Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

by John Curran

  Spoof butler

  This idea is difficult to date but seems to have been a possibility Christie considered for one of Tommy and Tuppence’s Partners in Crime adventures, although the rest of Notebook 65, where it appears, is taken up with Ten Little Niggers. The short story ‘The Listerdale Mystery’, published in December 1925, concerns a ‘spoof butler’ but this note is unlikely to refer to that early story. It seems more likely that it became Three Act Tragedy, where such a butler is one of the major plot devices of that brilliant novel.

  Or Japp—unhappy with D.P.P. A case—yes—not happy—asks Poirot will he check up on it. Young man—bitter—difficult

  This note, appearing just ahead of a page dated September 1947, eventually became Mrs McGinty’s Dead, but not with Japp (who had long disappeared) but Superintendent Spence from Taken at the Flood. The bitter young man is the already convicted James Bentley.

  Short Marple Stories A. Poison Pen—big hearty girl is it

  This appears on a lengthy list of similar cryptic ideas for short Marples, sandwiched between the plotting of Sparkling Cyanide and N or M?. It is obviously the germ of The Moving Finger, although a ‘big hearty girl’ is not unmasked at the end of that novel.

  …with teeth projecting, discoloured or white and even (better for short story)

  The teeth of the victim are one of the first anomalies noticed by Miss Marple when she views The Body in the Library.

  Stamp idea—man realises fortune—puts it on old letter—a Trinidad stamp on a Fiji letter

  The ‘stamp idea’ appears frequently—at least eight times with minor variations. It is used in the Marple story ‘Strange Jest’ and is also a plot feature of Spider’s Web.

  See a pin and pick it up all the day you’ll have good luck (dressmaker has been already—comes again—woman is dead)

  This is the basis of ‘Village Murder’/’Tape-Measure Murder’ and a ploy of Poirot’s in ‘The Under Dog’. The idea of a murderer returning and ‘discovering’ the body also featured in The Sittaford Mystery.

  Old lady in train—tells girl (or man) she is going to Scotland Yard—a murderer at work—she knows next victim will be the vicar—Girl takes job in village etc.

  This jotting, which appears in a list dated January 1935, is the basis for Murder Is Easy, although without a murdered vicar or a girl taking a village job. The novel itself is one of the few for which there are no notes.

  12

  The Body in the Library:

  Murder by Quotation

  There was a long shuddering sigh, and then two voices spoke in turn. Strangely enough, the words they uttered were both quotations. David Lee said: ‘The Mills of God grind slowly…’

  Lydia’s voice came like a fluttering whisper: ‘Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?’

  Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, Book III

  SOLUTIONS REVEALED

  Death on the Nile, Endless Night • The Hollow • The Man in the Brown Suit • The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side • The Murder of Roger Ackroyd • The Mysterious Affair at Styles • The Pale Horse • Sad Cypress • Taken at the Flood

  Throughout her life Agatha Christie was a voracious reader. Her childhood was filled with books and Postern of Fate discusses them at length—The Cuckoo Clock, Four Winds Farm, Winnie the Pooh, Little Grey Hen, The Red Cockade, The Prisoner of Zenda. Her Notebooks are littered with lists of books, which apart from many crime titles, included novels by Graham Greene, Alan Sillitoe, Muriel Spark, Rumer Godden, John Steinbeck and Nevil Shute. So it is not surprising that some of her titles, including those of the Mary Westmacotts, derive from quotations from a variety of sources—Shakespeare, Flecker, Tennyson, Blake, Eliot. Apart from titles, extracts appear throughout her books, and some novels (The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and Appointment with Death) end poignantly with appropriate quotations.

  Sad Cypress

  4 March 1940

  Come away, come away, death

  And in sad cypress let me be laid

  Fly away, fly away breath!

  I am slain by a fair, cruel maid.

  Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

  Elinor Carlisle is on trial for the murder of Mary Gerard.

