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

by John Curran

  Col L shoots Mrs L – rifle not shot gun as he thinks – prepared by ‘brother’ batman story – then good shot – quick etc. Accident. He is terribly upset that night – cares for her – remembers her as ‘girl in a blue dress’ [Chapter 9]

  P goes down – finds Colonel and Langton – former has been shooting rabbits – Langton flattering him. Talk of accident – he talks of shot beater etc. BC [Boyd Carrington] comes along – tells story of batman – goes off. Langton says he’ll never be bullied or henpecked – Langton quotes ‘Not in our Stars, dear Brutus but in ourselves.’ Col. shoots at rabbit – shoots Mrs – bending over flowers. Franklin and Nurse attend to her. Colonel latter comes later to Colonel – says it’s all right, Colonel all broken up – talks of her and old days – where he met her [Chapter 9]

  H[astings] has conversation with Nurse. She asks about Styles – was in murder case once. Talks about Mrs Franklin. Boyd Carrington comes up ‘Good looking girl’ – come and see house. H goes with him – the house – his uncle – a very rich man – has everything – lonely. About Col L – fine shot [Chapter 7 iii]

  There are three sketches of Hastings’ proposed murder and two of his unintentional murder, all from Notebook 60.

  H decides (goaded by Langton) to kill ‘seducer’ of Judith – J. very secretive – plants Boyd as decoy – really when with Franklin. Boyd a boaster – fond of travel – carrying on with pretty hospital nurse. P. drugs H so that he wakes up next morning and has not killed B – his relief

  Hastings plans a murder. Gets tablets from Poirot’s room or from Boyd’s own room – P drugs him

  Conversation between BC, Langton, Judith and H. BC – his magnetic personality – goes off. Langton tries to persuade Judith she wouldn’t have the courage etc. He comes to reassure Hastings she wouldn’t really do anything. Then tries to warn him – is it wise to let her see so much of Atherton – married etc. He looks through glasses – shows his bird – then snatches them away – changes subject – he can see the figures. Goes in very unhappy – very worried. Personal problem ousts all others. Judith comes out of his room – H upset – speaks to her – she flares out – nasty mind – spends a night of increasing anxiety – the following day Langton tells him – rather unlovely story (quote him) – Atherton and a girl – she committed suicide. He goes to Judith – real row – H. is miserable. Hangs about – I could kill the fellow – Langton says not really – one hasn’t the guts when it comes to it. H goes upstairs to see P (with L) – passes A’s room – he is talking to someone – (nurse) that’s fine, my dear – you run up to town – I go so and so – send a wire you can’t get back – will go to other D – etc. Finds L – pulling him away. I’ll go to her – No, you’ll make things worse. L goads him – one feels responsible. H makes up his mind – it’s his duty to save her. Gets drug – waits up – P makes him drugged chocolate. He sleeps. Next morning – his relief – tells P – P reassures him – you can’t lead other people’s lives for them – points out just how he would have been found out [Chapters 11 and 12]

  More points

  It is Hastings who kills Mrs F. He changes glasses or cups so that she gets it, not husband

  Everyone asked up afterwards. She is lying on divan – coffee – makes it herself. Crossword – everyone there – at least Nurse F. J. BC. Coles and H. Col and Mrs L L. Miss Cole. The stars – they go out to look – H puzzling over crossword. BC comes back – picks up Mrs [Franklin] in his arms – carries her out laughing and protesting. H’s eyes fill remembering Bella. J comes in – he disguises his feeling by pretending to look in bookcase – swings it round – muddle about ‘Death.’ J gives him correct word – he replaces book. Goes out with her – they come back – take their places. J by request brings medicine – F goes off to work. Dead the next day [Chapter 13]

  There is an irony in the fact that having ‘saved’ Hastings from an intentional murder, Poirot is unable to save him from committing an accidental murder. And, arguably, the explanation of Mrs Franklin’s death is as big a surprise to the reader as the explanation in Poirot’s letter at the end of the book.

