Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime. Joanne Drayton

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СКАЧАТЬ spiritual whoop and went in…boots and all.’ St Michael and All Angels was the school’s parish church. She adored its theatre: the sermons denouncing sin and promising retribution; the processions; the banners; the dressing-up—the stoles, the copes and the cassocks; and the ‘drift of incense’ mingled with the smell of waxed wood and coir matting. The vicar’s children, the ‘Burton sisters’, became special friends. They were English and loved acting and the theatre. The other close friend was Sylvia Fox.

      Then there was the drama of her English classes. ‘Eng. Lit. with Miss Hughes was exacting, and absorbing, an immensely rewarding adventure…she gave me a present that I value more than any other: an abiding passion for the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare.’ But Ngaio felt guilty about Miss Hughes. After winning a Navy League Empire Prize ‘with an essay containing thirty-one spelling mistakes’, she got the distinct impression that her teacher was not amused and would have liked to have read this, and other things her pupil wrote. Ngaio’s diffidence about her work made it hard for her to ask for assistance. She was very independent, but also painfully shy at times.

      However, Ngaio’s interest in literature, creative writing, drama and art was fostered, so she distinguished herself, becoming head prefect in her senior year. This brought her into regular contact with her ‘schoolgirl crush’, the headmistress, Sister Winifred. They began swapping confidences, Ngaio trying awkwardly one day to express her wish to do something for the Church. ‘To my amazement,’ Ngaio recalled,

      she opened wide her arms and, with a delighted smile exclaimed, ‘You are coming to us!’

      Nothing could have been farther from my thoughts. Never in my most exalted moments had I imagined myself to have a vocation for the Sisterhood. Immersed in the folds of her habit, I was appalled and utterly at a loss. It was impossible to extricate myself…I listened aghast to her expressions of joy and left in a state of utmost confusion. It was an appalling predicament.

      But Ngaio did find a calling at St Margaret’s. In fact, she found two: art and the theatre. While still at high school, she studied part-time at the Canterbury College School of Art, taking classes two afternoons a week in the antique room from 1909 to 1914. The results were encouraging. She believed art would become her occupation, and the theatre her leisure. In her lunchtimes, twice a week she went to the lower school at St Margaret’s to entertain the small girls by writing stories and enacting them. This evolved into the play Bundles, which was deemed good enough by Sister Winifred (who harboured no hard feelings) to be performed at the end-of-year prizegiving.

      Encouraged, Ngaio wrote a full-length play called The Moon Princess, based on a fairy story by George Macdonald. ‘I showed it to my friends, the Burtons and they bravely decided to produce it on quite an imposing scale at St. Michael’s.’ Her mother agreed to take a leading role, as the witch. Rose played her heart out. She screeched the ‘dark nights’ curse so frighteningly that the neck of every small child in the house crawled with fear. Her big scene was with Helen Burton, who was director as well as star of the show. They gave it ‘everything they had’, transforming Ngaio’s dialogue. Gramp Seager was there, too, and after the final performance he presented Ngaio with two precious heirlooms. One was a book called Actors of the Century, with his own emphatic annotations in the margins; the other was the ‘tawny-coloured lush-velvet coat’ of renowned actor Edmund Kean. This was his highest accolade.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