Ngaio Marsh : Scales of Justice, 1955

 

 

 

Scales of Justice by Ngaio Marsh is a novel of 1955, and is the eighteenth with Roderick Alleyn, the son of a lady, brother of a baronet, a nobleman who preferred the slow climb of a mistreated but great profession to a diplomatic career: that of the policeman. A noble policeman. There was another, "son" of another of the 4 Crime Queens, Dorothy Sayers: Lord Peter Whimsey. But that is a nobleman who improvises himself as a detective, partly out of snobbery and partly out of passion; here, on the other hand, we have a nobleman who has chosen, as a job, to be a policeman: starting from the ranks, as a simple Inspector. In this novel we find him Chief Inspector, followed like a shadow by his "help" Inspector Brer Fox.

The interesting note is that we find him operating in a fairytale landscape, in a corner of the old British feudal world, in which four families, the Cartarette, the Syce, the Lacklander and Danberry-Phinn, heirs of their traditional blazons for centuries, they are united, more or less firmly. The event that irremediably brings them into contact is the death of the old Sir Harold Lacklander, a very active and highly prestigious ambassador during the Second World War. Before dying he left the burdensome task of publishing his memoirs to his friend, Colonel Cartarette: burdensome above all because the theme of the death of the scion of one of the four noble families, the young Ludovic Danberry-Phinn, will certainly be addressed. he had worked with Sir Harold during the war, getting involved in a leak that had led the Nazis to win the English competition, that is of a hostile power, in the management of a certain affair of a neutral country: his suicide had followed . Now Sir Harold probably wanted posthumously to rehabilitate his memory. But how?

Everyone fears this extreme will of the old man. Mainly the close family of Sir Harold who fear the worst, that is to be directly involved and to pay the dishonor of the death of young Ludovic with the dishonor of someone else.

It is clear that they try to persuade the old Cartarette not to pronounce himself and not to publish the controversial seventh chapter; but the colonel is in one piece, and even if he is threatened with the breakup of the engagement between his daughter Rose and Mark Lacklander, the son of George Lacklander, Harold's eldest son and now a baronet, he does not break down and hold on.

However, he first wants to talk to Octavius ​​Danberry-Phinn, Ludovic's father, who after the tragedy of his son lost himself, also losing his wife and living with a myriad of cats: he has a passion for trout fishing as well as Cartarette, and they often quarrel because the Lacklanders, essentially owners of Swevenings, a small town, have rented to their two friends the stretches of the Chyne, the river that flows through its meadows, whose waters are full of trout. The two are mainly adversaries, both wanting to catch “The Old Friend”, a trout of exceptional weight, over two kilos, which is the damnation of the fishermen.

In the late afternoon that the Colonel has to talk about the manuscript to Octavius, and then to Sir Harold's widow, and then go fishing, the unexpected happens: Nurse Kettle, who lives on the same property Danberry-Phin inhabits, skirting the Chyne near the spot where they go to fish for trout, near some weeping willows, finds the dead colonel, murdered.

After investigations and reconstructions, Alleyn will find the killer he killed for abject reasons and also wore clothes and shoes not his own to blame others. The last scene is one of love between Nurse Kettle and Captain Syce: the captain promises to her not to drink more whiskey and to be worthy of her love for her.

Meanwhile, let's say that among all the novels read by Marsh so far, this is a great masterpiece: I don't know if The absolute masterpiece, but certainly one of his best works. Ngaio, creates a large fresco of the English landed province, talking about four aristocratic families, with an extremely sophisticated writing, but which is very easy to read, and a psychological introspection that leaves little to chance, managing to wonderfully characterize each character. It is an extremely classic whodunnit, a very well-defined formal story, which is very, very much reminiscent of the typical British crime fiction novels of the 1930s and 1940s (in a sense it is an "out of time" novel, like if for Marsh there had not been the War, and the abandonment of the classic whodunnit, even if the Second World War enters the history of smear), set in rural villages, where the military, the reverend, the ladies of good society who participate in social events for charity, the baronet are always subjects who are the masters: in some ways this is Marsh's novel that is closest to those of Agatha Christie.

The novel is chock full of descriptions, and we know that descriptions are Nagio Marsh's trump card: when she describes a corner of paradise, you can be sure that sooner or later something dramatic will happen. Here even, it would seem that the bad omen is contained in a song, a very melancholy motif associated with a romantic vision: two young people united in an unequivocal gaze. The tune is “Come away, come away, death,  And in sad cypress let me be laid. Fly away, fly away, breath;  I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,  O, prepare it! My part of death, no one so true  Did share it” (from Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare). After all, the marriage between love and death is always present: in this novel it is particularly so. Where there is love or there would seem to be, there is always a wrong note: there is in the union between Kitty and Captain Syce in the past of the two, there is in the union of Kitty with George, of Syce with Kettle, of Kitty with Cartarette, by Mark and Rose.

