Episode 113: Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh

SPEAKERS
Sarah Harrison, Carolyn Daughters, Z.J. Czupor

Sarah Harrison  00:12

Welcome to Tea, Tonic and Toxin, the only book club and podcast dedicated to exploring mysteries chronologically from Edgar Allan Poe to the present, we’re discussing the best mysteries and thrillers ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s most talented contemporary mystery and thriller writers. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters  00:33

And I’m your host, Carolyn Daughters. We aim to educate, entertain, and reignite interest in exceptional and often overlooked authors who shaped the genre. Check us out at teatonicandtoxin.com and on our socials to find tons of great content and take part in the conversation. We love hearing from listeners, and we’re excited you’re joining us on our journey through the history of mystery.

Sarah Harrison  00:57

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Sarah Harrison  01:23

Carolyn, we are back with our super fantastic guest Z.J. Czupor  to talk about Died in the Wool.

Carolyn Daughters  01:32

By Ngaio Marsh. Such a cool book, and our first Ngaio Marsh for Tea Tonic and Toxin, which is awesome. It was published in 1945. For all of just joining on this episode or learning about us more from this episode, we focus on the history of mystery, and we are smack dab in the 1940s.

Sarah Harrison  01:53

Such a cool guest, but not our first time being joined by Z.J. Czupor, who’s chatting with us about the Queens of Crime. But before we jump into that, I do want to give a call out to our listener of the episode, and that is Becky Malloy from here in Bedford, Virginia. Becky is a mystery fan, and was chit chatting with me about the podcast and gave me a whole list of local authors, mystery writers in the area. So we’re gonna open those up, and thank you, Becky, for helping out the podcast. Here you’re gonna get a shiny, beautiful sticker, and thanks.

Sarah Harrison  02:39

Awesome. Well, today we’re on our second episode. We have so much to talk about. So we have two episodes on Ngaio Marsh’s Died in the Wool, published in 1945. This mystery is set on a remote New Zealand sheep farm. Flossie Rubrick, a highly opinionated and influential member of the New Zealand Parliament, was last seen heading off to a wool shed on her farm, three weeks later she turns up dead, packed in a bale of wool. What happened on the night of her disappearance? Well, Inspector Roderick Alleyn is in New Zealand on counter espionage duty, and he’s happy to lend a hand. Born in 1895, Ngaio Marsh studied painting in art school, and was an actress and a theatrical producer in New Zealand before going to England. There, she wrote her first novel, *A Man Lay Dead* in 1934, which introduced Inspector Roderick Alleyn. She soon returned to New Zealand, where she wrote more novels and produced and directed Shakespearean repertory theater. Ngaio Marsh wrote during the golden age of detective fiction, and she’s considered one of the Queens of Crime, along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1966 and named a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master in 1978. She died in 1982.

Sarah Harrison  04:07

And I am delighted to introduce our guest for the second episode. Z.J. Czupor is the author of Dead Men Don’t Drink, When the Fog Rises and Cut Right Through Me, all published at Z. That’s the letter Z. James Z as in Z.J . zjames@substack.com. Z.J. is immediate past president of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and is an active member of Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. He is represented by Terry Wolfe, founder and owner of A.K.A. Literary Management, he’s also the author of *The Big Weird: Haikus in the Times of Pandemic and Chaos* a collection of sublime poetry about his observations of the pandemic. More of his haiku poems are featured in *Stop the World: Snapshots from a Pandemic* which includes authors, poets, and. This from around the world. Welcome back, Z.J.

Z.J. Czupor  05:04

Thank you. Great to be here.

Carolyn Daughters  05:08

Well, when we had left off in our last episode, which we hope everyone here gets a chance to listen to as well, we had started talking about our protagonist, or maybe not the protagonist. She’s not carried through the whole book, but the woman who is murdered, Flossie Rubrick, and we get a lot of opinions of this character throughout Died in the Wool. She’s a member of Parliament. She’s a strong personality. For some interesting reason, she refers to herself as “Floosie.” She says that F L O O S I E. We through this story learn how her husband had felt about her, how various people in her household had felt about her, and some of the staff who work on the farm. And it’s not that necessarily the prettiest picture, and yet Sarah, I think you really loved Flossie Rubrick.

Sarah Harrison  06:05

I did love her, but before I go on about my love of her, I really want to hear what Z.J. says, so he doesn’t feel like he hates her and doesn’t want to say so because I love her. What was your take on Flossie Rubrick, Z.J.?

