Roderick Alleyn (pronounced "Allen") is a fictional character who first appeared in the novel A Man Lay Dead (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, although the last Alleyn novel, Light Thickens, was published in 1982.
Marsh mentions in an introductionThe Ngaio Marsh Collection, volume 1 (A Man Lay Dead/ Enter a Murderer/ The Nursing Home Murder), Ngaio Marsh, Harper, 2009 that she named her detective Alleyn after the Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn, founder of Dulwich College, where her father had been a pupil. She started a novel with Alleyn in 1931, after reading a detective story by Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers on a wet Saturday afternoon in London and wondering if she could write something in the genre. So she bought six exercise books and a pencil at a local stationer and started A Man Lay Dead, involving a Murder Game, which was then popular at English weekend parties.
Background and early life
Roderick Alleyn (known as "Rory" to friends) is a gentleman detective, whose family and educational background may be deduced from comments in the novels. In brief, Alleyn was apparently born between 1892 and 1894, graduated from the University of Oxford around 1915, served in the army for three years in World War I, then spent a year (1919–1920) in the British Foreign Service. He finally joined the Metropolitan Police as a constable in about 1920 or 1921.
Marsh's Alleyn novels form a chronological series that follows his detective career. When the series opens (A Man Lay Dead, 1934), Alleyn is aged about 40 and is already a Detective Chief-Inspector in the CID at Scotland Yard.
In the early novels he is described several times as looking like a cross "between a monk and a grandee." He is very tall, dark and good looking; the press have given him the nickname "Handsome Alleyn". He has a habit of quoting Shakespeare, among others. As the series progresses, Alleyn marries and has a son, and eventually rises to the rank of Chief Superintendent.
He spends the years of the Second World War in the antipodes, engaged in counter-espionage work, often under an assumed name. When he returns to England, to his wife, Agatha Troy—and to a murder case—in Final Curtain (1947), Alleyn observes that they have been apart for "three years, seven months and twenty-four days".
Family background
Throughout the novels, Alleyn is clearly a member of the gentry. He is the younger brother of a baronet, and was raised in Buckinghamshire where his mother, Lady Alleyn, continued to live. Lady Alleyn is unseen until the sixth novel, Artists in Crime (1938). In Surfeit of Lampreys (1941) Alleyn states that his mother's maiden name was Blandish.
From the beginning of the series, Alleyn's father is dead: his older brother, Sir George Alleyn, is already enjoying the baronetcy. Their late father, also named George (Death in a White Tie, 1938) implicitly had at least one brother (Alleyn's paternal uncle), because the first novel (A Man Lay Dead, 1934) mentions a cousin, Christina Alleyn, who remains an unseen character. Christina is a chemist who trained at Newnham College, Cambridge. In 1934, Christina Alleyn is in her mid-twenties.
Alleyn is on tolerably good terms with his older brother, Sir George Alleyn, the current baronet, who throughout most of the series is an unseen character. In Artists in Crime (1938), their mother indicates that Sir George is more conventional and less intelligent than his detective younger brother. The novel Death in a White Tie features Sarah Alleyn, a daughter of Sir George, and mentions that Sir George's wife (Alleyn's sister-in-law) is named Grace and that the elder Lady Alleyn is called Helena (at least, she is addressed as such by Lady Lorrimer). Like his younger brother, Sir George entered the Foreign Service: Death in a White Tie implies that Sir George is the Governor of Fiji in the late 1930s, as he writes to Alleyn from Government House in Suva. In the much later novel, When in Rome (1970), Alleyn remarks that his older brother was once the British Ambassador there. Sir George finally appears in person, but only briefly, at an embassy function in Black As He's Painted (1974).
In the earliest five novels, Alleyn is single—and quite attracted to actresses, as described in both Enter a Murderer (1935) and Vintage Murder (1937). In Artists in Crime (1938), Alleyn meets renowned painter Agatha Troy on a ship leaving Fiji and again back in England after a model is murdered in Troy's studio. During the investigation he "loses his heart" but Troy cannot, at first, return his love. She finally accepts his proposal in the penultimate scene in Death in a White Tie (1938).
Troy is a famous painter, particularly of portraits, and features in many later novels either in person or in the letters Alleyn writes to her. According to one of a series of letters in Overture to Death (1939), their marriage was planned for April the following year. The actual event takes place "off stage", as does the birth of their son, also named Roderick but generally called Ricky; Ricky plays major roles as a six-year old child in Spinsters in Jeopardy (1954) and as a young adult in Last Ditch (1977).
Birth, education and early career
Alleyn was reportedly educated at Eton and Oxford, and worked in the Foreign Service for a year (1919–1920) before joining the Metropolitan Police. In Vintage Murder, Alleyn tells his New Zealand colleagues that his first beat was in Poplar, London. A much later novel, Scales of Justice (1955), gives sketchy details of this period in Alleyn's life. The reasons for the switch in careers are never made explicit.
Early in his police career, Alleyn wrote a textbook that became widely admired: Principles and Practice of Criminal Investigations, by Roderick Alleyn, M.A. (Oxon), C.I.D. (Sable and Murgatroyd, 21s), which is mentioned in a footnote to Chapter 6 of Vintage Murder (1937).
