Vintage Murder (1937)

[portico]

 Ngaio Marsh is considered one of the "queens of crime" of the golden age of detective fiction, but I've read very little of her. She, along with Josephine Tey, are the names I watch for in secondhand bookshops, but although this method has served me well with Tey, I've found comparably little of Marsh. And it's not because of her lack of books--she wrote 32 novels in her career, which spanned 50 years. That's just under half of Agatha Christie's output, but she's an outlier adn should not have been counted etc. Thus far I have encountered two of her books in the wild--Death in Ecstasy (1936) and Tied Up in Tinsel (1972). Death in Ecstasy (which she wrote immediately prior to Vintage Murder) is about a death in a cultish church and the present altar boys are very obviously queer actors and I found her detective, Roderick Alleyn's (all her books feature him), commentary about them so homophobic and off-putting that I quit it. I read a lot of golden age detective novels and have a pretty high tolerance for period-typical discrimination, so that should give you a sense of it. Tied Up in Tinsel was fun (fully half of it was written from the perspective of Alleyn's wife, acclaimed portraitist Agatha Troy), but also extremely 1972 (Santa appears in gold lamé), so I still felt like I hadn't had a solid golden age Marsh reading experience. I don't know if I'd say I'd had one yet with Vintage Murder, but this is such a rich text I have to talk about it.

Ngaio Marsh was born in Aotearoa (New Zealand), but her detective Roderick Alleyn was British and nearly all of her books are set in England. Vintage Murder, which is set in Aotearoa and sees Alleyn on vacation and falling in with a British traveling theatrical troupe, is not among them. Both of those elements immediately piqued my interest, because two things I know about Marsh are her Pākehāness and her absolute devotion to theater. It's her second book set in a theater, but her first in her homeland, and I suspect it was a pretty personal one. 

 

Really enjoyed the various artists' interpretations of the murder.
 

The book begins on a train, where Alleyn has coincidentally ended up sitting with members of the theatrical troupe on an overnight ride. Alleyn is on vacation and determined to be incognito, although he is recognized by one of the actresses due to having met her during Enter a Murderer (1935), and he reveals himself to a few more after someone makes an attempt on the life of the troupe's owner. Once the troupe arrives at its destination, Alleyn is invited to join them for that evening's performance, which will be followed by a surprise birthday party for the troupe's leading lady and artistic director, who is married to the owner. The party takes place on the stage and involves the dropping down from the flies a large bottle of champagne. As you might guess, this goes awry and the troupe's owner is killed.

The birthday party is also where we meet the sole non-white character in this book, a local Māori doctor, Dr. Rangi Te Pokiha. Alleyn made the acquaintance of Dr. Te Pokiha earlier that day, when Alleyn buys a small green tiki figure from him. Dr. Te Pokiha explains at the party that if it was his figure, he wouldn't sell it, but as it already belonged to a Pākehā (white New Zealander) on whose behalf he was selling it, it was fine. This is but the first of many troubling statements about Māori people and culture in this book. Alleyn gives the tiki to the leading lady, and it begins its new life as a mcguffin. 

Marsh is obviously trying to SAY something about the treatment of Māori people and culture, even having Dr. Te Pokiha make a disparaging remark about Pākehā who give their children Māori names (like Marsh herself received), and I think it was probably very progressive for the time. Marsh has cast Dr. Te Pokiha into the role of the good Māori. He has Alleyn over for dinner and they have a lovely little date. Alleyn apologizes on behalf of his companions for the way they treated the tiki (although he still refers to it as a little monster in a letter), and Dr. Te Pokiha talks about his determination to save his fellow Māoris from European diseases and vices.

But for all that Marsh can't get away from discussion of "savages." After the murder, the local constable comments of Dr. Te Pokiha: "The doctor's had an English college education-he's ninety per cent civilised. All the same, sir, there's the odd ten percent. It's there, no matter how civilised they are. See him when he goes into one of the back-country pas and you'll find a difference. See him when he goes crook! By gee, I did once, when he gave evidence on a case of-well, it was an unsavoury case and the doctor felt strongly about it. His eyes fairly flashed. He looked as if he might go off at the deep end and dance a haka in court." And if you're thinking to yourself, that sounds like a case of Chekov's savage imagery, I can tell you that I was thinking it too and we were both right. Near the end of the book, Dr. Te Pokiha's description of a character's movements becomes a crucial piece of evidence, the other character calls the doctor a liar, and he is understandably quite upset about it. And so we have the savage moment, when the doctor bares his teeth and Alleyn thinks "By Jove, the odd twenty percent of pure savage" and it all ends with the murderer calling Dr. Te Pokiha the n word. The man is bad, he's a murderer, and if Marsh made that choice to drive home his badness, then it DID work, but!!!! The chapter in which it occurs is called "Dr. Te Pokiha Plays to Type," so Marsh is NOT free from sin here. It's bad!!

I am reserving my harshest judgement for the audiobook publisher. I listened to it, an audiobook recorded (or at least released) in 2015, and a white British man says the n word. Now obviously the word has a very different cultural history in the US versus other countries, but by 2015 I thought it was pretty universally taboo. Granted, the version I found was ripped to youtube, so maybe the one on audible is censored? I didn't see comments mentioning it either way. 

Marsh's prose is gorgeous in this book, particularly when she's describing the Aotearoa scenery. The mystery was good! I definitely understand her place among the detective fiction greats, and I am definitely interested in reading more of her work. But whew. This sure didn't age well nor did it reflect well on hachette audio.

Comments

[skygiants]

Man, I also had such a reaction to Death in Ecstasy -- it's not just the language in that one but the like visceral disgust at the very thought thereof. The racism is Vintage Murder is also so, so messy but also more interesting to untangle because, like, there's an attempt being made, there's an underlying respect that I think she is genuinely attempting to express, And Yet.

[portico]

AND YET

[genarti]

I really need to read more Marsh. I've enjoyed the ones I've picked up -- not earthshaking, but fun, and full of a delightful level of gonzo happenings, and I liked how long we stayed with the characters before the murder happened or the detective showed up -- and I liked Alleyn and found him way less contemptuous than some other fictional detectives. (This may also be just a personal response difference, because I've never gotten on with Tey's Grant at all, in part because of the narrative meanness towards everyone who's not his personal friend, and I know several people who love Grant and dislike Alleyn.) But I also have only picked up random Marshes off my grandmother's bookshelf while on summer vacation, and neither of the ones you mention. So maybe I just haven't encountered her flaws as much.

But I have heard of her handling of the Maori doctor here, and: whew. Whew!!! (And YIKES, Hatchette audio.)

[portico]

I do love Grant, but I also imprinted on him like a baby bird lol. I think the difference between Grant and Alleyn is the jobbing inspector vs the gentleman detective. For all that Alleyn IS a jobbing inspector (and Marsh made a point of having him come up through the ranks) he definitely reads as something of a snob. So I do understand the dislike. I, notorious snob-liker that I am however—