  There are also a few versions of the death of Langton/Norton, all of them in Notebook 60, but none of them include a shooting:

  Langton tells H he has an idea about murder. P stops him ‘Dangerous’ – he goes to P’s room that evening. Chocolate put in trintium. He dies at once. H woken by striking against his door – looks out – Sees L – go into own room – limp, dressing gown etc. Next day – found dead – key of his room in own pocket – locked. P says gave him trintium tablets 1/10 – by mistake in 1/100 box. P says his fault – H knows better – says to P same method – always a mistake – P agrees

  P has had door key stolen – had new one made – (old room!) (a mention of P coming after Langton) P has trintium tablets for high blood pressure – takes them – induces tolerance. Shares chocolate with L – L dies. P wheels him to room – returns and plays part of L in dressing gown – hair – his own is wig – fake moustache – deliberately for Hastings. Goes in and locks door

  Mrs Langton – Emilia – realises truth – tells Hastings so – kills herself – cuts throat. Langton arrested – P’s machination – limp – razor blade dropped – blood on it etc. fingerprint – L and Hast. only – L put in invalid chair and pushed to room

  Emilia realises L is insane. First writes letter saying she is afraid of him, then cuts her shows herself in his dressing gown and limping, hides razor (wiped) with blood on it – then cuts her throat. P’s point is to lie – say L left him at 12.10. Or guillotine idea – L to put his head down – steel shutter

  P sends for L – confronts him with story. L admits it all, shows himself in his true colours –Emilia hears it all. P gives him narcotic – goes to Emilia’s room. She has killed herself with razor. P takes L along, lets him hold razor – blood on it, on him. Then leaves room waking up H – shows himself in L’s dressing gown hiding razor in pot. H finds it

  It is difficult to think of any advantage to the method, in which Mrs Langton (Emilia) plays a large and blood-soaked part, over the shooting Christie eventually settled on. Especially as the bullet-wound has the added symbolic resonance of the Mark of Cain; this was also a significant clue in And Then There Were None, making one wonder which came first. The ‘guillotine’ idea is one of the most bizarre in the entire Christie opus.

  The notes for Curtain, in both volume and invention, show a professional working at the height of her considerable powers. The manipulation of plot variations, the exploration of character possibilities, the evocation of earlier crimes, all culminating in an elegiac letter from the dead, combine to display the unique gifts of the Queen of Crime.

  UNUSED IDEAS: THREE

  * * *

  SOLUTIONS REVEALED

  Death in the Clouds • The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side • A Murder is Announced • One, Two, Buckle my Shoe • Peril at End House • Sparkling Cyanide • Three Act Tragedy

  * * *

  Batch three of Unused Ideas includes a number of sketches for possible plays.

  THE MOUSETRAP II

  Mousetrap II?

  A reunion dinner – the survivors of revolution? war (Airman and passengers lost in desert)

  Man gate crashes – a lawyer? elderly? Mannered? Felix Aylmer type or a [Sir Ralph] Richardson.

  A murder – here – one of group is a murderer – one of group is a victim. Doesn’t know victim

  End of Scene – I’m the prospective victim amn’t I? (Really murderer)

  Possibility of house in street Soho hired for party – waiters hired for joke! One man is waiter – brings drink to guest – later enters as guest – with moustache.

  Death at the Dinner – man drinks – dies – a doctor present says this glass must be kept. It is then he puts poison in it – real drink was poisoned earlier – before dinner

  (A mixture of 3 Act Tragedy (Sir Charles) and Sparkling Cyanide?) Is wrong person killed?

  T
he biggest mystery about this sketch is the reason for calling it ‘Mousetrap II’, as it has nothing in common with that famous play. Perhaps it was so called in the hope of another stage success that might rival the record-breaking title? It is also difficult to date this extract as most of the contents of Notebook 4, from which these notes are excerpted, remain unpublished. Much of it is taken up with notes for the relatively unknown play Fiddlers Five (later Fiddlers Three), first staged in 1971, so it seems reasonable to assume this extract dates from the late 1960s. Strength is also lent to this argument by the fact that by then The Mousetrap was a record-breaker.