Z.J. Czupor  06:19

Well, she’s obviously an interesting character. She pretty much runs the household. Her husband is ailing, so he’s not much of a factor in in that regard. And she leans on him to help her write her political essays and speeches, and he in turn gets the aid of their housekeeper, and they have a love affair. Although I don’t think it’s ever consummated in Died in the Wool, but it’s strongly hinted at that they have strong feelings for each other, thereby raising the question: Did he kill Flossie Rubrick, so that he could continue a life of love with his assistant, and he admits to her that he made a mistake in marrying Flossie. Flossie is just a strong personality, and she brings in people, she adopts them, she takes care of them. She encourages their talents so much so that she pays for their education. She’s very demanding, and she as she expects an exacting in return, favors from her, her household, and even the characters admit we love her, but she’s also demanding, and we don’t love that about her. So you begin to get she’s like an onion; it starts to peel off as we hear different people’s perspective of her.

Sarah Harrison  08:03

That was a nice setup for Died in the Wool. I thought Fabian when he comes to pick up Alan, he’s like, “Look, I have this idea. I have this idea. What if we all gave our perspectives a flossy, and then you could figure it out? And Alan seems to be humoring him. We don’t know yet that there is real espionage going on, and that’s why he’s there. So he’s like, “Okay, sure, you all give me your different perspectives. And so it’s an interesting, nice way to show this multifaceted lady and how she landed with everybody. But yes, I do love her. I think she’s terrific. She’s and everyone else’s everyone else’s sort of reaction to her says a lot about them and what they’re dealing with. I mean, it says some stuff about her, but it also says a lot about them. What are her husband Arthur like never actually seemed to have taken accountability for his own issues, and he’s either like admiring Flossie or resenting Flossie, but he’s never like owning Arthur and Arthur’s problems. Then the same thing with like Terry and Fabian, but she was so energetic and high energy and generous, and everybody didn’t know what to do with her. But one of the things I think I was telling Carolyn that I really loved about Flossie, and maybe it’s why I like her so much and I dislike Fabian so much. Everyone admits she was a great judge of character, and for me, I think that’s one of the traits that’s like pretty high up in the trait hierarchy is to be a great judge of character and assessing character so much so that when her nephew and we’re gonna get into. Some spoilers now, folks. We didn’t really spoil the last episode, but we are going to spoil this one because it’s so important and it’s so fun to discuss. So go read Died in the Wool. It’s really short. When her nephew comes to her with concerns of the butler, she knows her nephew’s a Nazi, like, and then she’s gonna she’s gonna figure it out and do something about it. Like that’s how sharp she is, and that’s ultimately why she had to die. But she was so good at assessing everyone’s character, and they allude to her being ugly. They allude to her being like masculine, but she was a straight shooter. Even her nephew, who ended up doing away with her, admitted that she knew how to talk to New Zealand people. They really, she was very popular. That’s what they wanted, and everyone else spinning out. Frankly, got on my nerves a lot about like what their problem was with her, and especially her own husband. To me, that hurt my feelings on her behalf a little bit to feel his inner discomfort about her personality. How about you, Carolyn?

Carolyn Daughters  11:22

In a lot of ways, I respected her outspokenness and her strength at a time where being an outspoken member of parliament as a woman certainly could not have been easy or common. The characters themselves. We were talking a little bit in the last episode that are complex creatures, and I know Z.J., you want to talk a lot more about these relationships in Died in the Wool because I think it’s so important. But the characters, in several of the characters, as a reader, they rubbed me wrong, and so Fabian’s an example, just irritating, and Terry a lot of the time irritated me, and that’s just my personal response to them, and so the more they irritated me, the more I thought maybe Flossie wasn’t so bad because so much of what I’m getting about her is coming from them, if that makes sense. But then one of the complexities is this story of Cliff, and I think it’s worth our spending just a couple minutes talking about Cliff Johns. He refers to this class consciousness in New Zealand, and he says the station holder’s wife taking an interest in the working manager’s kid accent on working. I felt the condescension, and she sends him to boarding school, and he’s a musician, he’s extremely talented, but what embarrasses him or makes him feel awkward a lot of the time is she’s really outspoken about her patronage? She talks about it constantly with everyone, and so he starts to feel sort of this differentiated and this special case, and it’s awkward for him, and at any rate, they sort of end up having a patron. He sort of breaks up with his patron, I guess is one way to say it, where he feels ashamed, and she’s furious that he doesn’t seem to be accepting her patronage, and so I want to like have just a couple minutes where we can talk through what’s going on with Cliff Johns, and like, did you identify with him and his perception, or maybe his perceptions because he’s so young and hasn’t had the years to process it, like what, from your perspective, and Z.J., we’ll start with you. But what did you feel was going on with Cliff Johns and with Flossie?

