Ngaio Marsh - Death on the Air - and other stories

In her early books Marsh is clearly feeling her way as a novelist, so the Alleyn of her first mystery, A Man Lay Dead , is merely an effete, pale version of the man he later became. Douglas G Greene, the American expert on crime and mystery fiction, puts this well when he writes that though Alleyn might have emerged from Lord Peter Wimsey, he became ‘the spiritual ancestor’ of P D James’s Adam Dalgleish. Fortunately Alleyn developed with speed, and in Artists in Crime , published in 1938, Marsh moved into top gear as a crime writer. In this novel Alleyn meets his future wife, Troy, and in the next novel, Death in a White Tie , he wins her. For the next twenty years after this classic pair of novels, Marsh is at her zenith, and even the fading of her powers is marked by outbursts of her old brilliance, notably in Black as he’s Painted , published in 1974. Her penultimate novel, Photo-Finish , finally does justice to the beauty of her native land, where she was to die in 1982 at the age of eighty-six.

Every Marsh novel features Alleyn, and as one looks back at her literary career it is hard not to wonder why she never moved on from writing mysteries to writing novels where there was no murder. It would seem she had no wish to move on; it was as though she could never quite summon the energy to break through into a different territory. She certainly had the ability to do so, and in some of her best novels, such as Opening Night , the crime is long delayed, as if the format had become an unwanted necessity. Perhaps this lack of will to move beyond the genre arose because writing was only the second string to her bow and because as she journeyed through middle age so much of her creative energy was channelled into the theatre. Almost single-handedly she generated interest in classical drama in New Zealand and was responsible for many outstanding productions. She was also involved in the creation of a new theatre which was eventually named after her, and in 1966 she was awarded a DBE for all her work in this field. Since she was so innovative in her theatrical career, is it really surprising that she avoided innovation whenever she retired to the typewriter? Alleyn was the good friend who provided stability and familiarity, but her heart belonged to Shakespeare, that glittering master who kept her constantly seeking new adventures.

It can in fact be argued that Ngaio Marsh’s problem was not that she was untalented but that she was too talented. Her painting, her writing and her theatrical career were all jostling for pride of place in her life, and the miracle was that she found the time and energy to excel in all three fields. In addition to the prizes she won at art school in her youth and to the DBE bestowed upon her in old age, she was made a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition of her literary achievements, and it is because of her status as a crime writer that this present book, Death on the Air and Other Stories is being published.

But the collection is not only essential reading for aficionados. It will also, I believe, serve as an appetizer for those who have never read her novels. The first two essays, one on Roderick Alleyn and one on his wife Troy, provide the perfect introduction to her hero and heroine. Marsh’s humour, her civilized grace, her sensitive intelligence – all are present here in these two lightly etched but intriguing portraits. They are followed by a most diverse sequence of items: I Can Find My Way Out is an example in miniature of the theatre mysteries in which she excelled, and there are echoes of the novels Opening Night and Death at the Dolphin; similarly, Chapter and Verse: The Little Copplestone Mystery is an example in miniature of the English village murder story which Marsh explored at length in Overture to Death , Off with his Head and Grave Mistake; finally Morepork , perhaps the strongest short story in the book, provides a taste of the novels set in New Zealand, Vintage Murder , Colour Scheme , Died in the Wool and Photo-Finish . Moving on from the miniatures, admirers of the classical murder puzzle may prefer Death on the Air , but my own favourite in this book is the television script Evil Liver . Written in the 1970s for the series Crown Court , this work shows more clearly than any of the short stories Marsh’s gift for characterization by means of dialogue.

So we have here a literary smorgasbord, little slivers of Ngaio Marsh’s creativity, signs which point beyond themselves to the novels which made her literary reputation. For the aficionados the book is a delicious feast which will stimulate all manner of nostalgic memories (note the use of those two unusual names Hersey and Caley – remember Lady Hersey Amblington in Death and the Dancing Footman and Caley Bard in Clutch of Constables ?) and for the newcomers the book is a seductive starter, hinting at luscious treats to come.

Speaking for myself, I confess that the book reminds me of how much I owe to her. I began to write crime novels when I was seventeen, and I was inspired to do so after reading Ngaio Marsh. My first published book was a mystery and I wrote five more before moving on to write novels which fell outside the genre. Even now, thirty years after my early struggles, I can look at my current work, a series of novels about the Church of England in the twentieth century, and still see traces of Marsh’s influence on me. It was she who taught me to divide my chapters into sub-chapters which would be more easily digested by the reader. It was she who taught me the importance of ending every chapter with a cliff hanger and every sub-chapter with a sentence designed to lure the reader on. It was she who taught me how to mesh prose and dialogue in a seamless narration, to view characters sensitively but without sentimentality and to keep melodrama at bay with injections of humour. I admired her unpretentious prose, her skill in wasting no words, her painter’s eye, her dramatist’s sense of timing. I liked her people, even her murderers (the nicest murderer is in When in Rome ) and I was enthralled by the realistic glimpses she gave me into the vanished world of the 1930s which the second world war destroyed but which still lived on so vividly in the memories of those who brought me up. My all-time Marsh favourite, Death in a White Tie , magically conjures up that doom-laden glitter of the London Season as the 1930s drew to their disastrous close.

And finally I must confess she influenced me on a very personal level. Was there ever such an attractive detective as Roderick Alleyn in his prime? He was the gold standard by which I judged all the men I met in my teens. Marsh chose not to follow the Alleyns into the more intimate dimensions of their married life, but she was magnificent in creating on paper the ideal relationship which we all long for but which many of us never achieve. I remember as a teenager being deeply envious of Troy and looking hopefully – but alas, always fruitlessly – for that handsome, clever, modest, well-educated, sophisticated, sensitive, witty English gentleman whom Marsh described with such affection and élan. In the end I gave up and married an American, but it is a tribute to Ngaio Marsh that she was able to create a character whom I found so intensely real.

When the last novel, Light Thickens , was published posthumously in 1982, I grieved that there would be no more encounters with Roderick Alleyn. Then I was given this book and it seemed like a gift from beyond the grave. I commend this collection to everyone, and can only add that after reading the book at a sitting, I went back and reread the novels. Ngaio Marsh was one of the great writers of her day and has enchanted millions of readers all over the world for decades. Taste this smorgasbord! It’s an invitation to a literary feast.