| He stood and looked at the door which Troy had only just not slammed. Then he turned to his job. There was a bow-fronted chest of drawers full of the sorts of garments that Alleyn often before had had to turn over. His thin fastidious hands touched them delicately, laid them in neat heaps on the bed and returned them carefully to their appointed places. There was a little drawer, rather untidy, where Troy kept her oddments. One or two letters. One that began "Troy darling" and was signed "Your foolishly devoted, John." "John,"
thought Alleyn, "John Bellasca?" He glanced through the letters quickly, was about to return them to the drawer, but on second thoughts laid them in a row on the top of the chest. "An odious trade," he muttered to himself. "A filthy degrading job." Then there were the dresses in the wardrobe, the slim jackets, Troy's smart evening dresses, and her shabby old slacks. All the pockets. Such odd things she kept in her pockets -- bits of charcoal, india-rubbers, a handkerchief that had been disgracefully used as a paint rag, and a sketchbook crammed into a pocket that was too small for it. There was a Harris tweed coat -- blue. Suddenly he was back on the wharf at Quebec. The lights of Troy's ship were reflected in the black mirror of the river. Silver-tongued bells rang out from all the grey churches. |
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- Artists in Crime, 1938
- Dame Ngaio Marsh
- GLUG, GLUG: Sir, -- The standard of radio drama in New Zealand is high and, by the large, it remains consistently so. Why, then, is it necessary, when a character is required to drink, for him to pant, grunt, smack his lips, sigh, inhale like a grampus and exhale like a steam-locomotive? We already know he is drinking. We have heard corks pop, glasses clink, people say 'ah' from the stomach and liquor gurgle. The dullest among us is fully informed. Why then must the actor, too, gurgle ad nauseum? Pray, Sir, let there be less of this glottal insistence. Credit Dame Marsh's Letter to the Listener, The Listener Bedside Book, 1977 and Good as Gold, Being a New Zealander, John Daley, 2002
"She has the gift ..." Erle Stanley Gardner | |
