Episode 112: Inspector Alleyn & Ngaio Marsh – Died in the Wool

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

Today’s sponsor is Linden Botanicals, a Colorado-based company that sells the world’s healthiest herbal teas and extracts. Their team has traveled the globe to find the herbs that offer the best science-based support for stress relief, energy, memory, mood, kidney health, joint health, digestion, and inflammation. U.S. orders over $75 ship free. To learn more, visit lindenbotanicals.com and use code MYSTERY to get 15% off your first order. Thanks, Linden. We are so excited about today’s episode and welcoming back guest Z.J. Czupor. How are you doing?

Z.J. Czupor  01:44

Great, thank you. Thank, nice to be back.

Sarah Harrison  01:49

Before we get started with Ngaio Marsh’s book Died in the Wool and her wonderful detective, Inspector Alleyn, we want to do our shout out. We have a very special shout out. I don’t know if all of our listeners follow us on social media. We get it if you don’t want to be on social media, but if you are on there, you should follow us because we have been doing a lot of really fun giveaways lately. And so for our shout out this month, I want to highlight Julie Freya Schott, who just won The Creeping Hand Murder book, which is a beautiful edition. We’re sending the book all the way to Denmark. So Julie’s going to get the book. She’s going to get her Tea, Tonic and Toxin sticker and any other swag we can put in there. So thank you so much, Julie, for participating, and if you haven’t joined one of our giveaways, we highly recommend that you do. We have, I think, at least two more planned in the upcoming months, so that’s going to be a lot of fun.

Carolyn Daughters  02:54

What I’ll say about our giveaways is that they are pretty straightforward and simple. We’re just looking to build our follower list, or really to help like-minded people find us, we don’t ever spam anybody or bother anyone. The worst thing that’s going to happen to you is you’re going to win one of these prizes and get awesome swag and a great book.

Sarah Harrison  03:16

Honestly, you’d probably like to be bothered more, but I think the algorithm suppresses a lot of content that people want to follow. If you want to see the giveaway, be sure to interact with the posts, and maybe that will make Meta show you the content. I don’t really know how it all works underneath the hood.

Carolyn Daughters  03:37

Exactly. Well, so today we’re really excited to talk about Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh, published in 1945. Died in the Wool is a mystery 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 up, packed in a bale of wool. What happened on the night of her disappearance? 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. That book introduced Inspector Alleyn. In 1933, somehow before the 1934, my order is screwed up here a little bit. She returned to New Zealand, where she wrote more novels and produced and directed Shakespearean repertory theater. The theater guild she helped found in 1944 became an important mainstay of New Zealand cultural life. She continued to produce plays in New Zealand and abroad throughout her career. In the 1930s. In the 1930s, Ngaio Marsh helped raise the detective story to the level of a respectable literary genre by writing books that combine an elegant literary style with deftly observed characters and credible social settings. The art world and the theater provided the background for many of her 32 novels, all of which feature Inspector Alleyn. These books are classic examples of the traditional detective story, giving readers a cleverly contrived puzzle involving sharply drawn characters against an authentic background. Ngaio Marsh also wrote about New Zealand and about the theater. Her autobiography, Black Beach and Honeydew, was published in 1965. Ngaio Marsh, of course, wrote during the golden age of detective fiction, and she’s considered one of the queens of 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. She was named a Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster in 1978. That’s the highest honor in mystery writing. She died in 1982.

Sarah Harrison  06:10

And I have the distinct pleasure of introducing our guest. If you haven’t heard our past episodes with Z.J., you should go and check them out. Z.J. Czupor is the author of “Dead Men Don’t Drink, when the fog rises and cut right through me, all published at 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 is also the author of The Big Weird, Haikus and 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 essayists from around the world. His noir short story, “The Man in the Corner, is featured in Crossing Colfax by Rocky Mountain fiction writers. His novel excerpts have been winners or finalists in the Claymore Award, Best Mystery Category, Freddie Award for Writing Excellence, Florida Chapter Mystery Writers of America, Southern Writers Who Done It Mystery Writing, and Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. As Green Play was a finalist for the Bogart Noir Short Film Competition in Miami. Z.J. is the past president of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and is an active member of the Rocky Mountain chapter, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. He and his wife co-founded the Inter Pro Group, one of Denver’s leading marketing and public relations firms. They are proud to be owned by their beautiful and way too smart rescue collie, who we actually just got to meet. Welcome, Z.J. Welcome back. We’re excited to hear what you think about Ngaio Marsh and Inspector Alleyn!

