Reading the Detectives discussion

Welcome to our November challenge book - Dead Water by Ngaio Marsh, the 23rd Roderick Alleyn mystery, first published in 1963.

Miss Emily Pride, an old teacher of Alleyn's, inherits a small island, where a a local spring believed to have miraculous healing properties is enriching many of the local residents who cater to those seeking healing they can't find elsewhere. She comes to inspect her new property with plans to stop what she considers to be the vulgar exploitation of gullible and desperate people. With locals sure to lose out, there are attempts to intimidate Miss Price, which eventually lead to murder...

Please feel free to post spoilers in this thread.

I do think this was one of Marsh's better books. It does really have the same sort of characters as her others, that is the courting couple, and the frustrated spinster, and the pub with the staff, and set this in the countryside, but it did have a new twist with some of the others. All the way through I kept thinking "Poor Wally"

Yes, I liked the characters too. It was a good twist at the end, with Fox and his constant desire to learn French!

An interesting contrast between the two spinsters in the book. While the victim has all the annoying traits so prevalent in some of these Golden Age books, Emily is a paragon (except for her stubbornness, which would be called tenacity if one agreed with her opinion).

Do we think Emily was correct to do what she did? Even if she held strong views about these things, she was aware it would cause financial damage to the locals?

I've just finished now. It's a difficult one, but I do think Emily had a good argument - even if the closure caused financial damage to the locals, continuing to push the "cures" could risk people not undergoing medical treatment for their conditions and becoming more ill or even dying as a result.

Perhaps it would be possible nowadays, though, to market it as a spa which offers complementary treatment rather than miracles?

Judy, it is not as if the people coming to the island had no access to modern medicine. Nobody (other than rationalists of a bygone era) would think of shutting down Lourdes etc. It is just that this miracle was new. Clearly it was not a fake as the warts did disappear.

When I was young, I had a persistent wart on my finger. I had it surgically excised twice but it reappeared. Then somebody advised me to try Thuja, a homeopathic remedy. It worked! Now homeopathy is as opposed to reason as one can get, but over the course of my life I have gone around suggesting it as a cure for warts. Similarly my mother tried various cures for arthritis when medicines were no longer helping her and my very rationalist father was willing to try all kinds of cures including homeopathy but he might have drawn a line on faith healing but nobody around my parents suggested it..

Ultimately, it is a question of what rights ownership gives you? Here Emily happens to own the entire island!

If you happen to own the only office buildings in a town, what would be the unacceptable bases of discrimination?

I think Emily was concerned with the way Wally was being used in the process, and of the repercussions if somebody 'took the cure' ignored traditional medicine and then died.

I totally sympathised with Emily's views, I just found it a really interesting premise.

Yes, poor Wally. Everyone felt for him, but nothing was actually done until the end of the novel. Again, an interesting insight into the time period and the way that families were not really interfered with, whether of not locals were aware of, say, child neglect or domestic abuse. The local constable may have kept an eye out, as would neighbours, but the infrastructure was not there.

I like this one, it has some interesting characters, especially Miss Emily, and an unusual plot. And the first time I read it I didn’t guess the murderer, which was very satisfactory.

Susan wrote: "Do we think Emily was correct to do what she did? Even if she held strong views about these things, she was aware it would cause financial damage to the locals?"

Personally, I would have stopped them charging admission to the spring, but would have left them alone to make money from the shop, hotel etc. Which I don’t think she can stop anyway. People will still keep coming to the spring. Things like that don’t stop once people have got an idea about it.

Louise wrote: "Susan wrote: "Do we think Emily was correct to do what she did? Even if she held strong views about these things, she was aware it would cause financial damage to the locals?"

Personally, I would ..."

I like that compromise.

The more I think about it, surely in real life they could have looked into the mineral composition of the springs and maybe started up a health spa explaining it could help skin conditions - there are lots of possibilities for compromise.

Judy wrote: "The more I think about it, surely in real life they could have looked into the mineral composition of the springs and maybe started up a health spa explaining it could help skin conditions - there ..."

They could have, but it wouldn't have made anywhere near as good a story and it would have been difficult to incorporate a murder! :):)

Haha, I agree, Lesley - sensible real-life compromises aren't always needed in detective stories! :)

Louise wrote: "Susan wrote: "Do we think Emily was correct to do what she did? Even if she held strong views about these things, she was aware it would cause financial damage to the locals?"

Personally, I would ..."

I also like this compromise

Susan wrote: "Do we think Emily was correct to do what she did? Even if she held strong views about these things, she was aware it would cause financial damage to the locals?"

Don't forget that she had a personal reason for being against "miracle cures". She had a friend who spent a lot of money trying such cures which did nothing for her (or so I recall). So while I think that she felt concerned about Wally, that wasn't what was driving her.

I think that she was aware of the financial aspect but she felt that it was morally wrong so she didn't let that dissuade her, especially as she was the landlord. Personally I think that she was right in her position but not necessarily in how she carried it out.

