by John Curran
Mrs Van Schuyler—boring American woman elderly snobbish
And in a later note:
Mrs Van Schuyler—a well known confidence trickster
Miss Harmsworth—girl companion to Miss Van Schuyler
The only character to remain as described—with a modification from Mrs to Miss—is Miss Van Schuyler, although her idiosyncrasy changes from confidence trickery to kleptomania. Miss Harmsworth became Cornelia Robson, the unfortunate niece of that ghastly snob.
Mrs Pooper cheap novelist
The unhappily named Mrs Pooper eventually became Salome Otterbourne, who specialised in outspoken novels of love and sex. One of her titles, ‘Snow upon the Desert’s Face’, is almost the same as the early, unpublished non-crime novel written by Agatha Christie herself, Snow upon the Desert. This was probably a personal joke inserted by Christie for the amusement of her family.
Rosalie Curtis sickly girl
Rosalie Curtis may well have changed to Rosalie Otterbourne, daughter of the ill-fated Salome.
Some possible plot developments are sketched on the pages following the cast list. Note that ‘P’, i.e. Poirot (‘but P proves that…’), has now firmly replaced Miss Marple:
Dr. Pfeiffer’s wife has been recognised—he decides to do away with Mrs. Oger
Wife of (Dr. Pfeiffer) herself is thief or murderer etc.—makes up story that someone has stolen ring or poison etc. and brooch A.M. seen in glass. She knows that A.M. is in lounge with others at that time but P proves that M.A. is real lettering
or
M.A. idea and yellow dress M.A. has not yellow dress—woman with yellow dress has not initial A.M.
Dr. Elbes—very ill man—had known her at St. John’s prison Pfeiffer mentions his researches the castor oil plant
Now then A. Who killed her?
B. Why?
Although the Pfeiffers were never to feature in any Christie work, some of these ideas were to resurface in other books—a stolen ring in Hickory Dickory Dock and the prison wardress in Appointment with Death.
But the main idea is the symmetrical letters of the alphabet and how confusion can arise depending on whether they are seen directly or through a mirror. A half page of Notebook 30 lists all of these letters, ‘H M A W I O T U V Y’, and a further list of possible female names starting with each one. (X is omitted presumably on the basis that names beginning with X are rare.) Christie finally settled on Isabel Oger, hence the reference to Mrs Oger above. This idea was eventually incorporated into Dumb Witness, also published in 1937, although with completely different names. Whether it was ever in fact intended as a plot device for Death on the Nile is debatable, despite the fact that the scenario Christie sketched involved the Pfeiffers from the list of characters for that novel. Adding to this doubt is the fact that there are no characters on the list with either the initials AM or MA.
Almost the final note for this title in Notebook 30 reads:
The Plan
Nellie is heard saying ‘I wish she were dead—will never be free till she’s dead.
Nellie is one of the names appearing on the list of reversible initials (‘Helen, Wilhelmina’) but the words she utters are very similar to the opening line, overheard by Hercule Poirot, of Appointment with Death. ‘You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?’ This, taken in conjunction with the Mrs P’s former profession and the make-up of her family, can be seen to form the basis of the later novel.
Four-Fifty from Paddington 4 November 1957
While travelling to visit her friend Miss Marple, Elspeth McGillicuddy witnesses a murder committed on a train running parallel with hers. During the search for the body, attention focuses on Rutherford Hall, home of the Crackenthorpe family. Miss Marple and her agent Lucy Eylesbarrow investigate.
All the notes for this title are contained in four Notebooks—3, 22, 45 and 47—amounting to 40 pages. Four-Fifty from Paddington was received at Collins in late February of 1957. The date at which it is set, and its writing, are contemporaneous. The story opens on 20 December (1956)—‘It was quite dark now, a dark dreary, misty December day—Christmas was only five days away’ (Chapter 1)—but apart from Miss Marple attending Christmas dinner at the Vicarage where she discusses local maps with Leonard Clement, the vicar’s son, there is no further mention, or atmosphere, of the holiday season.
