Rose Marsh was a very proud woman that night. There were social engagements in Christchurch she could not attend because of the state of her clothes. She recycled her dresses, coats, hats and shoes so that her daughter could stay at school. Now, her sacrifice was vindicated. Ngaio was a work in progress. Through her, Rose could relive her own life and overcome the fear that had halted her development. There was much at stake.
Ngaio believed that her mother ‘over-concentrated’ on her. ‘Is there such a thing as a daughter Fixation?’ she asked in Black Beech. ‘If so, I suppose it could be argued that my beloved mother was afflicted with it.’ But how else could Rose realize her ambition?
After school finished, Ngaio’s life became harder for Rose to control. When Ngaio met the Rhodes family in 1924, it was almost impossible. There were weekend parties at Meadowbank. ‘In perpetuity’ wrote Ngaio flippantly in their visitors’ book after one of her stays. Her parents went to Meadowbank, too, and enjoyed it, but found the life of indolent luxury there something of an enigma. In England the Rhodeses were very kind to Ngaio, but Rose felt they had led her daughter astray. Her illness had brought Ngaio home.
Whatever I may write about my mother will be full of contradictions. I think that as I grew older I grew, better perhaps than anyone else, to understand her. And yet how much there was about her that still remains unaccounted for, like odd pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Of one thing I am sure: she had in her an element of creative art never fully realised. I think the intensity of devotion which might have been spent upon its development was poured out upon her only child.
Rose Marsh died of liver cancer on 23 November 1932. She was 68 years old.
Three months after Ngaio’s return to New Zealand, ‘on a warm evening, my father and I faced each other across my old schoolroom table and divided between us the letters of sympathy that we must answer’. It would be a different future without Rose. Paradoxically, in spite of all that she had done to realize her daughter, it was in Rose Marsh’s absence that Ngaio became herself. ‘Most of us,’ she wrote reflectively in Black Beech, ‘could point to a time, often long after physical maturity has been reached, and say to ourselves: “it was then that I…grew up.” My mother’s illness…marked I think my own coming-of-age.’ The Marsh household became orientated towards masculine things. Ngaio and her father bached together in a comfortable but less colourful life.
Then one day a note arrived from her literary agent Edmund Cork to say that he had placed her book with publisher Geoffrey Bles and that it would be released in 1934. It seemed nothing short of miraculous. Ngaio had hoped, but had hardly had time to give the book’s progress a second thought. Geoffrey Bles offered her £30 in advance and a 10 per cent royalty. She worked on the proofs long-distance. When the book arrived, two months after it was on the shelves in England, Henry read it captivated, as Rose had, ‘with his hand shaking and the pipe jiggling between his teeth when he came to the exciting parts’. The dedication was:
ForMy FatherAnd in memory ofMy Mother.
Nineteen thirty-four was a big year for the Queens of Crime.
Agatha Christie released her chilling Murder on the Orient Express with another remarkable dénouement that left readers rushing for the rulebook. Surely, it was not cricket to have everyone involved? After writing 29 novels, plays and collections of poems, Christie was reaching her zenith.
Then there was Dorothy Sayers, who was realizing her aim of integrating detective fiction with the novel of manners. In her eighth novel, Murder Must Advertise, published in 1933, she found her stride and so did Lord Peter Wimsey. He was less affected, and so was she. Sayers was writing about her own experiences working in an advertising agency. Her familiarity with the people and the settings gave the story conviction, making it her most successful and well integrated so far. The Nine Tailors, published in 1934, continued this process, providing readers with perceptive observations of church life and bellringing. By enriching the crime novel, Sayers expanded its market. Her interventions did not change the style or form, but they did rehabilitate it for a more sophisticated audience, ultimately broadening its readership.
The publication of Margery Allingham’s Death of a Ghost, also in 1934, was another watershed. This was her first truly accomplished piece of crime writing. With her talent now tempered by the experience of writing six Campion novels, Allingham combined the dramatic tension of earlier books with more convincing characterization and plot to create a captivating story.
The Queens were in their prime when Ngaio began publishing, and their writing helped generate a huge interest in the genre. During the inter-war period—marked by the end of one catastrophic conflict and the anticipation of another—there was a seemingly spontaneous desire among readers to assuage fear of universal death by focusing on the particular. The demand for detective fiction burgeoned. But it was a difficult field to break into, and its exponents were well practised. Considering the context of its launch, Ngaio’s A Man Lay Dead did remarkably well. Critics who had watched Christie, Sayers and Allingham develop seemed prepared to let Ngaio do the same, although there was confusion over the writer’s race and gender. The Times Literary Supplement critic took a stab. ‘Mr. Marsh’s manipulation of motive and alibi is neat and effective and repays careful attention’, but ‘His methods of detection…[are] somewhat distracting’, and Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn, a ‘most superior person, expensively educated and a connoisseur of good living [is] rather tiresomely familiar’. This kind of criticism inspired Ngaio to develop her own individual approach.
She was working on a script that represented a new departure. Enter a Murderer drew on her knowledge of the theatre, ‘trying to get the smell and feel of backstage’. The Rat and Beaver at the Unicorn is a play-within-a-novel, which echoes rather than explains the action. Roderick Alleyn is in the audience at the Unicorn Theatre, as a guest of Nigel Bathgate. The tension is palpable in the final fatal scene of The Rat and Beaver. Anger boils between cartel bosses the Beaver, played by Surbonadier, and the Rat, played by Felix Gardener. The intensity of their venom has brought the audience to the edge of their seats. Bathgate feels extremely uncomfortable because he knows the fury between the men is more than just acting: off stage they hate each other. Inspector Alleyn’s eyes are riveted to the action. Nigel can see the tension in his face. The anxiety is almost unbearable.
This is the moment of truth when the infamous Rat is exposed as an illicit drug trafficker, traitor, Nazi spy, or hero of the British Secret Service. The Beaver’s masterminding of the opium trade is well known. On stage he takes a revolver from his pocket and loads it, then addresses Gardener, the man who, in real life, has stolen his starring role and his lover.
‘So the Rat’s in his hole at last!‘
‘Beaver,‘ whispered Felix Gardener…‘You’re not a killer, Rat,’ he said. ‘I am.‘
Gardener raises his hands above his head, but then in the doorway stands Stephanie Vaughan holding a revolver pointed at Surbonadier. The Beaver has been outmanoeuvred by his cheating stage girlfriend (and real-life ex-lover). He drops his hand. The gun hangs limp in his fingers. Sneeringly, Gardener thanks Stephanie as he takes the revolver from Surbonadier. She taunts him. Suddenly Surbonadier snaps, grabs at Gardener’s neck, and pushes his head back. Gardener’s hand jerks. Bang goes the gun across the blackness. The sound is deafening. ‘Surbonadier crumpled up and, turning a face that was blank of every expression but that of profound astonishment, fell in a heap at Gardener’s feet.’ Alleyn seems to know what has happened, even before the shocked usher finds him, seated on the aisle. He urges Nigel to get out as quickly as possible.
Someone has exchanged real bullets for fakes, breaching the boundary between illusion and reality. In the make-believe of the play, the Rat shoots the