 

 

 

I would also make a distinction regarding the sexual identity of the characters: male characters, austere, are always unlucky or cursed: Cartarette, a symbol of a past world, is murdered; Octavius ​​is emotionally devastated by losing his son and wife; Syce is also emotionally devastated, having lost his beloved wife to one of his comrades in arms, and moreover he is semi alcoholic; Harold, remorseful of something from the past; George, lost in his extreme vanity, and in the empty defense of a noble prestige, is underestimated by everyone, even his mother. The female characters, on the other hand, are winners: Kettle is the nurse who always bets on something positive; Rose is a woman who would seem helpless because she is romantic but is instead strong in defending her love for her; Kitty is a strong femme fatale; and also very strong is Lady Lacklander, determined to defend her kingdom to the bitter end and the memory of her husband and her family, by all means. If we turn Brer Fox too, Alleyn's shadow is unfortunate, because he makes a half-idea about the nurse in the course of the novel, but then realizes that it is a vain hope. The only strong and successful male character is Alleryn. And some of her subordinates, for example. Sergeant Oliphant of the County Police. I I don't know if this difference between male and female characters, and the winning characterization of female ones, is ultimately due to the fact that Ngaio Marsh was a lesbian.

As always, Ngaio manages to direct a composite orchestra of characters, each with their own personality, managing to make everyone suspect something hidden, as well as what is being affirmed. And this is her extreme virtuosity: she has control of the macroform, which, for example, is lacking in many of her other British colleagues and especially in French novels. And so she invents an extremely complex plot, because it is the result of three subplots, which like three parallel waves with a sinusoid effect, continuously intertwine and interface, throwing the reader into complete amazement. Frankly, the trout thrown there raises the suspicion that fishing has little to do with the death of the colonel; and does the revelation of old Sir Harold's memoirs also come into reality with the crime? But if we get these two subplots out of the way, what are we left with? An investigation like many others, but in which the motives seem to be extremely limited if not absent. And then, here the two subplots return, and it is precisely some of their consequences that shed light on a solar but hidden motive, and to frame a truly despicable murderer: evil, envious, lustful, slothful, angry. It can be said that at least 5 of the 7 deadly sins are in his cords. That he kills, disguises himself to indict others, and gain a different advantage. Who despises other people's behavior, hiding a truly disarming emotional and spiritual misery.

What remains, until the end, is the suspicion that the same nurse Kettle and the same Captain Syce, who it is understood that they are cultivating an affair, are truly innocent and unrelated to the turbulence of events, or somehow they too become part of it. . The captain actually enters it, but in passing, only because his behavior has a decisive importance in the events that happen.

The structure of the novel is circular: in fact it begins where it ends. It begins with the nurse observing the curves of the hills, and the Chyne flowing between them, and the homes of the four ancient families of the place, and at the same time observing the map that she would like to complete, which would become like the one for visiting a certain tourist attraction; and it ends, with Captain Syce realizing what his nurse craved: a figured map.

It is the gift of an announced engagement, between two people each with his age and his history, each of which gives the other a little of his attention and his esteem: the captain does not take into account the social condition of the nurse, but look ahead; the nurse does not look at the condition of alcoholism as a form of depression, of the captain but she wants to see in him the ability to want to stop on the slope of the end, and instead of resuming the climb. This time with her by her side.

There is also in Marsh's novel, and it is very clear, a sort of revaluation of the small landed nobility, that social part that has held the intertwining of the basic values ​​of society in its hands for centuries: it makes a mockery of them, but only to better define the forces of reaction, to make the best subjects spring the will to start over and in any case to give an example to those who are not of noble birth like them. One of the subjects that comes out best from the novel's weaving is the old Octavius: considered a half madman, upset by the death of his son and later of his wife, he vented his pain in love for cats and fishing. But even if he had, humanly speaking, to have a human resentment towards the Lacklander neighbors, he instead forgives, because he wanted his son, a candid soul, who did not betray, but was only negligent, and also when everyone should being against the Lacklanders, he holds out his hand. It is the old Lady, at the end of the novel, who, mindful of something that had broken one day, tightens hers to Octavius's, strengthening a bond, defrauded by betrayal and subsequently strengthened by the esteem and help of the vassal to her. man. It is a bit as if the lord recognized a vassal's merit and promoted him to social status.