  As Christie herself states, there are strong similarities with Three Act Tragedy – the subterfuge with glasses, the cryptic note ‘Doesn’t know victim’, the guest disguised as a waiter/butler – and Sparkling Cyanide – the unexpected death at the dinner table and a similar waiter/guest ploy. This ruse is also a variation on that adopted by the killer in Death in the Clouds. The oddly specific reason outlined for the reunion – survivors of a revolution – has echoes of the revolution in Ramat that culminated in murder at Meadowbank School in Cat among the Pigeons. And the prospective victim as murderer was a favourite throughout Christie’s career – Peril at End House, One, Two, Buckle my Shoe, A Murder is Announced, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side. Despite these echoes of earlier novels, this late in her career Christie was still coming up with original ideas: the trick with the glass did not feature in any of her earlier poisonings.

  The actor Felix Aylmer played Sir Rowland Delahaye in the first production of Spider’s Web in 1954; and Sir Ralph Richardson would play, many years later, one of Christie’s most famous creations, Sir Wilfrid Robards, in a 1983 TV remake of Witness for the Prosecution.

  THE REUNION DINNER

  Reunion Dinner 3 Act Play

  Collinaris Restaurant

  Waiter – old man like a tortoise

  Waiter – young Italian type (conversation between them about this dinner)

  Victor Durel – business type (approves menu etc. – wines)

  Valentine Band (Clydesdale? Harborough?) – rich furs and so on

  Major Allsop – sharp practice type company partner

  Isadore Cowan – old Jew

  Janet Spence – Middle aged, forthright (missionary? UNESCO?!)

  Captain Harley ex pilot – now rich

  Lowther – Company lawyer

  Canon Semple (not a Canon – an actor pretending)

  The Dinner

  Before it begins Durel makes speech – object of dinner

  The plane came down – our miraculous preservation – two three of our number left us – to the memory of our missing friends – Joan Arlington – Gervase Cape – Richard Dymchurch. Canon says grace – For what we are about to receive may the Lord

  Conversation?

  The old man waits about watching – pours wine

  Possibilities

  1. Wine – a truth drug?

  2. Wine – poison for somebody

  3. Canon is shown to be not a canon – but CID? Or oil surveyor

  4. Victor Durel points out – item out paper tonight – two skeletons have been found on an oil survey –

  Joan A[rlington]? R[ichard Dymchurch]? G[ervase Cape]?

  5. Isadore asks Harley about circumstances – dismissed for error of judgement – but very well off?

  Suggests: was it an error of judgement? Or were you paid to put down jet there

  These very detailed notes from Notebook 52 may be connected to the previous entry, from Notebook 4, although the two Notebooks seem to date from different years. The idea of survivors of an air crash is common to both and there are indications that, in each case, poison is the murder method. The full names (even of the missing characters) and backgrounds included would seem to indicate that considerable thought went into this idea. But there is no script, not even a rough draft – nothing but these intriguing notes. This Notebook also contains the notes for The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and The Clocks, both published in the early 1960s, and is directly ahead of the notes for the screen adaptation of Dickens’s Bleak House, on which Christie worked in 1962. Puzzlingly, therefore, it would seem that this more detailed sketch preceded the first sketch, discussed above. UNESCO had recently designated Christie the most translated writer, apart from the Bible, so the exclamation mark after their name may be a private joke.

  In many ways this is uncharted and untypical Christie territory – survivors of a plane crash, someone paid to ‘put a jet down’, skeletons found during an oil survey, a truth drug. During the 1950s she published two ‘foreign travel’ titles – They Came to Baghdad and Destination Unknown – and the latter does contain much air travel as well as a crashed plane. But while the background to the plot outlined above may contain adventurous concepts, the murder plot is Christie on home ground: a poisoning during dinner at a restaurant (‘Yellow Iris’, Sparkling Cyanide); a clergyman who is not a clergyman (Murder in Mesopotamia); a middle-aged missionary (Murder on the Orient Express); a detective in disguise (The Mousetrap, And Then There Were None). The description of the elderly waiter as ‘like a tortoise’ has distinct echoes of Lawrence Wargrave from Chapter 13 of And Then There Were None; this possibility is further strengthened when we read the ‘old man waits about watching’. And is it pure coincidence that there are ten characters listed – eight guests and two servants?

