by John Curran
Apart from her crime and detective stories, tales of the supernatural, romance and fantasy all appeared under her name in many of the multitude of magazines that filled the bookstalls. Many of the stories later published in the collections The Mysterious Mr Quin, The Hound of Death and The Listerdale Mystery were written and first published in the 1920s. And, of course, it was during the 1920s that Miss Marple made her first appearance, in the short story ‘The Tuesday Night Club’, published in The Royal Magazine in December 1927. With the exception of the final entry, ‘Death by Drowning’, the stories that appear in The Thirteen Problems were all written in the 1920s and appeared in two batches, the first six between December 1927 and May 1928, and the second between December 1929 and May 1930. In 1924 her first poetry collection The Road of Dreams was published. And it seems likely that her own stage adaptation of The Secret of Chimneys was begun in the late 1920s, as was the unpublished and unperformed script of the macabre short story ‘The Last Séance’.
The other important career decision taken in 1923 was to employ the services of a literary agent, Edmund Cork. The first task undertaken by Cork was to extricate Christie from a very one-sided contract with The Bodley Head Ltd and negotiate a more favourable arrangement with Collins, the publisher with which she was destined to remain for the rest of her life; as, indeed, she did with Edmund Cork.
Three of the best short stories Christie ever wrote were published during this decade. In January 1925 ‘Traitor Hands’, later to achieve immortality as the play, and subsequent film, Witness for the Prosecution, appeared in Flynn’s Weekly. The much-anthologised ‘Accident’ was published in the Daily Express in 1929; this was later adapted by other hands into the one-act play Tea for Three. And ‘Philomel Cottage’, which spawned five screen versions as Love from a Stranger, appeared in The Grand in November 1924.
Finally, the first stage and screen version of her work appeared during the 1920s. Alibi, adapted for the stage by Michael Morton from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, opened in May 1928 while the same year saw the opening of films of The Secret Adversary – as Die Abenteuer G.m.b.h. – and The Passing of Mr Quinn, based loosely on the short story ‘The Coming of Mr Quin’.
This hugely prolific decade shows Christie gaining an international reputation while experimenting with form and structure within, and outside, the detective genre. Although her first novel was very definitely a detective story, her output for the following nine years returned only three times to the form in which she was eventually to gain immortality.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
21 January 1921
* * *
Arthur Hastings goes to Styles Court, the home of his friend John Cavendish, to recuperate during the First World War. He senses tension in the household and this is confirmed when his hostess, John’s stepmother, is poisoned. Luckily, a Belgian refugee staying nearby is an old friend, a retired policeman called Hercule Poirot.
* * *
In her Autobiography Agatha 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, at the encouragement of her mother, during a two-week seclusion in the Moorland Hotel. 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 in a 1955 radio broadcast) and some short stories and sketches. While the story of the bet is realistic, it is clear that this alone would not be stimulus enough to plot, sketch and write a successful book. There was obviously an innate 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. Eventually, in 1919, John Lane, co-founder of The Bodley Head Ltd, 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 her took advantage of Agatha Christie’s publishing naivety. She explains in her Autobiography that she was ‘in no frame of mind to study agreements or even think about them’. Her delight at the prospect of publication, combined with the conviction that she was not going to pursue a writing career, persuaded her to sign. Remarkably, the actual contract is for The Mysterious Affair of (rather than ‘at’) 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 was to lead to much correspondence over the following years.
Later, as her productivity, success and popularity increased and she realised what she had signed, she insisted that if she offered a book she was fulfilling her side of the contract whether or not The Bodley Head accepted it. When they 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 the non-crime Vision, described in Janet Morgan’s Agatha Christie: A Biography as a ‘fantasy’, as her third title. The fact that her publisher had 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 Bodley Head. 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 to a confident and business-like professional with a resolute interest in every aspect of her books – jacket design, marketing, royalties, serialisation, translation and cinema rights.
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’. The readers were much taken with the character of Poirot – ‘the exuberant personality of M. Poirot who is a very welcome variation on the “detective” of romance’; ‘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 the manuscript’s 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 appears as A.M. Christie, another reader refers to ‘Mr. Christie’.