Z.J. Czupor  14:12

That’s a great question. Cliff was I think 18 years old, so yes, he’s the youngest of all the characters in in the novel, And Flossie Rubrick sees something in him that she wants to develop and blossom, and so that’s why she pays for his education, sends him off to school, gives him a private education, which elevates him to a higher level of education than most kids his age would get from that from that period, and from that region, and he develops his musical talents, but he comes back a changed man. He comes back with more communist ideas as explained in Died in the Wool, which is at contrast with Florence’s ideology, if you will, and so there’s that new tension that wasn’t there before, and she’s trying to still get him to appreciate what she’s done for him, and he is not a not appreciating that at all, and feels like he’s being used.

Carolyn Daughters  15:29

Sarah, what did you think?

Sarah Harrison  15:32

I can appreciate Cliff’s perspective, but then I also appreciate the mom perspective in my heart, and I think it takes about a fraction of that to embarrass an 18 year old. So it takes maybe nothing at all for an 18 year old to feel embarrassed or patronized or risen their gratitude, right? Which doesn’t make it not real. And so you have two different people with their two different brains, right? In Died in the Wool, you have Cliff, who’s very aware of his class, in feeling patronized and being 18, and Flossie coming on strong and Flossie probably largely unaware. And I see this in management dynamics a lot, where managers will come into a meeting. They’ll state their opinion. They’ll think they’re just putting it out there. Everyone agrees with it. The meeting ends. They go away, and everyone grumbles, and nobody does what was agreed to. And the managers, because they’re often my boss, will come back to me and say, “What happened? What’s going on? I thought everyone agreed, and I was like, they just said that because you come on so strong. It’s a known factor even in a society that has less class consciousness, right?

Sarah Harrison  17:00

When I build teams, I can’t have managers on a team because everything they say carries so much weight that the team will not be honest and will not be able to assess things even-handedly. And I think that’s where Flossie finds herself, whether she likes it or not. She tries to like be one of the gang, but she can’t. That’s not who she is. Whether she’s just born with more money than that, and so when she tries to give money to people, she’s a little bit stuck. Now the fact that she descends into a gratitude tirade, I know, comes off to Cliff as classist, but from what I was saying in the last episode, and one thing that Flossie reveals is that she thinks of Cliff like a son, and the fact that her person, that’s her son, is rejecting her, is like breaking her heart, so she spins out into a gratitude tirade. And I think they both feel sorry about it.

Sarah Harrison  18:10

In Died in the Wool, Cliff reveals later that he was actually going to apologize in the fateful. Like didn’t know what he was going to say, but they were going to try and repair things when he finds her dead, and it’s too late, and he looks now like the murderer. And I just like to me, it’s so tragic. Like she’s a single lady, and all she has is a war, and she wants a son. I mean, she’s not single. She’s a childless lady.

Sarah Harrison  18:35

She wants a son. She wants it to be Cliff. She pours her heart and money into him, and then he goes. He’s going through being 18, and wanting to break free, and wanting to be communist, and not wanting to take handouts, and that is breaking the relationship. So I can feel like super sorry for her. I can feel sorry for Cliff. I don’t think it’s all one-sided. I think it’s a situation that’s like, how, how do you solve that? I don’t exactly know. And Ngaio Marsh isn’t interested in solving it in Died in the Wool. She’s interested in creating a backdrop for potential murder. So she’s not solving that. Right, putting it out there.

Carolyn Daughters  19:21

I have personally been the recipient of several gratitude tirades in my life.

Sarah Harrison  19:28

Oh, really?

