Status Updates From Collected Short Mysteries

10. A Telescript (Part B): The Case with Five Solutions ***** Written by editor Greene in 1989. The editor proposes five possible solutions to the crime in #9, regardless of whether the jury verdict was guilty or not guilty. The solutions detail the different motives and methods for the various possible “Evil Liver” murderers.

9. A Telescript (Part A): Evil Liver ***** Originally broadcast in 1975. A previously unpublished telescript in which the reader must act as part of the jury/as detective. A fictional poisoning case is tried with a jury of regular citizens for the program “Crown Court.” Joan Hickson (who later played Miss Marple) played the defendant. The concluding lines depend on the jury’s verdict.

8. The Figure Quoted *** Originally source and year not stated. An auctioneer begins to hallucinate bids at an auction for a stone urn. More of a fantasy than a mystery.

7. Morepork **** Originally from 1978. Editor: “Marsh’s final and probably best short story”, "tells of an odd trial in the forests of New Zealand." An informal coroner’s hearing takes place in the bush when a bird song recordist is apparently drowned. But his parabolic microphone may have picked up a clue as to what really happened.

When they had withdrawn, Curtis-Vane said, “That young man—the son—is behaving very oddly.”
Dr. Mark said, “Oedipus complex, if ever I saw it. Or Hamlet, which is much the same thing.”

6. A Fool About Money *** Originally from 1974, exact source not stated. A man loves to retell a story which makes fun of his wife’s handling of money. But this time he tells the story when there is a certain witness on hand to rebut it.

5. The Cupid Mirror *** Originally from 1972, source not stated. At a restaurant a man tells his companion the story of how he watched someone be murdered by poisoning in the restaurant years ago. It all happened behind his back but he could see it reflected in a mirror.

4. The Hand in the Sand **** Originally 1953. Ngaio Marsh tells a story based on the true-crime facts of the 1885 disappearance of Arthur Howard in New Zealand. A severed hand was found on the beach and witnesses said that Howard had been the victim of a shark attack. Marsh says at the end that the facts were too bizarre to be turned into fiction. This was Marsh’s only true crime story.

3. Chapter and Verse ***** Originally from 1973. A book dealer from New Zealand arrives to visit Agatha Troy Alleyn. He has a family Bible with some mysterious entries written in it and wonders if his old friend Roderick Alleyn would be curious about it as well. Later he dies after falling from the Church tower, but was it an accident or murder? Roderick Alleyn arrives back home and has to solve the case.

2. I Can Find My Way Out ***** Originally from 1946. A friend of the Alleyns, Lord Michael Lamprey, wearing Roderick Alleyn's clothes (with Alleyn’s Police ID card in the pocket) goes out to play a prank at a theatre where he is mistaken for the detective but ends up discovering a murder in the backrooms. Alleyn is called out to solve it all.

1. Death on the Air *** Originally in The Grand Magazine in 1937. Marsh’s regular sleuth Roderick Alleyn investigates a death at Christmas involving a wireless radio set. This had a clever murder device, but the ending was a bit of a letdown. I had already read this in A Surprise For Christmas: And Other Seasonal Mysteries.

She stared meditatively at Alleyn. “Innocent people needn’t feel afraid, need they?”
“It’s an axiom of police investigation,” said Alleyn and wondered if indeed she was innocent.