Death of a Ghost (1934)
My review:
Moving from the (rather silly and generic) thriller to the detective story proper, this is one of Allingham’s first successes, and the first of her sophisticated works. Her ability to observe characters and set them in motion is shown both in the reactions of the crowd present at the unveiling of the eighth posthumous Lafcadio to the murder of Tommy Dacre, and in those who come under suspicion: Lafcadio’s widow, Belle; his grand-daughter, Linda; the quite dotty model, Donna Beatrice (née Harriet Pickering), who interests herself in psychomancy and advises others to “vibrate to green when we think of the picture… Beautiful apple green, the colour of the earth”; the unfortunate Potters, acutely conscious of their lack of talent; and the extraordinary Max Fustian. His guilt, certain yet impossible to prove, becomes known to Campion three-fifths through not “by the blinding process of quiet, logical deduction, nor yet by the blinding flash of glorious intuition, but by the shoddy, untidy process halfway between the two by which one usually gets to know things”; motive is revealed much later. With Fustian growing gradually more and more insane (his mental breakdown mirrored, in this world of colour, by his sartorial collapse, culminating in his wearing a tartan waistcoat to a party), Campion offers himself up as a bait in a particularly horrifying climax.