Death on the Air (23 page)

DR SWALE
: I would have thought it was obvious that they are those of a mentally disturbed spinster of uncertain age.

MISS FREEBODY
:
(sharply)
Libel! Cad! Murderer!

(The
JUDGE
turns and stares at her. The
WARDRESS
admonishes her. She subsides.)

O'CONNOR
: You are not Miss Freebody's doctor, are you?

DR SWALE
: No, thank God.

(Laughter)

USHER
: Silence in court.

O'CONNOR
: When you paid your earlier visit to The Elms on the afternoon in question, did you carry your professional bag with you?

DR SWALE
:
(after a pause)
I expect so.

O'CONNOR
: Why? It was not a professional call.

DR SWALE
: I'm not in the habit of leaving it in the car.

O'CONNOR
: What was in it?

DR SWALE
: You don't want an inventory, do you? The bag contains the normal impedimenta of a doctor in general practice.

O'CONNOR
: And nothing else?

DR SWALE
: I'm not in the habit of using my case as a shopping bag.

O'CONNOR
: Not for butcher's meat, for instance?

GOLDING
: My lord, I do most strenuously object.

DR SWALE
: This is intolerable. Have I no protection against this sort of treatment?

JUDGE
: No. Answer.

DR SWALE
: No. I do not and never have carried butcher's meat in my bag.

(
DEFENCE COUNSEL
sits.)

JUDGE
:
(to
GOLDING
) Mr Golding, do you wish to reexamine?

GOLDING
: No, my lord.

JUDGE
:
(to
SWALE;
)
Thank you, doctor.

DR SWALE
: My lord, may I speak to you?

JUDGE
: No, Dr Swale.

DR SWALE
: I demand to be heard.

JUDGE
: You may do no such thing, you may—

DR SWALE
:
(shouting him down)
My lord, it is perfectly obvious that counsel for the defence is trying to protect his client by throwing up a series of infamous suggestions intended to implicate a lady and myself in this miserable business.

JUDGE
:
(through this)
Be quiet, sir. Leave the witness box.

DR SWALE
: I refuse. I insist. We are not legally represented. I am a professional man who must be very gravely damaged by these baseless innuendoes.

JUDGE
: For the last time I warn you—

DR SWALE
:
(shouting him down)
I had nothing, I repeat, nothing whatever to do with the death of the Ecclestones' dog (JUDGE
gestures to
USHER), nor did I tamper with any of the meat in the safe. I protest, my lord. I protest.

(The
USHER
and a police constable close in on him and the scene ends in confusion.)

(
GWENDOLINE MIGGS
is sworn in on the stand. She is a large, determined-looking woman of about sixty.)

O'CONNOR
: Your name is Sarah Gwendoline Miggs?

MIGGS
: Yes.

O'CONNOR
: And where do you live, Miss Miggs?

MIGGS
: Flat 3, Flask Walk, Fulchester.

O'CONNOR
: You are a qualified medical nurse, now retired?

MIGGS
: I am.

O'CONNOR
: Will you give us briefly an account of your professional experience?

MIGGS
: Fifteen years in general hospital and twenty years in ten hospitals for the mentally disturbed.

O'CONNOR
: The last one being at Fulchester Grange Hospital where you nursed for some two years before retiring?

MIGGS
: Correct.

O'CONNOR
: And have you, since the sitting of this court, been looking after the defendant, Miss Mary Emmaline Freebody?

MIGGS
: Right.

O'CONNOR
: Miss Miggs, will you tell his Lordship and the jury how the days are spent since you took this job?

MIGGS
: I relieve the night nurse at 8.00 a.m. and am with the case until I'm relieved in the evening.

JUDGE
: With the ‘case'?

O'CONNOR
: Miss Freebody, my lord.

JUDGE
:
(fretfully)
Why can't we say so, for pity's sake? Very well.

O'CONNOR
: Do you remain with Miss Freebody throughout the day?

MIGGS
: Yes.

O'CONNOR
: Never leave her?

MIGGS
: Those are my instructions and I carry them out.

(
DR SWALE
, who has been looking fixedly at the witness, writes a note, signals to the
USHER
and gives him the note. The
USHER
takes it to
MR GOLDING
, who reads it and shows it to his junior and the solicitor for the prosecution.)

