Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

by John Curran

  ‘To discover where you were I enlisted the services of some five or six bona fide medical men. These men obtained letters of introduction from an eminent alienist in Berlin. At each institution they visited the director was, by a curious coincidence, called away by telegram about an hour before the visitor’s arrival. One of my agents, an intelligent young American doctor, was allotted the Villa Eugenie and when visiting the paranoic patients he had little difficulty in recognising the genuine article when he saw you. For the rest, you know it.’

  Hertzlein was silent a moment.

  Then he said, and his voice held once again that moving and appealing note:

  ‘You have done a greater thing than you know. This is the beginning of peace—peace over Europe—peace in all the world! It is my destiny to lead mankind to Peace and Brotherhood.’

  Hercule Poirot said softly:

  ‘Amen to that…’

  xi

  Hercule Poirot sat on the terrace of a hotel at Geneva. A pile of newspapers lay beside him. Their headlines were big and black.

  The amazing news had run like wildfire all over the world.

  HERTZLEIN IS NOT DEAD.

  There had been rumours, announcements, counterannouncements—violent denials by the Central Empire Governments.

  And then, in the great public square of the capital city, Hertzlein had spoken to a vast mass of people—and there had been no doubt possible. The voice, the magnetism, the power…He had played upon them until he had them crying out in a frenzy.

  They had gone home shouting their new catchwords.

  Peace…Love…Brotherhood…The Young are to save the World.

  There was a rustle beside Poirot and the smell of an exotic perfume.

  Countess Vera Rossakoff plumped down beside him. She said:

  ‘Is it all real? Can it work?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Can there be such a thing as brotherhood in men’s hearts?’

  ‘There can be the belief in it.’

  She nodded thoughtfully. She said:

  ‘Yes, I see.’

  Then, with a quick gesture she said:

  ‘But they won’t let him go on with it. They’ll kill him. Really kill him this time.’

  Poirot said:

  ‘But his legend—the new legend—will live after him. Death is never an end.’

  Vera Rossakoff said:

  ‘Poor Hans Lutzmann.’

  ‘His death was not useless either.’

  Vera Rossakoff said:

  ‘You are not afraid of death, I see. I am! I do not want to talk about it. Let us be gay and sit in the sun and drink vodka.’

  ‘Very willingly, Madame. The more so since we have now got hope in our hearts.’

  He added:

  ‘I have a present for you, if you will deign to accept it.’

  ‘A present for me? But how charming.’

  ‘Excuse me a moment.’

  Hercule Poirot went into the hotel. He came back a few seconds later. He brought with him an enormous dog of singular ugliness.

  The Countess clapped her hands.

  ‘What a monster! How adorable! I like everything large—immense! Never have I seen such a big dog! And he is for me?’

  ‘If it pleases you to accept him.’

  ‘I shall adore him.’ She snapped her fingers. The large hound laid a trusting muzzle in her hand. ‘See, he is as gentle as a lamb with me! He is like the big fierce dogs we had in Russia in my father’s house.’

  Poirot stood back a little. His head went on one side. Artistically he was pleased. The savage dog, the flamboyant woman—yes, the tableau was perfect.

  The Countess inquired:

  ‘What’s his name?’

  Hercule Poirot replied, with the sigh of one whose labours are completed:

  ‘Call him Cerberus.’

  The Incident of The Dog’s Ball

  In this story we have a recognisable, and in many ways, a typical Christie setting—a small village, a wealthy old lady and her avaricious relatives. It is immediately apparent, even from the title, that there are strong links to the 1937 novel Dumb Witness. She retains the basic situation and it is possible to see the germs of ideas that she expanded—the brief mention of the Pym spiritualists, the all-important accident on the stairs—into larger parts in the novel. But unlike some other occasions when she reused an earlier idea or short story (‘The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest’ for example), here she gives us a different murderer and explanation.

