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

by John Curran

  Happy families – I ask for a pack of cards – I get them. Mrs Mugg – the Milkman’s wife – Egg explains. P says he hopes she will be very happy. She goes off to dress rehearsal of Angela Sutcliffe’s play by Miss Wills – Little Dog Laughed.

  Tiens – I have been blind – the motive for the murder of Mr Babbington [Third Act, Chapter 14]

  There are two interesting points to consider about this novel. The first is a further variation on the Evans/Ellis issue. As discussed in the notes for The Sittaford Mystery and Lord Edgware Dies, the cryptic note in Notebook 41 – ‘Can we work in Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?’ – could conceivably also apply to Three Act Tragedy. Ellis/Evans in Lord Edgware Dies and Evans in The Sittaford Mystery both provide vital clues that lead to the solution of the mystery. And if Poirot had been able to question the missing Ellis of Three Act Tragedy, he would almost certainly have prevented the death of Mrs De Rushbridger. But because he doesn’t, in reality, exist, it is obvious Why They Didn’t Ask Ellis.

  The second, and little remarked upon, enigma is The Mystery of the Altered Motive. As discussed in Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks, the US and UK texts of The Moving Finger and Murder is Easy/Easy to Kill are considerably different. In Three Act Tragedy we find the same situation but the disparity is even more dramatic. In the UK edition of the book, during Poirot’s explanations in the final chapter, the motive attributed to Sir Charles, the supposed bachelor, is that, unknown to most people, he is actually married: ‘And there is the fact that in the Haverton Lunatic Asylum there is a woman, Gladys Mary Mugg, the wife of Charles Mugg’ (Sir Charles’ real name). And, Poirot explains, Sir Bartholomew Strange as ‘an honourable, upright physician . . . would not stand by silent and see you enter into a bigamous marriage with an unsuspecting young girl’ (Egg). During Chapter 12 of the Third Act, Sir Charles tells Egg about his real name but otherwise the reader has no reason to suspect that he already has a wife, albeit one confined to an asylum.

  In the US edition, however, it is Sir Charles, and not his wife, who is insane and as Poirot clarifies, ‘In Sir Bartholomew he saw a menace to his freedom. He was convinced that Sir Bartholomew was planning to put him under restraint. And so he planned a careful and extremely cunning murder.’ And, as he is being led away, Sir Charles breaks down – ‘His face . . . was now a leering mask of impotent fury. His voice rang shrill and cracked . . . Those three people had to be killed . . . for my safety.’ Melodramatic descriptions aside, it must be admitted that of the two potential motives, this one is by far the more compelling.

  The reason for this change is more difficult to explain. And it inevitably leads to the question ‘Which is the original version?’

  The amended denouement means that certain passages in the book which foreshadow the altered motive are significantly different. The most crucial changes occur in Chapters 7 and 26 of the US edition. In Chapter 7 Sir Charles and Mr Satterthwaite interview the Chief Constable, Colonel Johnson. In the course of this conversation Sir Charles says, ‘I’ve retired from the stage now, as you know. Worked too hard and had a breakdown two years ago’; and extracts from Sir Bartholomew’s diary are quoted, including one significant one: ‘Am worried about M . . . don’t like the look of things’ (my emphasis). Chapter 26 includes a lengthy conversation between Poirot and Oliver Manders. None of these passages appear in the equivalent chapters (Second Act, Chapter 2 and Third Act, Chapter 14) of the UK edition. The first two changes provide the clues to Sir Charles’ breakdown, the M referring to his real name, Mugg, and showing Sir Bartholomew’s concern over Cartwright’s mental health. The third prepares the way for Manders to replace Sir Charles in Egg’s affections, although this new romantic scenario applies in either case.

  However, as the book was published (both as a magazine serial and in book form) in the USA in advance of its UK publication it is likely that it was the latter edition that was altered. But the question remains: why?

  In a letter (undated, as usual, but from internal evidence probably late 1972/early 1973) to her agent, Christie herself briefly refers to the problem and states, ‘I am studying the problem of Three Act Tragedy . . . in the Dodd Mead [the US edition] Sir Charles goes mad . . . I have a feeling that was what I originally wrote.’ But this is by no means conclusive; and the Notebooks throw no light on this intriguing mystery.

