Off With His Head - Ngaio Marsh
First published 1957.
Recently Elise and I welcomed our first child into the world! Super exciting! Baby and mum are both healthy, although some complications during delivery meant that we ended up staying in hospital longer than expected. I grabbed this book from the hospital book exchange and managed to read the entire thing before we went home (you know, in between supporting Elise with her recovery).
The setting of this mystery is a small village in South East England, where the "Dance of the Five Sons" is performed each Winter Solstice by William Andersen and his five sons. The dance - a Morris dance/Mummers play/sword dance steeped in ritual and tradition - involves a moment where 'the Fool' (played by William) is 'beheaded', only to be resurrected later in the play. However, by the end of the dance it is discovered that William has indeed been beheaded, and Inspector Alleyn is called in to discover just how this happened and who the culprit was.
Chief suspects include the different sons of William (prominently his 'simple' youngest son Ernie who wants to dance the role of the Fool), an eccentric German woman (Anna Bunz) who is obsessed with English folk-dancing, a pair of lovers whom William was opposed to the union of, and the owner of a local garage who will benefit financially should William change his mind on a proposed business venture.
Like the best murder mysteries, Off With His Head drops a few clues here and there for the astute reader to pick up on. I noticed one or two, and was pleasantly satisfied when a few of my suspicions wound up being justified. Of course, there were also aspects that I didn't pick up on, meaning that the final solution about who, what and when was an actual revelation, as it should be.
The detailed description of the Morris dance was also interesting; something that Marsh researched carefully before crafting her own variation for the book.
A fun way to spend a week in hospital.
Completed 14 September 2023.
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