Z.J. Czupor  08:09

Thank you. Great to be here. Good to see you both.

Sarah Harrison  08:13

Good to see you. Now we had you on Gaudy Night, right, by Dorothy Sayers.

Z.J. Czupor  08:19

Right, right. And you a couple years ago?

Sarah Harrison  08:25

It’s incredible, but here you are again discussing yet another queen of crime, Ngaio Marsh. And we get to meet her fabulous detective, Inspector Alleyn.

Carolyn Daughters  08:31

That’s what instantly made us think about inviting you back. First of all, you are a wonderful guest and a friend of the show, but we thought, okay, this is our fourth of four queens of crime. I think it’s time to have Z.J. back.

Z.J. Czupor  08:46

Well, thank you.

Carolyn Daughters  08:48

So, Z.J., what’s give us a short recap? What’s going on in your world these days since the last time we had you on the show?

Z.J. Czupor  08:56

Well, my agent Terry Wolfe has two of my novels out for submission, and also a nonfiction book which I wrote about mystery writers, primarily dead mystery writers. There are a couple of living ones, but stories about their lives and how they succeeded as writers, or some of them how they failed, or how they failed and then succeeded. So we’re trying to get those sold, and excited about that. And I’m currently working on a on a new thriller, and halfway through. And I was talking to Sarah earlier. I’m pushing to try to get this done by the end of this summer.

Carolyn Daughters  09:41

Oh wow, that’s a big timeline.

Z.J. Czupor  09:44

Well, if I get it done, and then I can have a couple of weeks for editing and polishing and hand it off.

Carolyn Daughters  09:57

How does it feel to you when you hand the book off? Do you feel a sense of relief, or does that shift the tone where you’re like, okay, that’s just the next stage in this big journey.

Z.J. Czupor  10:08

It’s a great relief because your mind is consumed with this story for months on end, sometimes a full year or more, and when you finally wrap it up, it just wow! Finally, finally got it done, and it feels like a cohesive story. It’s a great feeling.

Carolyn Daughters  10:32

Well, maybe we can kick off the conversation talking a little bit about Ngaio Marsh and Inspector Alleyn. This is our fourth of four queens of crime. How does Ngaio Marsh fit into this group of four very talented mystery writers from the golden age?

Z.J. Czupor  10:53

Well, I would say she’s one of the most probably unsung writers of that group, and was really highly regarded as a mystery writer of that era, and she was great friends with Agatha Christie, and borrowed some of her plotting, if you will. A lot of them were closed room mysteries, which Died in the Wool is technically a closed room mystery, although it takes place at a country house. But you’ve got all the characters together, and if anybody follows the new Knives Out mysteries movies, it’s the same kind of idea. You get a room full of people, and they’re all suspects trying to figure out who committed the murder. The other thing I would add is that she spent half of her time in New Zealand, half of it in London, and she only wrote four of her novels in New Zealand. Died in the Wool was one of them, and even though she was well thought of there because of her theatrical work, and she really raised theatrical work in New Zealand to a really high level. But as a writer, the local writers didn’t think that much of her because she wrote these entertainments, these mysteries, and they weren’t highbrow in their opinion, and yet prophets never are heralded in their own country, and I think that’s the same kind of thing she suffered from there. But great writer, prolific writer. She wrote a lot of short stories, nonfiction books, a lot of plays. I think she was just unsung among those four queens of crime.

Carolyn Daughters  12:58

Sarah, how did you feel about Inspector Alleyn, how does he fit in your mind with the other lead detectives like an Hercule Poirot, for example, or a Lord Peter Wimsey?

Sarah Harrison  13:11

It’s a little tough for me to say. I liked Inspector Alleyn a lot. I liked his introduction, but as Z.J. alluded to this is my first Marsh book, so we’ve read I think three or four Wimsey books up until now, a number of Agatha Christie’s, and so I feel like I have more of a sense of those pretty distinct leading men, but I did really love the book before we got on. As I was reading, there’s so many nice parts of the book, and I had asked Z.J. if he wouldn’t mind picking a selection to read from the book. Z.J., do you feel like reading your reading?