This book went through more title changes than any other of her books. At various times it was 4.15, 4.30 and 4.54, before eventually becoming Four-Fifty from Paddington. The manuscript is headed ‘4.54 from Paddington’, mainly because, as Christie explained in a letter to her Edmund Cork dated 8 April (1957), there was no actual train at that time. She agreed that ‘Four-Fifty from Paddington’ or even ‘5 o’clock from Paddington’ were better titles.
The extract below from Notebook 47 would seem to predate similar notes as this one has no names (apart from Miss Marple), but the basic idea is the one followed in the finished novel. The blackly comic final question is a classic musing of Christie the arch-plotter. A few pages later notes for ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’ and The Unexpected Guest are pursued and the train idea is shelved. As ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’ was first published in December 1956, this supports the contention that the notes for Four-Fifty from Paddington did not pre-date its composition by very much.
Train—seen from a train? Through window of house. Or vice versa?
Train idea
Girl coming down by train to St. Mary Mead sees a murder in another train drawn up alongside—a woman strangled. Gets home—talks about it to Miss Marple—Police? Nobody strangled—no body found.
Why—2 possible trains one to Manchester—one a slow local. Where can you push a body off a train
Notebook 3 sketches the basic idea (with Mrs Bantry in place of Mrs McGillicuddy) but Notebook 45 has a succinct and accurate version of the opening chapter of the novel:
The Train
Mrs McGillicuddy—a friend of Miss Marple’s—going to stay with her—in train from Paddington—another train on other line—but same direction—that’s overtaken—hang together for a moment, through window of compartment level with hers—a man strangling blonde girl—then—train goes on.
Mrs MG very upset—tells ticket collector—Station master? Oh! Jane I’ve seen a murder
Uniquely among Christie’s books, we are informed from the outset of Four-Fifty from Paddington that the murderer is a man. A mere four pages into Chapter 1 the reader is told: ‘Standing with his back to the window and to her was a man. His hands were round the throat of a woman who faced him and he was slowly, remorselessly, strangling her.’ With such an unequivocal statement the possibility that the figure seen could have been a woman in disguise is never seriously considered and Christie knew her readers well enough to know that they would feel totally cheated if that transpired to be the solution. Therefore, with the exception of Emma Crackenthorpe (the motive) and Lucy Eylesbarrow (the investigator), all the main characters are male. The problem this presented was to make the men broadly similar as physical beings while distinguishing them as characters. She reminds herself of this in Notebook 22:
Must get clear on men
Three dark men—all roughly 5ft 10 to 6 ft Loose jointed
People Cedric eldest?
Harold married no children
Alfred
Bryan Eastley Ex pilot—Husband of Edith (dead)
Father of Alistair or stepfather?
2 sons of old man—good boy (in Bank) Artist—or scene designer or producer
Cedric—a Robert Graves—rolling stone, uninhibited—(eventually to marry Lucy Eylesbarrow)
Sir Harold Crackenthorpe—busy man—director of Crackenthorpe Ltd. Well to do—not really? On rocks?
Bryan? R.A.F. Wing Command D? At a loose end
Alph[red] Dark slender—the crooked one—black market in war—Ministry of Supply
The ‘Robert Graves’ reference is to Christie’s real-life friend and neighbour, the author of I, Claudius
among others. Graves was a critical fan and the dedicatee of Towards Zero. This reference also clarifies the question left unanswered at the end of the novel—which of the men will Lucy eventually marry?
There were seemingly minor points to consider but ones that impacted on the plot—how to ensure the necessary darkness for the commission of the crime and how to account for the presence in the house of two young boys. The question of possible dates is considered in two Notebooks:
Points to settle
Date of journey possibly Jan 9th or thereabouts Points to take in—holidays (boys) New Year (Cedric) Time of getting dark (train)
Dates
Holidays? April—Stobart-West and Malcolm there
So murder end of February? Say—24th 26th
The eventual decision to place the murder just before, and the investigation just after, Christmas answered all the concerns—the early darkness, as well as the presence of the two young boys and Cedric.