In the first few novels, Alleyn is in his early forties. In the first, A Man Lay Dead (1934), Nigel Bathgate (Alleyn's future Watson) is clearly stated to be twenty-five, and Alleyn is much older, judging by the tone of his remarks to Bathgate. In the second, Enter a Murderer (1935), there is a minor inconsistency, in that Bathgate appears to be slightly younger than before. Bathgate says that he has been working as a journalist for only 15 months, ever since he 'came down' (that is, graduated) from Trinity College, Cambridge. However, Alleyn comments that it is almost 20 years since he (Alleyn) came down from Oxford. Assuming both gentlemen graduated with a typical three-year Oxbridge degree at around age 21, then in 1934 or 1935 Bathgate is about 22 or 23 and Alleyn is about 20 years older, indicating his birth was around 1893 or 1894.
The fifth novel, Vintage Murder (1937), is explicitly set in New Zealand in June 1936—according to an epilogue dated September 1936 and set three months after the novel's action. In Chapter 16, Alleyn states his age, while speaking to a teenager: 'Rude you think? I'm twenty-five years older than you. Old gentlemen of forty-two are allowed to be impertinent. Especially when they are policemen.'
Vintage Murder also indicates Alleyn spent three years in the army after graduating, presumably during World War I. Nowhere in the series are details of this military service ever given. Immediately after the army, he spent a year in the Foreign Service.
The sixth novel, Artists in Crime (1938), rapidly follows the action of Vintage Murder (that is, occurs in late 1936), and contains letters between Lady Alleyn and her younger son during his return to England. These show that Alleyn's mother turns 65 in 1936, and that Alleyn is about 20 years younger. The same correspondence shows that Lady Alleyn's birthday is on the seventh of September, and that Alleyn's (forty-third) birthday follows soon after. Hence, from information in the fifth and sixth novels, Alleyn was probably born in September or October, 1893.
It is clear that later novels take some liberties with Alleyn's age. In Black as He's Painted (1974), Alleyn is clearly not 80 years old, as he would have to be if his birth was in 1893. The setting of the novel is identified as being contemporary with its writing, i.e. the early 1970s, and while Alleyn is clearly a senior member of CID, he is still relatively young and fit enough to be "sprinting" down alleyways after perpetrators.
The Alleyn canon The following descriptions are taken with acknowledgment from the rear cover blurbs on the Harper Collins Diamond Anniversary Collection of 2009.
A Man Lay Dead (1934) Sir Hubert Handesley's extravagant weekend house-parties are deservedly famous for his exciting Murder Game. But when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse with a real dagger in the back. All seven suspects have skilful alibis - so Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn has to figure out the whodunit. Enter a Murderer (1935)The crime scene was the stage of the Unicorn Theatre, when a prop gun fired a very real bullet; the victim was an actor clawing his way to stardom using bribery instead of talent; and the suspects included two unwilling girlfriends and several relieved blackmail victims. The stage is set for one of Roderick Alleyn's most baffling cases. The Nursing Home Murder (1935)A Harley Street surgeon and his attractive nurse are almost too nervous to operate. Their patient is the Home Secretary - and they both have very good personal reasons to want him dead. The operation is a complete success - but he dies within hours, and Inspector Alleyn must find out why. Death in Ecstasy (1936)Who slipped cyanide into the ceremonial wine of ecstasy at the House of the Sacred Flame? The other initiates and the High Priest claim to be above earthy passions. But Roderick Alleyn discovers that the victim had provoked lust and jealousy, and he suspects that more evil still lurks behind the Sign of the Sacred Flame. Vintage Murder (1937)New Zealand theatrical manager Alfred Meyer is planning a surprise for his wife's birthday - a jeroboam of champagne descending gently onto the stage after the performance. But, as Roderick Alleyn witnesses, something goes horribly wrong. Is the death the product of Maori superstitions - or something more down to earth? Artists in Crime (1938)It starts as an art exercise - the knife under the drape, the pose outlined in chalk. But when Agatha Troy returns to her class, the scene has been re-enacted: the model is dead, fixed in the most dramatic pose Troy has ever seen. It's a difficult case for Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn. Is the woman he loves really a murderess? Death in a White Tie (1938)The Season has begun. Débutantes and chaperones are planning their gala dinners - and the blackmailer is planning strategies to stalk his next victim. Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn knows that something is up and has already planted his friend Lord Robert Gospell at the dinner, but someone else has got there first. Overture to Death (1939)It was planned as an act of charity: a new piano for the parish hall, and an amusing evening's entertainment to finance the gift. But all is doomed when Miss Campanula sits down to play. A chord is struck, a shot rings out, and Miss Campanula is dead. It seems to be a case of sinister infatuation for Roderick Alleyn . Death at the Bar (1940)A midsummer evening - darts night at the Plume of Feathers, a traditional Devonshire public house. A distinguished painter, a celebrated actor, a woman graduate, a plump lady from County Clare and a local farmer all play their parts in a fatal experiment which calls for the investigative expertise of Inspector Alleyn.