Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets From Her Notebooks
Page 25
Spider’s Web had been the first original Christie stage play since Black Coffee in 1930. Verdict and The Unexpected Guest continued this trend for new, as distinct from adapted, material, although both of these scripts are considerably darker in tone than Spider’s Web. To some extent all three feature attempts to explain away a mysterious death with less emphasis than usual on the whodunit element. And in The Unexpected Guest Christie sets herself the added challenge of portraying a 19-year-old who is mentally disturbed. On a more personal note, the description of the victim, Richard Warwick, has distinct similarities to Christie’s brother, Monty. Both spent part of their adult life in Africa, both needed an attendant when they returned to live in England and both had the undesirable habit of taking pot-shots at animals, birds and, unfortunately, passers-by through the window of his home. In her Autobiography (Part VII, ‘The Land of Lost Content’) she recounts Monty’s description of a ‘silly old spinster going down the drive with her behind wobbling. Couldn’t resist it – I sent a shot or two right and left of her’; this is exactly Laura’s description in Act I, Scene i of Richard’s behaviour. There, it must be emphasised, all similarities ended, as Richard Warwick is painted as a particularly despicable character.
Verdict, after a critical mauling due, in part, to a mistimed final curtain, lasted only one month but in August 1958, spirit unquenched, the curtain rose on the next offering from the Queen of Crime. Verdict was an atypical Christie stage offering; despite its title it is not a whodunit and has no surprise ending. With The Unexpected Guest she returned to more recognisable fare. Although it is, in part, a will-they-get-away-with-it type of plot, it also contains a strong whodunit element and a last-minute surprise.
Christie had, presumably, spent the intervening period, not in licking her wounds, but in setting out to prove her critics wrong by writing a new play to eradicate the failure of Verdict. Or so it seemed. But Notebook 34 shows, with an unequivocal date, that the earliest notes for this play had been drafted even before The Mousetrap had begun its unstoppable run. Three pages of that Notebook show that almost the entire plot of the play already existed. A more likely scenario, and one borne out by further notes below, is that the plotting of the play was already well advanced even before Verdict was taken off; it needed only a final polish.
1951 Play
Act I
Stranger stumbling into room in dark – finds light – turns it on – body of man – more light – woman against wall – revolver in hand (left) – says she shot him.
‘There’s the telephone –
Uh?
‘To ring up the police’
Outsider shields her – rings police – rigs room
People Vera
Julian (lover?)
Benny (Cripple’s brother)
Act II
Ends with S[tranger] accusing V[era] of lying. Julian killed him – you thought I’d shield you – (she admits it) or led up to by his realising she is left handed; crime committed by right handed person
Curtain as –
‘Julian did it’
She – ‘You can’t prove it – you can’t alter your story’
‘You ingenious devil’!
Act III
Suspicion switches to Benny having done it. But actually it is woman. Ends with her preferring S[tranger] to Julian
Characters could be
Vera (Sandra)
Julian
Mrs Gregg mother of victim
Stepmother
Barny feeble minded boy
Rosa ” ” girl
Miss Jennson – Nurse
Julian’s sister
Lydia or niece of Julian’s – hard girl
This is, in rough outline, the plot of the play; and the characters correspond closely to the eventual cast list. The only element missing is the development of the part played by ‘the Stranger’; he does not even figure in the list of characters, although a ‘stranger stumbling into room’ is the opening of the play. And yet the part he plays is vital to the surprise in the closing lines of the eventual script. The explanation for this may be simply that the final twist had not occurred to Christie when she began drafting the play. This is in keeping with other titles; the shock endings to both Crooked House and Endless Night do not form a large part of the plotting of either novel and would seem to have emerged during, rather than being inspired by, the drafting of the book. But even without the final twist The Unexpected Guest is still an entertaining whodunit.
Notebook 53 also has a concise summation of the plot, this time including a list of possible murderers. These three pages appear, unexpectedly, between pages of extended plotting of After the Funeral and A Pocket Full of Rye, both of which were completed in the early 1950s and published in 1953. The general set-up here is reflected in the finished play, although neither victim nor killer has yet been decided. By now the part played by the ‘stranger’ has taken on a more important aspect; he is given a name, Trevor and is under consideration as the murderer.