I don't believe that a compromise such as a health spa would have worked; in fact, it isn't clear to me that the springs had any especially healthful properties in fact. It seems possible to me that Wally's condition was pyschosomatic and his cure came from 'the lady in green' and her words rather than from the waters. Certainly, Marsh made it clear that Miss Cost's so-called cure from asthma was no cure at all.

Miss Cost was another, rather sad, spinster. These characters do seem to abound in Ngaio Marsh's books, don't they? Plus the chance for a little romance, which Christie also seems to enjoy. Matchmaking on the page.

Susan wrote: "Miss Cost was another, rather sad, spinster. These characters do seem to abound in Ngaio Marsh's books, don't they? Plus the chance for a little romance, which Christie also seems to enjoy. Matchma..."

They do seem to be a stereotype, don't they? But then I remember Miss Climpson (spelling?) in Dorothy Sayers' book Unnatural Death and how after WW1, England had an unnatural imbalance between men and women. So I guess that these spinsters were a real part of life for the Golden Age authors; with that reality, the desire to show that some women do find love seems a not unreasonable desire so the romance angle follows.

Yes, good point, Leslie. Miss Climpson was not a sad spinster though, in my recollection, but a pretty amazing one! :)

When a certain type of character regularly appears in an author's writing I often wonder whether it is a reflection of the author.

Susan wrote: "Miss Cost was another, rather sad, spinster. These characters do seem to abound in Ngaio Marsh's books, don't they? Plus the chance for a little romance, which Christie also seems to enjoy. Matchma..."

I think Ngaio Marsh on the whole is more unkind to spinsters than Christie is. Christie gives us more positive images of spinsters - Miss Marple of course the best known, but there are several others I can think of whereas in Ngaio Marsh’s books they more often seem to be neurotic or pathetic.

True of Dorothy L. Sayers I think as well. She had some good, older female characters.

Yes, I agree Marsh is quite negative about spinsters in general. Miss Cost doesn't quite fit the "frustrated" spinster stereotype as she has had her brief recent affair, with the drunken landlord, but still a very negative portrayal.

I've just come across a good review of Dead Water:

https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...

It hadn't really struck me until reading this review, though I must have heard mentions over the years, that the "Green Lady" is a figure often cropping up in British folklore - here is a site about various Green Ladies associated with Scottish and Welsh castles:

http://www.icysedgwick.com/green-lady/

I've also just remembered that there is a TV adaptation of Dead Water - sadly I think this is the last one I have left to watch!

Judy wrote: "I've also just remembered that there is a TV adaptation of Dead Water - sadly I think this is the last one I have left to watch!"

From what I can remember, it is somewhat different from the book, I must rewatch it.

As with with Hand in Glove I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I agree with others that there seems to be an ease/fluency/lightness of touch that wasn’t always there with Marsh. I also found the mystery itself satisfying: I had an inkling early on about who would turn out to be the murderer and why, without being particularly confident; as the book progressed things fell into place along the lines of my initial suspicion in a satisfying fashion. My greatest satisfaction is when I’m completely deceived until the very end, but when it happens as I’ve described this time the gradual reveal/confirmation can also be satisfying.

With regard to miracles, homeopathy etc.: Both as a Christian and as a physicist I believe that there is, ultimately, a rational explanation for everything. Of course, this doesn’t rule out the miraculous, which has its rational explanation in a purposeful act of God, rather than the normal processes within nature. I think being both a Christian and a scientist might be partly why I’m drawn to classic detective fiction, in which both reason and justice/morality triumph. (If I remember correctly, P.D. James, at the and of her book on detective fiction, described such novels as celebrations of reason.) Thus it follows that the good guys (and Dr. Maine!) in a classic detective novel such as this are on the side of reason, expecting the occasional genuine healing to be down to some form of psychosomatic effect, as would be my reaction. (In the Bible, miracles are rare events associated with God’s rational purpose of authenticating revelation, rather than the actions of fairies etc..) I think that this along, along Emily’s experience, would explain her actions. However, there’s also a reaction against the cheap commercialisation. This is in line with Marsh’s tendency to an element of snobbery, although I admit that I share that reaction.

One of my favorite Marshes so far. I think her skill at dialogue is definitely growing (although there are still some obnoxious tendencies towards accented dialogue from "country folk"). I also appreciated that we weren't bogged down with the endless interview of suspects that sometimes comprise the latter third of the book. Even though there were still interviews, and Curtis, Thompson, Fox &c. working their magic, it felt more dynamic that usual (perhaps due to the urgency created by the storm).
I thought it was rather clever that the murder was not at all motivated by the issues involving the spring, and had nothing to do with Miss Pride (in a direct fashion). More so than in previous novels, the solution was arrived at by the physical evidence (photos, diaries), which are totally relatable in a real-world comparison.
Personally I don't agree with Miss Emily's plan to close the spring. It would have been more fair to provide disclaimers that cures are not guaranteed (I could see people in today's world suing). Perhaps some people do have psychosomatic ailments, but if the spring served as a source of relief and comfort, what is the harm? There is no procedure or medicine that is 100% guaranteed--you can only hope.
The issue with the exploitation of Wally has more to do with his own mental issues, and his terrible parents. That could have been dealt with in a different way as well.

Tara - I do agree about the endless interview of suspects!