Vintage Murder by Ngaio Marsh
published 1937
After looking at theatrical mysteries last week, and reading all the
erudite comments, this book came back to my attention.
I read Vintage Murder 10 years ago but didn’t blog on it (though I have
posted on almost all Ngaio Marsh's) and my notes say ‘rather a feeble one’. I have not
significantly changed my mind, but have summoned up a few comments.
It deals with a group of travelling theatricals, come from
London to New Zealand. Carolyn Dacres is the star actress, her husband and his
business partner run the company, and there is the usual collection of young
ingenues, old character players, and stagehands.
Inspector Roderick Alleyn, Marsh's regular sleuth, is travelling as a civilian on
holiday and has fallen in with them – not connected to any crime – and the book
opens with him sharing their private railway carriage on the way to their next performance,
in Middleton, an imaginary NZ town. The usual tensions show themselves.
The next day, with the group now based in Middleton, there is an
evening performance, to be followed by a special dinner on stage. The leading
lady, Carolyn, is celebrating her birthday, and her husband has set up a
surprise trick whereby a huge bottle of champagne will be lowered to the table
from the flies. This goes wrong: the bottle falls on the head of one of the
attendees. Is it just an accident or could it be….? Guess.
So does this fit in with my previous list of prop failures leading to death? Although the murder happens on stage, it is not part of a
performance, though I suppose the jereboam could be considered to be a prop
that plays its part in a dastardly plan…
Alleyn is welcomed by the local police (they’ve all read
his book on methods of investigation) and now Marsh outdoes herself: there is
150 pages of people explaining where they were in minute detail, and whom they
saw. It is stutifyingly dull. Alleyn is the only person still paying attention,
and he identifies who must have done it. Even he has lost interest in motive by
now. ‘Seems to point to something’ as a final explanation is a phrase that
should have no place in a sensible crime book.
My friend Brad Friedman, Ah Sweet Mystery blog, calls this
fatal tendency in the author ‘dragging
the marshes’.
A small return on ploughing through it – some tiny points
of interest.
1) A
group of travelling actors should be a great setting for a crime story, it’s
quite hard to make it so dull. And the strange thing is that Marsh’s Colour
Scheme, 1943, also has travelling actors in NZ, but is wildly
entertaining and one of my all-time favourites of her books. Her much later book, False Scent, also has a grande dame actress celebrating a birthday - and I discussed in the post item number 2, Marsh's horror of age:
2) With
her usual dislike of old people, two of the actors are repeatedly referred to
as old throughout the book, for no good reason. Old Susan, old Miss Max, old
Miss Susan Max, old Brandon Vernon. (Susan Max is left over from an earlier
Marsh theatrical book, Enter
a Murderer)
3) An
unloved comic actor is referred to several times as a ‘footpath comedian’, with
no indication as to what this means. I have been unable to track down the
phrase.
4) Very close to the end, Alleyn has a conversation with a stagedoorkeeper, Singleton, which is (finally) amusing – he keeps reminiscing about his years in the theatre in London, making wild and unlikely claims about his successes, praising the Swan of Stratford-on-Sea and claiming to have known Houdini and to have played Othello: he has to be constantly diverted from reminiscence to facts. ‘What a fabulous bit of wreckage’ says Alleyn, and he is.
The pictures come from a book about NZ drama of the era
https://archive.org/details/newzealanddrama10000thom
The show is a 1933 play called The Wind and the Rain, the first
NZ play ever to be staged in the West End of London, and a huge success everywhere, worldwide. (though the book contains this line: ‘the revival in 1981 left
many wondering how it could originally have run for three years in London.’)
It's funny, isn't it, Moira, how a dragging middle of a story can make such a difference in whether we enjoy the novel. And Marsh didn't do that in other books. Oh, and about her treatment of older people? I've never liked that, either. Ah, well... At any rate, I do like the concept of the group of theatricals who travel together. There's so much possibility there.
