“That day when I went to see Mrs. Kinmuir, in the midst of reciting some of the verses from ‘The Grand Old Duke of York,’ she said, ‘Oh, yes, it was a grand tour all right.’ At the time the words meant nothing to me, as I thought she had been referring to the nursery rhyme. But of course I realized later she must have been talking about one of her relatives going on the Grand Tour, in the days when young men from good families traveled to France, Switzerland, and Italy to study and collect art. I suppose that is how the Giorgione came to be in the family. Mrs. Kinmuir clearly knew of the painting’s existence but had not told her nephew or anyone else in the family about it because I believe at one point there had been a falling-out between them. Robin related something of this to me the first night I was here. I suspect the source of that problem was Mrs. Kinmuir’s disapproval of her nephew’s treatment of his first wife. And by the time Mrs. Kinmuir came to live here at Dallach Lodge, she had lost her faculties. Yes, a very sad state of affairs.”
I looked at Davison, who, with a slight nod, gave me permission to relate something he in turn had told me.
“So you see, a small, seemingly insignificant painting drove two men to commit murder,” I said. “You probably didn’t have a chance to study the picture, and even if you had done so, you might not have been able to see much, because its surface was very aged and dirty. It was of a Crucifixion scene, with someone, possibly Saint John the Evangelist, gazing up at Christ in his last moments. On the back of the canvas there was an inscription, very faint, but Mr. Davison made it out.”
I took a breath, realizing that everyone had turned to me to hear the very last clue. “That inscription was the title of the painting, L’ho visto morire… or I Saw Him Die.”
THE FACTS
In August 1930, Agatha Christie traveled to Skye with her daughter, Rosalind; her secretary, Carlo Fisher; and Carlo’s sister, Mary. They registered to stay at the Broadford Hotel. “I found Skye lovely,” Christie wrote in her autobiography. “I did sometimes wish it wouldn’t rain every day, though it was only a fine misty rain which did not really count.”
On 11 September 1930, Agatha married the archaeologist Max Mallowan, whom she had met in Ur, Iraq, earlier that year. They married in the Memorial Chapel of St. Cuthbert’s Church, Edinburgh. Agatha worried that Max was far too young for her, and on their wedding certificate both of them lied about their ages: she gave her age as thirty-seven, while his was recorded as thirty-one. In fact, Agatha was forty and Max was twenty-six. “I had had so much publicity, and been caused so much misery by it, that I wanted things kept as quiet as possible,” Christie wrote in her autobiography.
Many details about the Secret Intelligence Service mentioned in I Saw Him Die are true, including information about Sir Paul Dukes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dukes) and Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming (Alan Judd, The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service [London: HarperCollins, 1999]). According to an article in the Independent, “Cumming was so pleased to discover that semen made a good invisible ink that his agents adopted the motto: “Every man his own stylo” (Piers Brendon, “The Spymaster Who Was Stranger Than Fiction,” Independent, 29 October 1999). For more details, read Keith Jeffery’s excellent book MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909–1949 (London: Bloomsbury, 2010).
Agatha Christie wrote a number of novels whose titles echo popular nursery rhymes, including And Then There Were None (1939), One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940), Five Little Pigs (1942), Crooked House (1949), A Pocket Full of Rye (1953), and Hickory Dickory Dock (1955). Her long-running play The Mousetrap, which opened in London’s West End in 1952, started life as the BBC radio play Three Blind Mice, which she wrote for Queen Mary’s eightieth birthday celebrations in May 1947. Keen-eyed readers might spot allusions to these and other works in I Saw Him Die.
Agatha Christie is still the bestselling novelist of all time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my fabulous agent and friend, Clare Alexander, as well as the whole team at Aitken Alexander Associates, in particular Lisa Baker, Lesley Thorne, Steph Adam, Anna Watkins, Monica MacSwan, and Amy St. Johnston.
At Simon & Schuster in the UK, I would like to acknowledge Ian Chapman and my fantastic editor, Suzanne Baboneau, both of whom have supported me throughout the writing of this series. In addition, I would like to thank Bec Farrell, UK copyeditor Sally Partington, Justine Gold, Dawn Burnett, and the marketing department, the brilliant Jess Barratt, Harriett Collins, and everyone in publicity, Gill Richardson, Claire Bennett, Richard Hawton, Rhys Thomas, and the super-enthusiastic sales team. The cover was the work of the talented Mark Smith and was designed by Pip Watkins.
In the US, I would like to thank the wonderful staff at Atria: my editor Peter Borland, publisher Libby McGuire, and Sean Delone; also the copyeditor David Chesanow, production editor Samantha Hoback, and publicist Gena Lanzi.
Thanks too to all the Agatha fans, scholars, and academics who have embraced the series, particularly Dr. John Curran, Mike Linane, Dr. Jamie Bernthal, Scott Wallace Baker, Tina Hodgkinson, Emily and Audrey at The Year of Agatha blog, and many more.
Lastly, I would like to thank all my family and friends and Marcus Field.
More from the Author
Death in a Desert Land
A Different Kind of Evil
A Talent for Murder
Alexander McQueen
Mad Girl's Love Song
Shadow of the Titanic
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANDREW WILSON is an award-winning journalist and author. His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Sunday Times, and Smithsonian magazine. He is the author of four acclaimed biographies, a book about the survivors of the Titanic, and the novels The Lying Tongue, A Talent for Murder, A Different Kind of Evil, and Death in a Desert Land.
SimonandSchuster.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Andrew-Wilson
@AtriaBooks @AtriaBooks @AtriaBooks
ALSO BY ANDREW WILSON
FICTION
The Lying Tongue
A Talent for Murder
A Different Kind of Evil
Death in a Desert Land
NONFICTION
Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin
Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted
Shadow of the Titanic: The Extraordinary Stories of Those Who Survived
Harold Robbins: The Man Who Invented Sex
Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith
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I Saw Him Die Page 32