by John Curran
Ideas for G.K.C.
John Creasey
In Notebook 52 there are two references, both very similar, to John Creasey, British crime writer of almost 600 books. Hugely prolific under a variety of pseudonyms, he was also a founder of the Crime Writers Association. In The Clocks, the typewriting agency, which is the focus of much of the novel, does some work for Creasey-like authors. He did not write detective fiction.
Miss M[artindale] is chief agent—Sec[retary] to Creasey—who wrote spy stories
Rufus King
Twice in Notebook 35, during the plotting of Mrs McGinty’s Dead, Christie mentions Murder by Latitude, the title of a novel by this largely forgotten writer, although his name itself does not appear. Murder by Latitude features a typical Christie setting, aboard a ship from which contact with land has been severed. There are a few King titles in the library at Greenway House.
Atmosphere like Murder by Latitude—some people—amongst them a Murderer
A.E.W. Mason
Mason was the creator of Inspector Hanaud. The reference in Notebook 35 is to At the Villa Rose, published in 1910, a case involving the death of an elderly woman and the suspicion surrounding her companion. While plotting One, Two, Buckle my Shoe Christie reminds herself of it:
A murder discovered (woman? Elderly? Like Villa Rose) Clue—a shoe buckle
Edgar Allan Poe
The ‘inventor’ of the detective story when he published ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ in 1841, ‘The Purloined Letter’ is another famous case for his detective Auguste Dupin, turning on the idea of hiding in plain sight. Christie’s reference is in connection with a fortune hidden not in but on an envelope—as stamps. She used this plot device in the short story ‘Strange Jest’ and also much later, in Spider’s Web. The concept of hiding in plain sight is also used in ‘The Nemean Lion’.
Stamps—fortune left in them—on old letters in desk—‘Purloined Letter’ mentioned—they look in obvious envelope—really stamps on it
Dorothy L. Sayers
Sayers’ creation Lord Peter Wimsey made his debut in 1923 in Whose Body. In addition to the writer herself, Wimsey is mentioned in Notebook 41—this time in a reference to Ronnie West in Lord Edgware Dies. It is also possible that the naming of Dr Peter Lord in Sad Cypress is homage to Christie’s great contemporary.
Ronnie West (debonair Peter Wimseyish)
4
Cat among the Pigeons:
The Nursery Rhyme Murders
‘I adore nursery rhymes, don’t you? Always so tragic and macabre. That’s why children like them.’
The Mousetrap, I, i
SOLUTIONS REVEALED
Crooked House • Five Little Pigs • ‘Four and Twenty Blackbirds’ • Hickory Dickory Dock • ‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’ • Ordeal by Innocence • A Pocket Full of Rye • ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ • Ten Little Niggers • ‘The Tuesday Night Club’
The attraction of children’s literature, either as titles or themes, has often provided crime writers with inspiration. Dickson Carr’s The Arabian Nights Murder, Douglas Browne’s The Looking Glass Murders, McBain’s Snow White and Rose Red and Rumpelstiltskin, Queen’s There Was an Old Woman, Smith’s This Is the House, Witting’s There Was a Crooked Man and Fuller’s With My Little Eye are all drawn from the playroom, while S.S. Van Dine’s The Bishop Murder Case uses Mother Goose as a theme. The attraction is obvious—the juxtaposition of the childlike and the chilling, the twisting of the mundane into the macabre.
But it was Agatha Christie who made it her own and exploited it more comprehensively than any other writer. There are numerous references to nursery rhymes scattered throughout the Notebooks. Sometimes the idea went no further than a brief jotting (see ‘Miscellaneous’ on page 129); others provided her with some of her greatest works—Ten Little Niggers, Five Little Pigs and Three Blind Mice/The Mousetrap. In some cases it provides no more than a title, Hickory Dickory Dock and One, Two, Buckle my Shoe; in some cases, Ten Little Niggers and A Pocket Full of Rye, it provides the book with an overall schema; while the use of Crooked House and Three Blind Mice is more symbolic than actual. The most successful are undoubtedly Five Little Pigs and Ten Little Niggers, where the rhyme is convincingly and ingeniously followed. The dramatic impact of an innocent nursery rhyme transforming into a killer’s calling card is irresistible to an imaginative crime writer such as Agatha Christie.
Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye, Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie, When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing, Was not that a dainty dish to set before the king?
The king was in his counting-house, counting out his money, The queen was in the parlour, eating bread and honey, The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes When down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose.
The most fruitful nursery rhyme was ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’, which provided no less than three titles: the novel A Pocket Full of Rye, and the short stories ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ and ‘Four and Twenty Blackbirds’. In the case of the short stories, only the title has been inspired by the rhyme, whereas the novel follows the pattern of the rhyme very closely.
‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ December 1929
A sixpenny piece helps to solve a brutal murder that has left a family divided with mutual suspicion.
Although there are no surviving notes for ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’—unsurprisingly, since it made such an early appearance in the Christmas 1929 edition of Holly Leaves—there is a reference to it in Notebook 56. Appearing as it does among the notes for A Pocket Full of Rye, this is unusual in, puzzlingly, also appearing to make reference to the already published Crooked House.
Sing a Song of Sixpence
The crooked sixpence found (a Crooked man Crooked wife
Crooked house)
An aspect of this short story that has escaped the attention of Christie commentators is its similarity to Ordeal by Innocence (see Chapter 7). ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ features the arrival of an outside investigator, Sir Edward Palliser, at the home of Miss Crabtree, who has been murdered by a blow to the head administered by a member of her own household. Because no one has been arrested for the crime, her family describe how ‘they sit there every day looking at each other surreptitiously and wondering’. In this atmosphere of mutual suspicion he reaches a solution which explicitly foreshadows the 1958 novel.
‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’ August 1935
A plea for help to Poirot is too late to save Amelia Barrowby, but he is determined to get to the truth.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle-shells And pretty maids all in a row.
This short nursery rhyme features no less than five times throughout the Notebooks, even though its words gave the title of just one short story, ‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’. But it seems to have made an impression on Christie’s mind as she often referred to it in the course of plotting other titles. And there are similarities between this short story and a novel she planned but never wrote. The story was first published in the UK in The Strand, having appeared some months earlier in Ladies’ Home Journal in the USA. This story’s connection to the nursery rhyme is stronger than ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ or ‘Four and Twenty Blackbirds’, as it includes the shells, the garden and the killer’s name. Mary Delafontaine poisons her aunt and hides the shells of the fatal oysters among the other cockle shells used as decoration in her garden. She tries, unsuccessfully, to incriminate the foreign companion:
The old lady—the foreign girl—Mary—the ‘weak’ husband
The final plot is encapsulated in Notebook 20:
Oyster story—Man dies after dinner—strychnine in oyster—swallowed—shells out in garden or in shell box—food analysed—nothing. Possibly some complication about a cachet he took—or someone gave him—if so, unjustly accused
It is another example of one of Christie’s favourite early plot devices—the summoning of Poirot to
the scene of a suspected crime only to discover when he arrives that he is too late. As early as 1923 she first used this idea in The Murder on the Links, and subsequently in ‘The Cornish Mystery’, Dumb Witness and ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’ (see the Appendix). It can be seen why—it has an emotional and a practical impact. The summoner, who has promised to explain the situation in detail, is now unable to do so and Poirot has a moral, as well as a practical, imperative to solve the crime. There is also the plot device of the victim having known ‘too much’, always a good way to start a detective story. In ‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’, the appearance of a Russian character would have been very unusual in detective fiction of the day. In fact, the appearance of any foreigner (including Poirot) is always viewed with suspicion by the inhabitants of small villages throughout the Christie canon. And, of course—as can be seen in Dumb Witness—this allowed Christie to subvert, yet again, the readers’ prejudices.