Carolyn Daughters  19:30

And I have always found it super uncomfortable. I think it’s not atypical to say that my response is like it puts the fight in me. So it’s not like, oh, I’m hearing this gratitude tirade. I’m sorry, thank you. You are amazing, and it flips it a little bit, and you’re like, and my reaction wouldn’t be everyone’s, but I don’t think it’s an uncommon sort of. And some of the gratitude tirades I’ve received, even in retrospect, looking back, I can say were not earned. Like I didn’t, I should not have been the recipient of such a strange tirade. And then in a couple of the cases, maybe I should have, but there would have been a maybe a preferable way to communicate what I seemed to be taking for granted, and so I did feel for him, and I think I also was like channeling from Flossie Rubrick in Died in the Wool. I was channeling everything, my thoughts about her through the fact that she is an outspoken woman of some privilege and some class status, some wealth. She is outspoken in a way most women weren’t, but also most women would not have been able to be, and so anything that she thought on any topic in her household, or politically, or what have you, she felt free to say, and people had to listen to her to some degree if they were going to remain in her household, on her farm, in her district that she was representing. So she, there’s a lot of power that she had, and I think she’s she was super complicated for me as a result. Like not a good character, not a bad character. It’s a really complicated, interesting character.

Z.J. Czupor  21:40

From an author’s perspective, we talked a little bit about this off camera, but I think Ngaio Marsh did a wonderful job of layering all these conflicts, conflicts between lower, middle, upper class, conflicts between the characters, the love interest, the conflict there, the mystery of the murder, the subplot of the espionage, and so it’s like a cake. I mean, you’ve got all these layers going on in this one story, and as a reader, that’s what keeps you reading is all these conflicts. He’s like, “What the hell is going on here? And who’s right? Who’s wrong? And how do I figure this out from Inspector Alleyn’s point of view? Because he’s supposedly objective and withdrawn from all this internal drama, if you will. You’re pulling for him to figure this out, and I just think it was brilliant the way she created this story.

Sarah Harrison  22:51

I totally agree, and I want to hear more about Died in the Wool. You had a lot of thoughts. You’ve done a little bit of research on Ngaio Marsh herself. I’d love you to dive into that, Z.J.

Z.J. Czupor  23:05

Well, I’m always interested in what’s happening in an author’s life when they’re writing something, and so I did a little more deeper dive into her than I did the last time I wrote about her. So, this story is taking place in the middle of World War II, and she was 50 years old at the time that she wrote this. And she actually wrote it in 1944, and it was published in 45. During that period, she went back to New Zealand because her father was ailing, and her father had built this remote farmhouse outside of Christ Church. You can see a photo of it when you when you look at some of her background. And it sits up high on a hill. It looks very remote. In fact, one article I read, the boy who delivered newspapers said it was spooky, but here she is in World War II. She has gone back to New Zealand from London to take care of her ailing father, and she’s also volunteering for the local Red Cross. And she’s a bus driver, ferrying soldiers who’ve come back from the war to New Zealand, ferrying them to their homes, while she’s also directing plays at the playhouse, so she’s got all this stuff going on while she’s writing this particular story, and so she’s really steeped in New Zealand culture and where she grew up, and so this is her. I mean, this is all about her.

Carolyn Daughters  24:50

It’s interesting. I found so when I think of World War II literature or stories set during World War II, my first inclination isn’t to think New Zealand, and so Died in the Wool gave the war a really interesting global perspective to me that I don’t, I don’t know that I have most of the time, and so I thought that was really interesting. I tend to think it’s going to be set as many of the books we’ve read that take place during the Blitz in in England, for example. Very, very interesting. It’s also interesting that she’s taking some of her personal experience and sort of weaving the Roderick Alleyn stories sort of into the life she’s leading at the time. I think that’s a really cool detail that I didn’t know.

Z.J. Czupor  25:52

I thought it just gives you more of a richer understanding of her as a writer and of the story Itself, so she had a lot going on at this time, and in your introduction of her, you mentioned about her involvement in theater. She also, a year earlier, I believe it was, directed a play in New Zealand, called Hammett in Modern Dress. So this was really groundbreaking stuff. I mean, to take something from Shakespeare and put all the characters in modern dress, and it was really well received. And when you think about that, she’s got all this stuff going on at the same time that she’s creating, it just gave me a whole new admiration for her.