And it is also how Ngaio Marsh, New Zealander forever, would affirm with conviction: God Save the Queen!

Masterpiece. 

Pietro De Palma

Ngaio Marsh : Off with his Head, 1957

 

Ngaio Marsh's best-known Locked Room is Off with his Head, 1957), published in Italy from I Gialli del Secolo in 1958, just two years after its publication in the original language. This tells us an important thing: that this series, so mistreated, was however edited by people who had such contacts that a work that had appeared two or three years earlier in another language could be immediately published.

The novel was first published in the US in 1956 under the title Death of a Fool and the following year in the UK under the title  “Off with his head”, that is one of the exclamations made frequently by the Queen of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.

Theater of the events are the ruins of the castle of Mardian, on a hill, where every year the dance of the 5 brothers takes place, an ancient pantomime, of pagan origin, which is interested in Mrs. Bunz, a German who escaped Nazism, scholar of literature and history and folklore expert, who knew about this representation and wants to find out about it. However, the people she turns to are extremely reserved and absolutely do not want to collaborate with her: probably the war is still too close and she is still a German.

Representing the dance are the 5 brothers Andersen and their father William: while they must dance first with bells attached to their trousers and then they must continue the dance with swords, the father who impersonates the Old Jester, must recite some ancient verses, break a mirror, read the will, and then he must die on the scene, beheaded: for this purpose he wears a hat representing the head of a rabbit, which then, at the crucial moment, is untied, giving the sensation of a severed head.

The old man is stingy and possessive: he wants his children to be subservient to him and he too wants to decide their life. So it happened for her only daughter, who decided, years earlier, to flee to marry who her father did not like, and for this she was disinherited: now, however, the daughter of the disinherited heir presents herself, Camilla Campion. Her grandfather is happy to see her again, less happy are her children who are afraid of being deprived of part of their inheritance when their old father dies.

To complete the “idyllic” picture, there are Trixie, a beautiful local girl who loves one of the 5 Andersen brothers, Chris, but who in the past had an affair with Ralph Stayne, fiery great-grandson of old castellan Alice Mardian. Now Ralph is in love, in love with Camilla, but neither old William Andersen nor Aunt Alice like it. In addition there is Simon Begg, former RAF colonel and war hero, who has a workshop and who, like the Andersens, and Ralph, has a part in the pantomine, in which only male subjects play: Simon impersonates the horse, the Crack, lowered in heavy iron armor, while Ralph plays Betty, a hermaphrodite, half woman half man (who we would now call transex) as she has a long and large skirt.

The day scheduled for the performance, however, something goes wrong: even if in fact over 50 people attend the performance including Trixie Plowman, Alice Mardian, the local Sergeant Carey, Dr. Otterly, after the fake beheading, the old man (who should reborn to new life and then rise again, rising from the hole behind the old Mardian Stone, where Ernie, the epileptic son of Andersen, beheaded a combative goose) does not get up and so going to investigate in case he feels bad, they find him there where he had to be, beheaded for real, with his head turned in an unnatural pose as if he had made a 180 ° turn with respect to its axis, things if someone had put it there, still under the mask of the Jester, for some obscure reason.

 

Called to investigate is Roderick Alleyn, of Scotland Yard, who, the son of a noblewoman, is more familiar than others in dealing with nobles. He finds himself untangling a skein that is not easy at all: a man is beheaded, yet none, I mean none, of the 50 present at the performance has noticed anything, neither those farthest away nor those closest. Moreover, the only sword that could have decapitated the old man, the sword of the epileptic son Ernie, the sharpest of all, so much so that it is sharper than a razor, is immaculate and bears no bloodstains. Even the other swords did not serve this purpose: so who and with what did behead the old William? And above all how?

Beyond a series of facts, Roderick finds in all the testimonies collected, as well as a common line, so many discrepancies when not declared lies, which make his search for truth even more difficult. All the more so since, going to examine the matter carefully, it is not that old Andersen in life had been very nice and appreciated; quite the opposite! We have several possible motives and therefore potential killers: first of all the 5 brothers, who from time immemorial have wanted to transform the blacksmith's workshop that has resisted for centuries, into a modern service station, which is also interested in Simon Begg who owns already a workshop; then Ralph himself, as the old man was against his and his niece getting together: Camillla herself may have had an interest in killing the old man, since it is rumored that he was interested, in the appearance of his niece, in changing the will and to insert it among the heirs, which would have yielded a lot to Camilla if it is true - as it was said - that the old miser was rich. Furthermore, Begg prevents Ernie, William Andersen's epileptic son, from speaking whenever he is about to do so, and this makes both him and the former subordinate suspicious; and Mrs. Bunz is also suspicious, due to the hatred that the old man reserved for her. Is it possible that she is not what she says she is?