Z.J. Czupor  14:03

Sure, I can do that. This section I picked out because it describes part of the countryside where this takes place. It’s before Inspector Alleyn comes onto the scene. You can see Ngaio Marsh describing her homeland where she lives, through the eyes of this character, and what’s happening here is that Arthur Rubrick, who’s the husband of Florence Rubrick, the woman who’s murdered, is in his study with his secretary Terry, and Florence, his wife, has asked them to work on some essays for her, and so he. What’s described here first is the omniscient point of view. The article they wrote was the article they wrote. It was frankly heretical. They had stood side by side in the window, and looked over the plateau to the ranges, now a clean, thin blue in the mid-morning sunshine. When I look out there, Arthur Rubrick had said, “It always strikes me as being faintly comic that we should talk of settling on the plateau, and of bringing in new country, all we do is to move over the surface of a few hills. There’s nothing new about them, primal, yes, and almost unblotted by such new things as men and sheep, essentially back among the earlier unhuman ages. He added that perhaps this was the reason why no one had been able to write very well about this country, it had been it had been possible, he said, to write of the human beings moving about parasitically over the skin of the country, but the edge of modern idiom was turned when it was tried against the implacable surface of the plateau. He said that some older and therefore fresher idiom was needed, something that has the hard edge of a spring wind in it, something comparable to the Elizabethan mode. From this conversation was born his idea of writing about the plateau in a prose that smacked of Heiclet’s voyages. It sounds affected, said Terence, “but he only did it as a game. I thought it really did give one the sensation of this country, but it was only a game.

Sarah Harrison  16:29

I love that you picked that scene for a couple of reasons, actually. First, I was also really stunned by her description of the scenery of New Zealand. My husband and I visited there for our first anniversary, and it was absolutely stunning and very much like her description. In addition, I loved meeting the character Inspector Alleyn. Then I also love that she picked it as it centered around the illicit romance between Arthur and Terry, and Terry’s perspective of that, which is so interesting, a part of the book. What made you choose it, Z.J.?

Z.J. Czupor  17:14

Well, I thought it was lyrical in a way, but it also gave you a sense of, here’s this beautiful countryside that’s hard to describe, and at the time when Ngaio Marsh wrote this, it was basically just rural farmland. There wasn’t a whole lot there, and the place that she describes here is four hours away from any close metropolitan area, and the closest neighbors are maybe an hour or two hours away, so it’s quite remote.

Carolyn Daughters  17:52

Yes, it’s beautiful. I loved the setting of the book. I really thought that was fun, and we knew we wanted to include a Ngaio Marsh book in our History of Mystery lineup, and it was, of course, very difficult figuring out which one of all of the Inspector Alleyn books. And part of the decision for this one is the New Zealand setting. It just felt fresh and new, and like this insider/outsider Inspector Alleyn is coming to New Zealand, so he knows what of what he speaks, but he everything is also feeling fresh in his eyes as well.

Z.J. Czupor  18:30

It is, and I think maybe Ngaio is also trying to let her readers know about the beauty of New Zealand, and it’s her way of doing that.

Sarah Harrison  18:41

It really came across, and that that brings us back to where we started a minute ago, Z.J. And I’m wondering, you probably have a much broader sense of Inspector Alleyn than I do. Would this have been the book that you chose, or how did how did Inspector Alleyn show up for you in this book versus other Ngaio Marsh books?

Z.J. Czupor  19:09

I don’t know that I’m an expert on Inspector Alleyn, but I thought it was interesting in that in this book he shows up much later after the murder has taken place. Most detective novels, the detective’s on the scene fairly quickly, so he’s coming into the story late, which I thought was an interesting technique, because Ngaio Marsh sets this up as this broad countryside remoteness, and Inspector Alleyn has come to New Zealand because he’s also working on some espionage investigation around World War II, and so it’s a logical way for him to come from England to New Zealand, and as a literary device, I think it worked well.