O'CONNOR
: Do you find Miss Freebody at all difficult?

MIGGS
: Not a bit.

O'CONNOR
: She doesn't try to – to shake you off? She doesn't resent your presence?

MIGGS
: Didn't like it at first. There was a slight resentment but we soon got over that. We're very good friends, now.

O'CONNOR
: And you have never left her?

MIGGS
: I said so, didn't I? Never.

O'CONNOR
: Thank you, Miss Miggs.

(
DEFENCE COUNSEL
sits.)

GOLDING
:
(rising)
Yes. Nurse Miggs, you have told the court, have you not, that since you qualified as a mental nurse, you
have taken posts in ten hospitals over a period of twenty years, the last appointment being of two years' duration at Fulchester Grange?

MIGGS
: Correct.

GOLDING
: Have you, in addition to these engagements, taken private patients?

MIGGS
:
(uneasily)
A few.

GOLDING
: How many?

MIGGS
: I don't remember offhand. Not many.

GOLDING
: Nurse Miggs, have you ever been dismissed – summarily dismissed – from a post?

MIGGS
: I didn't come here to be insulted.

JUDGE
: Answer the question, nurse.

MIGGS
: There's no satisfying some people. Anything goes wrong – blame the nurse.

GOLDING
: Yes or no, Miss Miggs?
(He glances at the paper from
DR SWALE
.)
In July 1969, were you dismissed by. the doctor in charge of a case under suspicion of illegally obtaining and administering a drug and accepting a bribe for doing so?

MIGGS
:
(breaking in)
It wasn't true. It was a lie. I know where you got that from.
(She points to
DR SWALE
.)
From him! He had it in for me. He couldn't prove it. He couldn't prove anything.

GOLDING
: Come, Miss Miggs, don't you think you would be well advised to admit it at once?

MIGGS
: He couldn't prove it.
(She breaks down.)

GOLDING
: Why did you leave Fulchester Grange?

MIGGS
: I won't answer. It's all lies. Once something's said about you, you're done for.

GOLDING
: Were you dismissed?

MIGGS
: I won't answer.

GOLDING
: Were you dismissed for illegally obtaining drugs and accepting a bribe for so doing?

MIGGS
: It wasn't proved. They couldn't prove it. It's lies!

GOLDING
: I have no further questions, my lord.

JUDGE
: Mr Defence Counsel?
(
O'CONNOR
shakes his head.)
Thank you, Miss Miggs.
(She leaves the witness box.)
Have you any further witnesses, Mr Defence Counsel?

O'CONNOR
: No, my lord.

JUDGE
: Members of the jury, just let me tell you something about our function – yours and mine. I am here to direct you as to the law and to remind you of the salient features of the evidence. You are here as judges of fact; you and you alone have to decide, on the evidence you have heard, whether the accused is guilty or not of the charge of attempted murder…

You may think it's plain that the liver which the dog ate was poisoned. The prosecution say that whoever poisoned
that liver must have known that it might have been eaten by the late Major, and was only given to the dog by accident. The vital question, therefore, you may think, is who poisoned that liver. The prosecution say that Miss Freebody did. They say she had the opportunity to take the meat from the safe, poison it and replace it, having for some reason or other changed the paper in which it was wrapped. They say she had a motive – her antagonism to the Major as evidenced by the threatening letters which she wrote. But, say the defence, and you may think it is a point of some weight, the fact that the Major actually died before
your
eyes of cyanide poisoning at a time when the accused would have had no opportunity to administer the poison is evidence that someone else wanted to and
did
kill the Major. So if someone other than the accused did kill the Major in the second attempt on his life, how can you believe that the accused rather than the culprit of the second attempt was guilty of the first attempt?

Remember that before you can bring a verdict of guilty you must be satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt that the accused did make this attempt on the life of the late Major. Will you now retire, elect a foreman to speak for you when you return, and consider your verdict.

CLERIC
: All stand.

(The jury leave the room. Time passes, and the jury return to their seats.)

CLERK
: Members of the jury, will your foreman stand.
The
FOREMAN
rises.)
Just answer this question yes or no. Have you reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed?

FOREMAN
: Yes.

CLERK
: Do you find the accused, Mary Emmaline Freebody, guilty or not guilty on the charge of attempted murder?