  Chapter 7

  Miss Marple and ‘The Case of the Caretaker’s Wife’

  ‘Miss Marple insinuated herself so quickly into my life that I hardly noticed her arrival.’

  * * *

  SOLUTIONS REVEALED

  Endless Night • ‘The Sign in the Sky’ • ‘The Case of the Caretaker’s Wife’

  * * *

  The Miss Marple short story ‘The Case of the Caretaker’ was first published in the UK in The Strand in January 1942, followed by ‘Tape Measure Murder’ in February and ‘The Case of the Perfect Maid’ in April. These short stories can be seen as preludes to Miss Marple’s looming investigation of The Body in the Library in May 1942. Between The Thirteen Problems in 1932 and the publication, in quick succession, of these three short stories UK readers had seen the elderly detective in action only in the slight ‘Miss Marple Tells a Story’ in 1935. In the USA the Chicago Sunday Tribune published ‘The Case of the Caretaker’ in July 1942.

  Apart from being a very typical Marple murder-in-a-village case – the ‘big house’, the local doctor, gossiping neighbours, the post office – this short story is important in the Christie output as it is the precursor of the last great novel that she was to write over a quarter-century later, Endless Night. The similarities are remarkable – wealthy heiress marries ne’er-do-well charmer, builds a house in the country and is menaced by a peculiar old woman. Her death, following a horse-riding ‘accident’, is shown to have been orchestrated by her husband and his lover. What distinguishes the plot in the novel is the manner of its telling, the characterisation of the main protagonists and the shock ending.

  In common with many short stories, there is little Notebook material relating to ‘The Case of the Caretaker’. The first brief note below, reflecting the theme and the final poignant words of the story, appears in Notebook 60 and its accompanying page contains notes for the companion story, ‘The Case of the Perfect Maid’. The surrounding pages of this Notebook contain early notes for what would become The Moving Finger (1943) and Curtain, so a composition date of 1940/41 is confirmed.

  Poor little rich girl

  Old Mr Murgatroyd turned out – shakes fist etc. – really is paid by husband – accident at home – she is called in. Miss M tells Haydock what to look for

  The second, slightly elaborated note below is from Notebook 62. There, the inspiration is one of a list of one-sentence short story ideas, many of which remained undeveloped. The list is followed by the detailed notes for N or M? (1941) and then a page headed ‘Books 1941’, so it is reasonable to assume that the foll
owing was also written during 1940.

  A. Poison Pen

  B. A Cricket story

  C. Committee crime

  D. Infra Red photograph

  E. ‘Facing up’ story

  F. District Nurse

  G. Charwoman comes to Miss M.

  H. Arty spinster friends

  I. Poor little rich girl

  J. Lady’s maid and parlour maid

  K. Stamp story

  L. Dangerous drugs stolen

  M. Legless man

  N. Extra gong at dinner

  Idea A became The Moving Finger, K became ‘Strange Jest’, G and J were combined in ‘The Case of the Perfect Maid’, and I became ‘The Case of the Caretaker’. Idea N remains a mystery; both versions of this idea – ‘The Second Gong’ in 1932 and the more elaborate adaptation ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’, in 1937’s Murder in the Mews – had previously appeared by this time, as cases for Hercule Poirot. At a later date, to judge from the different pen and less sprawling handwriting, Christie begins to expand ideas I, G, C and J and then added ideas K, L, M and N. This expansion is an accurate sketch of ‘The Case of the Caretaker/Caretaker’s Wife’:

  I.

  Esme Harley, rich heiress, married to self serving man (politician? younger son ne’er-do-well?) unused to country life – old woman (or man) curses her when she is out riding – horse swerves. Horse shot with air gun – bolts – Esme is thrown. Clare Wright (doctor’s daughter?) comes up to her – injects digitalin? Heart gives out as she is taken home.

  Or

  Husband does it – the clock tower gives time. Yes, but he winds it or butler winds it (like ‘Sign in the Sky’)