Singing in the Shrouds by Ngaio Marsh

published 1958

At noon Mrs Dillington-Blick took to the water and the appearance was in the nature of a star turn. She wore a sort of bathing-negligee which Aubyn Dale, who escorted her, called a ‘bewilderment of nonsense’. It was all compact of crisp cotton frills and black ribbons and under it Mrs Dillington-Blick was encased in her Jolyon Swimsuit which belonged to a group advertised as being ‘for the Queenly Woman’.

She had high-heeled thonged sandals on her feet and had to be supported down the companion-ladder by Aubyn Dale who carried her towel and sunshade. At this juncture only Jemima, Tim, Alleyn and Mr Cuddy were bathing. The others were assembled under the awning and provided an audience for Mrs Dillington-Blick. She laughed a great deal and made deprecatory moues. ‘My dears!’ she said. ‘Look at me!’

 ‘You know,’ Jemima said to Tim, ‘I really do admire her. She actually cashes in on her size. I call that brilliant.’

‘It’s fascinating,’ Tim agreed. ‘Do look! She’s standing there like a piece of baroque, waiting to be unveiled.’

observations: Blog friend Lucy Fisher chose Singing in the Shrouds  for Rich Westwood’s ‘Books of 1958’ theme over at Past Offences – Lucy’s review here, Rich’s roundup here, the Clothes in Books choice here. I had to grab and read it immediately, and what a joy it was - and the clothes could have given me a week of entries. Well, Mrs Dillington-Blick alone could have done that. She’s a quite wonderful character, with ‘the feather in her hat, her earrings, the orchids on her great bust and her furs.’ As pointed out above, she is large and makes the most of it: she is good-hearted and generous, and enjoys the effect she has on others:

Mrs Dillington-Blick, who might have been thought to be already in full flower, awarded herself a sort of bonus in effulgence. Everything about her blossomed madly. ‘Fun!’ she seemed to be saying. ‘This is what I’m really good at. We’re all going to like this.’

(This book must be unusual in using the word effulgence several times, twice about Mrs D-B. Also she is praised for enjoying 'a bit of chaff' -  not something you hear of much these days.)

Lucy suggests that Diana Dors could have played her – the book is certainly asking to be made into a TV film. It is like Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile on an ocean liner, with a similar early scene where everyone eyes one another over the first dinner, and with a splendid collection of diverse and sharply-defined characters, all travelling from England to Cape Town – the grumpy spinster, the TV show host, the pedantic schoolmaster, the Anglo-Catholic priest, the young doctor. Is one of them the serial killer called the flower murderer? The killer sings over the victims, leaving them with their necklaces broken and blossoms on their bodies – a very sinister image. The book is witty and entertaining, despite having some very unconvincing psychology and psychiatry, and some very much of-the-time (and hard to take now) views of gay characters – Marsh is trying to be open-minded, but having some problems with it.

My memory of Marsh books was that they frequently get dull in the middle with long descriptions of alibis and who was where when the lights went out. This one manages to avoid that, and I found it consistently funny and clever. There were lovely contemporary touches, including the surprise that a TV programme might not have gone out live (the star has no alibi!), though the programme itself sounded very modern, with its over-sharing of personal problems. The details of shipboard travel were fascinating, starting with the boat leaving from central London in deep fog at midnight… leaving a body in an alley nearby. You can’t fault Marsh’s creation of atmosphere.

The clothes include an uncreased white dress, a startling Spanish dress, and a young woman looking ‘enchanting in jeans and a scarlet shirt.’ The same young woman earlier wears a camel-hair coat with a studded black belt, a black zouave hat (not as nice as it sounds, in my view, unlike zouave trousers ***) and black scarf. The TV host wears Palm Beach trunks to the swimming pool. There are linen tropical suits for the older men. Tremendous. 

*** I originally said that I liked zouave trousers (wide and billowy, very modern) but not a zouave hat. But I obviously found the wrong one. Above is a Van Gogh picture featuring a zouave: great hat. Zouaves were French soldiers 'with a distinctive uniform', mostly from Algeria.

I haven’t read much Ngaio Marsh since starting this blog, but feel I must now do some serious re-reading if they are all going to have clothes details like that….

The top picture is from Dovima is Divine. The bottom one, from Ladies Home Journal, was used on this blog entry.