ReplyDeleteI know - it should have been so much better, just a misfire this time
DeleteWouldn't "footpath" in this connection be another way of saying "pedestrian", i.e. dull?
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't quite make sense to me but you may be right!
DeleteI wondered whether this could be an allusion to the street entertainers who used to busk to people queuing on the pavement outside theatres and cinemas - UK “pavement” seems to be “footpath” in New Zealand.
DeleteSovay
Another interesting idea! The people who mention it are English, not NZ, but of course it could be Marsh's unconscious use of her natural phrase.
DeleteWhen we lived in America I was surprised to find the pavement was the roadway. Saying 'get on the pavement' to small children, a normal phrase in UK, was not a good idea!
Two countries divided by a common language - highly dangerous when it comes to road safety!
DeleteSovay
Yes! We once horrified a shop assistant in the US by saying we wanted torches for the children to play with. We should have said 'flashlights' - torches were open-flame welding equipment. Fortunately we sorted it out before they called child protection....
DeleteI hadn't noticed Marsh's dislike of old people, but will look out for it now. We read this one in Shedunnit a couple of years ago, and I couldn't get my head around the spiral train track, but remember thinking how Edwardian the company seemed.
ReplyDeleteOn a personal note, Old Susan Max is probably my age, so it’s doubly irritating. When did the bar start moving upwards for describing someone as old?
DeleteNerys
Wonder if Susan was also old in her first appearance? Marsh apparently also had a dislike for large people, according to a review I read somewhere. Can't remember where, or which book was reviewed.
DeleteOne you start looking, it is easy to spot. There is a lot of unnecessary (but possibly neutral) use of the word - why would you need to keep pointing out that a character is old? But also her descriptions of older women can be graphically horrible. False Scent and Spinsters in Jeopardy demonstrate these aspects.
DeleteThese horrible old women are often younger than Marsh was when she wrote the book concerned. and yes, Nerys, younger than I am now so I find it particularly strange.
Enter a Murderer, where Susan Max first appears was only a year or two before, and yes she is Old Susan Max in that too.
Re the spiral train track mentioned by Christine - the Raurimu Spiral is famous in NZ for solving a very difficult engineering problem. It looks pretty fabulous from the air - see here https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/7588/Raurimu%20Spiral
DeleteThanks so much - that is fascinating, I had no idea. Well worth looking up - what an achievement!
DeleteI didn’t really notice the old references but the ‘Colonialism’ makes me cringe. I like being a Canadian.
ReplyDeleteChris Wallace
I think she tries quite hard to be fair to Maori culture, and calls out some racism - but then it all falls apart in the final third with the Maori doctor. She was a proud New Zealander, and certianly thought of herself thus.
DeleteThe heroine of one of her books is a girl from NZ transplanted to London. She often thinks of her homeland. Marsh's descriptions of the country show her deep feelings for it.
DeleteWas that Surfeit of Lampreys? I remember reading that as a teenager and completely entering into the thoughts of the young woman, making her way across the world - it was so well done. (we will gloss over the fact that when I reread it later, I liked that opening passage and hated the rest!)
DeleteI had a similar experience with "Surfeit of Lampreys" - I loved it as a teenager, identifying with the young protagonist and seeing the Lampreys through her rose-coloured spectacles, then re-read it a few years later and found that all the Lamprey charm had evaporated, leaving a long tedious narrative populated by mostly unpleasant characters.
DeleteSovay
That's the one! (I was thinking of Ospreys--close but no cigar.) Marsh and I seemed to have different ideas of charm from the start and I didn't care much about the Lampreys, wishing the heroine had stayed in NZ which seemed so wonderful. Now that I think of it, did Marsh choose their name because they were rather a slippery bunch?
DeleteSovay you sum up exactly how I felt about it, then and now. They were so posh and Bohemian to a teenager, and so rude and charmless when viewed as an adult.