  UNUSED IDEAS: TWO

  * * *

  This second batch of Unused Ideas feature foreign settings, both inspired by holidays taken by Christie.

  * * *

  THE HELLENIC CRUISE

  There are two lengthy sketches in the Notebooks of a murder plot during a Hellenic cruise, possibly inspired by Christie’s own cruise to Greece in the late summer of 1958. Chronologically this makes sense: the first extract below is sandwiched between the pages of notes for Cat among the Pigeons, published in 1959; the second extract, from Notebook 15, appears alongside notes for 1961’s The Pale Horse.

  Book with Hellenic cruise setting

  A murderer

  Possible scene of actual murder Ephesus or could be electrocuted during lecture on deck

  People

  Lecturers – little man with beard his wife calls him Daddee – a professor

  Young schoolmaster type of man – uncouth and rather dirty – superior in manner

  Miss Courtland – a Barbara type – two schoolmistresses travelling together – one has had a nervous breakdown

  Mrs. Oliver??

  The 2 spinsters idea could be combined with this. The ‘friend’ schoolmistress came on deliberately – have planned to kill someone going on cruise – camouflaging it by going with a friend, really sending money to friend anonymously to pay expenses. Alibis helped by the two of them being places – but M[iss Courtland or, possibly, Murderer?] makes friend believe that she occasionally has short lapses of memory – appear to be very devoted.

  Motive?

  Although a possible plot involving two female friends is a recurring motif in the Notebooks, the sketch here is different; here one friend is the dupe, rather than the partner-in-crime, of the other. The reference to ‘Barbara’ is probably to Barbara Parker, Max Mallowan’s long-time assistant and, after the death of Dame Agatha, his wife for the last year of his life. The idea of convincing someone that they suffer from memory loss had earlier appeared in ‘The Cretan Bull’, the seventh Labour of Hercules, and would reappear a few years later in A Caribbean Mystery when Molly Kendall is drugged into forgetfulness and hallucination. It would seem from the ambiguous phrase ‘appear to be devoted’ that the friend with the nervous breakdown in her background is set to be the dupe of Miss Courtland, the putative murderer. And the reference to electrocution ‘during lecture on deck’, not a very obvious murder method, would suggest that Christie had something definite in mind, although what it was remains a mystery.

  The second outline, while retaining essentially the same characters, adds some new scenarios to the first:

  Hellenic cruise – murder – where? Ephesus? During lecture in the evening on deck?

  By whom committed – and why

  A Miss Marple?

  Wife decides to kill husband? Or she and her lover? Say she has had lovers – one, a foreigner? an American? Dismisses him abruptly because she knows he will react – actually he is framed by her and another lover whom she pretends she hardly knows? Possibly Cornish Mystery type of story? Academic background – woman like J.P.? or like M.C. Anyway 2 people in it – and a fall guy!

  Or a Macbeth type of story – ambitious woman – urges on husband – husband turns out to have a taste for murder. Perhaps murder is done when someone is sleeping on deck – or Murder is Easy idea – monomaniac who believes everyone who opposes him dies – this is really suggested to him by woman who hates him.

  One of lecturers little man with beard – his wife calls him Dadee – encounters young schoolmistress – rather dirty – Miss Cortland (a Barbara type! Good Company).

  Mrs Oliver ?!!

&n
bsp; Two Schoolmistresses travelling together (one has had nervous breakdown). One of them is murderer – she sent money anonymously to ill friend to enable her to come too – impresses on friend that she has ‘black outs’ short lapses if memory so that friend and she have alibis together

  If Christie had used either of the inspirations from her own earlier titles – Murder is Easy and ‘The Cornish Mystery’ – we can be sure that she would have rendered them unrecognisable, as she did with Death on the Nile/Endless Night and Dead Man’s Folly/Hallowe’en Party.