Sarah Harrison  20:02

That’s a good point. That that he was brought in by Fabe. Is that what Ursula calls him? Fabe. A year afterward, because nothing was solved and no one could get over it. And Fabian even was like acted like it was a big trick to even get like oh well I said espionage just so you would come and then it turns out to be very much an espionage case and he has no idea how real it is but Inspector Alleyn already knows they’ve caught a leak about this particular espionage and that that to me was a really fascinating turn. How about you, Carolyn? What was your thought about Inspector Alleyn as the detective?

Carolyn Daughters  20:48

It was interesting. Like Z.J. said, it reminded me a little bit of Gaudy Night by Dorothy B. Sayers, where the detective shows up on the scene later in the story, and so a lot of the story has emerged before the detective, Inspector Alleyn, becomes a relevant character, but he at times felt off-putting to me, sort of stern and judgmental, and at times I was wondering. So I’ve read, but it’s been many years. A few other Ngaio Marsh books, but it’s been a very, very long time, and so I want to dive back into some of her books to figure out if this is representative. My personal take on him, if that’s representative or not. He seems very pointed in a lot of his conversations, and he gets the job done, but I wasn’t getting a very strong, like, well-rounded picture of him. Maybe because he showed up so late, or because there were so many other characters doing so many things in the story. So I haven’t really wrapped my head around that. But I thought he was a very good detective, just maybe one that I’m not quite as connected to yet.

Sarah Harrison  22:07

So was he doing something that you found off-putting, or like he just wasn’t coming through in the story, like in a maybe comprehensive way?

Carolyn Daughters  22:19

I think he wasn’t coming through in the story from my take, but then some of the characters that he’s interacting with are either as we’re familiar with in all the books lying to him, or are sort of flaky or strange or evasive, and so I think I think I wasn’t really able to just get a better, stronger picture of who he is. And at one point, it’s referenced that he’s married to Agatha Troy, and I really was interested in learning more about her and about their relationship, and in reading a couple of the books that are set in England, seeing that maybe he enters the picture a little earlier and might get a fuller picture of him. Now, all of that said, I loved this book, and I’m not bothered by the fact that I didn’t have more Inspector Alleyn than I had. I really felt like the cast of characters is interesting enough to carry the parts where he’s not present.

Sarah Harrison  23:29

Well, that’s very interesting. I see what you’re saying. I feel like there’s a lot that he lets out, but there’s a lot that he keeps close. Like we got to read a letter to his wife at the end, and his thoughts about her, and like you find out these really interesting things about him in spurts, but you can see that Ngaio Marsh like wasn’t interested in painting a fleshed out picture of him in this particular book. Like she wasn’t in a rush for you to get to know him.

Z.J. Czupor  24:01

And also, I’d add, in fairness, this was her 13th Inspector Alleyn book. So maybe she felt like among her fans, if you will, that maybe they had already had a lot of opportunity to know him, and maybe she wanted to put more the emphasis on New Zealand and the characters there. I can’t read her mind there, but that could be at play.

Carolyn Daughters  24:28

I mean, some characters like Fabian, Terry, just when they would speak, I and then you would get it a little bit filtered through Roderick Alleyn. I agreed with him a lot of the time that, okay, Fabian seems a little flaky.

Sarah Harrison  24:54

Fabian.

Carolyn Daughters  24:55

Exactly. There was a serious nature to his request to have Inspector Alleyn come, but he’s also at the same time not taking things very seriously, as an example. And so, I don’t know. I think I’m having trouble placing exact. I think that the real answer would be for me to read more Ngaio Marsh.

Sarah Harrison  25:20

That’s usually what we come down to.

Carolyn Daughters  25:26

I want to know what you both thought about this wool bale, like this body in the bale, like what? It’s dyed in the wool, d-i-e-d, not “dyed” like you might dye sheep’s wool, but it’s obviously a bit of a pun there. There’s a body in the bale of wool. Did you find this weird, funny? Did you find it macabre? Like, what’s your what was your first reaction to this, the body in the bale?

Sarah Harrison  25:59

Well, if I can, I’ll start. You’re right. There’s a pun going on here, and Ngaio Marsh had a great sense of humor and mordant wit about her, and I’ll get back to this. But if you look at some of the characters, the last name Rubrick.

Sarah Harrison  26:23

That has a meaning all of its own, and so does the cook. Her last name is Duck, and they even reference that, Mrs. Duck, if you will. And then there is Ursula Harms.

