‘Murder on the Marsh’ by John Ferguson

Published by The Oleander Press,
14 December 2022.
ISBN: 978-1-91547518-3 (PB)

Murder on the Marsh (originally published in 1930) is another issue in the Oreon Golden Age series. Ferguson (1871-1952) was a Scottish railway clerk who became a clergyman. He wrote a number of novels and was also a successful playwright.

The tale starts when Ann Cardew visits the Daily Record’s crime reporter (and Ferguson’s regular sleuth) Francis McNab to tell of concerns about her father’s recent peculiar behaviour. McNab has a reputation for journalistic scoops, and he invites his younger colleague Godfrey Chance to the meeting. Both men (particularly McNab) think that Miss Cardew’s worries are exaggerated (Mr Cardew had given his daughter the impression that he was afraid of something or someone in the garden, and at particular times), but before they have time to consider the matter further Mr Cardew is found dead on his front lawn with no apparent signs of foul play. McNab, however, has his suspicions and sends Chance to Romney Marsh to find out why an inquest has been called.

Chance (and subsequently McNab) find themselves in a close-knit community interwoven with family relationships. A young and keen local policeman is the second victim. He is found clutching a torn half page from his notebook, and it becomes clear from this that he had solved the first murder. The problem for Chance and McNab is to work out what was on the rest of the page before they can identify the murderer. It becomes a case of treading in a dead man’s shoes.

There are the usual Golden Age touches, with plenty of pipe-smoking and policemen on bicycles. Chance narrates the novel and comes across as rather humourless, but he acts as a foil to the more idiosyncratic McNab. ‘One of your chief uses, Godfrey,’ he [McNab] said in a lighter tone, ‘is that you so often take it upon yourself to act as devil’s advocate. It is most helpful. You force me to clarify and purge my thinking processes.’ McNab, a proud Scotchman, has his prejudices: ‘His dislike of an Anglicised fellow-countryman was almost ferocious in its intensity,’ Chance observes. McNab takes against two residents of the marsh, considering them guilty of ‘the crime of trying to be more English than the English.’ Not that Chance is free of his own prejudices: he refers to McNab’s ‘cautious Scotch traits ... that I heartily disliked’, and later says ‘What a man he [McNab] would have been if only he had been an Englishman!’ And the local inspector has a dig at Scotchmen right at the end.

At one point there is a hint of almost supernatural forces (the other-worldly ambience of the marsh helps this), and it brought to this reader’s mind the work of John Dickson Carr and particularly The Crooked Hinge, to Ferguson’s advantage as Carr’s novel did not appear until 1937. One wonders idly whether Carr had read Ferguson! The denouement is fairly convoluted but convincing.

In summary, then, Murder on the Marsh is not perhaps an outstanding novel, but it is a perfectly readable and enjoyable example of the Golden Age genre.
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Reviewer: David Whittle

John Ferguson (1871-1952) was born at Callander, Perthshire. As a dramatist Mr Ferguson is probably best known for his now famous play Campbell of Kilmohr, which at its first Royalty Theatre production was hailed by the dramatic critic of the Glasgow Herald as 'a new and significant type of Scottish drama'. He is the author of  Death and Mr Dodsley, The Man in the Dark, and Murder on the Marsh.

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then. He is currently convenor of the Midlands Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association.