  The case against her seems foolproof as only she had the means, motive and opportunity to introduce poison at the fatal lunch. Dr Lord thinks there is more to it than meets the eye and approaches Hercule Poirot.

  This sketch appears, inexplicably, in Notebook 35 during the plotting of Five Little Pigs (1943) but is unmistakably the cover design for Sad Cypress (1940). Alongside the tree is, possibly, a coffin—of cypress wood perhaps, as per the quotation?

  Although published in March 1940, Sad Cypress had appeared in serial form in the USA at the end of the previous year. It is another example of a novel with characters more carefully drawn than many other novels, and although there is a clever plot device at the core there is less emphasis on clues and timetables and the minutiae of detection. As other commentators have pointed out, however, there is also a flaw in the plot; and there is a second problem.

  Notebook 20 has a version of the plot device of Sad Cypress and it is unequivocally stated, and dated, in Notebook 66. As early as this 1935 date, note that the murderer was to be female:

  Rose without thorns—a thornless white rose mentioned by front door—later apomorphine injected by murderer into herself

  Jan 1935

  A. Rose without thorn mentioned by front door—later murderess injects apomorphine into herself—draws attention to prick as having been caused by thorn

  Four pages later in the same Notebook we find a second reference to it showing that, over two years later, it was still in the planning process:

  Feb 1937

  A (as before)

  A. Illegitimate daughter—Begins hospital nurse attending old wealthy woman—(she learns about daughter supposedly d[aughter] of gardener) then kills off patient by sweets sent from niece—later niece and Mary antagonistic over a young man—nurse poisons Mary—Evelyn (niece) thought to have done it.

  Notebook 21 adds some detail, while item G on an alphabetical list in Notebook 66 also includes a similar plot device—but in a very different setting:

  Retired hospital nurse—apomorphine stunt—Evelyn Dane—inherits from Aunt—Mary is really daughter—actually companion—Jeremy is cousin who has loved Evelyn and now loves Mary—Nurse pretends to be surprised to see Mrs. D’s picture—she attended her for the birth of a child etc.

  Poison—man injects apomorphine after sharing some dish—small tube with morphia on it found later—really apomorphine. Family reunion—old father killed—who did it?—he has whisky and soda for tea—others have tea—fresh tea

  The family reunion mentioned in the latter extract was changed but the idea of disguising the poison in freshly brewed tea was retained.

  Like some other works, the Notebooks contain little that is different from the finished novel, leading to the suspicion that there were discarded notes that no longer exist. Apart from some name changes—Roger becomes Roddy, Mrs Dacres is changed to Mrs Welman and the first Nurse becomes O’Brien—the notes follow the course and detail of the novel almost exactly:

  Beginning

  Elinor in London—anonymous letter—accusing undue influence—Elinor about to destroy it—then rings up Roger

  Old Mrs. Dacres very ill—nurses in charge of case—gossip Mrs. Nurse Chaplin—a local nurse—Nurse Hopkins—they talk together—A photograph Mrs. D—asks for—signed Lewis—her husband’s name was Roger Henry

  Somewhat sudden death of old lady—suspicious absence of morphine?—Nurses not sure—she dies intestate

  The characters also were settled early on and, apart from their names, did not change. The eternal triangle too was defined from the beginning:

  The relations—in house

  Mary Dane [Gerrard]—daughter of gardener—acted as companion

  Evelyn her niece arrives—and Roger Dacr
es—nephew by marriage

  She is a real character—hard up—fascinating—antagonism between her and Mary

  Roger falls in love with Mary—Eve gives her a sum of money—Mary comes to life—Nurse Chaplin advises her to make a will

  Dr. Lord—good-looking young man—fall in love with Elinor?

  The nurses—Moira O’Brien resides in house—Nurse

  Hopkins from village—comes every morning to give a hand.