Z.J. Czupor  26:37

So who is she going to be harming in this cast of characters. I think some of that was at play in Ngaio Marsh’s mind. But back to the point of see where were we?

Sarah Harrison  26:57

The wool bale.

Z.J. Czupor  26:58

Well, the wool bale. I think that was maybe macabre to some people’s minds, but it was dramatic. It’s not the kind of murder you would expect. It wasn’t a gunshot. It wasn’t a knifing. She was pressed into a bale of wool, and it’s not funny, but it’s the pun there “died in the wool.” The book is different from a lot of the other Inspector Alleyn books, but I think it works.

Sarah Harrison  27:33

I loved the pun, and for me, I guess, a couple of things like what it was macabre through and through, and I think I was just taking on the characters in the story. And also, I don’t know what your copies look like. My copy of the book has this bloody wool bale hook up here, which the book leads in with the owner of whatever wool establishment is asking the guy to like hook into the bale, and see why it stinks, and so you can just like you get this visual, and all the men were just like they’re never going to bale again. They had to buy a new machine for them to come back, and then at the end, Fabian is considering just rebuilding a whole new wool shed. It’s horrifying, and it a little bit for me harkens back to how Dorothy B. Sayers takes this extreme detailed knowledge of things. I remember when we read The Nine Tailors, and I had no idea what that is, but it was like the most extensive treatise on bell ringing you’ve ever read, and so this has so much to do with. I wouldn’t have been able to really visualize it all without Ngaio Marsh being able to go through and describe in detail how this would have happened because I don’t know how wool baling happens, and so the way she did it, for me, came across extremely macabre. Is that how you felt, Carolyn, or did you think a different way?

Carolyn Daughters  29:11

“Quirky” is the word that came to mind for me first. The queens of crime often have this manor house kind of setting and the detective, in this case Inspector Alleyn, arrives on the scene. It’s isolated, but in many cases outside of London, and so it’s a little bit far out there, but it’s close enough that you can go back and forth. And so now we remove it to New Zealand, and we have this farm, and you still get a little bit of that country house feel, except that there’s this isolation associated with where they all live. Where I think you read these stories periodically. Someone was travel traveling in the middle of who knows where: New Zealand, Australia, United States, even West Coast. They’re in the mountains in the west coast, and they disappear, and because it’s this vast landscape, they could be anywhere. Anything could have happened to them, and so I get that sense in this New Zealand landscape that wow, like anything can happen out here. They are so isolated, and to take it one step further, that Ngaio Marsh found this really, really interesting way to hide the body. Like, wow, this is incredible that she came up with this, and so it felt inventive, and inadvertently made me smile a little bit, even though there’s really like nothing on the surface funny about it. This woman is dead, but I think that the plan had been for that bale to be carted off in a more timely manner and not to sit around. and In the book explains why this bale was there for a longer period of time, which is why it started to smell and that it was brought to the attention of the people who work the farm. But I thought, wow! Like in the middle of nowhere, New Zealand, they found a brand new way to kill someone and to bury them, essentially.

Sarah Harrison  31:11

It was really brilliant. And Z.J., I love what you’re saying about the names. I had been thinking that about Rubrick, and now I’m looking at all the names. Like Fabian Loss. He certainly experienced quite a bit of loss from the war, and one name that you can’t forget is Mrs. Aceworthy.

Carolyn Daughters  31:29

Peacekeeper and Mount Moon. It’s isolated. It’s like they’re out in the middle of nowhere. Really, the most prosaic name in the novel is Inspector Alleyn.

Z.J. Czupor  31:36

Right.

Sarah Harrison  31:37

One name that was surprising to me, and this is just like a curiosity. Terence Lynn was a girl, and I never knew a girl named Terence, or a girl Terry spelled with a Y. Is that like an old-timey name? Is that just some quirk? Do you know anything about Terence as a female name?

Z.J. Czupor  32:01

I don’t. I would just assume it’s probably from that era.

Carolyn Daughters  32:08

I do know two people, two females named Terry with a Y.

Sarah Harrison  32:13

Oh, you do know? Okay. I know a Terry with a Y is a man, and a Terry with an “I” is a woman.

Carolyn Daughters  32:22

Oh, okay. But Terence, that was new to me. I thought that that was a really interesting first name.