The plot will be revealed after Alice Mardian will have spoken to Alleyn about a certain diary in which the pantomime ceremonial was described, which the Andersens had recited for generations, knowing the verses by heart. And after Alleyn himself will have demanded that all those who had assisted or interpreted any role during the pantomime, were present, expressly saying that only one of the participants had played in two different roles.

The solution will be magnificent, and will bring to justice a murderer who he will have killed not for calculation but for another reason, and who will have used an accomplice, for the staging.

Once again we are faced with a staging, and as I have been saying for some time, the most beautiful Locked Rooms are those prepared, with the help of another person who acts as an accomplice. It is evident that if 50 people did not notice anything, the crime must have been committed not in the place where the beheading should have taken place but elsewhere; but how could he have been beheaded elsewhere and taken there without anyone seeing anything?

We are faced with an impossible crime, more than with locked room, if we intended it according to the usual canons, that is, a closed place; and here we are in an open space, where not even the footprints are to make it impossible for the murderer to escape. But it is also true that the very nature of the event, a "theatrical" performance that took place in a predetermined space, in front of 50 people, who have not seen anyone escape, let alone kill the old man, make this "impossible crime" a highly suggestive Locked Room. Which has numerous points of contact with another Locked Room, by Christianna Brand, however: the horse (true there, false here), the armor, a beheading, the fact that in both cases the head is imprisoned in something (there a helmet, here a mask). It would seem to me that Ngaio Marsh, while basing one of his most original and best written and conceived stories, may have taken Brand's novel as a model, or in any case that something of that has remained in his unconscious, given that between Death of Jezebel and Off with his Head, there is an 8 year difference.

 

To make this novel incredibly fascinating there is also a double surprise, which I realized in retrospect.

First of all, there is no motive. Normally when there is a crime we ask ourselves: Cui prodest? Who does benefit? Who does benefit from someone's death and therefore who has a valid reason to suppress them? There are many motives here, but as it happens the murderer does not have a valid motive for killing.

The second surprise concerns death itself: it is the response to an attack. In technical language we could configure it as an excess of self-defense. However, the murderer orders William to be beheaded to disguise his involvement. Thus, a couple is formed: the real killer, and the fake one, which is instead considered real. In other words, those who behead do not kill but insult a dead body. The couple of the two killers (the real one and the false one) is different, however, from another couple formed by the murderer and his accomplice who prepare the staging. And it itself, and here lies the genius of the novel, is carried out without any premeditation of the murder. Normally when there is a staging it is to make people believe in one thing instead of another, and therefore, in the context of a crime, we can speak of premeditation: here instead the staging is not such because the crime is not premeditated. If anything, a representation is used as a staging by dividing it into two distinct parts: the first part of the representation is such in all respects (until the Jester, who in the representation was beheaded, lies in the hole waiting to be resurrected), while in the second it can be assimilated to a staging (when it is used to hide death elsewhere).

Pietro De Palma

Ngaio Marsh : The Nursing Home Murder, 1935

 

The novel is in my opinion, one of the most interesting ever by the New Zealand writer, for various reasons, and moreover it enjoyed great popularity at the time, so much so that Agatha Christie had this novel read by one of her characters of Murder in Mesopotamia. I don't know if A Man Lay Dead had influenced with his idea of a house surrounded by frozen snow, on Ten Little Niggers (and after all Carr / Carter Dickson had already written in 1934, The White Priory Murders), but in my opinion Nursing Home Murder may have influenced, at least as a basic idea of the murdered ruler, Anthony Berkeley for Death in the House (1939).

WARNING : SPOILERS!!!

 Sir Derek O ’Callaghan is the Minister of the Interior. He is about to pass a law against anarchists, and since he began to develop his action against them, he has received several death threats. He is tough and energetic, but he is not a saint's shin. Although he is married to Lady Cicely O ’Callaghan, when he has the chance he cuckolds her. The latest of his victims is the daughter of an old family friend, Jane Harden, of a fallen noble family, who is a nurse at the private clinic of Sir John Phillips, a famous surgeon. She tricked her into thinking he was in love with her, got her pregnant and then abandoned her. Moreover, Phillips who had asked her to marry her, this time really, sees in front of him a woman destroyed by the shame of having believed in the powerful minister and of passing for an easy girl who is not at all, who would also marry him but who is in a difficult situation.