Despite these favourable readers’ reports, there were further delays and after a serialisation in The Weekly Times – the first time a ‘first’ novel had been chosen – beginning in February 1920, Christie wrote to Mr Willett at The Bodley Head in October that year 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. Eventually, 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 and The Bodley Head, cover design and blurbs also featured regularly throughout her career in her correspondence with Collins.
As we have seen, one of the readers’ reports mentioned the John Cavendish trial. In the original manuscript, Poirot’s explanation of the crime is given in the form of his evidence in the witness box during the trial. In her Autobiography Christie describes John Lane’s verdict on her manuscript, including his opinion that this courtroom scene did not convince and his request that she amend it. She agreed to a rewrite and although the explanation of the crime itself remains the same, instead of giving it in the course of the judicial process, Poirot holds forth in the drawing room of Styles in the kind of scene that was to be replicated in many later books.
Incredibly, almost a century later – it was written, in all probability, in 1916 – the deleted scene has survived in the pages of Notebook 37, which also contains two brief and somewhat enigmatic notes about the novel. Equally incredible is the illegibility of the handwriting. It was written in pencil, with much crossing out and many insertions. This is difficult enough, but an added complication lies in the fact that Christie often replaced the deleted words with alternatives, squeezed in, sometimes at an angle, above the original. And although the explanation of the crime is, in essence, the same as the published version, the published text was of limited help. The wording is often different and some names have changed. Of the Notebooks, this exercise in transcription was the most challenging of all. The fact that it is Agatha Christie’s and Hercule Poirot’s first case made the extra effort worthwhile.
In the version that follows I have amended the usual Christie punctuation of dashes to full stops and commas, and I have added quotation marks throughout. I use square brackets where an obvious, or necessary, word is missing in the original; a few illegible words have been omitted. Footnotes have been used to draw attention to points of particular interest.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The story so far . . .
When wealthy Emily Inglethorp, owner of Styles Court, remarries, her new husband Alfred is viewed by her stepsons, John and Lawrence, and her faithful retainer, Evelyn Howard, as a fortune-hunter. John’s wife, Mary, is perceived as being over-friendly with the enigmatic Dr Bauerstein, a German and an expert on poisons. Also staying at Styles Court, while working in the dispensary of the local hospital, is Emily’s protégée Cynthia Murdoch. Then Evelyn walks out after a bitter row. On the night of 17 July Emily dies from strychnine poisoning while her family watches helplessly. Hercule Poirot, called in by his friend Arthur Hastings, agrees to investigate and pays close attention to Emily’s bedroom. And then John Cavendish is arrested . . .
Poirot returned late that night.3 I did not see him until the following morning. He was beaming and greeted me with the utmost affection.
‘Ah, my friend – all is well – all will now march.’
Notebook 37 showing the beginning of the deleted chapter from The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
‘Why,’ I exclaimed, ‘You don’t mean to say you have got—’
‘Yes, Hastings, yes – I have found the missing link.4 Hush . . .’
On Monday the hearing was resumed5 and Sir E.H.W. [Ernest Heavywether] opened the case for the defence. Never, he said, in the course of his experience had a murder charge rested on slighter evidence. Let them take the evidence against John Cavendish and sift it impartially.
What was the main thing against him? That the powdered strychnine had been found in his drawer. But that drawer was an unlocked one and he submitted that there was no evidence to show that it was the prisoner who placed it there. It was, in fact, a wicked and malicious effort on the part of some other person to bring the crime home to the prisoner. He went on to state that the Prosecution had been unable to prove to any degree that it was the prisoner who had ordered the beard from Messrs Parksons. As for the quarrel with his mother and his financial constraints – both had been most grossly exaggerated.
His learned friend had stated that if [the] prisoner had been an honest man he would have come forward at the inquest and explained that it was he and not his step-father who had been the participator in that quarrel. That view was based upon a misapprehension. The prisoner, on returning to the house in the evening, had been told at once6 that his mother had now had a violent dispute with her husband. Was it likely, was it probable, he asked the jury, that he should connect the two? It would never enter his head that anyone could ever mistake his voice for that of Mr. A[lfred] Inglethorp. As for the construction that [the] prisoner had destroyed a will – this mere idea was absurd. [The] prisoner had presented at the Bar and, being well versed in legal matters, knew that the will formerly made in his favour was revoked automatically. He had never heard a more ridiculous suggestion! He would, however, call evidence which would show who did destroy the will, and with what motive.