  The plot device of Poirot receiving a plea for help from someone who dies before Poirot can talk to them is one that she had used on a few previous occasions. As early as The Murder on the Links (1923) his correspondent is already dead when Poirot arrives in France. Subsequently it is used in ‘How Does your Garden Grow?’ and ‘The Cornish Mystery’.

  When was it written?

  Of the Poirot and Hastings short stories, all with the exception of ‘Double Sin’ (September 1928) and ‘The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest’ (January 1932) were published in 1923/24. All the Poirot short stories after 1932 feature Poirot alone. No notes for any of those early stories survive and where Christie refers to them in the Notebooks, it is only as a reminder to herself of the possibility of expanding or reusing them. In many ways ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’ is similar in style, setting and tone to many others dating from the early 1920s and published in Poirot Investigates and Poirot’s Early Cases. But if it was written early in Christie’s career, this in turn raises the question of why it would have lain for almost 20 years without appearing in print. It does not appear in her agent’s records of work received by them and offered for sale. I hope to show that it dates from later in her career.

  In Notebook 30 it is included in a list (illustrated on the jacket of this book) which may help us to establish more accurately its date of composition:

  Ideas

  A. Dog’s Ball

  B. Death on the Nile

  C. Strychnine absorbed through skin?

  D. Double Alibi e.g. A and B murder C but—A is accused of trying to murder B at same time.

  E. Figurehead woman. Man back from Africa.

  F. Second Gong elaborated

  G. Mescaline

  H. Illegitimate daughter—apomorphine idea?

  Ideas to be incorporated

  Brownie camera idea

  Brooch with AO or OA on it AM. MA

  If we apply some of Poirot’s own methods we may be able to arrive at a timetable.

  This page from Notebook 30 is part-transcribed on the opposite page. Note the three intertwined fish logo in the top right-hand corner.

  Clue No. 1

  There are a number of immediately recognisable stories here: Dumb Witness or ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’ (A), Death on the Nile (B), They Do it with Mirrors (D) and Sad Cypress (H). ‘The Second Gong’ (F) was first published in June 1932 and both Dumb Witness and Death on the Nile in 1937, the former in July and the latter in November of that year. So it is reasonable to assume that the list was written between those dates, i.e. after ‘The Second Gong’ in June 1932 and before Dumb Witness in July 1937.

  Clue No. 2

  Unlike Item F on the list, ‘Second Gong elaborated’, there is no mention of elaboration in connection with ‘Dog’s Ball’, lending support to the theory that it did not then exist as a short story.

  Clue No. 3

  In the Christie Archive there are two letters from her agent Edmund Cork. One, dated 26 June 1936, acknowledges receipt of a revised version of Dumb Witness; another, dated 29 April 1936, expresses delight at her news that Death on the Nile was finished. We now have two new limits—later than June 1932 and before April 1936. Can we do better? I think so.

  Clue No. 4

  It is not unreasonable to suppose that the writing of Death on the Nile and Dumb Witness, both of them among her longest books, took over a year, which would bring our latest date back to April 1935. Our new dates are now June 1932 and Ap
ril 1935. And if we add two items of conjecture to the equation…

  Clue No. 5

  In the change from ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’ to Dumb Witness, the setting moves from Little Hemel, in the county of Kent, to Market Basing, Berkshire:

  General Plan P. receives letter—he and H—he writes—then he tears it up—No, we will go—Market Basing—The Lamb

  Market Basing is commonly assumed to bear more than a passing resemblance to Wallingford where Agatha Christie lived. She bought her house there in 1934 and this may account for the change of setting for the novel. There is evidence for this in the reference to The Lamb, a Wallingford pub, in Notebook 63. This is, admittedly, conjecture but as Poirot would say, ‘It gives one furiously to think, does it not?’

  Clue No. 6

  Miss Matilda Wheeler writes to Poirot on 12 April, a Wednesday, according to Poirot’s exposition: ‘Consider the dates, Hastings’ (section v). The 12th of April fell on a Wednesday in 1933.