The eponymous main character, Mary Delafontaine, became a byword in Christie’s shorthand, appearing in abbreviated form in the course of plotting Third Girl and Ordeal by Innocence respectively, even though she was used in the final plot of neither novel:
Mary Del.—Arthur (innocent husband)—Katrina—suspicious, passionate—for money looks after old boy
Olivia (The Mary Delafontaine wife)
The name was also used for one of the victims in The Pale Horse; she is a friend of Mrs Oliver in Chapter 1 and she appears on Father Gorman’s doomed list in the following chapter.
Ten Little Niggers 6 November 1939
Ten strangers are invited to a weekend on an island off the coast of Devon. Their host fails to appear and a series of deaths among their fellow-guests make them realise that one of them is a killer following the macabre nursery rhyme that hangs in each bedroom.
Ten little nigger boys went out to dine One choked his little self and then there were nine; Nine little nigger boys sat up very late One overslept himself and then there were eight; Eight little nigger boys travelling in Devon One said he’d stay there and then there were seven; Seven little nigger boys chopping up sticks One chopped himself in half and then there were six; Six little nigger boys playing with a hive A bumble bee stung one and then there were five; Five little nigger boys going in for law One got in Chancery and then there were four; Four little nigger boys going out to sea A red herring swallowed one and then there were three; Three little nigger boys walking in the Zoo A big bear hugged one and then there were two; Two little nigger boys sitting in the sun One got frizzled up and then there was one; One little nigger boy left all alone He went and hanged himself and then there were none.
Ten Little Niggers (also known as And Then There Were None) is Agatha Christie’s most famous novel, her greatest technical achievement and the best-selling crime novel of all time. Of all the ‘nursery rhyme’ titles this is the one that sticks closest to its origins. Although Christie adopted the ‘He got married and then there were none’ ending for the stage adaptation, she used the original ending for the climax of the novel. The existence of the rhyme is a constant theme throughout the novel, especially when the characters realise what is happening. The manner of each death cleverly echoes the rhyme, the only slightly jarring note being the death of Blore where the difficult Zoo idea is somewhat stretched.
With the writing of this book Christie set herself a challenge and in her Autobiography she describes how the difficulty of the central idea attracted her: ‘Ten people had to die without it becoming ridiculous. I wrote the book after a tremendous amount of planning…It was clear, straightforward, baffling and yet had a perfectly reasonable explanation…the person who was really pleased with it was myself, for I knew better than any critic how difficult it had been.’
As we saw in Chapter 2, this ‘tremendous planning’ is not evident from Notebook 65, the only one to feature this novel. This Notebook does, however, include interesting details of various characters that did not make it into the completed book. And, on the evidence of the Notebooks alone, it would seem to be the characters themselves that gave most trouble. At no stage are ten characters listed. At first there are eight (I have added probable names to both lists, although Vera Claythorne, Emily Brent, Philip Lombard and General MacArthur appear in the novel as listed in the Notebook, although minor background details were to change):
When Collins began to advertise Ten Little Niggers in Booksellers Record in July 1939, they called it, quite simply, ‘the greatest story Agatha Christie has ever written’. But their item in the Crime Club News incurred the wrath of the writer herself and she wrote from Greenway House on 24 July to William Collins to protest. She felt that too much of the plot was revealed, pointing out that ‘any book is ruined when you know exactly what is going to happen all the way along’. She also includes a veiled threat when she reminds him that she is just about to sign a contract for her next four books and is unwilling to do so unless they can guarantee that this error of judgement will not be repeated. Despite the fact that Collins declared it to be ‘certainly the greatest detective story that the Crime Club has ever published and probably, we believe, the world will declare it the greatest detective story ever written’, they included too many revelations. It is obvious what she means. They write about the island, the rhyme, the disappearing china figures, the realisation that the killer is among them and, most damning of all, the fact that the last one to die is not necessarily the villain. One’s sympathies are entirely with Agatha Christie; all they omitted was the name of the killer.