Finally, he would point out to the jury that there was evidence against other persons besides John Cavendish. He did not wish to accuse Mr. Lawrence Cavendish in any way; nevertheless, the evidence against him was quite as strong – if not stronger – than that against his brother.
Just at that point, a note was handed to him. As he read it, his eyes brightened, his burly figure seemed to swell and double its size.
‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ he said, and there was a new ring in his voice, ‘this has been a murder of peculiar cunning and complexity. I will first call the prisoner. He shall tell you his own story and I am sure you will agree with me that he cannot be guilty. Then I will call a Belgian gentleman, a very famous member of the Belgian police force in past years, who has interested himself in the case and who has important proofs that it was not the prisoner who committed this crime. I call the prisoner.’
John in the box acquitted himself well. His manner, quiet and direct, was all in his favour.7 At the end of his examination he paused and said, ‘I should like to say one thing. I utterly refute and disapprove of Sir Ernest Heavywether’s insinuation about my brother Lawrence. My brother, I am convinced, had no more to do with this crime than I had.’
Sir Ernest, remaining seated, noted with a sharp eye that John’s protest had made a favourable effect upon the jury. Mr Bunthorne cross-examined.8
‘You say that you never thought it possible that your quarrel with your mother was identical with the one spoken of at the inquest – is not that very surprising?’
‘No, I do not think so – I knew that my mother and Mr Inglethorp had quarrelled. It never occurred to me that they had mistaken my voice for his.’
‘Not even when the servant Dorcas repeated certain fragments of this conversation which you must have recognised?’
‘No, we were both angry and said many things in the heat of the moment which we did not really mean and which we did not recollect afterwards. I could not have told you which exact words I used.’
Mr Bunthorne sniffed incredulously.
‘About this note which you have produced so opportunely, is the handwriting not familiar to you?’
‘No.’
‘Do you not think it bears a marked resemblance to your own handwriting?’
‘No – I don’t think so.’
‘I put it to you that it is your own handwriting.’
‘No.’
‘I put it to you that, anxious to prove an alibi, you conceived the idea of a fictitious appointment and wrote this note to yourself in order to bear out your statement.’
‘No.’
‘I put it to you that at the time you claim to have been waiting about in Marldon Wood,9 you were really in Styles St Mary, in the chemist’s shop, buying strychnine in the name of Alfred Inglethorp.’
‘No – that is a lie.’
That completed Mr Bunthorne’s CE [cross examination]. He sat down and Sir Ernest, rising, announced that his next witness would be M. Hercule Poirot.
Poirot strutted into the witness box
like a bantam cock.10 The little man was transformed; he was foppishly attired and his face beamed with self confidence and complacency. After a few preliminaries Sir Ernest asked: ‘Having been called in by Mr. Cavendish what was your first procedure?’
‘I examined Mrs Inglethorp’s bedroom and found certain . . .?’
‘Will you tell us what these were?’
‘Yes.’
With a flourish Poirot drew out his little notebook.
‘Voila,’ he announced, ‘There were in the room five points of importance.11 I discovered, amongst other things, a brown stain on the carpet near the window and a fragment of green material which was caught on the bolt of the communicating door between that room and the room adjoining, which was occupied by Miss Cynthia Paton.’12
‘What did you do with the fragment of green material?’
‘I handed it over to the police, who, however, did not consider it of importance.’
‘Do you agree?’
‘I disagree with that most utterly.’
‘You consider the fragment important?’
‘Of the first importance.’
‘But I believe,’ interposed the judge, ‘that no-one in the house had a green garment in their possession.’
‘I believe so, Mr Le Juge,’ agreed Poirot facing in his direction. ‘And so at first, I confess, that disconcerted me – until I hit upon the explanation.’
Everybody was listening eagerly.
‘What is your explanation?’
‘That fragment of green was torn from the sleeve of a member of the household.’