  As Nurse C leaves—Mary accompanies her—says her Auntie in Australia is a hospital Nurse

  Mary’s death? She is at cottage—Elinor asks her to come up to the house for lunch—a cold lunch—Sandwiches—Nurse offers to make them a nice cup of tea—(apomorphine in kitchen)—the sandwiches—Mary to have salmon ones as she is a Catholic—gets her excited and then drowsy—Nurse Hopkins doesn’t like the look of her—sends for doctor—difficult to get him—morphine poisoning

  One of the flaws in the plot of Sad Cypress is that at the fatal lunch the killer cannot know that Elinor Carlisle will not also drink the poisoned tea along with Mary. The short note in Notebook 21 to the effect that ‘Mary to have salmon ones as she is a Catholic’ may have been an early solution to the problem of ensuring that only the intended victim ingested the poison, by attempting to guarantee that Mary would be limited in the type of sandwich (assumed erroneously to be the means of poisoning) she could eat. However, as the murder occurs on a Thursday (Chapter 7), Mary would not, in fact, be limited in her choice; the restriction on eating meat applied only to Fridays. And, in the event, the killer did not prepare the supposedly poisoned sandwiches anyway, so could not have stage-managed that aspect of the scene. It does seem as if this is a definite problem.

  But there is a further problem, also of a practical nature—how could Nurse Hopkins have known that Elinor would call herself and Mary from the Lodge to the house for the fatal lunch? And how did she have a hypodermic and apomorphine with her? Her original plan to poison Mary in her own (Hopkins’) cottage, as surmised by Poirot in the final chapter, does not answer the question either, as that scenario, even if it were to include Elinor, would be so unlikely as to be suspicious. Unfortunately the Notebooks give no indication as to whether Christie considered this difficulty.

  The aftermath of the murder is also accurately reflected in Notebook 21, with little deviation from the finished novel:

  Death of old lady—no will—her fortune goes to Elinor as next of kin

  E and Roger—a little stiffness—she says it doesn’t matter which of us has it—he again feels there is a coolness between them.

  R. and Mary—incipient love affair—she is pleased—Mary’s young man Edmund is angry—they quarrel

  Elinor sees them together—R. is ringing her

  Elinor gives Mary £1000 pounds—she accepts

  And ultimately…

  Dr. Lord comes to Poirot—insists it wasn’t her—can’t be Hopkins she had nothing to do with sandwiches—just made tea which they both drank—little bit of paper with morphine under the stove—the kitchen—it was open—someone could have got in there while the others were down in the Lodge

  The Moving Finger

  14 June 1943

  The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ moves on

  The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

  Shortly after Jerry Burton and his sister move to the idyllic village of Lymstock, a series of anonymous letters horrifies the inhabitants and culminates in the death of the local solicitor’s wife. The vicar’s wife decides to send for an expert in wickedness—Miss Marple.

  This is another example of a novel narrated by a male. Apart from the Hastings novels, seven other titles (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Murder at the Vicarage, The Moving Finger, Crooked House, Endless Night; and both The Pale Horse and The Clocks are partly male-narrated) have male narrators while only two (Murder in Mesopotamia and, for the most part, The Man in the Brown Suit) have female ones. While it is by no means extraordinary for a female writer to write as a male, this may have been dictated from the beginning of Christie’s career when, having created Hastings as Poirot’s chronicler, she grew accustomed to the idea of telling the story as a male. It would have been inconceivable for Poirot to have a close female friend with whom he lived and shared his cases. And equally inconceivable, but for different reasons, is the possibility that they would be recounted by his wife! In The Moving Finger it is also odd that Jerry Burton narrates the entire story without ever telling us anything about his background or that of his sister. Apart from the fact that he was a pilot and that Joanna has a busy social life we learn nothing about them.