Sarah Harrison  26:48

It really sounds like Flossie quite a bit, where Flossie wanted to get a war job, but she couldn’t because she needed to go take care of her ailing husband in this case, and just involved in Flossie was involved in politics, and Ngaio Marsh was involved in more creative endeavors. But no, I agree. We had started out reading The Ministry of Fear and Green for Danger and these sort of wartime novels, and then we got away from that in Home Sweet Homicide* and very far away from that, and *Death Comes as the End* and so I was surprised. I didn’t realize I knew *Die* in the wool was a New Zealand novel, but I didn’t really realize it was happening during the war and had this whole other espionage perspective, which I just want to throw out there. That was probably my favorite part of Died in the Wool. I call it like the twist in the middle, when you’re going through and you hear everyone’s stories and you have Douglas going on and on about the butler who’s probably the one doing it all and is probably a spy and you don’t know what to think. Alan goes up to his bedroom, and then in comes the butler, and they start talking like old friends. And you find out, oh, actually he is an agent, but on the good side. And it’s just they go through everything in the history, and I was like, “Ah, that’s great! It was such a fun twist. And then they become buddies, as they try and sort this out. How did you guys feel about the whole espionage plot,

Carolyn Daughters  28:37

Z.J.? What are your thoughts?

Z.J. Czupor  28:39

I liked it. Of course, I’m biased. I like espionage stories. I actually wanted to see more of that, but I understood that was secondary to the mystery of who killed Flossie. But it did add another layer, if you will, and it made the war, I think, much closer to this remote farmhouse. And the other aspect about war: war changes people. Even if you’re not involved in the actual action of fighting or on the front lines. I mean, New Zealand was so far away from World War II, the action in Europe, but still it changes people because sons and brothers and fathers go off and they don’t necessarily come back, or if they come back, sometimes they’re greatly changed. And while they’re gone, that puts great pressure on the families, and life as people knew it was different. It was changed, and there was sacrifices to be made even at home. And so you have all this under tow going on that isn’t really talked about in the novel, but it.

Carolyn Daughters  29:59

In Died in the Wool, Roderick Alleyn at one point says about Fabian. He says he had seen his share of precious young moderns and wondered if this particular specimen was habitually so disjointed in speech and manner. He knew Fabian Loss had seen war service. He wondered what had sent him to New Zealand and whether, as Fabia n himself had suggested, he was in truth suffering from shock. And I, I think there, I think what has surprised me from maybe the second year of our podcast to the present day is how much awareness there was during the war time period about this traumatic response to war and how that response didn’t end the day the war ended, or the day you were sent home, or if you lived through it versus were injured, or what have you. That I think in my mind that was such a much more modern or contemporary response to understanding what happens during war, but we’ve seen that with Peter Wimsey. We’ve seen it with various characters in these books where their wartime experiences have scarred them deeply, and they are working through it in their present day lives, but you can see the evidence.

Z.J. Czupor  31:24

You see the signs. I mean, this was before we understood PTSD, and people came back and we knew that there was an effect, but it was just they were part of the war, and it wasn’t taken very seriously, a recent example is one of my good friends that I’ve known since grade school was in Vietnam, and I didn’t think he was a security guard at an air base. I didn’t think he was very close to the action, but only now, some 30 years later, do I find out from him that he does have PTSD because he was shot at and did see some close action, which I never knew, and it’s manifested by restless nights, not sleeping, always checking the doors at night to make sure they’re locked, and he’s under medication. So yes, it deeply affects people, some in different ways, obviously. But now we’re beginning to understand some of this stuff.

Sarah Harrison  32:36

I remember that first Peter Wimsey novel we read [Whose Body by Dorothy L. Sayers] and his flashbacks and that coming up with hey well that’s unexpected and we see that in Fabian as well and it becomes sort of this whole plot line where he’s reliving what he saw and so it’s a really interesting treatment as people are trying to understand how does this work exactly? And I don’t I don’t know like all the different ways it can show up, but it was pretty interesting incorporation I thought into the storyline and into Fabian’s story in particular in Died in the Wool.

Z.J. Czupor  33:15

I thought Fabian’s observations of himself were interesting because he wanted to marry Ursula, but he was afraid that his condition would not allow for a complete relationship, if you will, and whether or not she would accept him. So, again, another deep layer of these characters.

Sarah Harrison  33:41

That’s actually one of the things I did like about Flossie, and why I had hope for her future. Once she realized, because so, to give our listeners a little bit of a context, if you don’t mind things being spoiled, Flossie had wanted Ursula and Douglas to get together, and was really mad that Fabian and Ursula were getting together since he had a broken brain, but when she found out her nephew was a Nazi, she did dial that back and was like no longer insisting. She’s like, okay, well, well, okay, in two years. Okay, in two years, if you still feel the same way, you can you can marry Fabian, and of course he resents it. But he also feels a little similarly himself. Like he’s not sure he’s a very good candidate for the rich and beautiful Ursula, and I’m not sure either. I think she could do better. But if she loves him, if she’s willing to wait the two years, and she thinks that’s fair, but she’s not planning to change her mind. So that was a whole interesting incorporation, I think, of the war element in Died in the Wool.

