Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

by John Curran

  On the top floor, up a winding wooden staircase, were the bathrooms still with the names of the child refugees (Ordeal by Innocence) from the Second World War taped to the cupboard shelves, while a bookcase contained signed copies from some of her fellow writers (‘To Agatha with blushes—Ngaio Marsh’). The following morning, there were panoramic views of the river and the Devon hills with glimpses of the Boathouse (Dead Man’s Folly) and the Battery (Five Little Pigs).

  On the first-floor landing was a revolving bookcase (Curtain) with multiple paperback editions and just down the corridor was Dame Agatha’s bedroom, commandeered by her creation for the duration of Dead Man’s Folly. Around the corner hung the tea-gown worn by Dame Agatha’s mother in a photograph in An Autobiography and further along this corridor were the back stairs, similar to those used by Miss Marple at the climax of Sleeping Murder.

  At the top of the stairs were two locked rooms, silent guardians of unimaginable literary treasure and heart’s desire for every Agatha Christie enthusiast (but in reality accessible to very few). The bigger of the two contained a complete run of UK and US jacketed first editions, all signed, many with personal inscriptions, as well as the books published about the Queen of Crime and her work. The second room was long and narrow, with nothing but shelves and cupboards containing more books—hardback and paperback, first and Book Club editions, many signed; typescripts and manuscripts, letters and contracts, posters and playbills, photos and dust-jackets, scrapbooks and diaries. On a bottom shelf was an ordinary cardboard box with a collection of old exercise copybooks…

  I lifted the box on to the floor, knelt down and removed the top exercise book. It had a red cover and a tiny white label with the number 31. I opened it and the first words that I read were ‘The Body in the Library—People—Mavis Carr—Laurette King’. I turned over pages at random…’Death on Nile—Points to be brought in…Oct 8th—Helen sequence from girl’s point of view…The Hollow—Inspector comes to Sir Henry—asks about revolver…Baghdad Mystery May 24th…1951 Play Act I—Stranger stumbling into room in dark—finds light—turns it on—body of man…A Murder has been arranged—Letitia Bailey at breakfast’.

  All these tantalising headings were in just one Notebook and there were over 70 more still stacked demurely in their unprepossessing box. I forgot that I was kneeling uncomfortably on the floor of an untidy, dusty room, that downstairs Mathew was waiting for me to begin dinner, that outside in the November darkness the rain was now spattering the shuttered window. I knew now how I would spend the rest of the evening and most of the weekend. And, as it transpired, the next four years…

  It was very late when I eventually, and reluctantly, went to bed that night. I had systematically gone through every page of every Notebook and as I climbed the winding stairs in the silent house I tried to retain as much of the fascinating information as I could remember from such a brief read-through. The fact that Death on the Nile was to have been a Marple story…that there were more than ten characters in the early stages of Ten Little Niggers…that I now knew her intentions for the ending of Death Comes as the End…that she toyed with various solutions for Crooked House…

  Next morning Mathew took me walking in Greenway Gardens. We began at what used to be the stable block (and then a National Trust office and gift shop), past the tennis court (Dead Man’s Folly) and walled garden with a view of the extensive greenhouses; past the croquet lawn and up behind the house and along the path to the High Garden with a magnificent view of the River Dart. Then we wound our way down to the Boathouse, the setting for ill-fated Marlene Tucker’s death in Dead Man’s Folly, and ended up in the Battery looking out over the river with the low wall where the vibrant Elsa Greer (Five Little Pigs) posed for the already-dying Amyas Crale many years earlier (see page 127). We walked back to the house along the path taken by doomed Caroline Crale from the same novel. As we approached the front of the house I remembered that this was Agatha Christie’s holiday home, where she came to relax with her extended family. I could imagine those summers of 50 years earlier when there was tea on this very lawn, the thwack of ball on racquet from the tennis court, the click of ball on croquet mallet; where dogs sprawled lazily in the afternoon sun and rooks soared and cawed in the trees; where the sun glinted on the Dart and Cole Porter drifted over the lawn from the turntable as the butler prepared the table for dinner; and where the faint click of a typewriter could be heard through an upstairs window…