  Conclusion?

  So we may conclude that ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’ was

  written, in all likelihood, in 1933.

  Why was it never published?

  Agatha Christie was now a household name. By the mid-1930s and Three Act Tragedy she was selling 10,000 hardbacks in the first year of a new title; she was one of the first writers to appear in paperback; her books had been dramatised and filmed. Why would any magazine not jump at the chance to publish a little gem of a new Poirot story, with its guarantee of increased sales? If it was offered to them…Again, we are in the realms of speculation, but I think the reason it never appeared in print is disappointingly mundane: it was never published because she never offered it to her agent. Because, in turn, she decided to turn it into a novel. Consider the evidence:

  Clue No. 1

  Her production of short stories had decreased from the multiple appearances of earlier years—27 in 1923 and 34 in 1924—to a mere half-dozen in 1933 and seven the following year. As she said when she refused to contribute to the Detection Club’s collaborative novels, ‘the energy to devise a series is much better employed in writing a couple of books’. She may well have thought the same about this short story and decided to turn it into a complete new Poirot book.

  Clue No. 2

  The Edmund Cork letter referred to above, dated 26 June 1936, acknowledges receipt of a revised version of Dumb Witness. This seems to refer to the first four chapters, a domestic English village setting, which were added to help ensure a US serialisation sale (it was serialised in the Saturday Evening Post in November/December 1936) and would lend support to the idea that it was an expansion of ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’. In the novel Hastings begins his firstperson narration only at Chapter 5; up to then the story is told in the omniscient third person with the assurance from Hastings, when he begins his narrative, that he did not witness the earlier events personally but that he ‘has set them down accurately enough’. And the opening scenes of both the short story and Chapter 5 are, apart from the month of the year, identical.

  Clue No. 3

  This not-offered-for-sale theory may also account for the major oversight involving the dates within the story. In section i Poirot says ‘No, April the 12th is the date [on which the letter was written] assuredly’ but in section iv he refers to August as the month when Miss Wheeler wrote the letter. An agent and/or an editor would surely have noticed a mistake of this magnitude, and one so germane to the plot.

  Conclusion

  In conclusion, it is entirely possible that ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’ was written in 1933 and never offered for publication but, instead, transformed, in 1935/36, into the novel Dumb Witness.

  ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’ in the Notebooks

  The story is referred to in two Notebooks, but in Notebook 30 it is mentioned only in passing as Idea A in the list above. In Notebook 66 we find more detail with resemblance to the short story rather than the novel:

  Dog’s Ball People

  Mrs Grant—typical old lady

  Miss Lawson—twittery companion

  Mollie Davidson—Niece—earns living in a beauty parlour

  Her young man—a ne’er do well

  Journalist—Ted Weedon—has been in prison for forgery—forged uncle’s name in City office—

  owing to girl pressing him for money—some actress

  James Grant—prim…respectable gentleman—

  Engaged to hospital nurse—Miss O’Gorman

  Ellen

  Cook

  The niece’s name—Mollie Davidson—remains the same, as does her occupation; and that name appears nowhere else in the notes for Dumb Witness. The nephew’s is amended only slightly to Graham, although that of the victim changes substantially from Mrs Grant to Miss Wheeler. Neither Mollie’s young man or James Grant’s fiancee features in the short story although Ted Weedon’s proclivity for forgery is transferred to Charles Arundell, the rechristened nephew in the novel.

  The Incident of the Dogs Ball[13] (From the notes of Captain Arthur Hastings O.B.E.)

  i

  I always look back upon the case of Miss Matilda Wheeler with special interest simply because of the curious way it worked itself out—from nothing at all as it were!

  I remember that it was a particularly hot airless day in August. I was sitting in my friend Poirot’s rooms wishing for the hundredth time that we could be in the country and not in London. The post had just been brought in. I remember the sound of each envelope in turn being opened neatly, as Poirot did everything, by means of a little paper-cutter. Then would come his murmured comment and the letter in question would be allotted to its proper pile. It was an orderly monotonous business.

