''Singing in the Shrouds'' is a

detective novel Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as s ...

by New Zealand writer

Ngaio Marsh Dame Edith Ngaio Marsh (; 23 April 1895 – 18 February 1982) was a New Zealand mystery writer and theatre director. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1966. As a crime writer during the "Golden Age of Det ...

; it is the twentieth novel to feature

Roderick Alleyn Roderick Alleyn (pronounced "Allen") is a fictional character who first appeared in 1934. He is the policeman hero of the 32 detective novels of Ngaio Marsh. Marsh and her gentleman detective belong firmly in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, ...

, and was first published in 1959. The plot concerns a

serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...

who is on a voyage from

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

Background

New Zealand born Ngaio Marsh divided most of her adult life between her home on the outskirts of Christchurch (NZ) and frequent visits to England (mostly London), where she had many friends, although she also travelled in France and Italy (where two of her novels are set), and to the USA and Japan. Some of her English visits were of considerable length. Most of her novels are set in either England or New Zealand, draw upon her own life experiences, and in some cases upon an identifiable initial idea taken from a true crime. Both apply to ''Singing in the Shrouds'', based on the long sea voyages between New Zealand and Europe or the USA she preferred to flying (when air travel became more usual). She would always choose a small (cargo) ship with only a limited number of passengers, rather than one of the big passenger liners, and she undertook careful research in writing this novel about the cargo ship ''Cape Farewell'' voyage from London to South Africa with capacity for only 9 passengers. Marsh biographer

Joanne Drayton Joanne Drayton is a New Zealand art historian, biographer and nonfiction writer. Drayton graduated from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch in 1998 with a PhD on "Edith Collier: Her life and work (1885–1964)". She adapted her thesis f ...

relates how the writer based the novel's ''Cape Farewell'' on a lengthy 1954 sea voyage she took aboard the Norwegian ship ''Temeraire'', with a cargo of wool and 10 passengers, from Adelaide to Odessa, then via Spain to its ultimate docking in Wales. As Drayton comments: 'The people on board and the ship itself became the material for ''Singing in the Shrouds'' '. In writing a rare Roderick Alleyn mystery about a psychopathic serial killer, Marsh also researched this aspect, two actual wartime cases clearly providing reference points for her plot - those of

Gordon Cummins Gordon Frederick Cummins (18 February 1914 – 25 June 1942) was a British serial killer known as the Blackout Killer, the Blackout Ripper and the Wartime Ripper, who murdered four women and attempted to murder two others over a six-day period in ...

(London's 'Blackout Ripper') and Eddie Leonski (Melbourne's 'Brownout Killer'). The latter case shares significant common features with Marsh's fictional strangler, who 'says it with flowers' and sings as he kills or just after killing his victims: Leonski is recorded as having explained of the women he strangled that he wanted "to get at their voices".

Plot synopsis

Shortly before the midnight sailing of the cargo ship ''Cape Farewell'' from the Pool of London, bound for Cape Town, with its crew and full complement of 9 assorted passengers, the body of a strangled woman is discovered on the fog-wreathed dock, clearly the third victim of a serial killer who scatters flowers and broken beads on his victims and sings as he departs. The body is clutching part of a torn embarkation notice for the ''Cape Farewell'', so it seems 'The Flower Killer' must be one of the passengers. Scotland Yard Superintendent Roderick Alleyn boards by pilot off Portsmouth and poses as a passenger with the aim of identifying the culprit and preventing another murder on voyage, despite the grudging co-operation of the ship's Captain Bannerman, whose obstruction and denial of the situation enables a further killing to take place on voyage. The passengers are a very mixed collection - a glamorous socialite widow, a sweet young girl who's been jilted at the altar, a deeply unhappy middle-aged spinster with a specialism in church music, an Anglo-Catholic priest, a pedantically tetchy school-teacher, an alcoholic TV presenter on the edge of a nervous breakdown, a charmlessly smug middle-aged couple and an eccentric elderly bachelor. The cast of suspects is completed by the crusty captain, the very camp steward and the ship's young doctor. As the ship cruises into the tropics, the temperature rises, tensions emerge and events lead relentlessly towards another murder, as the ship's passengers gradually recognise, with horror, that the Flower Killer is on board and due to strike again. Eventually, this happens, despite Roderick Alleyn's best efforts to prevent it, but the killer is identified and apprehended as the ship reaches Cape Town.

Adaptation

The novel was adapted for the stage in 1963 as ''Murder Sails at Midnight,'' and staged in 1972 in England.

References

{{Ngaio Marsh Roderick Alleyn novels 1959 British novels Collins Crime Club books Novels set on ships Novels set in South Africa Novels set in London Novels set in Spain British detective novels British mystery novels British crime novels English-language novels