But the biggest problem about Four-Fifty from Paddington is the identity of the corpse. It is a problem for Miss Marple, the police, the reader and, I suspect, for Agatha Christie herself. We do not know for certain until the novel’s closing pages whose murder is actually under investigation. And it must be admitted that it makes what would otherwise have been a Grade A Christie novel, something of a disappointment. It also raises the question of how, divine intervention aside, Miss Marple can possibly know the story behind the murder. The original reader at Collins, who reported on the manuscript, admitted that ‘unless I am being very stupid I cannot see how anyone could have known that murderer’s motive’. He was not ‘being very stupid’ as it is not possible to deduce the identity of the killer, or the motive, although, in retrospect, both are perfectly acceptable. The following note shows that Christie had two ideas about the possible identity of the corpse—Anna the dancer or Martine—and, reluctant to abandon either, eventually used aspects of both:
Is dead woman Anna the dancer or not?
Is Anne = Mrs Q—or is Anna red herring arranged by Q
Is woman killed because she is Martine and has a son or because she is Q’s wife and he plans to marry
But the devotion of even the most ardent Christie fan is severely tested when Martine is finally identified.
7
Elephants Can Remember:
Murder in Retrospect
But now, she realised, she had got to remember. She had got to think back into the past…To remember carefully every slight unimportant seeming incident.
Sparkling Cyanide, Chapter 1
SOLUTIONS REVEALED
Mrs McGinty’s Dead • Ordeal by Innocence • ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ • Sleeping Murder • Sparkling Cyanide
Some of Agatha Christie’s strongest titles feature murder in the past—the investigation of a case where the detective is dependent on the memories of those involved, where the trail has grown cold and clues have disappeared, and where the uncovering of the truth often awakens a sleeping murderer. She first experimented with this in Dumb Witness, where Poirot investigates a two-month-old death; six years later her greatest triumph finds Poirot examining a 16-yearold case in Five Little Pigs (see Chapter 4); in two other cases, Mrs McGinty’s Dead and Ordeal by Innocence, the verdict is already handed down and of her last six novels, five of them feature this type of plot. Also in this category we find her historical detective story, Death Comes as the End, a daring if not wholly successful experiment from mid-career.
Dumb Witness 5 July 1937
Emily Arundell writes to Hercule Poirot on 17 April but he does not receive the letter until 28 June. And by then she is dead. Poirot goes to Market Basing to investigate her death, where the case involves spiritualism, a brooch, a dog’s ball—and another death.
Most of the notes for Dumb Witness, roughly 25 pages, are contained in Notebook 30 along with notes for Death on the Nile and the newly discovered short story ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’; the relationship between the novel and its earlier incarnation as the short story (albeit with a vital difference) is considered in detail in the Appendix. Dumb Witness was published at the end of 1936 in the US as a Saturday Evening Post serial with the title Poirot Loses a Client, and as Mystery at Littlegreen House in a UK serialisation beginning in February 1937. In connection with the US serialisation, a surviving letter dated June 1936 from Edmund Cork to Christie thanks her for the revised version sent to the Saturday Evening Post magazine (who paid $16,000 for it, $2,000 more than Cards on the Table). Cork considered it a ‘tremendous improvement’ and suggested ‘using it for Collins also’. This most probably refers to the first four chapters, in which the ‘little English village’ setting is told in the third person—the rest of the book, in contrast, being narrated by Hastings. In retrospect, the information that they were added at a later stage makes perfect sense.
Dumb Witness is the archetypal Christie village mystery—a mysterious death in a well-to-do household, a collection of impecunious relatives, the village doctor and solicitor, and the arrival of Poirot whose questioning sets village tongues wagging. Once again the red herring of spiritualism is dragged across the investigation. As far back as ‘The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb’ in 1923 Christie murderers used this ploy to cover their tracks. And as late as 1961 and The Pale Horse, with a more sinister version of Dumb Witness’s Tripp sisters, spiritualism is a major plot device.