Sarah Harrison  32:27

Well, it threw me for a minute trying to figure out who was talking and what was going on.

Carolyn Daughters  32:33

Because I think we’re thinking Terry, Teresa, like a nickname for Teresa or something like. Not for Terence, but who knows? Maybe all these Terrys we’ve ever met in our lives are actually Terences.

Sarah Harrison  32:46

I’m going to start asking: Is that short for Terence?

Carolyn Daughters  32:49

If you are a Terence, please reach out to us and let us know.

Sarah Harrison  32:52

A lady Terence, a Lady Terence, please.

Carolyn Daughters  32:55

Or a male Terence who knows about the Terences.

Sarah Harrison  32:58

The historic Terence.

Z.J. Czupor  33:06

Yes, it’s another mystery.

Carolyn Daughters  33:11

Did how did you both progress in the story with regard to the crime? Were you homing in on one character or another, did this character seem guilty and then another, or were you following a thread with one particular character the whole way? How was your own process of deduction. Z.J., let’s start with you.

Sarah Harrison  33:35

I want to hear you, Z.J.

Z.J. Czupor  33:37

I started making a chart of money, motives, and opportunity, and then on the left-hand side, listing the characters as they came up. I was playing detective like Inspector Alleyn. Not all of them, but as Ngaio Marsh was laying out clues and hints, or maybe red herrings, trying to figure out okay who had the motive here and what was maybe the reason? And my first instinct was to look at both Fabian and Douglas Grace because she had left her money, or Mrs. Rubrick had left her money for Fabian and the farm to Grace. They both had reason to probably want to take over control, and yet they played it played out as though they were friendly adversaries in the novel. But then Ngaio Marsh very cleverly lays out all these other clues that the other people in the story might just as well have had a had a motive, and so you have you have to read through and follow the breadcrumbs and try to figure it out.

Sarah Harrison  34:58

Absolutely. I love that you made a chart. I always imagine I’m going to make a chart, and I never make a chart. But I totally agreed with Inspector Alleyn. Fabian’s like, well, here’s all her stories. As you can see, nobody had any reason to kill her, and I was like, oh, actually, it sounds like everybody has reason to kill her, like on all pretty classic, pretty highly motivated reasons, except for like Ursula Harm, and Ursula was actually the only character that I liked. I did not like any of the other ones, and they were so. I was. I feel like when I give up on clues, right, and I finally I rely on just like mystery approaches, right? Who’s the least likely person to do it? And then that must be the person that’s going to do it. And so, and then I kept saying, “Oh no, don’t let it be Ursula. She has no motive and no reason, and is the most likable character. And so I was, I was glad it wasn’t her, actually. I was just tossing around.

Z.J. Czupor  36:12

She was interesting because she was probably the most honest among them all.

Sarah Harrison  36:16

Yes, she’s the most honest, the most nice, the least cynical, and I really liked her. I thought she was a great character, Fabian. I could hardly stand.

Carolyn Daughters  36:35

I found Fabian highly annoying and grew impatient with him at times, and just I had trouble, like, feeling like he was a serious person.

Z.J. Czupor  36:48

I agree. I agree because the novel starts with him driving Inspector Alleyn to the to the remote farm, and he explains his point of view, and for me immediately, I began to think of him as an unreliable narrator, and with an agenda.

Sarah Harrison  37:09

Absolutely, and I like that Ursula kept telling him to shut up, and Alleyn kept telling him to shut up. I think he called him a mosquito, and Fabian took it as he’s like, yes, I’m sorry. I am. I am being a mosquito right now. That was his redeeming character, as he could see that about himself.

