: Gilbert Adair
: The Act of Roger Murgatroyd
: Faber& Faber
: 9780571319800
: 1
: CHF 7.90
:
: Krimis, Thriller, Spionage
: English
: 304
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Boxing Day circa 1935. A snowed-in manor on the very edge of Dartmoor. A Christmas house-party. And overhead, in the attic, the dead body of Raymond Gentry, gossip columnist and blackmailer, shot through the heart. But the attic door is locked from the inside, its sole window is traversed by thick iron bars and, naturally, there is no sign of a murderer or a murder weapon. Fortunately (though, for the murderer, unfortunately), one of the guests is the formidable Evadne Mount, the bestselling author of countless classic whodunits. In fact, were she not its presiding sleuth, THE ACT OF ROGER MURGATROYD is exactly the type of whodunit she herself might have written.

Gilbert Adair has published novels, essays, translations, children's books and poetry. He has also written screenplays, including The Dreamers from his own novel for Bernardo Bertolucci.

‘Sort of thing you can’t imagine happening outside of a book!’

With a shaking hand the Colonel lit his cigar, then added, ‘D**n it all, Evadne, it could be one of yours!’

‘Hah!’ snorted the lady in question, straightening her pince-nez, which were sitting askew on the bridge of her nose. ‘That only proves what I suspected all along.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘That you were fibbing when you told me how much you enjoyed my stuff.’

‘Fibbing? Well, of all the –’

‘If you’d actually read my novels, Roger ffolkes, instead of just pretending to have read them, you’d know I never touch locked rooms. I leave them to John Dickson Carr.’

The Colonel was patently calculating how best to bluster his way out of the fix he’d got himself into when his daughter Selina, who until that instant had been seated beside her mother on the sofa, her face buried in her hands, suddenly startled both of them by shouting, ‘Oh, for God’s sake stop it, you two! You’re being absolutely horrid, behaving just as though we were playing a game of Murder! Ray is lying dead’ – she made a histrionic gesture in the vague direction of the attic – ‘shot through the heart! Don’t you even care!’

These last four words were spoken in audible capital letters: DON’T YOU EVEN CARE! It’s true that, when Selina decided to study art instead of going on the stage, she may have chosen the wrong calling, but on this occasion nobody could have doubted her sincerity. She had only just ceased sobbing, all of half-an-hour after the body had been discovered. And though he and his wife had done what they could to comfort her, the Colonel, in the heat and confusion of that discovery, had already forgotten the strength of his daughter’s feelings for the victim. He was now wearing a rather sheepish expression on his ruddycomplexioned features.

‘Sorry, my sweet, sorry. I’m being awfully callous. It’s just – well, it’s just that this murder is so extraordinary I still haven’t got over it!’ He put an arm round her shoulder. ‘Forgive me, forgive me.’

Then, typically, his mind started wandering again.

‘Never known a locked-room murder to happen in real life,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Might be worth writing toThe Times.’

‘Ohhh, father!’

While the Colonel’s wife continued ineffectually to pat her daughter on the knees, Donald, the American boy Selina had met at art school, hovered solicitously over her. He was, though, too bashful to do what he was surely pining to do, which was to cradle her in his arms. (That’s Donald Duckworth, by the way, an unfortunate name, but his parents couldn’t have anticipated that when they christened him back in 1915.)

In truth, the Colonel was by no means the sole offender