Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

by John Curran

  The events of the fatal night are worked out:

  Night of Tragedy

  Neville and Lady T—quarrel overheard by butler—then he goes—rings bell for Barret (old maid). He has also put narcotic in her milk—she sees him go out—goes to Lady T who denies ringing bell. B feeling very confused and queer gets back to bed and passes out. Lady T discovered in morning.

  A few interesting ideas that never made it into the novel show that some of the detail was not self-evident. It must be remembered of course that the ‘victim’ below is not the real victim and is only a means to an end in this labyrinthine plot. Although none of the detail appears quite as outlined, the series of dated vignettes that opens the novel could indeed be seen, in retrospect, as sketches of eventual witnesses. The victim is not related to Judy/Kay and Audrey has not remarried, thus paving the way for a romance at the end of the novel:

  Towards Zero

  Series of vignettes of various people—witnesses at murder trial which takes place in last chapter?

  Who is victim? Judy’s stepmother? Her father—very rich man—left the money to 2nd wife (chorus girl or shop girl) she has it for life—Judy wants the money

  Audrey quickly remarries her quiet doctor—a biologist—or archaeologist—they are happy but poor—she wants stepmother’s money for research

  But one of the most tantalising notes in Notebook 63 concerns a ‘new end’ to Towards Zero. The page references are, presumably, to those of the publishers’ proofs, and one interesting point is that in the novel it is McWhirter who carries out all of the actions here attributed to Thomas Royde. Unfortunately we will never know what the original draft was—the Notebook then continues to list the events that appear in the published novel just before the section ‘Zero Hour’:

  New End to Zero starting P. 243

  Thomas and little girl acquaintance—Dog and fish—Goes to cleaner—(lost slip) quarrel about suit—Royde—ever so sorry—thought you said Boyd—Easthampton Hotel—gets suit—takes it home—smell on shoulder—takes it back—or rings up. Goes to Easthampton Hotel—no Boyd staying there—goes up to cliff—Audrey—afraid of being hanged.

  P. 255 the police come—Battle talks to the others ending with Royde—then goes to house—Mary comes across him in attic—Or Kay? Wet rope

  269? Royde speaks to B privately—B comes out—A taken off- then B looks over house—finds rope—Mary? Or Kaye? Finds him there—it would be strong enough to hang a man!

  In September 1956 a stage version of the novel opened in London, dramatised by Gerald Verner and Christie. Some of the notes for this adaptation appear in the Notebooks, although they are not comprehensive and consist mainly of a list of scenes without any elaboration. But the opening scene in Notebook 17 corresponds closely with the play itself:

  Act I

  Royde alone on stage—looking out of window—takes up Audrey’s photo—looks at it—puts it down—walks to window—Kay rushes in (tennis racquet) agitated—picks up Audrey’s photo—dashes it down into grate—Royde turns—she looks like guilty child.

  Oh! Who are you? I know who you are—the man from Malaya

  R. Yes, I’m the man from Malay

  At Bertram’s Hotel

  15 November 1965

  Miss Marple’s nephew treats her to a stay in Bertram’s Hotel, a relic of Edwardian decency in London. While enjoying its old-fashioned, and somewhat suspicious, charm, she becomes involved in a disappearance, robbery and murder.

  At Bertram’s Hotel was the second Marple novel in as many years. Like its predecessor, A Caribbean Mystery, the title page included the reminder ‘Featuring Miss Marple The Original Character as created by Agatha Christie’. This appeared as a result of the recent incarnations of the character on screen in the Margaret Rutherford travesties.

  While the setting of this novel is typical Christie and Marple, our expectations are confounded in the denouement when an even more breathtaking conspiracy than that of Murder on the Orient Express is revealed. The notes for this novel are evenly divided between three Notebooks. Notebook 27 has two dated pages, ‘October 30th’ and ‘November 17th’ (1964), and the first page of Notebook 36 is dated ‘October ‘64’. Notebook 23 would seem to pre-date the notes in the other two, as the following extract shows:

  Bertram’s Hotel

  Description of it—Mayfair St. etc.—Edwardian comfort—fires—porters…Tea and muffins—‘Only get muffins at Bertrams’. Points about hotel—a nucleus of ‘landed gentry’—old style Miss Marple points out later—‘pockets’ left over really no-one like that left—No, ‘Bertrams’ hotel belongs to two Americans—(never seen!). They cash in by deliberately recreating the nucleus (at low prices) to give the right atmosphere—then Americans and Australians etc. come at large prices.

