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it was 'white civilization' fighting to defend itself that had been implicit in the attitude of Charlie Slatter and the Sergeant, 'white civilization' which will never, never admit that a white person, and most particularly, a white woman, can have a human relationship, whether for good or evil, with a black person. The one fact that remained still to be dealt with was the necessity for preserving appearances. But even she, since she was dead, was no longer a problem. Finally, however, as the first chapter comes to a close, the narration spells out what we are told Marsden will come to understand after some time in Rhodesia, before he succumbs to the denial necessary for surviving as an accepted member of white South African society: Most of all he is shocked that they clearly regard Mary with hatred and distaste - ' almost hysterical look of hate and fear' - all their sympathies being for her husband, Dick. He clearly knows that the murder has resulted from some unusual relation between Mary and her houseboy Moses (though the narrative also withholds precisely what he knows), but feels silenced about it and frustrated that they appear to insist on a more mundane explanation.
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Thus we share Marston's puzzlement at the reaction of the other two men to Mary's corpse.
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Here the narration takes a more clearly - or apparently - omniscient stance, entering the mind of the Turners' young managerial farming assistant, Tony Marston, only recently employed and arrived from England, but, while authorially knowing in tone, continues to withhold from the reader the precise workings of the minds of the other two men. The first chapter then goes on to filter through the puzzled viewpoint of a putative outsider the hush-hush reaction of the local community to the event, before moving back to the hours in which the death was discovered and dealt with by the local Sergeant and, more directly, by the somewhat bullying neighbouring farmer, Charlie Slatter. This 1950 novel, Doris Lessing's first, opens with a newspaper article entitled 'Murder Mystery' starkly reporting the murder of Rhodesian farmer's wife Mary Turner by her houseboy who has confessed to the crime.