DeleteMarty, I love the idea of the Ospreys, that'd make a great family name for a novel. They were very slippery, but wasn't Marsh still seeing them as wonderful? I wondered if she came over from NZ and was taken up by a similar family.
I just checked to see who the book is dedicated to - thinking perhaps it would helpfully be to, say, 'the wonderful Perch family who were so welcoming when I arrived in London' - but no, it is dedicated to a prominent NZ doctor and his wife, lifelong residents of NZ.
If you look at my post on Surfeit, you'll see that it was part of a bloggers' theme month on Marsh, where others had said they disliked the book. I was wholly prepared to write an elegy to its joys, and was horrified when I realised that I was going to have to join the haters!
Marty’s quite right – lampreys are slippery snake-like parasites, and a surfeit of them can kill you! So maybe NM really was trying to flag up that the reader shouldn’t take the family at their own or the naïve young protagonist’s valuation (I remembered her as Robin but she seems to be Roberta).
DeleteSovay
Read the biography Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime by Joanne Drayton. Yes, she was taken up by such a family. PS I loathe the Lampreys. She also spent time working in a dress shop - I wish she'd used that experience as a background!
DeleteSovay: It was King Henry I who died from a surfeit of lampreys (maybe - doubts have been cast)
DeleteLucy (I'm guessing) Iwould be interested to read a biog of her - and totally agree, dress shop a missed opportunity.
I just googled lampreys, and now I wish I hadn't! I had thought of it as an eel, but apparently that's a misnomer. Lampreys make eels look good!
DeleteI think the Osprey family would be high flyers, right? And maybe related to Peregrine Jay, a character in some of the books?
DeleteI try not to be judgmental about other life forms but it’s really hard to find anything positive to say about lampreys!
DeleteSovay
I feel my whole life until now I have only known two things about lampreys - this book, and the dead king. And now I know how awful they are.... why were they such a delicacy?
DeleteOh yes, Marty, high flyers! But with a nesting instinct...
I guess one can be a scary prehistoric-looking parasite with thousands of teeth and still be delicious! And they were apparently popular in pre-Reformation days because they had a texture not unlike beef but could be eaten on days of abstinence from meat.
DeleteIf NM knew anything about them, her choice of name for the Lamprey family must surely have been a hint to the reader.
Sovay
Could the Ospreys be a great theatrical dynasty? I can envisage a multi-volume saga, starting in the late Victorian era ...
DeleteSovay
That's a very interesting point about their meat-y flavour.
DeleteClemence Dane wrote two wonderful books about theatrical families, Broome Stages and The Flower Girls. I think she would have been the ideal writer for a book aobut the Ospreys and their ups and downs, family scandals. You can just see it - the old time-y actor manager, the rebellious young women, the young men moving into the wrong circles, the one who wants to do new experimental plays... We just need a strong title.
Some wonderful new to me authors and books in these theatrical posts and comments, so lots to look forward to. I have stuggled with Ngaio Marsh in the past, her writing seems very dense to me but I will definitely try Colour Scheme.
ReplyDeleteI love it when people find new authors/books. And I do recommend Colour Scheme if you want to give Marsh another go.
DeleteMarsh's penultimate novel, Photo Finish, features an old female opera singer. It is not I think very complimentary of old age either, and also heavily emphasizes how horrible the idea of an affair between a younger man and an older woman is. Marsh of course was no spring chicken when she wrotes books about how horrible old women are, which makes it more interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt is so strange that she was so unsympathetic - I can (kind of) understand a brash 25 yo thinking 55 is ancient, but she was in her 80s when she wrote Photo Finish, right?
DeleteYes, she was. The book is set in NZ by the way, Alleyn's third visit to the country, and the fourth book set there. Dr Te Pokiha gets a mention.
DeleteThere's a large singing teacher in that book but he's sympathetic. The singer is not old, just "over the hill". (There's some cruelty to a fat policeman in Vintage Murder, and guying of a young actor who tries to adopt the "Oxford manner".)
DeleteThat was me, Lucy.