  Meg Gresham [Bess Sedgwick]—her career—well born? rich? Ran away with Irish groom. Then married Parker Whitworth—enormous man—then Duke of Nottingham—then Count Stanislaus Vronsky—Dirk Chester—film star—or Op. singer

  Amalgamate this with frog-faced old major Ronnie Anstruther and Miss Marple—staying a week in London. His talk about murder—same chap—saw him again—different name—same kind of death—medical fellers seemed satisfied—quite all right—only different name again—Looks at someone coming

  The general set-up is the same as the novel but the mention of the ‘frog-faced Major’ (possibly a forerunner of Colonel Luscombe, the guardian of Bess’s daughter, Elvira, although without the unflattering description) and his talk about an earlier murder had appeared in 1964 in A Caribbean Mystery, so these notes were probably written prior to that. Or it may be Christie’s general description of retired Army men! Despite this, much of the plot is accurately sketched; but it is sketched at least three times in the course of the notes, each adding little or nothing to the earlier, possibly an indication that her powers of weaving variations were waning.

  Ideas

  Bertram’s is a HQ—of a crime organization—mainly bank robberies? Train robberies? No real violence—Money is taken in respectable luggage to Bertram’s. Certain people take it there—rehearsed beforehand—they are usually actors—character actors and they double for certain people—Canon Penneyfather, General Lynde, Fergus Mainwaring—country girl—Mr and Mrs Hamilton Clayton?—Contessa Vivary—Ralph Winston

  Resume of story

  Bess Sedgwick—an outlaw rich loves dangerously—Resistance—racing car falls for foreign criminal—handsome—attractive Stan Lasky. She combines with him and they plan robberies on a colossal scale—this has now been going on for (5 years?) (longer?) HQ is Bertram’s Hotel which changes hands—has a lot of money spent on it and people of the gang are infiltrated into it. Henry is its controlling brain and Bess is his partner—the Americans are its titular owner—but really a façade for Henry—there is a shuttle service—jewels or bank notes pass through Bertram’s in the hands of old fashioned ‘clients’, elderly ladies—clerics—lawyers—Admirals and Colonels—pass out next day—with rich American to Continent

  While there is very little in any of the Notebooks about the murder of Michael Gorman, the commissionaire at Bertram’s and an important figure from Bess Sedgwick’s past, our old friend the chambermaid gets yet another outing. Although the setting of a hotel would seem to be perfect for this idea, however, a satisfactory solution eluded her—again:

  Circumstances of murder?

  Meg—breakfast tray by bed—Kidneys, mushrooms, bacon, tea—chambermaid—evidence—as to conversation between Meg and husband (Chester? Stanislaus?) Anything the matter? She is opening letters. ‘No, nothing’—This evidence clears husband—also chambermaid collects tray—not waiter—

  Bertrams Points

  Murder—woman in bed—chambermaid’s evidence—took her breakfast in bed—quite all right then (9 a.m.) body not found until 12—really killed—at 8.30. Man (in evening dress) as waiter takes in breakfast tray—strangles her—knifes her—shot? Then goes down and out. In it are chambermaid and R
ichards

  Hallowe’en Party

  10 November 1969

  A bobbing-for-apples game goes horribly wrong at Lucilla Drake’s teenage party. One of the guests, Mrs Oliver, approaches her friend Hercule Poirot who subsequently visits Woodleigh Common and, in the course of his investigation, uncovers a long-forgotten crime as well as the killer at the Hallowe’en party.

  The notes for Hallowe’en Party provide the clearest example in the whole of the Notebooks of a definite starting and finishing date for a title. The first page of Notebook 16, with the notes for Hallowe’en Party, is headed ‘Jan. 1st 1969’ and 45 pages later we read:

  July 7th Halloween Party completed

  Chapter 1 to 21 inc. ending p. 280 to be sent or taken to H[ughes] M[assie]. 3 or 4 chapters to go to Mrs Jolly [her typist] on Dictaphone rolls 1 to 9. Continue corrections and revisions in them commencing P. 281 and send on to H. M.