Carolyn Daughters  35:02

My first introduction to Roderick Alleyn, as we’ve said in Died in the Wool, or my certainly my most recent interaction with Roderick Alleyn, is when he comes on the scene. He tells Fabian, “I just think I ought to warn you. I’m a bit of state machinery. Anyone can start me up, but only the state can shut me off. You’ve been warned, and so I get a sense that okay, there is some sort of espionage thread happening here, and it’s not just hypothetical. It’s going to show to be real, and there’s something happening in this household, and we are going to get to the bottom of it. That simple statement that Roderick Alleyn makes really gave me complete confidence in him as a detective. Where I thought, okay, he’s going to get to the bottom of this. He’s so I just have to follow him along on this journey. I really liked there were some aspects of his personality I really liked, and that was one of them. That sort of the way he instilled confidence, probably in Fabian Loss, but certainly in me as a reader.

Z.J. Czupor  36:09

I thought so too. And he openly said, I’m not going to be asked. I’m going to ask some of the same questions that the police asked you, but I want to hear it in your own voices. And he allows them to talk, and he allows them to make mistakes, and he allows them to actually go at each other, which introduces some new personality quirks and relationship issues that maybe the police never saw.

Sarah Harrison  36:47

It was a pretty interesting in Died in the Wool, that dynamic where Fabian basically invited this guy to find out who did it. That was the one thing that was like, okay, it’s probably not him, Ben. It’s really probably not him because the case has been dead. It’s been unsolved for a year. It pretty much became a cold case. You didn’t. If you wanted to get away with it, you wouldn’t invite the detective to come back in. So it’s like, okay, it’s probably not Fabian, not Ursula.

Sarah Harrison  37:17

But then everybody else, and everyone agrees. They’re like, definitely. But of course, you’d have to, even if you were guilty, because you don’t want to be like, no, I don’t think. I think we should let it be unsolved. That’s probably the way to go. You would have given yourself away, and the four of them. It was so interesting the way Alan plays him. I remember towards the end, Ursula was like, “Oh, you’re such a darling, and gives him a kiss because you don’t think it’s any of us. Oh, this. All right, go to bed, because he’s about to go and stop, Douglas from doing more damage and killing him.

Carolyn Daughters  38:03

And what do you both think about the ending of Died in the Wool where there’s some little hide and seek going on, and we’re gonna trap the culprit? And like, did that work for you? Did you feel like, but I mean, did that raise the tension for you? Were you wondering who is going to be unmasked?

Z.J. Czupor  38:24

It did for me because I probably read mysteries different than a lot of people, but because I’m trying to study it and understand it. But if you notice near the ending, sentences got shorter. There was less exposition of internal dialog, and so it ratcheted up the tension quite a bit because things started happening faster and faster, and you knew he was setting a trap, and then it was just a matter of okay, how’s it going to play out? Then that was begins to be a real page turner there.

Sarah Harrison  39:05

I actually thought the ending of Died in the Wool was really interesting. I love the way he partnered up with the with the butler and they were both hiding and even wish like Markins. He’s like, do you want to hear who I think it is? And then he whispers it, and we don’t know what he whispers. But what we do know is earlier, both he and Markins agreed. Like, Douglas doesn’t have the brains for it.

Sarah Harrison  39:33

Doesn’t have the brain. Like he’s just, they just talk about what a specimen he is with his big mustaches and his cluelessness and his engineering, and then they used a word at the end. I wasn’t familiar with it. Herrenvolk. After he turned, he had been like these young guys going to school in Germany and got converted over to the. Young Nazism, and then came back to their home countries. He said he went considerably further and is now among the eternal Herronvolk. That’s after Douglas got killed. I was unfamiliar with that term. Have you guys heard that before? Is that this was a different perspective of the war for me and a different operation?

Carolyn Daughters  40:19

I think it’s that the master race concept.

Sarah Harrison  40:23

Is that Herronvolk?

Carolyn Daughters  40:25

I think so. I don’t know more than that though.