Unusually, we know from internal evidence—the ending of Chapter 7—the exact timeline of the novel; Emily Arundell died on 1 May 1936 and Poirot’s investigation began on 28 June, although for most of that investigation there is nothing to show that murder has been committed. Reader prejudice is toyed with, and yet again subverted, with the introduction of suspicious foreigner, Dr Tanios. Four previous killers are mentioned—Death in the Clouds, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Mystery of the Blue Train—and there is an oblique reference to Murder on the Orient Express in Chapter 25. The description of Market Basing in Chapter 6 corresponds to that of Wallingford where Christie had, some years earlier, bought Winterbrook House.
The notes, headed with a working title, list the family members and background, although names and details—Charles is not married and his sister is Teresa, not Bella—were to change:
Death of Martha Digby [Emily Arundell]
The Digbys—their family history
Miss Martha—Miss Amelia—Miss Jane—Miss Ethel and Mr Thomas
Marriage of Mr Thomas—to a barmaid?
Mr John [Charles] and Miss Daphne (T’s children)
John—stock exchange—married—his wife clever woman
Daphne [Bella] marries an Armenian? Dr. Mendeman [Tanios]—charming man—his wife quiet, cold
The early chapters of the novel are accurately sketched with only minor differences—the chemist is delayed until Chapter 21 and there is a cryptic reference to painting in connection with Theresa:
General Plan
P. receives letter—he and H [astings]—he writes—then he tears it up—No, we will go—Market Basing—The Lamb…Board to be let or sold. Visit to house agents—an order to view—Ellen conversation—rap—rap—rap—a ball drops down staircase terrier wagging his tail
The chemist—his remembrances—they pretend that are writing up a history of the town—he is an amateur archaeologist—the history of the family. P goes to doctor—as a patient (and an archaeologist) doctor comes to dine—a good deal of local gossip—some little mystery about that death? Doctor indignant—perfectly natural causes—he says—well, I should think you’d be satisfied now. P. says ‘But she died’
Theresa—flat in Chelsea—painting—her engagement to Dick Donaldson—latter wants to specialise—infection—liver—serum therapeutics
Oddly, there are references to Peggy, rather than (Ara) Bella, in both of the following extracts. This was probably an early name choice for the character, as the clue of the symmetrical letter seen in the mirror, M for Margaret, would s
till work with it. As we have seen, this device was considered in conjunction with the plotting for Death on the Nile (see Chapter 6).
This page of experimentation with symmetrical letters and corresponding names is from Notebook 30. Note the inclusion here of ‘Wilhelmina/ Mina’, the first name of Miss Lawson. The all-important ‘Arabella’ and ‘Teresa’ are arrived at later in the same Notebook.
Another visit to the terrier—to the Tripps—hallucinations etc.—evidence of the cook—Miss Theresa on stairs that night—a piece of thread—yes, Ellen had found it. Miss Lawson again—money missing from drawer—knew who took it. P. bullies her a bit—she gets rattled—talks about poor Peggy—who has left her husband
Peggy again—about husband—she refuses to say—P. says tell me—I’m going to be in danger—she refuses to say anything. H. says ‘she knows something’—asked about dressing gown—says yes—she has a dark blue silk one—Theresa gave it to her. When? When we were all down that weekend, Which day? I can’t remember
And a page of letters and names experimenting with symmetrical letters, the vital clue as misinterpreted by Miss Lawson, eventually arrives at the required one:
ARABELLA A.T. BELLA T.A. Arundel
Sparkling Cyanide 3 December 1945
An elegant restaurant, a glamorous birthday party and beautiful Rosemary Barton is poisoned during the toast. A year later, in a macabre reconstruction at the same restaurant and with an almost identical party, there is another death. But who was the intended victim? Colonel Race investigates.