Agatha Christie

by Janet Morgan

  The first working title for The Thirteen Problems was ‘Thirteen at Dinner’. Discarded there, this became the title of the American edition of Agatha’s next book, Lord Edgware Dies. Most of this story was written in Rhodes, to which Agatha took herself for a few weeks in the autumn of 1931 before joining Max at Nineveh, where he was now working with Campbell Thompson. Agatha, who was missing Max, sent him long, chatty letters from the Grand Hôtel des Roses. Her routine was simple:

  Breakfast at 8 (now I haven’t got you); Meditation ‘till 9. Violent hitting of typewriter ’till 11.30 (or the end of the chapter – sometimes if it is a lovely day I cheat to make it a short one!) then to the beach and plunge into the sea – then lie on the beach with a bare back as far as possible. 1.30 lunch – then a wander round the town – or else a chat on the terrace. After tea some more work (sometimes no work but a sleep) 8.30 dinner – and afterwards work if I’ve slept – or if I have been industrious, intellectual conversation … punctuated by mosquito slapping. Then to bed inside my mosquito net all alone.

  As with all Agatha’s detective stories, Lord Edgware Dies was meticulously plotted before she began to write. Her central idea for the plot came from watching the American entertainer Ruth Draper, who had been performing dramatic monologues in London since the nineteen-twenties, transform herself with slight but subtle disguises into one person after another. Having outlined her plot, Agatha’s next step was to assemble the characters. She wrote to Max from Rhodes: ‘Lord Edgware is getting on nicely. He is dead – Carlotta Adams (Ruth Draper) is dead – and the nephew who succeeds to the property is just talking to Poirot about his beautiful alibi! There is also a film actor with a face like a “Greek God” – but he’s looking a bit haggard at present. In fact a very popular mixture, I think. Just a bit cheap, perhaps.’ The novel was finished at Nineveh at a table bought for £3 according to Max, £10 according to Agatha, and in either case, according to the notoriously economical Campbell Thompson, an extravagance.

  Just before Christmas 1931 Agatha left Max and travelled back by herself on the Orient Express. It was a catastrophic journey, in retrospect hilarious. As soon as she got into Campden Street, at six o’clock in the morning, she sent him an account of her adventures. A long letter, it is nonetheless worth giving in full, not just because it shows how swiftly and entertainingly she could tell a story but also because it gave her the setting – and some elements of the characters – for a novel she wrote in 1933, Murder on the Orient Express.

  My darling, What a journey! Started out from Stamboul in a violent thunder storm. We went very slowly during the night and about 3 AM stopped altogether. I thought we were at a frontier at about eight o’clock. It seemed to me that even for a Lower Nation the frontier halt was excessive – so I got up, discovered we were in the middle of nowhere and perturbed officials hurrying up and down the train who said the line has flooded further along, ‘C’est une inondation, Madame – mais nous ne savons rien – mais rien!’

  A chatty breakfast in the dining car ensued. ‘All boys together’ spirit! There was an elderly American lady who was catching the Acquitania [sic] at Cherbourg on 16th – a funny little Englishman from Smyrna – a little fussy man but very interested in archaeology – an old gentleman of 85 with a most amusing wife of 70 with a hideous but very attractive face – I think they were Greek but they were some of the richest people in Istanbul and the old boy was going to attend a conference at Buda Pesht. Sitting with them was a Hungarian Minister and his wife and they all four talked very entertaining diplomatic scandal in French. There were also two Danish lady missionaries who never seemed to be there because they had scant food and only came to breakfast. There was also, most fortunately, a director of the Wagons Lits Company. But for his presence I think we should be there still! He was in the same coach as I was and everyone would come to report to him – so I was always in the position of having inside information. I used to creep to the door and listen. ‘Oui, M. le Directeur. Non, M. le D. On répond qu’on ne sait rien.’

  It got awfully cold after breakfast and the engineer was sent off to bring back water and ‘chaudron pour le chauffage’. We spent the morning wrapped up in rugs and the conductor fetched my hot water bottle and said that last time they had stayed in that particular place three weeks!! He said that of course the passengers had got tired of it at last and had gone back to Stamboul. He said it was all very difficult because the line was washed away in three places – two of them in Greek territory and one in Turkish – and the question of who was to mend what was very complicated. He added ‘C’est un sâle pays. Ces gens là ne feront rien.’

  Mrs Hilton, the American lady, was by now full of USA bewilderment. ‘But why aren’t they doing anything? Why, in the States they’d have motored some automobiles along right away – why, they’d have brought aeroplanes.…’

  However the rumour went round that there was only going to be twelve hours delay and the chauffage was restored and we had lunch on our ‘lunch in Yugoslavia’ coupon and everyone was more cheerful and then a rumour got about that we were going on a little way by train and then by car – so everyone packed up and put on warm things.

  We went on with great éclat to the next station, Pythiou, where Greek officers came aboard and with great politeness begged us not to worry about visas but to all sit and enjoy ourselves fully. As it was then pouring down in this slushy snow and at a station and those decrepit huts seemed to be all there was of Pythiou we stayed put! We had ‘dinner in Yugoslavia’. In the middle of the night the next Orient Express arrived behind us and five passengers were transferred to us – a large jocose Italian, a little German with a bald head, a Bulgarian lady, a thin and a terrible man from Chicago – a Turk by extraction dressed in an orange suit, lots of gold chains and things and a royal blue satin tie with horse shoes on it. He too was going to catch the Acquitania and he was devastatingly friendly!!! Sunday was a beautiful day – a lot of snow had fallen in the night but it was all sunny. After ‘breakfast in Italy’ we all decided to do some telegraphing in spite of my gloomy conductor who warned us, ‘Can’arrivera jamais.’

  We went in a body to the office where a very unshaven Greek clerk received us with a courtly bow. Some telegrams were then written out – to America, to England, to Berlin, to Smyrna, to Paris, to Buda Pesht!

  Then, of course, he wanted to be paid in Drachmas and no one had any. The dining cars had everything else! The polite Greek officers came to the rescue by producing a newspaper some days old and working out exchanges so that we paid in dollars and francs and Marks. It was the cheapest telegram ever sent – mine cost a dollar (and it got there in an hour, what is more!!).

  In the afternoon things really happened. We were all taken into one coach and the rest of the train was to go back to Stamboul. As the old gentleman had missed his conference his wife wanted to go back but the old boy was slightly gaga and full of spirit. He’d started for Buda Pesht and he was going to Buda Pesht, flood or no floods!! He extracted rusks and offered them to me in a gracious manner. ‘Mais mangez donc, Madame. You – do – not – know – when – you – will – eat – next.’

  We all felt very excited at starting off – the engine went behind and pushed – (so, I suppose, that we should bear the brunt!) Nothing happened at first because they’d left the brakes on but all the dining car men got out and undid the brakes by hand – and then we did actually start … and got over the Greek bit safely and then we came to the place where the water had come down from the mountain and hooshed the whole thing away. Then we got out and walked – on planks laid over the chasm (you know how I hate walking on planks!) A scene of great confusion – because on the far side was a coach of the other train and everyone coming across from it to us. And the workmen stopped mending the line and carried suitcases with great zeal, so much so that they brought back the ones others had taken and began to return them to the same train and everyone was shouting and trying to keep an eye on all their things at once – and th
ere were the Grandes Bagages and the Mails.

  It was very beautiful because the moon [?] had risen … with Adrianople on the far side of it with all its minarets looking too beautiful in the setting sun.

  However the poetic feeling didn’t last long! In our new coach all had been laid bare. There was nothing to eat – no water in the wash basins – and no water to drink. We all filled in somehow. The American lady discovered she’d lost her sleeping car and the prospect of being shut up with the very talkative Bulgarian lady for the night was too much for her and she wept bitterly. ‘My daughter said I’d have no trouble at all – no trouble at all. I’ve never travelled in Europe before and I’ll never travel in it again.’ We all consoled her, the Danish missionaries made her tea with the scrapings of everybody’s water bottle and I produced biscuits and chocolate and the Terrible Chicago Man produced oranges and cheese – and the Bulgarian lady ate everything within sight!

  At last everybody got calm and settled and disentangled their luggage which was all mixed up. The chauffage was on (which is all that really matters to me!) and the marvellous little conductor from Ostend made my bed and the Danish ladies’ for us, I think because we hadn’t been as cross as the others.

  A peaceful night except for the Turk who was next door to me and was continuously trying to open the door between our compartments – not, let us hope, for the worst reasons but I think because he thought it was the wash place!!

  In the middle of the night we started towards Sofia – got there about six a.m. and were put on to a siding about a mile from the station. Three feet of snow by then – so we all woke up rather hungry and cold about eight and found ourselves marooned. At 10.30 – we were attached once more to a train and became the usual Orient Express – only two days late! And how we enjoyed some hot Coffee!!

  At Belgrade we acquired the King and Queen who looked very well and gave charming looks – immediately the train swarmed with detectives looking exactly like they do on Cinemas and in plays. They spent most of the time leaning so firmly against the lavatory doors that you could hardly dislodge them.

  On Wednesday instead of Monday I arrived.…

  16

  ‘… a nice parallel track’

  Max was now anxious to lead an expedition of his own and set about raising funds. Agatha shared this goal; indeed, in a Christmas letter to him in 1932 she had joyfully announced that she had been approached by some ‘film people who want to engage a few well-known authors’ and that, although suggestions she might ‘make £200,000 out of it’ were obviously ludicrous, it might bring ‘a nice little sum and with it we’d raze a mound to the ground!’ Nothing came of these advances, though she perhaps had them in mind as she drafted a dramatised version, never performed, of The Secret of Chimneys.

  Agatha was writing prolifically and well. She was now just in her forties, happy and creative. There had been one sad moment, for the baby she was expecting the year before had miscarried and it was felt that she and Max should not now try to have another child. She was at Abney when this happened. Punkie was concerned and Rosalind alarmed at seeing her mother looking frail and ill, until Agatha assured her that, though shocked, she would be perfectly all right. This sorrow, too, was known to only a few friends, including, later, two or three young archaeologists at the time of their own pregnancies. Despite Agatha’s belief that a wife should always go with her husband on his travels, she would advise these women friends to stay at home for their confinement, avoiding the unsteady journeys to the desert. Her marriage to Max was a success and Rosalind got on well with her step-father, who was a natural teacher. He even succeeded with her where he had failed with Agatha, interesting Rosalind in philosophy and drinking wine. She had adjusted well to the new situation, and saw Archie regularly – though he and Agatha did not meet again after the divorce. Rosalind enjoyed her father’s games and teasing and managed to remain staunchly loyal to both her parents.

  In the spring of 1933 Max eventually managed to attract as sponsors the Trustees of the British Museum and the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. The mound he chose was at Arpachiyah, some miles north-east of Nineveh, and, after some anxious weeks, he proved to have chosen well, as considerable quantities of beautifully decorated pottery and figures came to the surface. Max’s whole expedition, including publication of the results, cost only £2,000. The staff was small; apart from the cook, houseboy, labourers, and Gallaher, an Irishman who drove the lorry, it consisted of only three persons: Max, his friend John Rose the architect, and Agatha. Agatha was by no means a passenger. Her duties included keeping a written record and helping to arrange and reassemble pottery fragments. She had continued her lessons in drawing to scale, and, though not the most confident draughtsman, did her best. She also continued her practice, begun at Nineveh, of writing a chapter or two in quiet moments; two detective stories, two collections of short stories and a novel written under the name of Mary Westmacott were all completed in 1933.

  One of the full-length detective novels was Murder on the Orient Express, which she dedicated to ‘M.E.M. Arpachiyah 1933’. The other took its title from a sentence Agatha had noted in her list of ideas for 1931, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, there part of the outline of a complex plot in which Poirot pursued a poisoner (‘the poison that makes everything yellow… poison applied to dress – very misleading as another girl had yellow dress’). Like Evans in the story itself, ‘Evans’ in the notebook is a maid, and, confusingly, also the gardener and baker. ‘Why didn’t they ask Evans?’ is an odd and memorable phrase, just the sort of question which, overheard, would stimulate Agatha to spin a story.

  The two collections of short stories she wrote in 1933 were Parker Pyne Investigates and The Listerdale Mystery. One of the tales in The Listerdale Mystery. ‘Philomel Cottage’ was later adapted for the theatre, as Love from a Stranger, and subsequently filmed. Another, ‘Accident’, almost enjoyed a more interesting fate, for in 1957 Alfred Hitchcock expressed an interest in using the plot for a film, a suggestion, however, that eventually came to nothing. The first working title of the other collection was The Reminiscences of Mr Parker Pyne. Some of these stories describe the clients who reply to the advertisement placed in The Times by this retired civil servant: ‘Are you happy? If not, consult Mr Parker Pyne, 17 Richmond Street.’ Others show how Mr Parker Pyne is able to help distressed people whom he meets on his travels (In ‘The House at Shiraz’ and ‘The Oracle at Delphi’ Agatha remembered some of the places and people she and Max had seen together.) They are charming stories, particularly because they are a wise and generous mixture of Mr Parker Pyne’s own observations about human nature – a statistician, he has concluded that there is a limited number of identifiable ways in which people can be unhappy – and Agatha’s own observations and preoccupations – her knowledge of the desire for adventure, her interest in marital jealousy, her understanding (as in ‘The Case of the Rich Woman’) of the glorious freedom loss of memory affords. Agatha was fond of Parker Pyne, whom she saw as a more realistic figure than, say, Poirot: ‘Much more suitable for an American radio series,’ she was to tell her agent in 1947. (The larger than life creation of Poirot nonetheless smothered Parker Pyne and the series appeared as ‘Starring Hercule Poirot’ instead.)

  The last book Agatha wrote in 1933 was Unfinished Portrait, the novel in which two of the principal characters, Celia and Dermot, derive from Agatha herself and from Archie. Agatha was now sufficiently secure to be able to reflect more calmly on her first marriage; in 1930, on what had until now been a sad anniversary, she had written a thoughtful letter to Max, thanking him for all he had restored to her. Not that she discussed even with her closest friends the end of her first marriage, her illness and recovery. The shock had gone too deep. In any case, it was a private matter and talking about it would have been invading Archie’s confidence as much as her own. Moreover, such matters were probably best not dissected in chat; Agatha was one of a generation that knew the value of discreet silence. It i
s interesting that she did allude to and analyse her private experience in her books, as if there she could not keep from returning to something so important. By building her recollections of that terrible time into other characters and other stories, she avoided exposing herself, except on her own terms. ‘Mary Westmacott’ was further protection; indeed, her contract with Collins for this and two other novels, drawn up in early 1934, provided yet another disguise, for it is between her publisher and ‘Nathaniel Miller’, amended before signature to ‘Daniel Miller’.

  The excavations at Arpachiyah were the last that Max was to conduct in Iraq for many years. There was an increasingly nationalistic mood in the country, whose manifestations had included worrying disputes and delays over the division of the finds between the Iraqi Government and the expedition. Max thought it prudent to move on. He and Agatha accordingly spent the last two months of 1934 in Syria, with the blessing of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, surveying the Habur Valley and examining a number of mounds, or ‘tells’, which might be suitable for excavation. They were assisted by a young architect called Robin Macartney, shy and silent but conscientious. As well as being a skilled draughtsman, he was a clever painter. Two of his water-colours of the desert, its sinuous curves painted with firm lines and delicate colours, hung in Agatha’s house to the end of her life. She was always entranced by the desert’s clear air and cool colours and when she returned to wintry London one year she asked Marion Mackintosh, one of her more artistic friends, to make her a pair of lounging pyjamas, the trousers apricot and the jacket blue, as a reminder of the desert sand and sky. (The effort was not wholly successful, since crêpe de chine tended to slither off Agatha’s sloping shoulders.)