Z.J. Czupor  40:32

I wasn’t familiar with it with the word either, but I think Carolyn, you might be right.

Sarah Harrison  40:40

Well, and I never knew until the end. Like, is it gonna line up, right? He was brought there on this espionage idea. We found out in the middle. Hey, there is real espionage going on. They leaked the plans to this thing that Fabian was engineering, and then somebody killed Flossie. Is that going to be the same person or a different person? Did Arthur kill her because he finally was decided they didn’t want to be married anymore, or did Cherry kill her, or did Ursula? Was it related? Was it just coincidental? So it was interesting that it did fall together, and it was one and the same person, and it was espionage motivated.

Carolyn Daughters  41:27

And so we got all those stories from all the characters about Flossie, who is Florence Rubrick, and through the eyes of the people in the household, and then at the end we hear Alan drew his breath. He was about to discover whether the post mortem on Florence Rubrick’s character, the deductions he had drawn from it, and the light it had seemed to cast on her associates were true or false, and then he switches on his torch, and this is the spoiler alert. So, listeners, if you have not finished Died in the Wool yet, pause here. The torch shone full in the eyes of Douglas Grace.

Sarah Harrison  42:05

So, yes, I did spoil it a couple times already.

Carolyn Daughters  42:09

I think that part of the spoiling before was woven into conversation, where if someone wasn’t really tracking exactly what was being said, whereas here it’s like.

Carolyn Daughters  42:21

It’s revealed. It’s like a stage. Here’s the spotlight on him, and so forth. But yes.

Z.J. Czupor  42:29

It did. It made sense, and it was an abrupt ending, unlike today’s novels, where typically we find out who did it, but then all the loose ends are tied up after that, so it just boom, and then fade to black.

Carolyn Daughters  42:47

And then in Died in the Wool, we get the letter from Alan to his wife.

Z.J. Czupor  42:54

Yes.

Sarah Harrison  42:55

Oh, and that was one of the interesting things about Fabian too. He invited him in. He turned him on, as he said, but he never wanted it to be anybody, and he thought he was gonna get Cliff. Fabian almost like threw himself between him. Was like, no, no, shut up, stop. Alan’s like, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave if you, if you can. And then it turned out to be Douglas, and Fabian’s mind was blown that the only other person that had access to your plans was, in fact, the agent of espionage. Right here.

Carolyn Daughters  43:29

Unless Flossie Rubrick had killed herself and put herself in that bale of hay, really, it becomes clear that really the access was limited to the blueprints.

Sarah Harrison  43:40

Like he thought it would be no one, I guess, and I don’t know why he invited Alan to come because he just didn’t want it. They didn’t want anyone to actually be guilty or do any of the things that had to have been.

Carolyn Daughters  43:55

Fabian in Died in the Wool is a mystery to me. I don’t know if that’s because of his wartime experience or if he’s just a flaky, strange guy. I don’t know.

Sarah Harrison  44:04

Well, he’s also a foreigner in New Zealand, and I don’t know if that’s playing into the whole you were discussing, Z.J., like the fabric of like class and place and background. But like Douglas frequently accuses him of like not getting New Zealanders, and I don’t know, like if that resonated with New Zealand at the time or not.

Z.J. Czupor  44:26

I don’t know. That’s a good question. But again, I think it’s just a matter of creating characters that are in opposition and characters that have overt conflict and subtle conflict just adds to the whole milieu of the mystery in the story.

Sarah Harrison  44:47

There’s a lot of depth, and we are coming up on time for this episode on Died in the Wool, unbelievably. But before we go, I want to ask Z.J. So you’ve written about all four Queens of Crime. The Queen of Crime we’re discussing today is Ngaio Marsh. How do you see her sort of fitting in in the landscape? Tell us a little bit about your article and your research in that area.

Z.J. Czupor  45:13

Well, as you mentioned in the opening of her bio, where she was awarded the Dame Grandame nomenclature, and she was the grand master of mystery writers. I think by the end of her career, she was recognized for her contribution to literature, and especially to detective form of literature. And she was really on an equal footing, I think, in terms of her writing acumen with Agatha Christie and the others. She just didn’t get the notoriety, maybe because she was more of a New Zealander than she was a Londoner, and I think that maybe have had some to do it. Although she spent so much time in London, you would think that would offset some of that. But who knows? Anyway, I think I think she’s of equal or in some cases higher literary writer than maybe a couple of them.