  Elements from each extract can be found elsewhere in Christie – the stage-managed dismissal has echoes of Death on the Nile and ‘two people and a fall guy’ is similar to ‘Triangle at Rhodes’. And there are some compelling new variations: the husband who ‘turns out to have a taste for murder’ after his initial reluctance and the anonymous gift of money to set up an alibi. The references to ‘J.P.’ and ‘M.C.’ have proved elusive but may simply refer to two of Christie’s fellow passengers on the cruise.

  Miss Marple, a few years before her only foreign case, A Caribbean Mystery, makes a brief appearance. Interestingly, Mrs Oliver was intended to appear, whichever scenario was chosen. Ariadne Oliver, Agatha Christie’s alter ego, is a prolific detective novelist with a foreign detective, the Finnish Sven Hjerson, one of whose cases is The Body in the Library. Doubtless she would, like her creator, have been using the trip as a background for her next masterwork. In the event she did feature in The Pale Horse, published shortly afterwards. Both of these outlines could be a revisitation, 20 years later, of Death on the Nile – a group of people with emotional entanglements cut off from the world aboard a ship in a foreign country. The two female friends, here schoolmistresses, appear in each sketch, each time with more background detail.

  THE GIRL-IN-THE-BAHAMAS

  These examples, all from different Notebooks, show Christie experimenting with an intriguing idea before eventually deciding to send Miss Marple, who is not mentioned here, to essentially the same place, St Honore, and have her solve Major Palgrave’s murder in A Caribbean Mystery:

  Girl gets job – sent out to Bahamas – plane brought back. She goes back to flat – another girl there acting as her

  West Indies Book

  Begins girl secretary – told by Company to go to Barbados (Tobago) on business – meet certain executives there – passage paid etc. Goes off from London Airport – Shannon etc. – then back again following evening – her flat occupied by someone else – she and boy friend decide to investigate

  How about girl gets job – a flat is given her – after a month she is sent to Barbados – return of plane she goes to flat – finds dead body or finds she is supposed to have died – young man she telephones him – they discuss it – what is the point? Person to die first – a lawyer – head of solicitor’s firm? New member of a country solicitors? A Q.C.?

  The common denominator of the West Indies was the idée fixe of these jottings, probably inspired by her holiday there in the early 1960s.

  Chapter 5

  ‘How I Created Hercule Poirot’

  ‘Why not make my detective a Belgian?’

  * * *

  SOLUTIONS REVEALED

  Death on the Nile

  * * *

  Agatha Christie wrote the article that follows to herald the Daily Mail’s serialisation of Appointment with Death (or, as they renamed it, A Date with Death) on 19 January 1938, prior to the publication of the novel by Collins Crime Club in May of that year.

  The appearance of the ‘latest Agatha Christie’ in a newspaper or magazine was mutually advantageous. Both author and periodical enjoyed a boost in sales and publicity. Although not every novel had a pre-publication appearance, as early in her career as The Mysterious Affair at Styles and as late as Sleeping Murder Christie was regularly serialised on both sides of the Atlantic. Changes to the title and often to the text were tolerated, as the financial rewards were significant. The Saturday Evening Post in America paid $14,000 for Cards on the Table and $16,000 for Dumb Witness. But the enterprise was not without its pitfalls. A competition to accompany the serialisation of The A.B.C. Murders, in which readers were invited to send in their solutions, was won by a reader who got every detail of the plot correct.

  Christie’s account of the genesis of Hercule Poirot has appeared in print only once since, in the Agatha Christie Centenary Celebration book, edited by Lynn Underwood and published in September 1990. The version below is reproduced from the pages of Notebook 21 and I have left intact many of the original deletions, made by Christie herself. This will help to show how fluently she could produce 1,400 words with a minimum of cutting and rearrangement. Unusually, the text in Notebook 21 is continuous and, apart from the slightly amended drafts of the final paragraphs, would seem to have been completed at one sitting. It is impossible at this stage to be absolutely certain that this was the case, but it is all written with the same ink and, until the final stages, in the same handwriting on 12 consecutive pages. The earlier 1990 publication is shorter and slightly different; some paragraphs were there rearranged to create a more coherent structure – for example the discussions of Poirot’s earlier cases were brought together – but I include here the entire text exactly as it was first written.

  How did the character of Hercule Poirot come into being?

  Difficult to say – he came perhaps about accidentally that is I realise that he came into being not at all as he himself would have wished it. ‘Hercule Poirot first,’ he would have said. ‘And then a plot to display his remarkable talent to the best advantage.’ But it was not so. The idea often plot of the story, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was roughed out and then came the dilemma: a detective story – now what kind of detective? It was wartime in the early autumn days of 1914 – Belgian refugees were in most country places.22 Why not have a Belgian refugee, for a detective, a former shining light of the Belgian Police force.

  What kind of man he should he be? A little man perhaps, with a somewhat grandiloquent name. Hercule – something – Hercule Poirot – yes, that would do. What else about him? He should be very neat – very orderly (Is that because I was a wildly untidy person myself?)23

  Such was the first rough outline – mostly, you will note, externals – but certain fad traits followed almost automatically. Like many small dandified men, he would be conceited and he would, of course, (why ‘of course?’) have a luxuriant handsome moustache. That was the beginning. Hercule Poirot emerged from the mists and took concrete shape and form. but he was a particularly Once he was that had happened he took charge, as it were, of his own personality – there were all sorts of things about him that I did not know, but which he proceeded to develop show me. There was more in this little man than I had ever suspected. There was, for instance, his intense interest in the psychology of every case. As early as The Murder on the Links he was showing his appreciation of the mental processes of the a murderer – and insisting that planning of a every crime had a definite signature.24

  Method and order still meant much to him – but not nearly so much as before. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd he was at his best investigating a crime in a quiet country village and using his knowledge of human nature to get at the truth. For the terrible death on the Blue Train he was I have always suspected not I have always thought he was not, I think, quite he was not at his best but the solution of Lord Edgware’s death was, I consider, a good piece of work on his part, though he gives some of the credit to Hastings.25 Three Act Tragedy he considers one of his failures though most people do not agree with him – his final remark at the end of the case has amused many people [but] Hercule Poirot cannot see why!26 He considers that he merely stated an obvious truth.

  And now, what of the relation between us – between the creator and the created? Well – let me confess it – there has been at times a coolness between us. There are moments when I have felt ‘Why, why, did I ever invent this detestable, bombastic tiresome little creature? E
ternally straightening things, forever boasting, always twirling his moustaches and tilting his ‘egg-shaped head.’ Anyway, what is an egg-shaped head? Have I ever seen an egg-shaped head? When people say to me, ‘Which way up is the egg? – do I really know[?] I don’t, because I never do see pictorial things clearly. But nevertheless, I know that he has an egg-shaped head covered with black, suspiciously black, hair27 and I know that his eyes occasionally shine and some with a green light. And once or twice in my life I have actually seen him – once on a boat going to the Canary Islands28 and once having lunch at the Savoy. I have said to myself, ‘Now if you had only had the nerve you would could have snap-shotted the man in the boat and then when people have said “Yes, but what is he like? I could have produced that snap shot and said ‘This is what he is like.’ And in the Savoy perhaps I would have gone and explained the matter but life is full of lost opportunities. If you are doubly burdened – first by acute shyness and secondly by only seeing the right thing to do or say twenty-four hours late – what can you do? Except only write about quick-witted men and resourceful girls whose reactions are like greased lightning!

  Yes, there have been moments when I have disliked M. Hercule Poirot very much indeed –when I have rebelled bitterly against being yoked to him for life (usually at one of these moments that I receive a fan letter saying ‘I know you must love your little detective by the way you write about him.)29 But now, I must confess it, Hercule Poirot has won. A reluctant affection has sprung up for him. He has become more human, less irritating. I admire certain things about him – his passion for the truth, his understanding of human frailty and his kindliness.I did not understand suspect before that he felt so strongly so strictly not for the punishment of the guilty but for the vindication of the innocent. And he has taught me something – to take more interest in my own characters; to see them more as real people and less as pawns in a game. In spite of his vanity he often chooses deliberately to stand aside and let the main drama develop. He says in effect, ‘It is their story – let them show you why and how this happened.’ He knows, of course, that the star part is going to be his all right later. He may make his appearance at the end of the first act but he will take the centre of the stage in the second act and his big scene at the end of the third act is a mathematical certainty.