  At this time Agatha Christie was 78 and although six months for a full-length novel is not unreasonable, it is a long way from the 1930s and 1940s when she finished two or three novels a year. It is entirely possible that the idea for this novel was hatched during a visit to America in late 1966, where Hallowe’en was a bigger holiday, when she accompanied Sir Max Mallowan on a lecture tour. She toyed with the idea of an eleven-plus, rather than a Hallowe’en, party for young teenagers. But the basic plot device was set from the beginning. Yet again Mrs Oliver appears, as she does in four of the final dozen titles that Christie wrote. Also making a reappearance is the policeman Spence from Mrs McGinty’s Dead and Taken at the Flood; and he was to appear again three years later in Elephants Can Remember.

  Themes, ideas and plots from earlier titles abound. There are strong echoes throughout of Dead Man’s Folly. In both we have a child murdered during a game, witnesses to an earlier murder presenting a danger to a hitherto safe killer and the creation of a thing of beauty as a grave—a folly in one novel and a garden in the other. As we shall see, a short story from 35 years earlier, ‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’ was also in her mind. Dead Man’s Folly, Mrs McGinty’s Dead and The Labours of Hercules are specifically mentioned in Chapter 4, 5 and 11 respectively; the inspiration for Butter in a Lordly Dish is referred to in Chapter 11, Miss Bulstrode from Cat among the Pigeons is recalled in Chapter 10 and a brief allusion towards the end of Chapter 16 may have provided the basis for Nemesis, two years later. Mrs Drake’s looking over the staircase (Chapter 10) has distinct similarities to Marina Gregg’s in The Mirror Crack‘d from Side to Side. And the opening line of Chapter 17 is almost identical to that in ‘The Case of the Perfect Maid’.

  Like many of the late titles, both the notes for Hallowe’en Party and the book itself are diffuse and unfocussed. There are some new ideas as well as those from earlier titles but there are also too many meandering conversations. The uneasy mix does not coalesce into a coherent and ingenious detective novel. Compare the set-up with similar titles from earlier decades—Dumb Witness, Taken at the Flood and Mrs McGinty’s Dead—where Poirot arrives in a small town to investigate a suspicious death and we can appreciate the deterioration in the quality of the titles from Endless Night onwards. Apart from Passenger to Frankfurt all of the titles after 1967 are journeys into the past, each one weaker than the previous. But they are all predicated on a compelling basic idea.

  Apart from name changes, the following extracts outline the basic situation that sets the plot in motion, although it has to be asked why Miranda (Mifanwy in the notes) does not admit earlier that she, and not Joyce, was the original witness. And the later revelation of her parenthood in the novel beggars belief.

  Jenny Butcher—Mrs. O’s friend on Hellenic cruise—widow—husband was (leukaemia?) or polio victim—contracted it abroad—a scholar? Man of intellect—child Mifanwy eleven or twelve—did father die at Ephesus? Stroke?

  Is it Mifanwy who saw murder? Her father’s? or her father kill Jenny’s lover? Or—her father—or mother—or mother’s sister still alive and living in Woodlawn Common kills brother (or mental defective). Anyway Mifanwy saw a murder—tells her older friend Joyce. Joyce boasts about this at party as her adventure. Mifanwy was not at party—ill that day—cold?

  Mrs Oliver is at Party—helping a friend—friend is:

  Jean Buckley? Or Gwenda Roberts?

  Her family consists of: Daughter of 14—Twin boys Henry and Thomas 12—A husband—Doctor? G.P.

  Bobbing for apples? Looking glass? (future husband) Snap Dragon—talk about origins of these rites—snapdragon—should be Christmas

  The following significant passage from Notebook 16 appears almost verbatim in Chapter 1. Here we see resonances of an earlier Christie as she teases and taunts the reader with hints of an earlier crime:

  Joyce—‘Oo-er—I saw a murder once’

  Grown up—‘Don’t say silly things, Joyce’

  Beatrice ‘Did you really—really and truly?

  Joan ‘Of course she didn’t—she’s just making it up’

  Joyce ‘I did see a murder—I did—I did’

  Ann ‘Why didn’t you go to the police about it, then’?