It so happens that during a session in Parliament in which the government in the person of the Minister of the Interior is illustrating the measure against the anarchists, O’Callaghan feels ill and faints from an appendix that he has neglected. And that he be taken to the clinic of his family doctor who is Phillips, to be operated on. But not only Phillips, who is the primary physician, and Harden work there, but also Nurse Banks, a passionate Bolshevik supporter, Dr. Thoms (Phillips' assistant) and Dr. Roberts (anesthetist) whose political sympathies also seem to be addressed. they to the Bolsheviks / anarchists, Nurse Graham, and Sister Marigold, who is the Superior of the John Phillips Clinic. John Phillips would like another surgeon to operate on the patient but Callaghan's wife wants him to take care of it. Thus it happens that Fate, just like in a Greek tragedy, because what happens in the operating room is a tragedy, confronts the one who caused so many evils, at the mercy of various people who more or less would have excellent reasons to send him to the other world, killing him . After the operation went well in itself, resolving the appendicitis abscess that caused peritonitis, Sir Derek dies. Immediately it is thought that it was the heart, and in fact during the operation Dr. Roberts, separated from the others by a curtain placed on the patient's chest, had warned that the patient was responding badly and the pressure was dropping, and for this reason he had been made an injection of camphor oil. But under pressure from Lady Cicely O'Callaghan, who turns to Scotland Yard, the case is reopened and an autopsy is authorized which discovers how the Prime Minister was poisoned with sixteen centigrams of Joscina, an anelgesic that Phillips for example uses inject. , in the dose of seven milligrams, to patients before the operation, to reduce the use of morphine and other analgesics. The fact is that it is not clear how sixteen centigrams which is a huge dose, the dose of an entire tube made up of twenty discoid Joscina, each of seven milligrams, plus some other discoid, ended up in Sir Derek's body. .

John Phillips was seen to open a new tube and remove a discoid (and in fact there are still 19 in the tube) and administer it in the form of a hypodermic injection to the patient; but Phillips had drifted away for a moment. And there is the story of a second tube that he says was already empty, but which may have been used together with the other discoid. And someone saw that he used too much distilled water. In short, Phillips is the main suspect, even if there is no evidence that it was him. And on the other hand, during the operation three injections were made: that of Phillips, who injected 7 milligrams of hyoscine (he says!), That of the nurse Banks (of anarchist sympathies) who used a hypodermic syringe to inject camphor oil (since Roberts has not given injections since he had caused the death of a patient years ago by giving an injection), and that of Dr. Thoms who injected concentrated antitoxin gangrene gas through a large syringe. Basically, any of these three may have killed Callaghan. Then there is also the suspicious behavior of Harden, who despite not having given injections, had hesitated to give the syringe with camphor oil, and then later passed out.

Alleyn, will have to investigate, including meetings of Bolsheviks and stalking of various suspects, and other people, also on another medicine based on hyoscine, "Fulvitavolts", served to the patient by his sister, Ruth O'Callaghan, concerned about the health of the brother (but heir to a third of his brother's money!), but prepared by a chemist, very friend of the lady, and at the same time also a Bolshevik sympathizer: in essence, Alleyn suspects that this substance served up before the operation, perhaps in a large quantity, even by accident, could then have been combined with that injected to the point of causing the death of the Minister of the Interior. The problem is everything, to demonstrate how a disproportionate amount of hyoscine has been served up to the patient without anyone noticing, because essentially all those who have operated on each other apologize, having seen what the others were doing. Eventually he will find the killer he killed through a very ingenious procedure and with an absolutely unusual weapon.

SPOILERS END

The novel is extremely interesting, I would say that in the production of Marsh, it is one of the most interesting of all.

That it is one of the first novels, as evidenced by the group of actors of the drama, which identifies precisely the first production of Ngaio Marsh. As in the novels of A. Christie with Poirot, the first novels are distinguishable from the others because the Cap. Hastings moves there and then disappears in the continuation of the production, returning only at the end with Curtain (but there are also some novels distinguished from the others for the presence of Ariadne Oliver), and as well as eg. the wonderful decade of Ellery Queen is distinguished from the rest of his production by the constant presence, even if only in the preface, by JJMcClure, so varied only the figures of Roderick Alleyn's favorite "shoulder": in the first novels we have Nigel Bathgate, his journalist friend (together with his girlfriend Angela North), who then disappears to make room for Inspector Fox already present in the first but more muted (appears for the first time in Enter a Murderer, the second novel), which characterizes the following novels with his verve at times comic, and which while always remaining, fades at a certain point, to make room in the role of favorite shoulder to the figure of Agatha Troy, wife of Alleyn and painter. Basically we have (taking into account that in other novels also figures such as Sergeants Thompson and Bailey appear)

Novels with Nigel Bathgate: A Man Lay Dead; Enter a Murderer; The Nursing Home Murder; Death in Ecstasy; Artists in Crime; Death in a White Tie; Overture to Death; Surfeit of Lampreys; Final Curtain; Swing, Brother, Swing A Man Lay Dead.