  And then suddenly there came a difference. A longer pause, a letter not read once but twice. A letter that was not docketed in the usual way but which remained in the recipient’s hand. I looked across at my friend. The letter now lay on his knee. He was staring thoughtfully across the room.

  ‘Anything of interest, Poirot?’ I asked.

  ‘Cela dépend. Possibly you would not think so. It is a letter from an old lady, Hastings, and it says nothing—but nothing at all.’

  ‘Very useful,’ I commented sarcastically.

  ‘N’est ce pas? It is the way of old ladies, that. Round and round the point they go! But see for yourself. I shall be interested to know what you make of it.’

  He tossed me the letter. I unfolded it and made a slight grimace. It consisted of four closely written pages in a spiky and shaky handwriting with numerous alterations, erasions, and copious underlining.

  ‘Must I really read it?’ I asked plaintively. ‘What is it about?’

  ‘It is, as I told you just now, about nothing.’

  Hardly encouraged by this remark I embarked unwillingly on my task. I will confess that I did not read it very carefully. The writing was difficult and I was content to take guesses on the context.

  The writer seemed to be a Miss Matilda Wheeler of The Laburnums, Little Hemel. After much doubt and indecision, she wrote, she had felt herself emboldened to write to M. Poirot. At some length she went on to state exactly how and where she had heard M. Poirot’s name mentioned. The matter was such, she said, that she found it extremely difficult to consult anyone in Little Hemel—and of course there was the possibility that she might be completely mistaken—that she was attaching a most ridiculous significance to perfectly natural incidents. In fact she had chided herself unsparingly for fancifulness, but ever since the incident of the dog’s ball she had felt most uneasy. She could only hope to hear from M. Poirot if he did not think the whole thing was a mare’s nest. Also, perhaps, he would be so kind as to let her know what his fee would be? The matter, she knew, was very trivial and unimportant, but her health was bad and her nerves not what they had been and worry of this kind was very bad for her, and the more she thought of it, the more she was convinced that she was right, though, of course, she would not dream of saying
anything.[14]

  That was more or less the gist of the thing. I put it down with a sigh of exasperation.

  ‘Why can’t the woman say what she’s talking about? Of all the idiotic letters!’

  ‘N’est ce pas? A regrettable failure to employ order and method in the mental process.’

  ‘What do you think she does mean? Not that it matters much. Some upset to her pet dog, I suppose. Anyway, it’s not worth taking seriously.’

  ‘You think not, my friend?’

  ‘My dear Poirot, I cannot see why you are so intrigued by this letter.’

  ‘No, you have not seen. The most interesting point in that letter—you have passed it by unnoticed.’

  ‘What is the interesting point?’

  ‘The date, mon ami.’

  I looked at the heading of the letter again.

  ‘April 12th,’ I said slowly.

  ‘C’est curieux, n’est ce pas?’ Nearly three months ago.’[15]

  ‘I don’t suppose it has any significance. She probably meant to put August 12th.’

  ‘No, no, Hastings. Look at the colour of the ink. That letter was written a good time ago. No, April 12th is the date assuredly. But why was it not sent? And if the writer changed her mind about sending it, why did she keep it and send it now?’

  He rose.

  ‘Mon ami—the day is hot. In London one stifles, is it not so? Then how say you to a little expedition into the country? To be exact, to Little Hemel which is, I see, in the County of Kent.’

  I was only too willing and then and there we started off on our visit of exploration.

  ii

  Little Hemel we found to be a charming village, untouched in the miraculous way that villages can be when they are two miles from a main road. There was a hostelry called The George, and there we had lunch—a bad lunch I regret to say, as is the way at country inns.

  An elderly waiter attended to us, a heavy breathing man, and as he brought us two cups of a doubtful fluid called coffee, Poirot started his campaign.