DeleteMarsh doesn't like opera, either, and Troy makes fun of the singer in her work. (Lucy)
DeleteJohan: so is there an NZ book without Alleyn?
DeleteLucy: she didn't hold back on her important likes and dislikes did she?
No, but there are two books that I imagine reflect the same visit to NZ. Scotland Yard seem to have sent their best man to NZ for a large part of WW2.
DeleteAfter I'd asked you I kind of worked that out, but I am still impressed by how clearly you remember details!
DeleteYes, after reading False Scent, I decided that I definitely wouldn't want to be an older woman in a Ngaio Marsh novel. Chrissie
ReplyDeleteNo, you really don't!
DeleteEven though that particular leading lady is so beautifully described! (Lucy)
Delete"There was a rather deadly little pause."
Haven't we all experienced those?
I was torn about False Scent - there were aspects I didn't like, the 'surprise' murder method seemed gallopingly obvious - but I did enjoy reading it.
DeleteOn the other end of the spectrum, it seems that NM's heroines tend to be very young, teenagers even. They are often plucky orphans who immediately enchant an older man. Honorable exceptions to this rule are Barbara in Colour Scheme, who is an interesting young woman, and Verity in Grave Mistake who is a sensible adult woman. I liked NM very much when I was young, and perhaps this is why it's often so disappointing to read her books today.
DeleteNerys
Yes I recognize all of that - and I find ups and downs when I reread....
Delete***The comment below has a huge gap in it - I don't know how that happened, but please do keep scrolling down to more! Blogger is not the best platform, and we have to live with it...
i would urge anzone to read Marsh``
ReplyDeleteI would urge anyone to read her autobiography 'Black beech and honeydew'. It's bundled in with 'Photo finish' and Light thickens' in the Harper paperback editions published with three books together. It also includes a short story 'Morepork' which is set in New Zealand.
Her autobiography is a fascinating depiction of another world and time.
Christine in Germany
Second that, I enjoyed her autobiography very much. But you can definitely pick up echoes of her ... Let's call them prejudices? That show up in her novels.
DeleteThanks both of you, that's an encouraging recommendation from both of you. It's a book I've always meant to read - I've always felt it was a beautiful title
DeleteIt's also on archive.org--I've started reading it.
DeleteOh thank you, very helpful. Let us know how you get on.
DeleteIt was a good read, her love for NZ and the theater were obvious. I was surprised that there was so little about her detective fiction. There were plenty of interesting "characters" many of whom were relatives. Of course there were the "Lampreys" and yes, she thought they were wonderful! Apparently it was a question of charm, which could have been hard to convey in her book.
DeleteVery prompt report thank you. sounds interesting.
DeleteEvelyn Waugh said in Brideshead 'Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art'
That seemed very cynical when I was young (and obv it's a character saying it) but as I grow older I often think of it and have decided he may have a point...
To rephrase the verse, charm covers a multitude of sins! Actually, Marsh emphasizes the Lampreys' kindness and generosity, and puts their cyclical financial crisis down to an indifference to money which she seems to find amusing if not downright admirable. But you can't help wondering about people who may have suffered because of their lifestyle. After all, most of us can't afford to be indifferent to money, much as we'd like to be! You'd probably enjoy the descriptions of her various theatrical enterprises, though.
DeleteRe Waugh's remark, I can't believe that charm doesn't exist outside your "damp islands"--too much evidence of charming rogues everywhere!
ReplyDeleteI always have a problem (IRL and in books) with people whse indifference to money means others have to subsidise them. 'Poor old them, they're in debt/can't pay the rent' - well can we think about the creditor and the landlord for a moment? And I speak as someone who is undoubtedly a champagne socialist.
DeleteI think Waugh was talking about a specific kind of charm, which was very English. And it wasn't rogues he meant. He was talking about Sebastian Flyte, whose difficulties could be found anywhere, but whose manner of presenting was very (if not uniquely) English. But not a rogue.