Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets From Her Notebooks

by John Curran

When was Curtain written? In Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks I showed that the writing of Miss Marple’s last case, Sleeping Murder, took place much later than was formerly believed, and certainly not during the Blitz of the Second World War. Because there are no dated pages among the notes for Curtain, the case here is less clear. Sad Cypress, mentioned in Chapter 3 (‘the case of Evelyn [Elinor] Carlisle’), was published in March 1940 with a US serialisation beginning in November 1939. The address on the manuscript of Curtain is ‘Greenway House’, which Christie left in October 1942 on its requisition by the US navy. These are the two parameters on the writing of Curtain.

  But from the evidence of the Notebooks it would seem that it was written earlier, rather than later, than previously supposed. The clearest evidence for this is in Notebook 62. The early pages of this Notebook contain the notes for the stories that make up The Labours of Hercules, beginning with ‘The Horses of Diomedes’ on page 3 and ‘The Apples of the Hesperides’ on page 5. The first page contains a short list of ‘Books read and liked’ and the latest publication date involved is 1940. (The list includes Overture to Death, the 1939 Ngaio Marsh title and her first to be published by Collins Crime Club.) Sandwiched between this list and the first page of notes for ‘The Horses of Diomedes’ is a page headed unequivocally ‘Corrections Curtain’; page 4 continues with the corrections and the final revisions appear below the half-page of notes for ‘The Apples of the Hesperides’; these stories were published in The Strand in June and September 1940 respectively. Combined with the reference on the first page of the novel to ‘a second and a more desperate war’, this would seem to place the writing of this novel in the early days of the Second World War.

  For the reader, the main difficulty with Curtain is one of fitting the case into the Poirot casebook, containing as it does inevitable chronological inconsistencies for a book written 35 years before its 1975 publication. It is impossible to state with any certainty when the book is set. Although he has been married for over 50 years, Hastings has a 21-year-old daughter. Poirot has declined dramatically since his previous appearance three years earlier in Elephants Can Remember; and even the most generous estimate must place his age at around 120. In Chapter 3 there are references to cases that were all written, and published, during the late 1930s or early 1940s – ‘Triangle at Rhodes’, The A.B.C. Murders, Death on the Nile, Sad Cypress; the main character in the last of these is, oddly, referred to as Evelyn, instead of Elinor, Carlisle. Countess Vera Rosakoff (The Big Four, ‘The Capture of Cerberus’, ‘The Double Clue’) is also mentioned in the same chapter and the bloodstained butcher, also from The Big Four, is mentioned in passing in Chapter 5. There is a reference in Chapter 15 to the original Styles case as happening ‘20 years ago and more’; the earlier case could not have been simply ignored and this reference is vague enough to have little chronological significance.

  The question that has to be asked, but unfortunately cannot be answered, is: Did Christie write Curtain intending that it would appear long after many ‘future’ cases of Poirot had been published, or did she write it as if she was writing it after many such cases had been published? Are references to ‘long ago’ (Chapter 7) actually to long ago or to the ‘long ago’ Christie imagined would have elapsed by the time the book was published? There is no indication on any of the the original typescripts of any major deletions or updating, putting paid to the theory that the resurrected manuscript received major surgery to remove obvious chronological anomalies. One of the surviving typescripts contains minor corrections, and these correspond to the list of corrections in Notebook 62, which seems to date from the early 1940s, possibly 1940 itself.

  But if you accept that the book was written many years prior to publication and treat it as a ‘lost’ case, then these problems disappear and it is possible to enjoy this masterwork of plotting for what it is – the ultimate Christie conjuring trick. Technically it is a master class in plotting a detective story. Arguably there is no murder, although there are three deaths. The breakdown is as follows: Colonel Luttrell attempts to murder his wife, while Mrs Franklin attempts to murder her husband; Hastings proposes to murder Allerton and is responsible for the unintentional murder (i.e. manslaughter) of Mrs Franklin; and Poirot’s ‘execution’ of Norton is followed by his own death.

