This is one of Marsh’s last mysteries – and one of her weakest. There is the usual start with a family of gentry – the Pharamonds – and an early death, soon suspected to be a murder. Ricky Alleyn, the young son of Superintendent Roderick Alleyn and his artist-wife Troy, is visiting with the Pharamonds so there’s a good reason for Supt. Alleyn to get involved. The setting is an interesting one: an island in the English channel with close ties to France. So why doesn’t this book work?
For one thing, there is a connection to drug trafficking, with illegal substances coming in from Marseilles. Marsh doesn’t seem comfortable writing about drugs and drug addicts, as shown by the characters from When in Rome. Roderick Alleyn and his constant associate, Inspector Fox, have many long discussions of the European drug trade, which seem forced and are mostly boring. And Alleyn’s manner when he withholds an addict’s “fix” until he gives information seems uncharacteristically harsh, but perhaps his concerns about his son make this understandable.
Despite the fact that Ricky becomes infatuated with the already-married Julia Pharamond, there’s not much charming banter around the Pharamond dinner table, as one would have expected in an earlier Marsh mystery. Instead, there is a lot of physical hardship for Ricky, who is nearly drowned, then beaten up, and later sufficiently wounded to need hospitalization. Late in the book (page 247 in copy), Julia identifies herself as a Lamprey by birth, which recalls the great fun of the earlier (1940) Death of a Peer, but nothing comes of this.
At long last, when it appeared that the last 20 pages were racing to a dazzling Golden Age finish, Marsh threw the ending away. So a disappointment in all ways.
Mystery- Death by Committee 