Carolyn Daughters  37:27

I think he had some undiagnosed something going on or something. He’s like, oh yes, that’s right. People have pointed out, pointed that out about me before. I’ll shut up. But then Ursula, who so Sarah, I want to talk Ursula, and then I want to talk Flossie because Sarah, you said a couple interesting things about Flossie as well that I want to get to, but Ursula, so she’s Flossie’s ward, so she comes from England to New Zealand, and there’s this whole element of this story about patronage and the idea of patronage, and so there’s a class system even in this very small farm community, within the house and outside the house, and there’s a whole lot of talk about who’s helping whom, and what one owes to another person, and what one owes in return, and I think what I had written down in my notes is the idea of gratitude as a weapon. So I’ve done this for you, and you have this particular class, which is related to my class, but below my class. Therefore, you should behave in a particular way. You owe this back to me, to my household, to our family, and I think Ursula definitely is hit with some of this class system or what I would call a patron problem. Like I want to hear from both of you. This might be a product of the time. It might be the closed society household upper class household that we get with the queens of crime, or do we think that Ngaio Marsh is going a step further and actually adding some commentary here? Did that make sense? Did my question make sense? Is Ngaio Marsh weighing in here on what she thinks about this class and patronage system in place, or is this just very Agatha Christie? Everybody has their role in their place in their class.

Z.J. Czupor  39:35

Well, I think all the queens of crime had genius detectives like Inspector Alleyn and played around with this theme of class. Some of it was sarcastic. Some of it was just trying to bring to light that we do have this class system, but there are just people like everybody else. They put their pants on one leg at a time. Bringing to light the injustice of the class systems, if you will, and I thought Ngaio Marsh did that really well with these characters. I thought especially she did that with was it Cliff John? Cliff John the boy, here she paid for his schooling. She encouraged his musical talent as a pianist, and then he backed away from all that, and he felt like he was he’d been put. Ngaio Marsh using that character really emphasized the class differences and the gratitude versus ingratitude, and I thought that was very well done.

Sarah Harrison  40:50

We’ve been reading a number of books lately where gratitude has played a role. We just finished Death Comes as the End by Agatha Christie, and the class system and the gratitude there between like landowner, children, concubine, family dependent, is highly integrated in everyone’s motivation. And I think I agree with what you’re saying there, Z.J. It’s like class exists, and how do the people in the different tiers live within their own class, and how do they feel about the other ones? (The queens of crime also have upper-crust detectives like Inspector Alleyn.) Like we might think of Ursula as having a patronage problem, but she doesn’t see it that way, and I think she is actually successful in that. I think Flossie is this upper-class landowner, and she’s trying to be kind, and it lands differently with each character. With Ursula, who maybe we find out has her own money and doesn’t need anything, with Ursula it lands fine, and she’s grateful, and like loves Flossie and all of her flaws with Fabian. You couldn’t be less grateful, really. From the moment she starts helping him, he thinks she’s a ding dong and doesn’t like her. Then with Cliff, who’s got the lowest class and therefore the highest expected gratitude. He’s massively struggling with what to do or how to react, and it’s all the same Flossie. I feel like she’s doing her best, but also you can’t necessarily help. Like, how do you how do you be kind without people feeling the weight of that? And how do you not have expectations? I mean, I teach my kids gratitude, and so sometimes I’m sounding a little bit like Flossie. Like, how are you acting like this? To my seven-year-old, who does who does need to learn it? Like, how are you acting like this? Do you see what everybody’s doing for you, and you’re acting like this? No, you need some gratitude. But then it’s not necessarily appropriate in other contexts between a mom and her seven-year-old, or two adults.

Carolyn Daughters  43:22

This comes back down to maybe a related element, but so Flossie is an MP. She’s a very strong personality. We have this prolog where we get this international spy feel, where she’s wants to see the face of the buyers of this wool clip, and there’s this guy from Japan, Mr. Karata Khan, and so that, and then it leads into the main story that takes place. I think three or so years, maybe four years later. So it’s 1939 in the prolog. We get this first introduction to her, and then we get another introduction to her at the beginning of the main story, like was she sympathetic to you? Did you like her? Did because a lot of the characters did not like her. But Sarah, you said something super interesting in our conversation a few days ago.

Sarah Harrison  44:14

Well, listeners, I love her, and this is a good question, though. And here’s what we are running up on time for this episode, but I love it. Z.J., can you stay for a second episode? Can we dive into Flossie and Inspector Alleyn in the next segment? How does that sound to you guys?

Carolyn Daughters  44:36

Perfect.

Sarah Harrison  44:37

All right, let’s get in there. Let’s figure out this Flossie Rubrick and see if we can solve her. All right. Come back and join us, listener. We will see you in the next episode.

Carolyn Daughters  53:48

Thanks so much for listening to our the first 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

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Carolyn Daughters  51:52

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