  Hastings’ intended murder of Allerton is foiled by Poirot, who realises what he means to do. Mrs Franklin, thanks to an innocent action on the part of Hastings, is hoist with her own petard when she unintentionally drinks the poison she intended for her husband. Colonel Luttrell’s shooting of his wife is a failure because, as Poirot puts it, ‘he wanted to miss.’ And Poirot, in effect, executes Norton. In this regard, it should be remembered that Poirot was not above taking the law into his own hands and had done so, to a greater or lesser degree, throughout his career. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Peril at End House, Dumb Witness, Death on the Nile, Appointment with Death and The Hollow, he ‘facilitated’ (at least) the suicide of the culprit. And in Murder on the Orient Express and ‘The Chocolate Box’ he allowed the killers to evade (legal) justice.

  The references to Curtain are scattered over nine Notebooks. Notebooks 30, 44 and 61 each have a one-page reference, while half a dozen other Notebooks have a few pages each, but the bulk of the plotting is contained in Notebooks 62 and 65 (ten pages each) and Notebook 60 with over 40 pages. It is difficult to be sure if this was because Christie mulled it over for a long time, jotting down a note whenever she got an idea, or because the plotting of it presented a challenge to her creativity. I would incline towards the latter theory, as many of the jottings are a reiteration of the same situation with changes of name, character, profession or other minor detail. This would seem to indicate that the basic idea (Styles as a guest house and Poirot as an invalid inhabitant) remains the same and that, as she intended this to be Poirot’s swan song (and the notes would back this up), she wanted it to be stunning; as indeed it is.

  In Curtain Agatha Christie played her last great trick on her public. Throughout her career she fooled readers into believing the innocent guilty and, more importantly, the guilty innocent. Her first novel made the most obvious parties the guilty ones; a few years later she made the narrator the murderer. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s she rang the changes on the least likely character – the investigating policeman, the child, the likeable hero, the supposed victim; she had everyone guilty and everyone victim. She repeated the Ackroyd trick in her last decade but made it unrecognisable until the last chapter. By the time of Curtain her only remaining least likely character was the one she chose – Poirot, her little Belgian hero. And in so doing, her title was also the only possible one – Curtain.

  The idea of a ‘last case’ for Poirot was one that Christie toyed with intermittently while plotting earlier titles. The following references are scattered through seven Notebooks and all refer to such a case, often with the name Curtain included:

  The cover of a typescript of Curtain. Edmund Cork of Hughes Massie and Co. was Christie’s agent from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd onwards.

  The title page of the Curtain typescript, showing the title and name-and-address in Christie’s own handwriting.

  Curtain

  Poirot investigates story of death believed caused by ricin

  B. Poirot’s Last Case

  Styles – turned into convalescent home or Super Hotel

  A. Poirot’s Last Case

  History repeats itself – Styles now a guest house

  Double murder – that is to say: A poisons B [and] B stabs A but really owing to plan by C (perhaps P’s last case?)

  Curtain

  Letter received by Hastings on boat. His daughter with him – Rose? Pat? At Styles

  The Unsolved Murder – Poirot’s Last Case?

  The Curtain

  H[astings] comes to Styles – has heard about P[oirot]

  Short Stories

  Scene of one – Road up to Bassae? (Hercule’s last case)

  T
hat last, very short and cryptic example from Notebook 60 refers to the Temple of Bassae in Greece, one of the places that Christie visited on her honeymoon. Both her Autobiography and Max Mallowan’s Memoirs mention it, mainly because it involved a ten-hour mule ride. At first glance it seems that she was considering it as a possible setting for Curtain but it is far more likely that it is the last of The Labours of Hercules she had in mind, although in the end it came to nothing. This would have been totally in keeping with the international flavour of many of those cases (see Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks).

  Possible characters are considered in six Notebooks, with Hastings and/or his daughter appearing in many of the lists:

  The people

  Sherman is the man who likes power – attractive

  personality. Victim is Caroline

  Curtain Characters

  Judith – H’s daughter

  Mrs Merrit – tiresome invalid

  Her husband – tropical researcher medicine

  Girl – B.Sc. has done work for him – very devoted

  Or

  Judith

  Miss Clarendon – nurse companion – fine woman – experienced – mentions a ‘case’ of murder – ‘I once had to give evidence in a murder case’

  Sir C. Squire – fine English type – wants to fight – H. terrifically taken by him –

  2nd set of people?

  Betty Rice (old friend of Landor) – A difficult life – her husband takes drugs

  Dr. Amberly – clever man tropical medicine

  Mrs Amberly tiresome invalid but with charm

  Sir Roger Clymer – old school tie – fine fellow – has known Mrs A[llerton] as girl

  Miss Clarendon – a nurse companion

  A girl, Betty, and her friend come down together – she is an archaeologist or B.Sc. or something in love with Dr. Amberley

  Or

  Judith H’s daughter

  Superior and unpleasant young man? (Mrs A’s son by former marriage?)

  At Styles

  Dr Amory – keen man of forty-five – wants to go to Africa, study tropical medicine

  His wife, Kitty – invalid imaginaire – a blight but attractive

  Governess Bella Chapstowe

  Nurse companion Miss Olroyd

  Martin Wright – cave man – naturalist

  People

  John Franklin

  Adela Franklin

  Langton

  Nurse Barrett

  ? Mrs. L[angton] (Emilia?)

  Roger Boyd

  Old Colonel Luxmoore

  Mrs Luxmoore

  People there

  The Darwins – Fred – patient, quiet – his wife querulous

  He wants to go off to Africa – his wife won’t let him

  Betty Rousdon – a girl staying there – very keen on his work

  Wife’s companion – Miss Collard – principal false clue

  John Selby – cave man – fond of birds – a naturalist – becomes great friends with Joan Hastings

  Girl and mother (latter impossible)

  Young man who wants to marry her

  Has Selby a wife?

  Col. Westmacott and wife – (like Luards?) some secondary resentment between them

  Langdon – lame man – keen on birds – has alibi genuine for some previous case

  P[oirot] – invalid – thinks Egypt etc. not George another valet – (not totally helpless)

  Triangle drama

  (Hastings daughter?) sec. to scientific man – nagging invalid wife who won’t let him go to S. America

  Some of the characters seem to have been decided early on and, apart from name changes, remained constant until the finished novel. They include a doctor interested in tropical medicine and his invalid wife, under various names (the Amberleys/Merrits/Darwins/Amorys/Franklins); a young professional woman (Betty Rousdon/‘a Girl’/Judith) in love with him and his work; a nurse companion (Miss Collard/Oldroyd/Clarendon/Nurse Barrett); an ‘old school tie’ (Roger Boyd/Sir C. Squire/Sir Roger Clymer); a naturalist (Sherman/Martin Wright/Selby); and the owners of Styles (the Westmacotts/Luxmoores). These remain, in one form or another, through most of the notes. The young professional woman was not always Hastings’ daughter, Judith; this amendment was introduced possibly in order to give Hastings the necessary motive for murder.

  Note the one-time proposal to use the name Westmacott for the owners of Styles. Although it is now well known that Mary Westmacott is a pseudonym for Agatha Christie, at the time these notes were written it was a carefully preserved secret. The reference to the Luards in the final extract is to a once-famous real life murder case in 1908 involving a love triangle.

  Eventually, in Notebook 60, we get the listing that is nearest to the novel. At this point, as in some of the earlier listings, there was to be a Mrs Langton. However, Langton as a ‘loner’ makes more sense, psychologically as well as practically.