  I spent almost 24 hours of that weekend in the fascinating room at the top of the stairs, emerging only to eat (and that at Mathew’s insistence!) and sleep. I refused offers of lunch in Dartmouth and tea in the library with family friends; I eschewed polite after-dinner conversation and lingering breakfasts and Mathew’s amused indulgence tacitly encouraged such bad-mannered behaviour. As carefully as Hercule Poirot in Roger Ackroyd’s study I scrutinised the typescripts of Curtain and Sleeping Murder, the original and deleted scenes for the first draft of The Mousetrap; the extensively annotated manuscript of Endless Night; the original magazine appearance of ‘The Disappearance of Mr Davenby’ [sic]; the signed first-night programmes of Death on the Nile and Appointment with Death; the official scrapbook for the fiftieth book celebrations for A Murder is Announced; the Royal Premiere memorabilia for Murder on the Orient Express; and all the time, as Miss Lemon to her filing, I kept returning to the mesmerising Notebooks.

  Among Agatha Christie’s papers there still remains much work from her early days as a writer—some non-crime, some light-hearted, some borderline crime and her pre-Styles novel Snow Upon the Desert. Among the original typescripts of her short stories (some with textual differences from the printed versions) there was also ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’. The existence of this story was known to Christie scholars, including my friend and fellow Christie enthusiast Tony Medawar, editor of While the Light Lasts, but its similarity to an already published work had always militated against its inclusion in any of the posthumous collections. I was convinced that this very resemblance, albeit with a major difference, made it of intense interest. You can now judge for yourself.

  It was on a subsequent visit the following year that I made what I now think of as The Discovery. I spent the month of August 2006 in Greenway sorting and organising Dame Agatha’s papers in preparation for their removal from the house before the restoration work began. Weekdays were often scenes of boisterous activity as surveyors and architects, workmen and volunteers could be found in any and every corner of the house, but weekends tended to be quiet and, although the gardens were open to the public on Saturdays, life in the house itself was more tranquil; indeed, so quiet was it, that it was possible to imagine that there was nobody else on the entire estate. On the afternoon of Saturday 19 August I was checking the collection of manuscripts and typescripts preparatory to listing them before storage. The only bound typescript of a short story collection, as distinct from novels, was The Labours of Hercules and I idly wondered how, if at all, it differed from the published version, knowing that stories that have been first published in magazines are often amended slightly when collected between hard covers. The Foreword and the early stories all tallied with the known versions but when I got to the twelfth, ‘The Capture of Cerberus’, the opening line (‘Hercule Poirot sipped his aperitif and looked out across the Lake of Geneva…’) was not familiar to me. As I read on, I realised that I was looking at something unimaginably unique—an unknown Poirot short story, one that had lain silently between its covers for over 60 years, had been lifted and carried and moved and re-shelved numerous times over that period, had been handled by more than one person and had still managed to evade attention until a summer afternoon almost 70 years after its creation. My self-imposed task of listing and sorting was abandoned and I sat down to read, for the first time since October 1975 and his last poignant words in Curtain (‘Yes, they have been good days…’), an unknown and forgotten adventure of Hercule Poirot.

  When, earlier in 2006, I had approa
ched Mathew about the possibility of a book based on his grandmother’s Notebooks, with his customary generosity he immediately agreed. And, shortly afterwards, HarperCollins was equally enthusiastic. The question of how to treat the two unpublished stories remained. I had gone through the Notebooks slowly and carefully and I realised that there were notes for both stories within their pages. Mathew agreed to their publication and I am very honoured that the initial appearance of two new stories from the Queen of Crime has been entrusted to me.