Ten Niggers
Doctor—drunk at op—or careless [Dr Armstrong]
Judge—unjust Summing Up [Judge Wargrave]
Man and Wife—Servants (did in old lady) [Mr and Mrs Rogers]
Girl—whose lover shot himself [Vera]
Husband and wife—Blackmailing
Allenby—Youngish man—dangerous alert [Lombard]
At a later stage, to judge from the change from pencil to pen and the slightly different handwriting, she tries again. This time she includes 12 characters:
1. Vera Claythorne—Secretary at school—has applied at agency for holiday post
2. Mr Justice Swettenham in first class carriage [Judge Wargrave]
3. Doctor—telegram from Gifford—Can you join us—etc. [Dr Armstrong]
4 5. Capt and Mrs Winyard—Letters—mutual friend Letty Harrington—Come for weekend
6. Lombard—visited by solicitor or confidential agent—offered one hundred guineas—take it or leave it
7. University student who runs over children—a bit tight—arrives in car [Anthony Marston]
8. Llewellyn Oban—Committed perjury in murder case—man executed [Blore]
9. Emily Brent—turned out maidservant—later drank oxalic acid—letter from someone starting guest house and is a friend of hers—free stay
10 11. Man and wife servant [Mr and Mrs Rogers]
12. General MacArthur—killed 30 men unnecessarily in war
Each of the lists includes a husband-and-wife combination, Capt. and Mrs Winyard in the latter list, and these were the ones to be dropped. The second listing is much nearer to that of the novel although it is possible to discern the germ of the characters in the first tentative listing.
Two further refinements to the plot are included between characters 8 and 9 in the Notebook. Most of the guests to the island are lured by arrangements or invitations made by a Mr or Mrs Owens, sometimes with the initials ‘U.N.’ or, as Justice Wargrave says at the end of Chapter 3, ‘by a slight stretch of fancy: UNKNOWN’. The initials undergo a few variations and the first note below is probably the seed of this idea. The second note refers to the diminishing collection of china figurines on the dining-room table:
Ulick Noel Nomen
Ten Little Niggers on dinner table
After a blank page the notes begin with Chapter 9 and, over the next six pages, trace the course of the rest of the novel including the scene at Scotland Yard. This means that the last
seven murders (from Rogers onwards) are all covered in this relatively short space, lending further support to the theory that the plotting for the book was done elsewhere and Notebook 65 represents the almost-finished plot.
Chapter IX
Judge takes charge—exhibits a good deal of quickwittidness [sic]—Armstrong and Wargrave—Judge has an idea. The storm comes on—all of them huddled into a room—nerves crackling. Next morning—no Rogers—no sign of him—breakfast not laid. Men search island—at breakfast—suddenly Vera sees—Seven Six niggers. Growing suspicion of Emily—a face watches her—a wasp stings her—dead bee on floor. Everyone terrified—all keep together. Where’s old Wargrave—they find him dressed up in red robe and wig. He and Blore carry him up—the dining room—still 5 niggers. The 3 of them—criminal must be Armstrong. Finally: body washed up Armstrong! Blore crushed by falling rock. Vera and Lombard—one of us—her fears—self preservation—she gets his revolver—finally she shoots him—at last—safe—Hugo
The investigation—
The other deaths Owen? V and L last? Mrs R[ogers] and AM [Marston] all dead—
Morris dead too—he did all arrangements—committed suicide—dead—
Young man suggests Wargrave—Edward Seton was guilty—Old Wargrave was queer
Epilogue—Letter in bottle—he describes how it was done
One idea that was abandoned was that of a ‘watcher’ throughout the action. After the death of Emily Brent we read in the Notebook that ‘A face watches her’; and at the climax of the story, when Vera goes up to her room the notes read ‘Goes up to her bedroom—the noose—man steps out of darkness’. In retrospect the reader can imagine the killer ‘watching’ the