Novels with Inspector Fox: Enter a Murderer; The Nursing Home Murder; Death in Ecstasy; Artists in Crime; Overture to Death; Death at a Bar; Surfeit of Lampreys; Death and the Dancing Footman; Final Curtain; Swing, Brother, Swing; Opening Night; Scales of Justice; Off With His Head; False Scent; Hand in Glove; Dead Water; Clutch of Constables; Tied Up in Tinsel; Black As He’s Painted; Last Ditch; Grave Mistake; Light Thickens.

Novels with Agatha Troy: Artists in Crime; Death in a White Tie; Death and the Dancing Footman; Final Curtain; Swing, Brother, Swing; Spinsters in Jeopardy;  Hand in Glove; Dead Water; Tied Up in Tinsel; Black As He’s Painted; Last Ditch; Grave Mistake; Photo-finish.

First of all, the novel, given its peculiarity, that is the faithful reconstruction of an operation, and much of the novel's charm is due precisely to the fidelity of the surgical steps, was written by Ngaio Marsh, but with the collaboration of Henry Jellet, famous Irish gynecologist of the time then Obstetric Surgeon at the New Zealand Department of Health (whose collaboration is attested) and of Sir Hugh Acland. Joanne Drayton talks about this second collaboration, not attested as co-author in her essay Ngaio Marsh : Her Life in Crime, Harper-Collins,2009 : “The Home Secretary, Sir Derek O’Callaghan, dies of a lethal dose of hyoscine administered on the operating table. Because she needed medical knowledge, Ngaio took on her only collaborator, Irish surgeon Dr Henry Jellett. She also consulted Sir Hugh Acland. Both men were her specialists while she was in hospital..” (page 61).

Basically, in 1934, Ngaio was diagnosed with uterine cancer, and was operated on in the gynecological division of the hospital in Christchurch, New Zealand, where the two surgeons operated. She was probably operated on by both or only by Jellet whom she called "Papa Jellet", as a friend of her father. She then made use of the two surgeons when creating the plot of a detective novel developed around an operating table. Acland and Jellet were then consulted, following the release of the novel which was immediately a success, to stage a play, entitled Exit Sir Derek, in which Acland distinguished himself for the maniacal writing of details: the simulated surgical operation. in theatrical work, it even seemed true to many, so much did Acland care for the part. Exit Sir Derek was performed in the small theater of the University of Cambridge in England, probably in 1937, when she visited the United Kingdom.

As we know Ngaio Marsh was famous not only as a successful writer but also and above all as a theater director, indeed it was for the popularity acquired with the Theater that she was awarded the title of D. B.E. (Dame of British Empire). And theater in one way or another enters many of her novels. Even in this. Because the operating room is often referred to as a theater (and in ancient times it was, operating the surgeons at the center and assisting the students from above, like a stage surrounded and surmounted by galleries). But in this case, the Operating Room (with the antisales: that of narcosis and the one where you sterilize and dress before the operation), refers to the proscenium and the stage, and to the parascene of classical theater. Classical theater in which tragedies were primarily represented. And what tragedy is more so than this, in which in an operating theater the actors of a tragedy, the powerful tyrant (the operated patient) and surgeons and nurses all with their motives to hate or suppress him act? Moreover, it is said in a specific passage of the novel: in Chapter III, there is a dialogue between Phillips and Jane Harden, and she specifically refers to Tragedy, Fate and Vendetta (Nemesis):

"Jane," said Phillips.
"Yes?"
"This--this is a queer business."
"Nemesis, perhaps," said Jane Harden.
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing," she said drearily. "Only it is rather like a Greek play, don't
you think? 'Fate delivers our enemy into our hands

 

Another feature of the novel are the frequent political digressions, more present than in other novels. Rather than focusing the novel's attention on an evil deviance of the criminal, the murderer, The Nursing Home Murder focuses it on the allegedly deviant ideas of a political group, which proclaims its aversion to the bourgeois state and to those who caused death for malnutrition of urban workers and underclass: the anarchists. Having taken this particular political subject as an example in the course of the novel characterizes it as belonging to another time. There are various moments in which he talks about it. There is for example Alleyn's servant, Vassily who knows something:

