The knife is removed before Sonia takes up the position once again.Īfter a weekend where everyone went away from Troy's home and studio at Tatler's End, class resumes on Monday.

Malmsley decides to paint Sonia with a dagger stabbing her through the back and Troy and the students set up the throne with a knife poking out from under the boards in such a way that it lines up with the model's heart. Valmai Seacliff is engaged to Pilgrim but had past dalliances and flirtations with Cedric Malmsley, Watt Hatchett and Fracis Ormerin.

Sonia has had affairs with both ne'er-do-well sculptor Wolf Garcia and Basil Pilgrim, whose father is a Lord. Much to Troy's dismay, many of her students live a Bohemian lifestyle full of drugs and sex. Sonia is a temperamental model who often breaks her uncomfortable pose on her throne, which requires Troy or another student to shove her shoulder down back in place. Letters back to England from Troy and Alleyn establish their hesitant initial, awkward acquaintance.īack in England, Troy hosts her art class consisting of eight students who paint and sculpt model Sonia Gluck. Alleyn falls in love with Troy at first sight but she initially finds him irritating. Among the passengers are the painter Agatha Troy, who is painting the receding wharf at Suva, discreetly observed by Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn returning from his last case in New Zealand. The novel opens aboard a passenger ship en route from New Zealand to Vancouver via Hawaii. The plot concerns the murder of an artists' model Alleyn's love interest Agatha Troy is introduced. Artists in Crime is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh it is the sixth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1938.

Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh