Agatha Christie_A Biography

by Janet Morgan

  None of these was developed. In December Agatha fell into the French window at Winterbrook and badly split her head. She sat in bed, in her silk nightdress (all her nightdresses were made by the blind), her hair blood-caked, a sad figure now. The drugs she took for her heart had shrunk her into a little scrap and she ate only a very little. Frail, she remained the good sport she had been in Syria and Iraq, tottering to Wimbledon with Max, and managing to attend the Lord Mayor’s Dinner. In July Max persuaded her to come to the polling station to vote in the referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Community; her reluctance was not due to the physical effort the expedition required but to doubts as to where her duty lay. A natural conservative, believing in gradual progress on a loose rein, she was wary of political and bureaucratic schemes, as she put it in her letters to Max in the ’forties ‘to make people happy and safe by force’. Max, on the other hand, was a romantic in politics; in 1945 he had spoken to Agatha of Russia’s new golden age, ‘like that of sixth to fifth century Greece’, renowned ‘not merely for their military genius but for their economics, their organisation and … imagination. Apart from Stalin ‘perhaps’ and Michurin the agronomist, he had rhapsodised, ‘we know of no individual Russians. It is a collective genius animated by a burning belief in their political foundation, which to them amounts to a religion.’ Agatha was not wholly convinced then, nor, as Passenger to Frankfurt showed, later. Now she rallied her strength to argue with Max about the Community: it would be no more than a customs union and a regulator’s paradise, she predicted, while he visualised it as a unified historical, cultural and intellectual Eden. Gamely, Agatha agreed to try it, and voted yes.

  She also kept up the running argument with Billy over covers, this time for the jacket of Collins’s recent volume of short stories, Poirot’s Early Cases: ‘He was a little man,’ she protested. ‘His smartly dressed lower half seems entirely unlike him and represents him as 6 feet high at least. I never remember him as prone to carry a little bag.’ She had been upset, too, by the choice of stories for inclusion in this collection, although these had been explicitly cleared. By now her mind was fuzzy. She still hoped to recover her old wits, to write ‘a series – ghost story or book built round the White Horse of Uffington’, which (in a swipe at the new Local Government Act) ‘was situated in Berkshire and is now being transferred with all the rest of us to Oxfordshire, which causes very bad feeling to the neighbourhood.…’ One of these days, she concluded, ‘when I am quite myself again …’

  Fragile and immensely aged, Agatha became, as the very old sometimes do, more and more like the child she had been, over eighty years before. Sometimes she was serene, sitting quietly at luncheon with friends, gently leafing through one of her books. ‘Stop it, Agatha,’ Max once said, as he caught her looking speculative. At other times she was eccentric, declaring, for instance, that today she would wear all her brooches, from the grandest diamonds to small ornaments children had sent her. She was often difficult, frequently upset by the indignities and dependence of her state. Once, to the horror of her family and friends, she seized the scissors and cut off locks of the fine hair of which she had been so proud. Then she would be calm again, resting in the garden in the sun, asking repeatedly for a sun-hat and bemusedly finding she had it on. She could be as interested and quick-witted as ever; just as she had once speculated about the true facts of the Bravo murder case and, in the early nineteen-sixties, about the alleged theft of a diamond bracelet by a British footballer visiting Colombia, so she now greeted her solicitor with the words, ‘I wonder what has happened to Lord Lucan?’ From time to time she still pounced on an idea for a plot: one old friend, visiting the house at the end of Agatha’s life, explained that she gave a shine to her decanters by rinsing them in Steradent. She noticed how Agatha immediately fixed on this remark as a possible device for a story. A pompous guest was stopped in his tracks when she expostulated, ‘What is this nonsense about “training” for the theatre?’ Another lofty conversation about the meaning of life was punctuated by her asking, ‘Does there have to be a purpose?’ and an All Souls acquaintance, talking about the vulgarity of dahlias, was amused to hear her murmur: ‘But pompom dahlias do go so well with Dresden.’

  Physical and mental decline is sad. Agatha’s family tried to protect her. She still saw old friends and, very occasionally, a pilgrim. One admirer who called at Winterbrook was Lord Snowdon, commissioned by the Sunday Times to take photographs to mark the release of Lord Brabourne’s film of Murder on the Orient Express. They were interesting and sympathetic pictures but her family insisted that it had been made clear that none was to be published without Agatha’s explicit approval. She was upset when, with no clearance, the pictures appeared, and even more hurt when her desultory conversation with her guest appeared as an interview in an Australian magazine. It was another reminder of the gulf between those who see people as exhibits, to be used, and those who prefer to let individuals themselves decide whether they wish to live, and die, by self-advertisement.

  One of Agatha’s few expeditions was to the première of Murder on the Orient Express. Despite her determination that this story, one of her most precious, should not be made into a film, she had succumbed to the blandishments of Lord Mountbatten, so persuasive that she briefly forgot her disenchantment with filmmaking and agreed to entrust her story to his son-in-law, John Brabourne. Agatha was impressed by the lavish production and thought Albert Finney a convincing Poirot, apart from his feeble moustache; otherwise she was unconverted. The last outing was to the annual Mousetrap Party.

  Agatha now needed a great deal of looking after. Her bed at Wallingford was moved downstairs and Max, writing his own Memoirs, left the sanctuary of his library for an uncomfortable chair beside her. Neighbours and friends would sit with her and a night nurse was engaged, but Agatha was unhappy at being so intimately cared for by a relative stranger and once more the work of attending her fell to Max and the family. Barbara Parker, who had so efficiently looked after things at Nimrud, came at weekends, to give Max some rest. Friends came to sit with Agatha; delirious, she talked of preparations and journeys, going to find Max, travelling to Cambridge, bringing ladders to fetch down trunks, packing for ‘the children’.

  Now she turned to her memorial. Months before, she had addressed an envelope to ‘Max or Rosalind’, adding later ‘or Mathew’. Inside was the instruction, ‘Put on my Slate: Sleep after Toyle, Port after Stormie Seas. Ease after Warre, Death after Life, Doth greatly please.’ She asked for ‘Bach Air in D from 3rd Suite played at my funeral, please. Also Nimrud [sic] from the Elgar Variations. Mathew to arrange.’ In another envelope, she again gave the quotation from Spenser, adding a phrase from the Psalms: ‘In Thy Presence is the fulness of Joye,’ with the words, ‘I would like these two things put on my Tombstone. Agatha Mallowan.’

  Agatha did outlive ‘the insufferable Poirot’, for in 1975 Rosalind decided that Curtain should now be published. In it, Poirot returns to Styles, telling Hastings, ‘I am very tired – and the exertions I have been through have strained me a good deal. It will not, I think, be long …’ There was also a new edition of Come, Tell Me How You Live, published the autumn of 1975.

  That winter Agatha caught a cold. ‘I’m joining my Maker,’ she murmured and on January 12th, just after luncheon, she died at Winterbrook. Max telephoned the doctor who had looked after her for twenty years, listened to her talk of her dreams, been worried by Treacle and bitten by Bingo. He left his house immediately but before he reached Winterbrook Max telephoned again: ‘She’s gone,’ and then, the doctor’s wife thought, strangely, ‘Don’t say a word.’ Max’s warning was wise, for within hours the invasion began. The local, national and foreign press appeared in Wallingford, the telephone rang incessantly. Max was inundated with telegrams and letters from the family and personal friends, which he answered within the day, official tributes, and requests that were sometimes in poor taste (an American company wanted to market a commemorative Hercul
e Poirot ‘moustache mug’) or well-meaning but idiotic (like ‘a letter from some quasi-lunatic who would like to handle all Agatha’s records’, Max told Cork).

  Agatha was buried wearing her wedding ring, as she had asked, at Cholsey, the little church near Winterbrook. The service was private, a small reunion on a chill January day for Agatha’s family and a handful of close friends. In May there was a memorial service at St Martin-in-the-Fields, with the music she had requested, the Twenty-Third Psalm and a reading from Thomas à Kempis, the book she kept by her bedside. Billy Collins, unwell himself, delivered an address.

  Some of Agatha’s affairs were settled quickly. There was little money to leave – only small bequests here and there – and the treasures she had chosen for her friends were soon packed and despatched (though an enormous mother-of-pearl ‘Damascus’ chest and a Wedgwood bust of Mercury were more difficult to transport to Edmund Cork). A fund to which her admirers contributed was divided between the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Agatha Christie Trust for Children, two causes close to her heart. Other memorials took longer. There were difficulties, for example, over her tombstone, the lettering carved by a friend from archaeological days and embellished with cherubs by another. The stone slab was so heavy that a crane was needed to hoist it over the churchyard wall. It can be seen, tall and shining, from the London-to-Oxford railway, where the lines skirt Cholsey.

  Agatha’s most complex legacy was her work. Sleeping Murder, the last Miss Marple story, was published in 1976. Billy was not, perhaps, surprised to receive a letter from Rosalind regretting that she had not been shown the proposed design for the jacket. For to Rosalind now fell the task of battling to protect the integrity of Agatha’s creations: to ensure that Agatha Christie Ltd kept a wholesome distance from proposals for games, strip cartoons, toys, cookery books; and to consider what her mother’s wishes would have been with regard to the exploitation of the enormous number of copyrights in every market in the world, in an age when literary material was seized on for films, television, mail order and book club sales, cable rights and video-cassettes.

  It is difficult to make more than a rough assessment of the total volume of Agatha’s sales, since any calculation is complicated by the fact that her books are known to be published in at least fifty languages, in countries which have different procedures for making returns, when they make them at all. Statistics are unreliable and often out of date. An indication of her success is given by the fact that by 1980 UNESCO believed that some four hundred million copies of her books had been sold, world-wide, since she first published The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Nor can we give a precise figure for the earnings from her work, though the records of Agatha Christie Ltd, for many years now the owners of the vast majority of her copyrights, show in the 1980s an annual turnover of over a million pounds. The complexities of the Christie estate make it impossible to establish the total income from her work or to estimate trends. The figures that are available do show, however, that the popularity of her work continues to grow.

  Rosalind also found herself fielding successive applications to write an official biography of her mother. A number of self-appointed biographers published volumes of their own, from the gushing to the malicious, from pot-boiling romances to serious literary criticism. As Agatha had cheerfully forecast, the more lightweight efforts were overshadowed by her own Autobiography. This was published in 1977, after a great deal of cutting and correction by Philip Ziegler of Collins, Rosalind and Anthony. Max (who, bereft, had married Barbara Parker in September 1977) conscientiously examined the proofs but his own health was failing now. After an operation on his arthritic hip in July, he had a mild heart attack and died in August 1978.

  Agatha’s books last because they are good, if sometimes hopelessly improbable, stories. The reader, once hooked, wants to know what happens next. They deal with myths, fantasies, obsessions shared by people of every sort: quests and contests, death, sex, money, murder, conspiracy, transformation, power, the triumph of the simple over the complex, the importance of the mundane as well as the cosmic. They construct a pattern, assigning facts and emotions to their appointed place as problems are resolved and guilt and innocence established.

  This last quality helps us understand why Agatha’s Autobiography is so interesting. It is an enchanting book, fluent, pungent, clear-eyed about the times and circumstances in which she lived, funny about herself and other people. With Come, Tell Me How You Live, it gives many clues to her life and her nature. It interests Agatha’s insatiable admirers and people who do not like detective stories or care a fig for her mysteries. Some feel her Autobiography leaves nothing more to say; others, disappointed because she dwells on her childhood – and ignores her flight to Harrogate altogether – believe much remains hidden.

  There is, indeed, always more to say, if only because no one can give a balanced assessment of themselves. Memory fails, especially of events in adult life; recollections are invariably coloured. A person who writes an autobiography approaches it, consciously or not, in one of several ways: it may be their presentation of themselves to the world or their exploration of how they became what they are, an unravelling process for the writer as much as the reader. Some autobiographies do both. Agatha’s is one. To what extent she gives a ‘true’ picture of herself and a fair account of her development is something each reader must judge alone; this biography, authorised by her daughter and based on Agatha’s private papers, may help that assessment.

  Knowing now as much as we do of Agatha, her work and its origins, we can, I think, understand the purpose of her own Autobiography. It was not intended as a screen, nor to distract attention from aspects of her life she did not want to be discussed. Agatha described her experiences as best she could, in the ‘Mary Westmacott’ novels and in the narrative and characterisation of her detective stories. If some of her writing about herself is fantasy or wishful thinking, that is true of all of us when we talk about ourselves. Agatha was good at seeing patterns, astute, sensible, down-to-earth, affectionate and dry. In her Autobiography she almost succeeded in fitting everything together, as she had matched pieces of the Nimrud ivories and Max’s pots. Some pieces she could not fit; others, being too close, she could not see. Perhaps we can perceive her more clearly, in this biography, as if by shaking a kaleidoscope, looking along its length. There, reflected and refracted in its mirrors, is another arrangement of the fragments.

  Index

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader’s search tools.

  ABC Murders, The. 208, 211, 216, 225

  film adaptation, 336

  Abenteuer GmbH, Die (film; based on The Secret Adversary), 177

  Abney Hall, Manchester, 35–7, 118, 147, 153, 215–16, 243, 286

  Absent in the Spring (‘Mary Westmacott’), 108, 242, 248, 262–3

  ‘Accident’ (short story), 206

  Ackerley, Joe Randolph, 195–8

  Adams, Tom, 290

  ‘Adventure of the Cheap Flat, The’ (short story), 342

  Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, The (long stories), 311

  ‘Adventure of the Clapham Cook, The’ (short story), 198

  After the Funeral, 295, 297, 310, 369

  film, 335

  Afternoon at the Seaside (play), 327, 333

  Agatha (novel and film), 123

  Agatha Christie Ltd, 353–6, 371, 377

  Agatha Christie Trust for Children, 347, 376

  Akhnaton (play), 213, 226, 370–1

  Alassio (Italy), 128

  Alibi (play based on Roger Ackroyd), 177, 239, 264, 296

  Allingham, Margery, 259, 261

  Alphabet Murders, The (film based on ABC Murders), 208, 336

  Amin, Dr Mahmud al, 269

  Anderson, James Grant, 368

  And Then There Were None (film; based on Ten Little Niggers), 234, 253

&n
bsp; Anti-Defamation League (USA), 265

  Appointment with Death, 214, 248, 251, 254, 317

  Arbuthnot, Mr and Mrs, 226, 236, 240

  Archer, William, 174

  Arpachiyah (near Nineveh), 206, 207

  Asher, Rosie, 148

  Ashfield (house, Torquay): Clara buys, 6–7

  household, 12

  Frederick lets, 24, 31

  life at, 29, 79

  Clara keeps, 34–5, 126

  upkeep, 83

  Monty at, 106

  AC inherits, 127–8, 130

  Rosalind at, 209, 216

  sold 218–9

  Astor, Nancy, Lady, 214

  At Bertram’s Hotel, 16, 337–8, 342, 346

  Attenborough, (Sir) Richard, 294, 303

  ‘Augean Stables, The’ (short story), 232

  Australia, 94–8

  Autobiography: on childhood, 11, 13

  on AC’s mother, 14

  on grandmothers, 16

  on meeting men, 42

  on aspirations as a singer, 47

  on men and women, 56

  on meeting Archie, 60

  on Empire Tour, 86

  on Rosalind, 107–8

  on motoring, 116

  on The Secret of Chimneys, 118

  on death, 126

  on estrangement from Archie, 129, 133

  on Rosalind’s schooling, 165

  on Max, 180, 185

  on honeymoon with Max, 188

  on pets, 192

  on World War II, 223

  on scale of wartime writing, 255

  on National Socialists, 265

  writing and publication of, 338–40, 377

  AC re-reads, 372