FOREMAN
:
(answers either ‘guilty' or ‘not guilty'.):

CLERK
:
(if guilty)
Is that the verdict of you all?

JUDGE
:
(if not guilty) Mary
Emmaline Freebody, you are free to go.

COURT REPORTER
:
(if guilty)
Mary Freebody was remanded in custody for psychiatric reports.

My Poor Boy
was written for a talk on New Zealand Radio in 1959 and was subsequently printed in the
Listener
. As a postscript to this collection it offers Ngaio Marsh a fitting last word…

M
y Poor Boy,

So you want to be an author. O, my poor boy. I wonder
why
you want to be an author. Your letter, in common with almost all the, I'm afraid, very many other similar letters that I have been sent, tells me everything but that. It says that in your schooldays you frequently discovered the econium V.G. written in the margins of your essays. It says that you would like me to tell you how you can find a publisher for the novel that you have in mind but of which you have not yet written the opening chapter. You add that whenever you think about beginning your novel you feel disheartened because you can't be sure it will ever see the light of day and that, as often as you are visited by this depressing notion, the fount of your inspiration dries up and you are unable to make a beginning. You say in parenthesis that your sister, who sounds a detestable girl, has a habit of picking up your poems and of reading them aloud with grotesque gestures and serio-comic inflexions to the ill-concealed amusement of your family. You ask if I think this is fair. You enclose a piece you have written on the sexual behaviour of blind eels which you submitted without success for publication in a New Zealand monthly. You say that you dislike your present job. Finally, you offer to collaborate with me in the writing of a detective novel for which you have an original plot. You say that on receiving my acceptance of your offer you will be glad to arrange a meeting, outline this plot and come to an appropriate business arrangement. O my poor boy.

Shall I try to answer your letter in reverse, beginning with its concluding offer? To this offer my answer is no. I hope the reason for my refusal will declare itself as I go on and shall merely point out that if your plot is as good as you believe it to
be and you do in fact want to become a professional writer, it would be an excellent point of departure. Why not use it for an attempt at your own first detective novel? Believe me, one can't enter this particular arena on the back of one of the oldstagers. Either you go in under your own steam, as every published writer has had to do in the beginning, or you decide that you don't feel like taking the risk of working very hard for no reward. In which case you are not, even potentially, a writer.

You dislike your present job. That's a depressing state of affairs but it doesn't necessarily mean that the alternative is authorship. Please don't entertain for a moment the utterly mistaken idea that there is no drudgery in writing. There is a great deal of drudgery in even the most inspired, the most noble, the most distinguished writing. Read what the great ones have said about their jobs; how they never sit down to their work without a sigh of distress and never get up from it without a sigh of relief. Do you imagine that your Muse is forever flame-like – breathing the inspired word, the wonderful situation, the superb solution into your attentive ear? Not at all. She can just as often appear as some acidulated schoolmarm, some nagging, shrill-voiced spouse or sulking girlfriend. ‘You got yourself into this mess,' she points out. ‘All right. Get yourself out of it. How many words have you written today? What's the latest excuse for taking a day off? You're not, I hope, depending on
me
to do it for you? I'm your Muse not your stand-in and I'll thank you to remember it.' Believe me, my poor boy, if you wait for inspiration in our set-up, you'll wait for ever. It's true that on good days the minor miracles do tend to crop up but one generally finds in the long run that one's best work is the stuff that has been ground out between the upper and nether millstones of self-criticism and hard labour. Of the antics of your sister I have little to say. Unless, with your indulgence, I may tell you that I wrote one of my most successful stories within the bosom of a family whose favourite pastime was to add chunks of nonsense to my
manuscripts and shout aloud, with shrieks of laughter, the words they read over my shoulder as I was writing them.