  People

  Judith Hastings

  John Franklin

  Barbara Franklin

  Nurse Campbell [Craven]

  Sir Boyd Carrington

  Major Neville Nugent [Allerton] (seducer) really after Nurse

  Col and Mrs Luttrell own the place

  Miss Cole – handsome woman of 35

  Langtons [Norton]

  Chapter 2 of the novel lists the cases on which Poirot bases his assertion that a death will take place at Styles in the near future. Some of the scenarios sketched below, from Notebooks 60 and 65, tally closely with that chapter though, in general, details have been selected and amalgamated:

  The Cases

  On a yacht – a row – man pitched another overboard – a quarrel – wife had had nervous breakdown

  Girl killed an overbearing aunt – nagged at her – young man in offing – forbidden to see or write to him

  Husband – elderly invalid – young wife – gave him arsenic – confessed

  Sister-in-law – walked into police station and admitted she’d killed her brother’s wife. Old mother (of wife) lived with them bedridden [elements of the Litchfield Case]

  Curtain The Cases

  Man who drinks – young wife – man she is fond of – she kills husband – arsenic? [the Etherington Case] (Langton’s her cousin – or friend?)

  Man in village – his wife and a lodger – he shoots them both – or her and the kid (It comes out L[angton] lived in that village) [elements of the Riggs Case]

  Old lady – the daughter or granddaughter – elder polishes off old lady to give young sister a chance [elements of the Litchfield Case]

  The only scenario not to appear in any way is the first one. In many ways these recapitulations are reminiscent of a similar set-up in Mrs McGinty’s Dead, where four earlier and notorious murder cases affect the lives of the inhabitants of Broadhinny.

  The following extract, from Notebook 61, appears as Idea F in a list that includes the germs of Sad Cypress (‘illegitimate daughter – district nurse’) and ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’ (‘The Second Gong – Miss Lingard efficient secretary’) and is immediately followed by detailed notes for Appointment with Death, published in 1938. As this jotting was probably written around late 1936 (‘Dead Man’s Mirror’ was first published in March 1937 in Murder in the Mews) this would put the early plotting of Curtain years ahead of its (supposed) writing. The theory that Christie wrote Curtain and Sleeping Murder in case she was killed in the Blitz begins to look questionable, as the 1940 Blitz was an unimagined horror four years earlier. Nor can it have been a book held in reserve in case of a ‘dry’ season when she didn’t feel like writing. Curtain could only be published at the end of Poirot’s (and Christie’s) career, so it can in no way be considered a nest egg. Ironically, despite the fact that this is a very precise and concise summation of Curtain, this Notebook contains no further reference to it.

  The Unsolved Mystery Poirot’s Last Case?

  P very decayed – H and Bella [Hastings’ wife, whom he met in The Murder on the
Links] come home. P shows H newspaper cuttings – all referring to deaths – about 7 – 4 people have been hanged or surprise that no evidence. At all 7 deaths one person has been present – the name is cut out. P says that person X is present in house. There will be another murder. There is – a man is killed – that man is really X himself – executed

  And this extract, from Notebook 62, mentions another important point – the absence of George and his replacement with another ‘valet’:

  Hastings arriving at the station for Styles – Poirot – black hair but crippled – Georges away – the other man – a big one – quite dumb

  After dinner (various people noted) P in his room gives H cases to read – X

  Notebook 65 recaps this with some added detail – Poirot and Egypt, the sadism angle – but the note about warning the victim is puzzling. As he says in Chapter 3, Poirot knows from his experiences in Death on the Nile and ‘Triangle at Rhodes’ how fruitless warning a potential murderer can be. And he makes the point in the same chapter that warning the victim in this case is impossible as he does not know who the victim is to be. So why is the ‘Warn the victim?’ question answered with ‘I have done that’?

  The Curtain

  H comes to Styles – has heard about P from Egypt – has arthritis – Georges is back with him – Master much worse since he went to Egypt.

  I am here because a crime is going to be committed. You are going to prevent it

  No – I can’t do that

  Warn the victim?

  I have done that

  It is certain to happen because the person who has made up his mind will not relent

  Listen –

  The story of 5 crimes – H stupefied – no motive in ordinary sense? No – spoilt – sadistic

  The first ‘murder’, that of Mrs Luttrell by her husband, is considered in Notebook 60. The finished novel follows these notes accurately, even down to the quotation from Julius Caesar: