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

by John Curran

  Murderous alliances are a feature of Christie’s fiction beginning with The Mysterious Affair at Styles and continuing with The Murder at the Vicarage, Death on the Nile, One, Two, Buckle my Shoe, Evil under the Sun, The Body in the Library, Sparkling Cyanide and Endless Night, all of which feature murderous couples. Cat among the Pigeons and, to a lesser degree, Taken at the Flood, feature more than one killer working independently of each other; The Hollow features an unusual and morally questionable, collusion; and, of course, Murder on the Orient Express features the ultimate conspiracy.

  The murder method

  Christie never resorted to elaborate mechanical or scientific means to explain her ingenuity, and much of her popularity and accessibility lies in her adherence to this simplicity. Many of her last-chapter surprises can be explained in a few sentences. Once you have grasped the essential fact that the corpse identified as A is, in fact, Corpse B and vice versa everything else falls into place; when you realise that all twelve suspects conspired to murder one victim all confusion disappears; when it dawns that the name Evelyn can mean a male or a female little further explanation is necessary.

  Van Dine 14. The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be rational and scientific.

  Knox 4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need long scientific explanation at the end.

  While Christie uses poisons as a means of killing characters more than any of her contemporaries, she uses only those that are scientifically known. But, that said, thanks to her training as a dispenser, she had more knowledge of the subject than many of her fellow writers and was familiar with unusual poisons and the more unusual properties of the common ones. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, depends for its surprise solution on knowledge of the properties of strychnine, but this is not unreasonable as the reader is fully aware of the poison used. In fact, there is a graphic description of the death of Mrs Inglethorpe and a discussion of the effects of, and the chemical formula for, strychnine. Taxine in A Pocket Full of Rye, ricin in ‘The House of Lurking Death’ from Partners in Crime, thallium in The Pale Horse and physostigmine in Crooked House are just some of the unusual poisons featuring in Christie. Fictitious drugs such as Serenite in A Caribbean Mystery, Calmo in The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and Benvo in Passenger to Frankfurt also feature, but as the plot does not turn on their usage, they merely bend rather than break Knox’s Rule.

  To be avoided

  Some of these items are mere personal prejudice; there is no good reason why cigarettes or twins, for instance, cannot be a clue, or even a main plot device, provided that the reader has been properly prepared for them. With all of these the important point is the originality of the approach in utilising them – and this Christie had in full measure and overflowing.

  Van Dine 13. Secret societies have no place in a detective story.

  Many readers, including probably the author herself, would wish that The Big Four had never found its way between hard covers. Cobbled together at the lowest point in her life (after the death of her mother, the request for a divorce from her husband and her subsequent disappearance) with the help of her brother-in-law, Campbell Christie, this collection of short stories that had earlier appeared in various magazines was turned into a novel by judicious editing. The ‘secret society’ bent on world domination that it features was, mercifully, a one-off aberration on Christie’s part. The Seven Dials Mystery features an equally preposterous secret society, albeit one with a Christie twist. Throughout the novel we are told of the existence of this society and the reader assumes the worst. At the eventual and literal unmasking we discover that it is actually working for the eradication, rather than the promotion, of crime, and its membership includes Superintendent Battle. The Pale Horse, one of the best books of the 1960s, features a mysterious organisation, Murder Inc., that seems to specialise in remote killing, but a rational and horribly plausible method of murder is revealed in the closing chapters.

  Knox 5. No Chinamen must figure in the story.

  This comment is not as racist as it may first appear. At the time of its writing Orientals in fiction were perceived as the personification of everything undesirable and came under the general heading of ‘The Yellow Peril’. A more lengthy discussion of the subject can be found in Colin Watson’s Snobbery with Violence (1971), an investigation of the social attitudes reflected in British crime fiction of the twentieth century, but suffice it to say that the white-slave trade, torture and other ‘unspeakable acts’ were the accepted fictional norms at the time for any character of Oriental extraction. This Rule was included to raise the literary horizon above that of the average opium den. Apart from The Big Four, and the more politically correct Poirot case ‘The Lost Mine’ in 1923, no ‘Chinamen’ play a part in any of Christie’s detective novels. Unfortunately, she succumbs to stereotype in The Big Four where, as well as some cringe-inducing scenes with Oriental characters and ‘speech’, the chief villain, ‘the greatest criminal brain of all time’, is Chinese. But these stories had appeared some years earlier, pre-dating Knox.

  Knox 3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.

  This Rule is taken to mean that no solution may turn on the existence of a secret passage. It was designed to eliminate the possibility of an exasperated reader hurling his detective novel across the room as the detective explains how the killer gained access to his closely guarded victim through such a passage, the existence of which was unknown up to that point. Christie is not above introducing the odd secret passage almost as a challenge to the cliché, but their very introduction long before the solution is in keeping with the tenet of this Rule. The Secret of Chimneys, Three Act Tragedy and ‘The Adventure of Johnny Waverley’ all feature, but openly and not covertly, a secret room or passage. The play Spider’s Web features a sliding panel with a concealed cavity; but its use pokes gentle fun at this convention.

  Knox 10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

  This Rule was formalised in an effort to avoid the disclosure that Suspect A, who had a cast-iron alibi for the night of the crime, was the guilty party because his alibi was provided by a hitherto unheard-of twin brother. Tongue firmly planted in literary cheek, Christie cocks a snook at this convention in ‘The Unbreakable Alibi’ in Partners in Crime. This is her take on the alibi-breaking stories of her contemporary Freeman Wills Crofts. And look at the ingenious double-bluff of Lord Edgware Dies. The Big Four also has an episode featuring a twin – one Achille Poirot . . .

  Van Dine 20. A list of devices, which no self-respecting detective story writer should avail himself of . . .

  The bogus séance to force a confession

  At the end of Peril at End House Poirot arranges something very like a séance in End House, but it is really a variation on his usual ‘all-the-suspects-in-the-drawing-room’ ploy – although he does manage to elicit a confession. At the other end of a story is the séance in The Sittaford Mystery, where such an event is cleverly stage-managed in order to set a plot in motion.

  The unmasking of a twin or look-alike

  In Partners in Crime, Christie has Tommy and Tuppence tweak this Rule in ‘The Unbreakable Alibi’.

  The cipher/code-letter

  In The Thirteen Problems Christie features a very clever version of the code-letter in ‘The Four Suspects’ and in the last book she wrote, Postern of Fate, Tommy and Tuppence find a hidden message that begins their final case.

  The comparison of cigarette butts

  ‘Murder in the Mews’ features not just this idea but also the clue of the cigarette smoke, or, more accurately, the absence of cigarette smoke.

  Knox 2. All supernatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

  Van Dine 8. The problem of the crime must be solved by strictly naturalistic means.

  These two Rules are, in effect, the same and are more strictly adhered to, but Chri
stie still sails close to the wind on various occasions, especially in her short story output. The virtually unknown radio play Personal Call has a supernatural twist at the last minute just when the listener thinks that everything has been satisfactorily, and rationally, explained. Dumb Witness features the Tripp sisters, quasi-spiritualists, but apart from her collection The Hound of Death, which has a supernatural rather than a detective theme, most of Chritie’s stories are firmly rooted in the natural, albeit sometimes evil, real world. The Pale Horse makes much of black magic and murder-by-suggestion but, like ‘The Voice in the Dark’ from The Mysterious Mr Quin and its seeming ghostly presence, all is explained away in rational terms.

  Van Dine 3. There must be no love interest.

  Although Van Dine managed this in his own books (thereby reducing them to semi-animated Cluedo), this Rule has been ignored by most successful practitioners. It is in the highest degree unlikely that, in the course of a 250-page novel, the ‘love interest’ can be completely excised while some semblance of verisimilitude is retained. Admittedly, Van Dine may have been thinking of some of the excesses of the Romantic suspense school, when matters of the heart take precedence over matters of the intellect; or when the reader can safely spot the culprit by pairing off the suspects until only one remains. Christie, as usual, turned this rule to her advantage. In some novels we confidently expect certain characters to walk up the aisle after the book finishes but, instead, one or more of them end up walking to the scaffold. In Death in the Clouds, Jane Grey gets as big a shock as the reader when the charming Norman Gale is unmasked as a cold-blooded murderer. In Taken at the Flood, Lynn is left pining after the ruthless David Hunter and in They Came to Baghdad, Victoria is left to seek a replacement for the shy Edward. In some Christie novels the ‘love interest’ or, more accurately, the emotional element and personal interplay between the characters, is not just present but of a much higher standard than is usual in her works. For example, in Five Little Pigs, The Hollow and Nemesis it is the emotional entanglements that set the plot in motion and provide the motivation; in each case it is thwarted love that motivates the killer.

  Van Dine 16. A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, and no ‘atmospheric’ preoccupations.

  This Rule merely mirrors the time in which it was written. And it must be admitted that it would be no bad matter to reintroduce it to some present-day practitioners. Many examples of current detective fiction are shamelessly over-written and never seem to use ten words when a hundred will do. That said, character analysis and atmosphere can play an important part in the solution. In The Moving Finger, it is only when Miss Marple looks beyond the ‘atmosphere’ of fear in Lymstock that the solutions both to the explanation of the poison-pen letters and the identity of the murderer become clear. In Cards on the Table the only physical clues are the bridge scorecards and Poirot has to depend largely on the character of the bridge-players, as shown by these scorecards, to arrive at the truth. In Five Little Pigs, an investigation into the murder committed 16 years earlier has to rely almost solely on the evidence and accounts of the suspects. Character reading and analysis play an important part in this procedure. In The Hollow, it is from his study of the characters staying for the weekend at The Hollow that Poirot uncovers the truth of the crime. Apart from the gun there is nothing in the way of physical clues for him to analyse.

  RULE OF THREE: SUMMARY

  The Knox Decalogue is by far the more reasonable of the two sets of Rules. Written somewhat tongue-in-cheek – ‘Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable’ – it is less repetitive and restrictive and shows less personal prejudice than does its American counterpart. A strict adherence to Van Dine’s Rules would have resulted in an arid, uninspired and ultimately predictable genre. It would have meant forgoing (much of) the daring brilliance of Christie, the inventive logic of Ellery Queen, the audacious ingenuity of John Dickson Carr or the formidable intelligence of Dorothy L. Sayers. In later years it would have precluded the witty cunning of Edmund Crispin, the erudite originality of Michael Innes or the boundary-pushing output of Julian Symons. Van Dine’s list is repetitive and, in many instances, a reflection of his personal bias – no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no ‘atmospheric’ preoccupations. It is somewhat ironic that while the compilers of both lists are largely forgotten nowadays, the writer who managed to break most of their carefully considered Rules remains the best-selling and most popular writer in history.

  And so, from The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920 until Sleeping Murder in 1976, Agatha Christie produced at least one book a year and for nearly twenty of those years she produced two titles. The slogan ‘A Christie for Christmas’ was a fixture in Collins’s publishing list and in 1935 it became clear that the name of Agatha Christie was to be a perennial best seller. That year, with Three Act Tragedy, she reached the magic figure of 10,000 hardback copies sold in the first year. And this trebled over the next ten years. By the time of her fiftieth title, A Murder is Announced, she matched it with sales of 50,000; and never looked back. And all of this without the media circus that is now part and parcel of the book trade – no radio or TV interviews, no signing sessions, no question-and-answer panels and virtually no public appearances.