  At the end of The Mysterious Affair at Styles Poirot tells Hastings, ‘Never mind. Console yourself, my friend. We may hunt together again, who knows? And then…’ Who knew, indeed, that almost a century after those words were written we would join Hercule Poirot in one more hunt…and then, unbelievably, just one more…

  1

  A Murder is Announced:

  The Beginning of a Career

  That was the beginning of the whole thing. I suddenly saw my way clear. And I determined to commit not one murder, but murder on a grand scale.

  Ten Little Niggers, Epilogue

  SOLUTIONS REVEALED

  Death on the Nile • Evil under the Sun • The Hollow • Lord Edgware Dies • The Murder at the Vicarage • The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Ordeal by Innocence • Witness for the Prosecution

  The Golden Age of British detective fiction is generally regarded as roughly the period between the end of the First World War and that of the Second, i.e. 1920 to 1945. This was the era of the country house weekend enlivened by the presence of a murderer, the evidence of the adenoidal under-housemaid, the snow-covered lawn with no footprints and the baffled policeman seeking the assistance of the gifted amateur. Ingenuity reached new heights with the fatal air embolism via the empty hypodermic, the poison-smeared postage stamp, and the icicle dagger that evaporates after use.

  During these years all of the names we now associate with the classic whodunit began their writing careers. The period ushered in the fiendish brilliance of John Dickson Carr, who devised more ways to enter and leave a locked room than anyone before or since; it saluted the ingenuity of Freeman Wills Crofts, master of the unbreakable alibi, and Anthony Berkeley, pioneer of multiple solutions. It saw the birth of Lord Peter Wimsey, created by Dorothy L. Sayers, whose fiction and criticism did much to improve the literary level and acceptance of the genre; the emergence of Margery Allingham, who proved, with her creation Albert Campion, that a good detective story could also be a good novel; and the appearance of Ngaio Marsh, whose hero, Roderick Alleyn, managed to combine the professions of policeman and gentleman. Across the Atlantic it welcomed Ellery Queen and his penultimate chapter ‘Challenge to the Reader’, defying the armchair detective to solve the puzzle; S.S. Van Dine and his pompous creation Philo Vance breaking publishing records; and Rex Stout’s overweight creation Nero Wolfe, solving crimes while tending his orchid collection.

  Cabinet ministers and archbishops extolled the virtues of a good detective story; poets (Nicholas Blake, otherwise Cecil Day Lewis), university dons (Michael Innes, otherwise Professor J.I.M. Stewart), priests (Rev. Ronald Knox), composers (Edmund Crispin, otherwise Bruce Montgomery) and judges (Cyril Hare, otherwise Judge Gordon Clark) contributed to and expanded the form. R. Austin Freeman and his scientific Dr John Thorndyke sowed the seeds of the modern forensic crime novel; Gladys Mitchell introduced a psychologist detective in her outrageous creation Mrs Bradley; and Henry Wade prepared the ground for the police procedural with his Inspector Poole. Books were presented in the form of correspondence in Sayers’ The Documents in the Case, as verbatim question-and-answer evidence in Philip Macdonald’s The Maze and, ultimately, as actual police dossiers complete with physical clues in the shape of telegrams and train tickets in Dennis Wheatley’s Murder off Miami. Floor plans, clue-finders, timetables and footnotes proliferated; readers became intimately acquainted with the properties of arsenic, the interpretation of train timetables and the intricacies of the 1926 Legitimacy Act. Collins Crime Club and the Detection Club were founded; Ronald Knox issued a Detective Story Decalogue and S.S. Van Dine wrote his Rules.

  And Agatha Christie published The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

  Poirot Investigates…

  In her Autobiography Christie gives a detailed account of the genesis of The Mysterious Affair at Styles. By now the main facts are well known: the immortal challenge—‘I bet you can’t write a good detective story’—from her sister Madge, the Belgian refugees from the First World War in Torquay who inspired Poirot’s nationality, Christie’s knowledge of poisons from her work in the local dispensary, her intermittent work on the book and its eventual completion during a two-week seclusion in the Moorland Hotel, at the encouragement of her mother. This was not her first literary effort, nor was she the first member of her family with literary aspirations. Both her mother and sister Madge wrote, and Madge actually had a play, The Claimant, produced in the West End before Agatha did. Agatha had already written a long dreary novel (her own words) and a few stories and sketches. She had even had a poem published in the local newspaper. While the story of the bet is plausible, it is clear that this alone would not be spur enough to plot, sketch and write a successful book. There was obviously an inherent gift and a facility with the written word.

  Although she began writing the novel in 1916 (The Mysterious Affair at Styles is actually set in 1917), it was not published for another four years. And its publication was to demand consistent determination on its author’s part as more than one publisher declined the manuscript. Until, in 1919, John Lane, The Bodley Head asked to meet her with a view to publication. But, even then, the struggle was far from over.

  The contract, dated 1 January 1920, that John Lane offered Christie took advantage of her publishing naivety. (Remarkably, the actual contract is for The Mysterious Affair of Styles.) She was to get 10 per cent only after 2,000 copies were sold in the UK and she was contracted to produce five more titles. This clause led to much correspondence over the following years. Possibly because she was so delighted to be published or because she had no intention then of pursuing a writing career, it is entirely possible that she did not read the small print carefully.

  When she realised what she had signed, she insisted that if she offered a book she was fulfilling her part of the contract whether or not John Lane accepted it. When John Lane expressed doubt as to whether Poirot Investigates, as a volume of short stories rather than a novel, should be considered part of the six-book contract, the by now confident writer pointed out that she had offered them a novel, the non-crime Vision, as her third title. The fact that the publishers refused it was, as far as she was concerned, their choice. It is quite possible that if John Lane had not tried to take advantage of his literary discovery she might have stayed longer with the company. But the prickly surviving correspondence shows that those early years of her career were a sharp learning curve in the ways of publishers—and that Agatha Christie was a star pupil. Within a relatively short space of time she is transformed from an awed and inexperienced neophyte perched nervously on the edge of a chair in John Lane’s office into a confident and businesslike professional with a resolute interest in every aspect of her books—jacket design, marketing, royalties, serialisation, translation and cinema rights, even spelling.

  Despite favourable readers’ reports a year earlier, in October 1920 Christie wrote to Mr Willett of John Lane wondering if her book was ‘ever coming out’ and pointing out that she had almost finished her second one. This resulted in her receiving the projected cover design, which she approved. Ultimately, after a serialisation in 1920 in The Weekly Times, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published later that year in the USA. And, almost five years after she began it, Agatha Christie’s first book went on sale in the UK on 21 January 1921. Even after its appearance there was much correspondence about statements and incorrect calculations of royalties as well as cover designs. In fairness to John Lane, it should be said that cover design and blurbs were als
o a recurring feature of her correspondence with Collins throughout her career.

  Verdict…

  The readers’ reports on the Styles manuscript were, despite some misgivings, promising. One gets right to the commercial considerations: ‘Despite its manifest shortcomings, Lane could very likely sell the novel…There is a certain freshness about it.’ A second report is more enthusiastic: ‘It is altogether rather well told and well written.’ And another speculates on her potential future ‘if she goes on writing detective stories and she evidently has quite a talent for them’. They were much taken with the character of Poirot, noting ‘the exuberant personality of M. Poirot who is a very welcome variation on the “detective” of romance’ and ‘a jolly little man in the person of has-been famous Belgian detective’. Although Poirot might take issue with the use of the description ‘has-been’, it was clear that his presence was a factor in its acceptance. In a report dated 7 October 1919 one very perceptive reader remarked, ‘but the account of the trial of John Cavendish makes me suspect the hand of a woman’. (Because her name on the manuscript had appeared as A.M. Christie, another reader refers to Mr Christie.) All the reports agreed that Poirot’s contribution to the Cavendish trial did not convince and needed revision.