Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, and – New Zealand’s own pride - Ngaio Marsh. Also known as the Queens of Crime. At the height of her career, the highly successful author, director and producer was said to be even more popular than the likes of Agatha Christie.
Acclaimed author Joanne Drayton, who wrote a biography on the best-selling author in 2008 and even got to meet her before she died in 1982, says Dame Ngaio’s theatrical story-telling is what set her apart.
“[Agatha] Christie was the problem plot [writer], sort of almost like a crossword puzzle. Ngaio Marsh was theatrical and she evoked the scenes, she actually crafted more into bringing the world and those people alive," Drayton told Jesse Mulligan.
“So they had their different strengths. But I think definitely Ngaio Marsh, I think, lots of commentators at the time put her ahead of Christie.”
And this was Dame Ngaio’s response when she was asked to name six of the best thriller stories in an interview in 1947: “At a moment's notice, no, I couldn't, I don’t think, [but] I might have a stab at six authors ... Conan Doyle, I think all good detective novels begin in Baker Street, Austin Freeman, Margery Allingham, Michael Innes, Agatha Christie, and Carter Dickson, but I am not wedded to that list. That's just at a moment's notice.”
She also named Hamlet's Revenge by Michael Innes as one that she “enjoyed enormously.”
But the connection drawn between her and Christie goes beyond just titles, Dame Ngaio herself got to meet Christie as she reveals the backstory in an interview.
“I had the same agent as Agatha Christie, and he brought us together and introduced me and she was awfully kind to me, very encouraging, indeed, she'd read one of my books and liked them.
“I went to her husband who's a famous archaeologist and she did a lot of archaeology too, I went to a lecture he was giving ... and it was after the lecture that I met her for the first time. And then I met her from time to time on different occasions. I liked her very much and she was awfully kind and it was very encouraging indeed.”
Some readers wonder whether she was paying homage to the writer with the naming of the wife of the detective character as Agatha Troy – but Dame Ngaio denied this.
While she was born in Christchurch, she lived a divided life between here and the UK, and only four of her 32 novels were set in New Zealand.
“I just love Died In The Wool. It's just so quintessentially New Zealand, but it brings all those elements of the crime detective fiction novel of that classic era to New Zealand,” Drayton says.
“I think it was quite intriguing for [the international readers] to actually experience detective Roderick Alleyn, escaping the London and UK and actually coming to New Zealand ... I think it connected New Zealand readers to her writing and in a very immediate sense.”
Yet her popularity proved timeless and beyond the scope of geographical boundaries, with one million of her books selling out in 1949 when Penguin and Collins released them.
Dame Ngaio spoke in 1967 about what it was that attracted her to London so much: “Well, I suppose it's what's known as London feeling primarily, anybody who's been there and gets the London feeling knows exactly what you mean, when you say it, it's an extraordinary phenomenon.
“You get up one morning, and you go out into the street, and you suddenly have an enormous uplift of the spirit. It's not imagination. It's something that nobody's ever been able quite to explain, which I don't think is given by any other city in quite the same way except possibly Paris, but no, I don't think so.
"But quite apart from that there's so much in London; the theatre, anything you want is there if you go out and look for it.”
And theatre was in fact where a lot of her passion and drive came from, Drayton says. She had a particular knack for spotting talent.
“She could spot talent, and she nurtured it, she challenged it, she shaped it. And yes, so Sam Neill was one of one of her protégés ... she had this rare ability to spot talent to use it and to make the most of it and to put people on a pathway to successful careers.”
But Dame Ngaio had some frustrations about the lack of resources in New Zealand’s theatres.
“It was a real struggle for her to produce these sort of elegant, wonderfully timed and written plays for theatre and with the condition she was working with. She spent a lot of time in the UK so she knew what a normal theatre over there might be like ... she felt really angry about it,” Drayton says.
In 1952, Dame Ngaio unleashed that anger: “Our theatres as they stand are 30 years out of date in respect of their equipment, and practically unusable in respect of upkeep. To a trained stage director, a New Zealand theatre is as primitive as a keystone comedy would be to Danny Kaye. During the last 50 years, the technical presentation of plays in Europe and America has developed just as dynamically as the jittery bioscope is developed into the present sound-picture.”
Her early years prior to success are quite a mystery like her novels. Drayton says the author did take some secrets to the grave with her.
“She is a bit of a mystery in that she was born in 1895. But she only ever admitted to 1899, it seems that her father didn't register her birth for four years.
“People only discovered when they went through her papers and they had a look at her birth certificate, which seems to have been backdated to when she actually was born.
“If you're a crime detective novelist, then you should know how to put out the red herrings and die with some kind of secrets going with you.”
What is known about her childhood is she grew up pampered in a way, but as far as her father was concerned she was brought up like a son as well; she learned to shoot, owned a gun, smoked, and referred in her memoir to a Huckleberry Finn type of upbringing.
Her mother, on the other hand, was determined that Dame Ngaio would have the same education as a boy would at the time and sent her St Margaret's in Christchurch.
Dame Ngaio reminisced about her childhood in this 1970 interview about a Christmas in 1913 spent in the Southern Alps: “Christmas Eve came in very hot that year, we dragged a straw stuffed mattresses out of our tents and slept under the trees and under the stars. Starlight glanced and winked beyond the beech branches. And when the moon rose, it looked as if it had been crackle glazed with twigs. The camp fire pulsed and faded and settled into a glow. Moreporks called to each other across the valley. And wekas, who stole our spoons when they could, once or twice shrieked, vaingloriously in the bush.”
Fans and those interested in knowing more about the legacy of Dame Ngaio can visit the recently reopened Dame Ngaio Marsh theatre at Canterbury University - which also showcases some of the excerpts of the productions she worked on.
“Her trailblazing career as a woman at a time when it was very, very difficult for women to establish and to reach the heights that she did. I think her legacy is her amazing investment in young people and in the theatre and in leaving those careers for our pleasure. And I think it's remarkable she made a huge contribution to New Zealand,” Drayton says.
This story was produced using archival audio from Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision.
Photo: Nga Taonga Sound & Vision