  Although mutually advantageous, the relationship between Christie and her publisher was by no means without its rockier moments, usually about jacket design or blurb. The proposed design for The Labours of Hercules horrified her (‘Poirot going naked to the bath’), she considered that an announcement in ‘Crime Club News’ about 1939’s Ten Little Niggers – its title later amended to the more acceptable And Then There Were None – revealed too much of the plot (see Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks), and in September 1967 she sent Sir William (‘Billy’) Collins a blistering letter for not having received her so-called advance copies of Endless Night before she saw them herself on sale at the airport. And as late as 1968 she wrote her own blurb for By the Pricking of my Thumbs.

  Thanks to her phenomenal sales and prodigious output, she became a personal friend of Sir William and his wife, Pierre, and conducted much of her correspondence through the years directly with him. They were regular visitors to Greenway, her Devon retreat, and Sir William was one of those who spoke at her memorial service in May 1976. A measure of the respect in which he held her can be gauged from his closing remarks, when he said that ‘the world is better because she lived in it’.

  Chapter 2

  The First Decade 1920–1929

  ‘It was while I was working in the dispensary that I first conceived the idea of writing a detective story.’

  * * *

  SOLUTIONS REVEALED

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles • The Mystery of the Blue Train

  * * *

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published in the USA at the end of 1920 and in the UK on 21 January 1921. It is a classic country-house whodunit of the sort that would eventually become synonymous with the name of Agatha Christie. Ironically, over the following decade she wrote only one more ‘English’ domestic whodunit, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926). The other two whodunits of this decade are set abroad – The Murder on the Links (1923) is set in Deauville, France and The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) has a similar South of France background. With the exception of the last title, which Christie, according to her Autobiography, ‘always hated’ and had ‘never been proud of’, they are first-class examples of the classic detective story then entering its Golden Age. Each title, with the same exception, displays the gifts that would later make Agatha Christie the Queen of Crime – uncomplicated language briskly telling a cleverly constructed story, easily recognisable and clearly delineated characters, inventive plots with all the necessary clues given to the reader, and an unexpected killer unmasked in the last chapter. These hallmarks would continue to be a fea
ture of Christie’s books until the twilight of her career, half a century later.

  The rest of her novels of the 1920s consist of thrillers, both domestic – The Secret Adversary (1922), The Secret of Chimneys (1925) and The Seven Dials Mystery (1929) – and international – The Man in the Brown Suit (1924). While none of these titles are first-rate Christie, they all exhibit some elements that would appear in later titles. The Secret Adversary, the first Tommy and Tuppence adventure, unmasks the least likely suspect while The Man in the Brown Suit is an early experiment with the famous Roger Ackroyd conjuring trick. The Seven Dials Mystery subverts reader expectation of the ‘secret society’ plot device and The Secret of Chimneys, a light-hearted mixture of missing jewels, international intrigue, incriminating letters, blackmail and murder in a high society setting, shows early experimentation with impersonation and false identity.

  Throughout the 1920s Christie’s short story output was impressive. She published three such collections in the decade. The contents of Poirot Investigates (1924) first appeared in The Sketch, in a commissioned series of short stories, starting in March 1923 with ‘The Affair at the Victory Ball’. By the end of that year two dozen stories had appeared and 50 years later the remainder of these stories had their first UK book appearance in Poirot’s Early Cases. In 1953 Christie dedicated A Pocket Full of Rye to the editor of The Sketch, ‘Bruce Ingram, who liked and published my first short stories.’ In 1927, at a low point in Christie’s life, after the death of her mother and her own disappearance, The Big Four was published. This episodic Poirot novel, consisting of a series of connected short stories all of which had appeared in The Sketch during 1924, can also be considered a low point in the career of Hercule Poirot as he battles with a gang of international criminals intent on world domination. The last collection of the decade is the hugely entertaining Partners in Crime (1929). These Tommy and Tuppence adventures, most of which had appeared in The Sketch also during 1924, were pastiches of many of the crime writers of the time – ‘The Man in the Mist’ (G.K. Chesterton), ‘The Case of the Missing Lady’ (Conan Doyle), ‘The Crackler’ (Edgar Wallace) – and, while light-hearted in tone, contain many clever ideas.