Very old reading

I discovered Ngaio Marsh in my teens and have loved her writing ever since. Born in 1895, in her day she was one of the ‘queens of crime’ along with Christie, Sayers and Allingham.
 
Marsh wrote 32 detective novels, of which I have 23. This one was published in 1942 and this copy was printed in 1954, which makes it 70 years old. It’s one of the original green Penguins – green for detective stories. The pages are brittle and brown, the ‘perfect’ binding is falling apart and, as I realised when I got to page 47, four pages are missing. But it’s still a delight to read.