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Dulcie Winifred Catherine Bailey Denison, known as Dulcie Gray, (1915 – 2011) was a Renaissance woman: She was a British singer and actress on stage, film, and television; she wrote 18 mysteries between 1957 and 1979; and she studied butterflies. She was vice-president of the British Butterfly Conservation Society and in 1978 she published Butterflies on My Mind, a work on the conservation and life of butterflies in Great Britain. She also wrote a short biography of J.B. Priestly, the English novelist and playwright.
Her second mystery was a stand-alone called Murder in Melbourne (Arthur Barker, 1958), which was adapted both for BBC radio and television broadcast. The book jacket blurb says she wrote the first part while she was performing in a play in Melbourne.
Richard Quayle is flying into Melbourne to ask his long-term girlfriend Anna Matheson to marry him. They had parted on less than amicable terms four months earlier, as Anna wanted to be married and Richard was happy with their relationship as it was. He is a little unsure of his reception, apprehensive that Anna had decided she could live without him during their hiatus.
Anna doesn’t answer the telephone and Richard goes to her hotel room to find the door unlocked and Anna on the bed, dead for some hours. The police find that she’d been spending a lot of time with Jack Leonard who’d left Melbourne earlier that day and that she’d attended a party given by Felix Milton the day before. Milton was known for his frequent and elaborate parties. It was there that the police believe the fatal dose of poison was given to Anna in a drink.
Richard is dissatisfied with the slow progress of the official investigation and decides to conduct one of his own. Oddly enough, the police don’t seem to object to Richard’s efforts and in fact welcome the additional information he can offer. He attends one of Milton’s parties, where he meets most of Anna’s social circle. Everyone has a secret or two, and they aren’t especially happy that Richard suspects them. One of the group is being blackmailed and is distraught at the idea that her well-hidden past might not be as shrouded as she had supposed.
All of the plot threads are sorted out during another of Milton’s parties in a classic denouement, where the police inspector masquerades as one of the guests. Overall, an interesting read but something was off about the structure or the pacing, I haven’t decided exactly what it was. The epilogue seemed to be pointless and I’m not sure what purpose it was supposed to serve. Fans of fair-play mysteries will find this story problematic because clues were sadly lacking. The portrayal of Melbourne as young but growing city was intriguing. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book and will read another by the author if the opportunity arises, although her works are not especially common.
I have not heard of this author before. Thank you for an interesting review.
Thank you! Someone on the Facebook Golden Age Detection page mentioned her some time ago. Her books have not been reprinted or converted digitally, and the originals have either been hard to find or out of my price range. I found this one at The Scene of the Crime books in Canada.