by Nicola Upson
Gordon Daviot, The Privateer
An Expert in Murder is a work of fiction, inspired by real lives and events.
Gordon Daviot was one of two pseudonyms created by Elizabeth Mackintosh (1896–1952) during a versatile career as playwright and novelist; the other, Josephine Tey, was taken from her Suffolk great-great-grandmother and did not actually appear until 1936, with the publication of A Shilling for Candles. It was reserved for detective fiction, and is the name by which we know her best today.
By 1934, she had written a mystery and two other novels as Daviot, but it was Richard of Bordeaux which made her name and led to a number of important friendships and professional relationships. Mackintosh divided her time between London and her hometown, Inverness, where she looked after her father, and, when she died, she left the bulk of her considerable estate to the National Trust for England. The Josephine Tey who appears in An Expert in Murder mixes what we know about Elizabeth Mackintosh with the personality which emerges so strongly from her eight crime novels – novels which are loved for their warmth and originality by those who have discovered them, but which are still vastly underrated in comparison with the work of her contem-poraries.
Richard of Bordeaux ran for 463 performances at the New Theatre (now the Noël Coward Theatre) in St Martin’s Lane, closing on 24 March 1934. It took more than £100,000 at the box office under the management of Howard Wyndham and Bronson Albery (who lived to enjoy the success), and acquired the sort of 289
popularity that films enjoy today: hundreds of Elspeths went thirty or forty times to see it; the cast took part in high-profile publicity stunts; commemorative portrait dolls were produced; and it turned its leading man, John Gielgud, from a brilliant young actor into a celebrity overnight. The beauty of the set and costumes, designed by ‘Motley’ (Margaret and Sophia Harris and Elizabeth Montgomery), was vital to the play’s success, as was Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies’s performance as Anne. Bordeaux toured provincial theatres and was produced on Broadway, but the over-all experience was not entirely positive for its author: fame was unwelcome, particularly in Inverness, and, according to Gielgud, she was subject to unfair accusations of plagiarism which hurt her deeply. Gielgud’s own hopes for a film starring himself and Lillian Gish were never realised.
Daviot wrote many other plays – The Laughing Woman and Queen of Scots were produced at the New later in 1934 – but none were as successful as Bordeaux, whose humanity and romanticism struck a powerful chord in an audience haunted by one war and threatened by another. The war’s significance in the public response was a surprise even to the author: what she thought of as a tale of revenge, she admitted later, turned out to be a play about pacifism.
For an author who wrote several historical plays and novels, Elizabeth Mackintosh took a dim view of mixing fact and fiction –
but she allowed it if the writer stated where the truth could be found, and if invention did not falsify the general picture. Readers wanting to know more about the real people involved in Richard of Bordeaux should consult Gielgud’s autobiographical writings, the biographies by Sheridan Morley and Jonathan Croall, and Michael Mullin’s Design by Motley. Murder, of course, does rather distort the general picture, but I hope that it won’t entirely eclipse a unique moment of theatrical history and the true beginning of a remarkable writing career.
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Acknowledgements
An Expert in Murder was part of the 2005–6 Escalator Literature Awards Programme and funded by Arts Council England, and I am especially grateful to the New Writing Partnership and Michelle Spring, and to all at Arts Council England, East, for their support.
The book is a tribute to the people whose hard work and achievements created such a special world during the 1930s –
particularly to Sir John Gielgud and Margaret Harris of Motley, both of whom were kind enough to talk to me at length about the theatre of the period, and, of course, to Josephine Tey, whose work is at the heart of the novel.
Many other people have helped – wittingly or unwittingly – and I owe particular thanks to Karolina Sutton, Jennifer Joel, Laura Sampson and ICM for wonderful advice and encouragement; to Claire Wachtel, Jonathan Burnham and Heather Drucker for their passion for the novel; to Peter Mendelsohn, Cindy Achar, Roni Axelrod and Julia Novitch at HarperCollins for their care and vision in its production; to Walter Donohue for his magic at the beginning; to Dr Peter Fordyce and Stewart P. Evans for their expertise in very different areas of unpleasantness; to Richard Reynolds for his enthusiasm and knowledge of detective fiction; to Jane Munro and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, for influencing Archie’s taste in art so beautifully; to Helen Grime and Margaret Westwood for their great interest and help with the project; to Josceline Dimbleby for the story of May Gaskell in her book A Profound Secret; to Virginia Nicholson for the wealth of information in Among the Bohemians; to Ian Ross, for the time to 291
make a start; to H.W. for additional typing; and to Sir Donald Sinden, Frith Banbury, Dulcie Gray and the late Michael Denison for their generosity in sharing recollections and stories with me.
Love and thanks go, as always, to my parents and family – for much, much more than their enthusiasm for this novel.
And to Mandy, who has been so instrumental in every moment
– from the original idea and wild beginnings to the fine detail and finished book – the joy of this is all down to you.
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About the Author
NICOLA UPSON is also the author of two works of nonfiction and has worked in theatre and as a freelance journalist. The recipient of the Escalator Award from Arts Council England, she splits her time between Cambridge and Cornwall.
www.nicolaupson.com
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Credits
Jacket photograph © Bert Hardy
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Jacket design by Peter Mendelsohn
Copyright
AN EXPERT IN MURDER. Copyright © 2008 by Nicola Upson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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