Carolyn Daughters  46:20

Interesting, and I was wondering if her status was higher during the Golden Age, and maybe today she’s read less. And then I was trying to figure out, okay, if the four writers were on par with each other at the time, what has made her works less read today? Like why do why do we know so why do generally speaking a lot of people know the names of the other three, for example, and maybe know Ngaio Marsh less today?

Z.J. Czupor  46:58

I think it’s because of geography, and her New Zealand status versus the metropolitan area of London, where millions of population, more access to media coverage, publishing houses, and so on. Although Ngaio Marsh had, I think, 100 and 100,000 copies in print at one point, which was phenomenal for that period, but you try to weigh her against Agatha Christie, who’s the second highest selling author of all time after the Bible, and then you have Ngaio Marsh. I don’t know.

Z.J. Czupor  47:47

Maybe she needed a better PR person. I don’t know.

Carolyn Daughters  47:49

Ah, yes. Maybe so.

Sarah Harrison  47:56

I do think your handling of the estate post mortem, the availability of reinventing these stories into movies and TV series really has a major impact on how an author endures. Because she only had a couple.

Z.J. Czupor  48:16

I think there are only a couple of movies made from her books, and a couple of TV series, but they were Australian and New Zealand series, so they didn’t have the wide, wide exposure like Agatha Christie’s novels that were adapted into film. Much, much larger exposure.

Carolyn Daughters  48:37

I’m so glad we had a chance to talk about Ngaio Marsh.

Sarah Harrison  48:45

I want to read the last paragraph of Died in the Wool because I feel like Alan came to like where I came to. Like I feel like Alan and I were together, and I think I think that’s probably on purpose since the otter wrote it that way, that we should feel that way. But he said, as the case the case is wound up, but as I stretch my cold fingers and look once again at the portrait of Florence Rubrick, I regret very much that I didn’t accept her invitation and come before she was dead, for a weekend at Mount Moon. I like that a lot. He’s putting it all together, and he wishes he did know her in person.

Sarah Harrison  49:30

Interesting person that she was.

Carolyn Daughters  49:32

I felt like it was him saying maybe he could have done something to prevent her death, but also, like you’re saying, there was something about her that made her a person worth knowing, and I really liked that.

Sarah Harrison  49:48

You can be complicated and flawed and mess up a lot of stuff and be a person. Z.J., where can folks find you in your work? Looking to learn more about you.

Z.J. Czupor  50:02

Well, my website is zoltanjames.com, and also on zjames.substack.com.

Sarah Harrison  50:12

Cool. Fantastic, and we add books as they become available. We always put on our Amazon bookstore and our bookshop, bookshop, bookshop.org are both so to support local bookstores. Carolyn, as we wrap up Died in the Wool, do you want to introduce next month’s selection?

Carolyn Daughters  50:37

I would love to. Next up is The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin, published in 1946. The Moving Toyshop is an ingenious mystery featuring eccentric Oxford professor Gervais Fen. When a poet discovers a murdered woman in a toy shop that later vanishes, Fen investigates the surreal case. The book is celebrated for its wit and inventive plot. It’s a crime fiction classic.

Sarah Harrison  51:04

We just secured our guest for that episode, so you’re really gonna like them. I’m gonna keep them a secret. And we hope all of you guys will join us for our Edmund Crispin episodes next month.

Carolyn Daughters  51:21

And it’s a really fun book. For goodness’ sake, the toy shop disappears. It’s pretty cool.

Sarah Harrison  51:28

It sounds. It sounds. I’m in the middle right now, so I don’t have any evaluation yet. But thank you so much for joining us, Z.J. It’s been delightful seeing you again.

Z.J. Czupor  51:40

My pleasure, and it’s great to see you again. And love the conversation with you always. Thank you.

Carolyn Daughters  51:46

Wonderful.

Carolyn Daughters  53:48

Thanks so much for listening to the second of our two-part discussion of Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh. Please help other mystery lovers find our show with a like, subscribe, share, or rating. It’s totally free, and it means the world to us.

Sarah Harrison  54:02

If the spirit of mystery so moves you, we have a few ways you can financially support our labor of love. Click the link in the show notes to support this podcast. Buy your books through our Amazon store or join our Patreon, where subscribers have access to additional episodes that include bonus content and discussions of the movies inspired by some of the greatest mysteries ever written.

Carolyn Daughters  51:52

Thanks for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. Until next time, Stay Mysterious.