Death of a Peer by Ngaio Marsh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is quite a fun mystery! And there’s a lot of pretty funny parts, too. I think Marsh must have known a family much like the Lampreys, in order to write their particular blend of personalities so well.
There’s a particularly hilarious scene where the (upper-crust) Lampreys are all in a room with a police officer, awaiting individual questioning, and they try to get their alibis straight speaking French to each other, assuming the low-class officer won’t understand. But they KNOW he writes in shorthand, which makes it very likely that he could write down what they’re saying phonetically and get somebody to translate it later. They can see how fast he writes. What are they thinking?
Oh, and he speaks French too.
And after that, there’s a more deeply funny moment when they get caught and it becomes apparent that the detective knows everything they’ve been saying the whole time. They shrug it off. No apology, no repentance, just a comment along the lines of, “Well, I guess we looked like jerks.” and then on to the next thing. Like water off a duck’s back. This is why they are what they are. They have achieved near-complete ironic detachment.
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