 

Vassily," said Alleyn, "do you ever see anything of your disreputable pals--The Pan-Soviet Brotherhood, or whatever they were--nowadays?"
"No, sir. Not now am I such a foolish old rascal. I am one bite too shy."
"So I should hope, you old donkey. You don't happen to remember hearing any gossip about Nicholas Kakaroff?"
Vassily crossed himself lavishly from right to left. "Hospodi bozhe moy! He is one of the most worst of them," he said energetically. "A bad fellow. Before the Soviet he was young and anything but conserff-a-tiff. After the Soviet he was older and always up to no-good. The Soviet pleased him no better than the Romanoffs. So sometimes he was killing officials, and at last he has heated up Russia for himself too much, so has come to England"(Chapter VI).  

 

The high points are when Nurse Banks and chemist Sage are being questioned. Nurse "Bolshie" Banks's passionate speeches against capitalism introduce an evil ideology, which is an expression of a belief against the status quo. Questioned first by Marigold, she exclaims: “And for that reason he's the more devilish," announced Banks with remarkable venom. "He's done murderous things since he's been in office. Look at his Casual Labour Bill of last year. He's directly responsible for every death from under-nourishment that has occurred during the last ten months. He's the enemy of the proletariat. If I had my way he'd be treated as a common murderer or else as a homicidal maniac. He ought to be certified. There is insanity in his blood. Everybody knows his father was dotty. That's what I think of your Derek O'Callaghan with a title bought with blood- money” (Chapter III).

When questioned by Alleyn, she will say:

“You may stand there with a smile on your lips," she stormed, "but you won't smile for long. I know your type--the gentleman policeman--the latest development of the capitalist system. You've got where you are by influence while better men do bigger work for a slave's pittance. You'll go, and all others like you, when the Dawn breaks. You think I killed Derek O'Callaghan. I didn't, but I'll tell you this much--I should be proud--proud, do you hear, if I had” (Chapter IX).

But the invectives against a bourgeois society destined to be supplanted by the proletariat are also those of the chemist Harold Sage, perhaps less livid and bitter:

As a matter of fact," continued Mr. Sage, "I must own I don't go as far as Comrade Kakaroff in the matter of O'Callaghan's death. Undoubtedly it is well he is gone. I realise that theoretically there is such a thing as justifiable extermination, but murder--as this may have been--no." (Chapter  XIII).

Basically Sage who is a young communist chemist, protected by Ruth O'Callaghan, Derek's sister, and therefore in a certain sense (not quite) close to Kakaroff's ideas, while admitting that Callaghan's death was a gift done to the working class, for what he was doing to it, and that the mass extermination of the enemies of the working class could be shared (in a revolutionary situation), murder is not as much.

As we can see, Bolsheviks and anarchists are not the same thing, and are distinct. Nurse Banks, who is an expression of the popular malcoltage of an exploited band, is related to Kakaroff, without making a distinction between communism and anarchy, while there is a basic distinction. In essence, anarchists are initially exploited as an anti-tsarist force but then when power is consolidated in the hands of the Bolsheviks, the anarchists with their nihilistic strength are kept away and persecuted, because they represent a threat to the status quo. So in essence the CCCP and the United Kingdom, as an expression of power, are opposed by anarchists. However, from what is clear from the novel, if anarchists were really in an antithetical position to power and violently opposed it, they would not gather in the sunlight in halls, advertising it everywhere. And the sister of the Minister of the Interior, however wild she may be, would not protect those who hate her brother. Kakaroff's anarchist expression is therefore an antithetical movement by now on the facade, made up of people that the central power knows and protects itself from, who growls but do not bite, and who in essence therefore convey the negative energies of the population in a less violent. Moreover, if Kakaroff had really been antithetical to the British central power, he would never have found political asylum, fleeing from the Bolsheviks.

Another interesting point of the novel is that which concerns the sterilization of the morons, of those who have family defects and inherit them. Dr. Roberts is a champion of sterilization if not the extermination of morons. He talks about it with Alleyn at his house:

There need not necessarily be any usual motive." Roberts hesitated and then spoke with more assurance than he had shown so far. "In suggesting this," he said, "I may be accused of mounting my special hobbyhorse. As you have seen, I am greatly interested in hereditary taints. In Sir Derek O'Callaghan's family there is such a taint. In his father, Sir Blake O'Callaghan, it appeared. I believe he suffered at times from suicidal mania. There has been a great deal of injudicious inbreeding. Mark you, I am perfectly well aware that the usual whole-hearted condemnation of inbreeding is to be revised in the light-- " He had lost all his nervousness. He lectured Alleyn roundly for ten minutes, getting highly excited. He quoted his own works and other authorities. He scolded the British public, in the person of one of their most distinguished policemen, for their criminal neglect of racial problems”