Which brings us up to your not-yet-begun novel. What I have to say about this follows upon what I have already said. If you wait for fair weather, inspiration and no external interference, you will never begin it. You
may
be able to write a novel, you may
not
. You will never know until you have worked very hard indeed and written at least part of it. You will never
really
know until you have written the whole of it and submitted it for publication. You talk about detective fiction so I will assume that it is in this field, or an associated one, that you hope to work. May I draw your attention to one or two points? Nowadays, a good plot, an amusing anecdote and a string of lively episodes laced with a certain amount of factual information will not get you very far in any field of writing. These are essential ingredients but they can be ruined in the hands of a bad cook. In other words, you must be a craftsman – I will not pay an artist since my purpose is to avoid the grandiose. You must be able to write. You must have a sense of form, of pattern, of design. You must have a respect for and a mastery oyer words. The writer of a thriller has no need to haul down his stylistic flag a quarter of an inch. Indeed, he has every reason not to do so. He will be read by persons of the educated sort – by university dons, by professors, doctors, clergymen, scientists, serious novelists, poets, journalists and members of the nobility. He will not be read by people whose interest in the written word is confined solely to the racing news, the football results and the scandal columns. Quite on the contrary. He is writing in a genre and an exacting, difficult genre at that.

Do you think you can do this? All I have to go by is your rejected article on the sex habits of blind eels. I have read it and I have also read a copy of the New Zealand journal that rejected it. Now, in the first place, literary merit apart, it is by no means the kind of thing these people are looking for. So, however well you may or may not have written it, you have
made your initial mistake in sending it to the wrong market. But suppose you sent it to some appropriate scientific publication. Is it sufficiently well-informed and authoritative to find a home there? Knowing nothing of blind eels, I venture to suggest that it is not. So perhaps you have written an unsaleable article. Never mind. It was an exercise. Let us examine it purely as a piece of writing. To my mind it contains two sentences that have some distinction, some feeling for your instrument, some flavour of individuality. Two sentences are not enough to make it a good piece of writing but they are enough to make one wonder if, after all, you may not have a gift of words. Let us suppose that you have.

We arrive at your first question. How can you hope to find a publisher? My poor boy, by doing in a big way precisely what you have already done in a small one. By writing your novel. By sweating it out. By setting yourself the highest standard and by re-writing whenever you have fallen away from that standard. By preparing yourself to take the mortification of rejection slips. And also by remembering one or two points about publication which I shall now try to set out.

Publishers are continually on the look-out for authors. They do not exist in a constant state of haughty rejection. They yearn for authors. Every spring and every autumn they lavish thousands of pounds upon launching a new author in whom they have faith. They are even prepared to lose terrifying sums of money on a first novel if they think the author will ultimately command a public. Contrary to some opinions, they also have a standard to maintain and, in many cases, the standard of a great tradition. They are not unapproachable.

On the other hand, most publishing houses are not prepared to risk launching more than a limited number of unknown authors in a year. So that, suppose, my poor boy, you send your first novel off to Messrs Format and Serif and they think it well up to publishing standard, they may still reject it on the grounds that they have already signed up as many new
authors as they can comfortably manage for the publishing season.

If, however, you entrust your book to a reputable agent he will know which publishers are on the lookout for a new author and will offer your book to them. He will not undertake to handle it unless he thinks he has a good chance of selling it. He will, if he succeeds in doing so, take 10% of everything you earn. If, in the ripeness of time, he finds an American publisher, he will watch your contracts there and protect you from piracy and raw deals. He will also try to get pre-publication serial rights and will have an eye on broadcasting, television and the cinema. He is an expert. There are reputable agents and there are disreputable ones. The good agents are listed in the
Authors and Composers Year Book
, a publication you will be well advised to study. I have always dealt with an agent. He sold my first novel 25 years ago and has, I consider, done me proud ever since.

And so we have worked out way back to this one thing you have not told me about yourself. Why do you want to become an author? I will accept only one answer. If it is because you feel you can write better than you can do anything else then go ahead and do it without frills and flourishes. Stick to your present job and write in your spare time: but do it as if it is a whole time job. Depend on nobody but yourself. Don't talk about what you are doing – something goes wrong if you talk – because writing is a lonely job. If you are very lucky you may find one friend with whom it is good to discuss your work while it is in process. But be sure you
have
found the right one before you open your mouth. If you think journalism will help – and I'm not committing myself there except to say that good journalism is a very different thing from journalese – try your hand at freelance articles but find out the sort of thing that is wanted before you start. Above all things – read. Read the great stylists who cannot be copied rather than the successful writers who must not be copied. Don't try and turn yourself into a Hemingway, rather listen to E M Forster or
V S Prichett or Proust or Daniel Defoe. Read what people like Maugham have to say about style and what people like Maurice Richardson have to say about Maugham.

And write simply. And re-write and write again and – O my poor boy,

I remain, with compassion,

Yours sincerely,