  Joyce ‘Because I didn’t know it was a murder’

  With the usual name changes—Mary Drake becomes Rowena and Sonia Karova is Olga Seminoff—she lists some of the characters:

  Possible characters

  Mary Drake—Giver of party (?)

  Mother or step-mother of Joyce [Mrs Reynolds]

  Alistair Drake—fair—good-looking—vague

  Sonia Karova—Au pair girl came to Barrets Green four or five years earlier

  The Drake—old Miss or Mrs. Kellway an Aunt lived with them—dies suddenly—left a will hand written, leaving money to Sonia—former wills left money to Alistair

  Girl ran away—never found—or—girl’s body found—or au pair girl disappeared—went off with a young man

  A school teacher—Miss Emlyn—her body found—seen with a man

  The notes indicate that much of the plot eluded Christie for a long time, as again and again she tried to get a coherent outline:

  A garden made out of a quarry by Mrs. Llewellyn Browne—rich eccentric elderly woman mad on gardens—sunk gardens—saw one in N. Ireland—spent a lot of money.

  David McArdle—young, artistic landscape planner—rumoured to be an elderly woman’s fancy—to make money out of them.

  Also au pair girl Alenka—looked after old lady—she was keen on David—(refer to Cornish Mystery— she thinks husband is giving her arsenic)

  Au pair girl—looked after old Mrs. Wilberforce—Aunt dies—her will found later—hidden in Chinese jar—(under carpet?)—money left to Olga—A supposedly written by her—but it was a forgery

  Mary Drake—rich runs place—husband—Julian—polio victim?—weak—works on board of hospital—draws beautifully—forges—or—is Mr. Drake her second husband—first one was polio victim—did she kill him? In order to marry No. 2

  But eventually she settled on a scenario that pleased her, and on pages headed ‘May 20th’ and ‘31st’ (1969) we find the following:

  Idea—Sonia (Olga) (Katrina) was friends with John Leslie Ferrier—he had a conviction for forgery. Michael induces Leslie to forge will—offers him money—Leslie then killed (knifed by Michael)—Or—Hit and Run by car. Mary in with him her husband killed (hit and run) Soon after he inherits—man in car—car was pushed from somewhere 15 miles away, Michael at a meeting in London

  Sequence—

  A. Mrs. L.B. makes will or codicil—Michael hears about it (from Olga)

  B. Gets Leslie to forge a codicil—pays him money—knifes him after a row between jealous girls.

  C. Death of Mrs. L.B. (overdose)

  D. Death of polio nephew—his wife adored him—Mrs. Mary had people playing bridge.

  E. Mrs. L.B. had written draft codicil of my will. She had written it—or shown it to girl—then changed its position (work out details). Possibly in library.

  Ideas and Points May 31st
>
  A. Cleaning woman goes to Mrs. Oliver about seeing codicil

  B. Poirot opens letter—Hungarian Herzoslovakian friend—has visited family—Olga Seminova—young man Olga was going to marry

  C. Poirot and Michael Wright—in wood—he was with Miranda.

  D. Miss Byways and hedges—Doctor dispensary—has cooked up prescription—little bottle of pills

  E. Leonard or Leopold was near Michael and Miranda—sly—knows something—nasty little eavesdropper—is Leopold the next victim? Leopold—scientific bent—eavesdropper—possible juvenile blackmailer—or his sister Ann

  This is, in fact, the plot she adopted, although why Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe should have written a codicil and then hidden it is never fully explained in the novel. And is it at all likely that Leopold, an 11-year-old, should blackmail a double murderer, thereby becoming another victim?

  The short story ‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’ hovers over the novel, as the extract below shows. Both feature an elderly lady ignoring her family to leave her fortune to a foreign companion and the subsequent scapegoating of the legatee. The ‘shells’ is a reference to the plot of the earlier story, where strychnine is concealed in an oyster and the shells later hidden in plain sight as a decoration in the garden:

  What did Joyce see? Mary Drake comes out from back door—shells—sticks them by path

  11

  Poirot Investigates:

  The Labours of Hercules

  …a passion for getting at the truth. In all the world there is nothing so curious, and so interesting and so beautiful as the truth…

  Three Act Tragedy, Act III Chapter 5