Moreover, during the operation, Doctor Thoms, making fun of the anesthetist's studies, and Callaghan's alleged defects, had said:

"He's a striking-looking chap, isn't he?" he remarked lightly. "Curious head. What do you make of it, Roberts? You're a bit of a dog at that sort of  thing, aren't you? Read your book the other day. There's insanity somewhere in the racial makeup here, isn't there? Wasn't his old man bats?" Roberts looked scandalised. "That is so," he said stiffly, "but one would hardly expect to find evidence of racial insanity clearly denned in the facial structure, Mr. Thoms”. (Chapter IV) Basically, from the shape of the skull one could have hypothesized a hereditary defect in the Minister of the Interior.

And then Alleyn comments separately:

“It sounds reasonable enough, Fox, and certainly consistent with Roberts's character. With his views on eugenics he'd be sure to support sterilization. You don't need to be a Bolshie to see the sense of it, either”. (Chapter XV).

Dr. Roberts was also seen at the Kakaroff Rally. It is not known if he too is a subversive, but he is sure that he rather went there because probably someone has pledged support for his crusade. After all, Roberts' crusade did not arise without a triggering cause, which are Mendel's studies on heredity and Galton and Pearson's proposal in England that the state should monitor procreation, preventing that of sick individuals. Now if this is true, one does not remember a Bolshevik eugenics except that which aimed to eliminate the inequalities of the capitalist system thus giving free development to the individual as such. What we remember instead in the 1930s is a National Socialist eugenics, aimed at sterilizing (ordered by the Nazi regime on July 14, 1933) if not at eliminating the diverse and the sick especially of genetic diseases capable of corrupting the pure Aryan race. What comes to mind is that Ngaio Marsh, as a transference, has poured the paternity of this crazy eugenics onto the anarchists, not being able to mock ideas referring to National Socialism which in 1935 enjoyed great sympathies in England.

The interesting features of this novel do not end there. In fact, there is one more thing to talk about: the novel is not mentioned in any text as a novel with an "impossible" crime, yet it is. It is already the second case in which, for novels by Ngaio Marsh, we notice this characteristic.

 I had already talked about it for its debut, and in that case (A Man Lay Dead, 1934) I had mentioned the fact that that novel could also have been a hidden Impossible Murder. Why? In the course of the novel, at a certain point, it is specified that no other person, from the outside, could have committed Rankin's murder, because the house had been isolated by a snowfall that had enveloped the surrounding countryside, for more than frozen. . Well, here too we have a hidden impossible murder, even more so. Let me explain.

That Marsh was not interested in being remembered as a writer of novels with impossible crimes, was testified by that first novel, which had all the canonical cornerstones of the impossible crime, even if then no one emphasized its impossibility or rather, while highlighting it , did not exalt it as such. In this case, while in the first, Ngaio underlines at a certain point that the murderer was at home even if it seemed impossible, because it was surrounded by frozen snow, and in essence the house is like an island surrounded from the sea (the reference is to Ten Little Niggers by Agatha Christie, five years later), not even here Ngaio Marsh uses the term "impossibility", even if the novel bears the stigmata everywhere: three injections were made but none he may have killed the Minister of the Interior and in theory he could have taken medications containing hyoscine in such quantities as to legitimize the quantity ascertained after autopsy but this is evidently not the case: yet 16 centigrams of hyoscine were found in his body, an amount such as to surely kill a man (15 would have been amply enough). How was it administered? Even a neophyte would understand that there are all the prerequisites for talking about impossible murder, impossible poisoning, yet .. Ngaio Marsh doesn't talk about it. The impossibility of this poisoning, which is solved only by finding the weapon used, is revealed at the end of the novel: in essence, in this case we have a reversal of what is a classic impossible murder. While in the canonical impossible murder (Wynne, Carr, Halter, Boileau. Vindy) we have a crime that is defined as impossible from the beginning, and that will be solved only by explaining how it could have been carried out, and therefore associating the solution of Howdunnit with the 'murderer, here we have a crime that is never defined as impossible, but which appears as such only at the end, when discovering its "impossible" weapon (a syringe of a special shape, with a piston that is easily confused with another thing), the killer is also discovered. In other words, the assumption behind the discovery of the murderer would not be: the murderer could be X if the impossibility were Y, but if the impossibility is Y, the murderer is certainly X because only he could use that weapon.

 

Pietro De Palma