her aristocratic sleuth, and in
Gaudy Night
had used the detectivestory to say something about the almost sacramental importance of work and the problems for women of reconciling the claims of heart and mind which, she wrote, had been important to her all her life. Margery Allingham widened the scope of her talent so that the later novels are markedly superior to those written earlier in both characterisation and plot, while Agatha Christie knew precisely what she could do best and did it with remarkable consistency and regularity throughout a long writing life. It seems to me that only Ngaio Marsh—popular as she was and indeed remains—could have left a more impressive legacy as a novelist.
All four women had their secrets. Dorothy L. Sayers concealed the birth of her illegitimate son from her parents and close friends until her death. Her parents never knew they had a grandson. Agatha Christie never explained or spoke about her mysterious disappearance in 1926, which became a national scandal; Margery Allingham suffered much ill-health and personal anguish at the end of her life. Both Christie and Marsh falsified their ages, Marsh by actually altering her birth certificate. The secrets of their characters’ lives were finally explained by the brilliance of Hercule Poirot, Albert Campion, Lord Peter or RoderickAlleyn, but their own secrets remained inviolate until after their deaths, when all secrets, however carefully guarded or pitiable, fall prey to the insistent curiosity of the living.
Christie, Allingham and Marsh successfully continued writing detective stories well after the Second World War. Christie’s last detective story,
Postern of Fate
, was published in 1973, Allingham’s
Cargo of Eagles
in 1966 and Marsh’s
Light Thickens
in 1982. Dorothy L. Sayers’s last full-length detective story,
Busman’s Honeymoon
, was first published in 1937 and reissued by Gollancz in 1972. But by the time it first appeared, Sayers was already losing interest in her aristocratic detective and turning her attention to her theological plays, and finally to her half-completed translation of Dante’s
Divine Comedy
, which was to be her creative passion for the rest of her life. But no novelist can distance herself from the social and political changes of contemporary life, and those detective writers who lasted into the new age, symbolised by that mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, necessarily had to adapt their fictional worlds to less comfortable times. Agatha Christie did so with some success, but even so, when a character in her books refers to returning from the war, or his experience during the war, I haveto look back to the date of publication to know whether he is referring to the Great War of 1914–18 or the 1939–45 conflict.
In the Agatha Christie novels the changes in contemporary life are mostly shown by the inconveniences suffered by the characters in ob taining servants, good service from tradesmen or maintaining their houses. Superintendent Spence, the retired policeman in
Hallowe’en Party
, published in 1969, deplores the way that girls are no longer looked after by their aunts and older sisters and that “more girls nowadays marry wrong ’uns than they ever used to in my time.” Mrs. Drake complains that “mothers and families generally” were not looking after their children properly any more. There are complaints that too many people who ought to be under mental restraint are allowed to wander round freely at risk to the public and that those who went to church only got the modern version of the Bible, which had no literary merit whatsoever. Altogether things are not as they were in St. Mary Mead. Poirot, however, is little changed, although in
Hallowe’en Party
he admits to dyeing his hair. Strangely, however, he now speaks like an Englishman but still, to Mrs. Oliver’s dismay, insists on wearing patent leather shoes in the country. The limpwhich affected him when we first encountered him has
Gaudy Night
had used the detectivestory to say something about the almost sacramental importance of work and the problems for women of reconciling the claims of heart and mind which, she wrote, had been important to her all her life. Margery Allingham widened the scope of her talent so that the later novels are markedly superior to those written earlier in both characterisation and plot, while Agatha Christie knew precisely what she could do best and did it with remarkable consistency and regularity throughout a long writing life. It seems to me that only Ngaio Marsh—popular as she was and indeed remains—could have left a more impressive legacy as a novelist.
All four women had their secrets. Dorothy L. Sayers concealed the birth of her illegitimate son from her parents and close friends until her death. Her parents never knew they had a grandson. Agatha Christie never explained or spoke about her mysterious disappearance in 1926, which became a national scandal; Margery Allingham suffered much ill-health and personal anguish at the end of her life. Both Christie and Marsh falsified their ages, Marsh by actually altering her birth certificate. The secrets of their characters’ lives were finally explained by the brilliance of Hercule Poirot, Albert Campion, Lord Peter or RoderickAlleyn, but their own secrets remained inviolate until after their deaths, when all secrets, however carefully guarded or pitiable, fall prey to the insistent curiosity of the living.
Christie, Allingham and Marsh successfully continued writing detective stories well after the Second World War. Christie’s last detective story,
Postern of Fate
, was published in 1973, Allingham’s
Cargo of Eagles
in 1966 and Marsh’s
Light Thickens
in 1982. Dorothy L. Sayers’s last full-length detective story,
Busman’s Honeymoon
, was first published in 1937 and reissued by Gollancz in 1972. But by the time it first appeared, Sayers was already losing interest in her aristocratic detective and turning her attention to her theological plays, and finally to her half-completed translation of Dante’s
Divine Comedy
, which was to be her creative passion for the rest of her life. But no novelist can distance herself from the social and political changes of contemporary life, and those detective writers who lasted into the new age, symbolised by that mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, necessarily had to adapt their fictional worlds to less comfortable times. Agatha Christie did so with some success, but even so, when a character in her books refers to returning from the war, or his experience during the war, I haveto look back to the date of publication to know whether he is referring to the Great War of 1914–18 or the 1939–45 conflict.
In the Agatha Christie novels the changes in contemporary life are mostly shown by the inconveniences suffered by the characters in ob taining servants, good service from tradesmen or maintaining their houses. Superintendent Spence, the retired policeman in
Hallowe’en Party
, published in 1969, deplores the way that girls are no longer looked after by their aunts and older sisters and that “more girls nowadays marry wrong ’uns than they ever used to in my time.” Mrs. Drake complains that “mothers and families generally” were not looking after their children properly any more. There are complaints that too many people who ought to be under mental restraint are allowed to wander round freely at risk to the public and that those who went to church only got the modern version of the Bible, which had no literary merit whatsoever. Altogether things are not as they were in St. Mary Mead. Poirot, however, is little changed, although in
Hallowe’en Party
he admits to dyeing his hair. Strangely, however, he now speaks like an Englishman but still, to Mrs. Oliver’s dismay, insists on wearing patent leather shoes in the country. The limpwhich affected him when we first encountered him has
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