  Not only was The Moving Finger published almost a year earlier in the USA but the US and UK editions are significantly different, although this did not come to light until the mid-1950s. When Penguin Books published the title in 1953 a flurry of correspondence drew Edmund Cork’s attention to these discrepancies. He had supplied Penguin with a US edition for their reprint, as the agent’s own file copy of the UK edition had been a war casualty. When he contacted Christie’s US agent in July 1953 seeking an explanation of the inconsistencies it was difficult, even then, to say how the mistake happened. The most likely explanation, according to them, was that the US publishers had worked from a copy used by the publishers of the serial, Colliers Magazine, who had ‘cut’ the manuscript. The mistake has been perpetuated ever since. While the basic story remains the same, many minor characters have disappeared from the US edition and some passages, including the opening scene, are significantly different. Apart from puzzling references to characters who do not (seemingly) exist the overall effect is to leave the US edition a shorter book.

  The same situation, and probable explanation, applies to Murder is Easy.

  Miss Marple was indicated as the detective from the beginning, which makes her non-appearance until Chapter 10 (of the UK edition) all the more peculiar. It is almost a cameo appearance, less than a dozen pages. The setting, however, is very much Miss Marple territory and Lymstock is the typical English village associated with Agatha Christie. Apart from St Mary Mead the number of similar villages in Christie novels is actually surprisingly small, despite the common perception that they are all set in such surroundings.

  The Moving Finger also has the most unusual denouement of any Christie novel. We learn who the killer is before Miss Marple’s explanation. The ploy to trap the murderer is known to the reader as we watch him attempt another killing. This is at variance with similar ruses in, for example, The Body in the Library, Cards on the Table and Towards Zero, where the reader is unaware of the identity of the victim of the trap.

  There are only 15 pages of Notebook devoted to The Moving Finger and, apart from a few fleeting references elsewhere, most of these pages are in Notebook 62. It does not seem to have presented many technical problems and the plotting progresses smoothly. And she follows her (then) normal pattern of assigning letters to scenes.

  The initial appearance is dated, although not very precisely, 1940:

  Ideas (1940)

  Poison pen—letters in village—‘repressed spinster’ indicated—really plot by someone to discredit her—(a resourceful mother?) Miss Marple

  Although the ‘repressed spinster’ as the source of the anonymous letters is much discussed in Lymstock as, indeed, the killer hoped, the ‘discrediting’ idea was abandoned; perhaps it had too many echoes of the recent Murder is Easy, where the killer hoped that the murders would discredit the real target, a person with a strong motives for removing all of the victims.

  Christie began work on the novel the following year, as shown by a subsequent note, and the general set-up closely follows Notebook 62. In a typical piece of Christie misdirection, she uses the minor crime of anonymous letters as camouflage for the more deadly crime of murder. This is the same principle of camouflage adopted by the killer in The A.B.C. Murders, although in that novel a series of murders is used to camouflage one particular killing. The town, the people and their names, t
he events and the first murder all appear in the book as they do in the Notebook:

  Anonymous letters—deliberate—finally woman commits suicide as a result of letter—really killed (by husband?)

  Books 1941 Miss M? or told in 1st person

  Poison Pen—all round village—unhappiness etc.—wife of lawyer (?) gets one—kills herself—really is killed by husband—and he then puts letter in her pocket—its subject matter is untrue

  Suspected of writing letters—Vicar’s sister? wife—schoolmistress—doctor’s wife sister?—Hearty spinster—maidservant—maidservant is next killed because she saw something or knew something

  Description of town—market town known better days—they take bungalow—the letters come—not sister—wonders if there is much of this sort of thing about—what about if a shot in the dark hits the bulls eye?

  Resume of people they meet

  Dr. Thomas—his sister—dark fierce ‘manly looking’ woman—little Mr Pye—Vicar—his wife—goes home to find Mrs. Symmington calling

  In the notes for this novel we again see the method of assigning letters to scenes, although in this case no rearrangement of them is specified in the Notebook:

  Progress Moving Finger Points

  A. J [erry] discovers book of sermons cut out pages [Chapter 9 v]

  B. Megan goes home [Chapter 7 ii]

  C. Maid knows something—scene between her and Elsie H [olland]—Joanna overhears comes back and tells J? Did she come back that afternoon? Does she come and ask advice from Partridge? She is killed—deliberate [Chapter 7, but not exactly as described here]