Plan The Unexpected Guest
Act I
Trevor blundering in – in fog or storm – Sandra against wall – pistol. He and she – he rigs things – rings police. Scene between them
Curtain – end of scene
Scene II
People being questioned by police
Julian Somers MP
Sandra
Nurse Eldon
Mrs Crawford
David Crawford – invalid
Or
David Etherington Sandra’s brother
Act II
Further questions
Julian and Sandra – Trevor’s suspicions. He accuses her – having tricked her with revolver
Damned if I’ll shield him
What else can you do – now? etc.
Act III
Mrs Crawford takes a hand. ‘Who really did it’ – (brightly)
Now who did?
1. Trevor the enemy from the past – his idea is to return and find body
2. Nurse? Told him about wife and Julian – his reaction is that he knew all about it – is brutal to her – she shoots him
3. Governess to child? Or to defective?
4. Defective has done it – or child
5. Mrs Crawford?
As further confirmation of the unpredictability of the Notebooks, the following extract, clearly dated November 1957, appears in Notebook 28, preceded by notes for By the Pricking of my Thumbs and followed by notes for Endless Night, both published in the late 1960s. How this gap of ten years can have happened in the middle of a Notebook and how a title from the previous decade can appear between notes for two titles from a later decade, is inexplicable; but it shows, yet again, the danger of drawing deductions or making explicit statements about the timeline of the notes, unless supported by incontrovertible proof.
There seems to be confusion in the following extract in the naming of the main female character. Earlier notes refer to her as Vera, as do the initials in this extract, but in the course of the notes she is also referred to as Ruth and/or Judith:
FOG
Nov 1957
M enters – R dead
V. revolver in hand – admits – the build up – tells her of MacGregor – dead man displayed in bad light – letter written – printed – left – then (M. rings up police?) V goes up stairs – paper bag trick – they come down – M. enters – discovery – M rings up police. Does Ruth – make some remark about lighter (Julian’s)
Scene II
Police – then family
Julian comes – lighter – he picks it up etc.
Act II
Police again or a police station – or his hotel and V. comes there?
Ends with Julian and V
His saying ‘You did not kill him – didn’t know even how to fire a revolver’
Act III
(Cast?) V[era]
M[ichael and/or MacGregor]
Jul[ian]
Police Insp.
Mrs Warwick
Judith Venn [no equivalent]
Bernard Warwick [possibly Jan]
Crusty [possibly Miss Bennett]
Angell – Manservant (Shifty)
Crusty works on Bernard or Judith or Bernard begins talking
Points to decide
Judith (angry because R. chucks her out). If so, Bernard is induced by her to confess or even boast. He is taken away. M. clears him and breaks down J. [M] says to V. (good luck with J.) he is M[acGregor]
Or
Bernard boasts to killing him – he is killed – cliff? window? etc.
Case closed. Then M springs his surprise
As can be seen, at this point the play is referred to as ‘Fog’; and the same title appears in other Notebooks, once with the addition of ‘The Unexpected Guest’ in brackets. As a title ‘Fog’ has its attractions. In both the physical and metaphorical sense fog plays an important part in the play. ‘Swirls of mist’ are described in the stage directions and fog is necessary to lend credence to Starkwedder’s story of crashing his car; and, of course, the other characters, and the audience, are in a fog of doubt throughout the play. Unusually for a Christie play (with a UK setting) the scene is specifically set near the Bristol Channel, and the fog-horn sounds a melancholy note periodically throughout the action of the play. The stage directions specify that ‘the fog signal is still sounding as the Curtain falls’.
‘Greenshaw’s Folly’
December 1958
* * *
Miss Marple uses her powers of observation and armchair detection to solve the brutal murder of Miss Greenshaw, owner of the monstrous Greenshaw’s Folly. In doing so she uses her knowledge of theatre, gardening – and human nature.
* * *
The history behind this short story was outlined in Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks. Briefly, it was written as a replacement for the still unpublished novella ‘The Greenshore Folly’, which, in turn, had been written as a gift for the Diocesan Board of Finance in Exeter. Embarrassingly, it had proved impossible to sell the story (due, probably, to its unusual length) and Christie recalled the original and replaced it with one bearing the similar-sounding title ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’. It was published in the UK in the Daily Mail in December 1956; in the USA, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine published it in March of the following year, referring to it as Christie’s ‘newest story’.
Unusually for a short story, there are 25 pages of notes in two Notebooks. Those in Notebook 3 are alongside notes for 4.50 from Paddington, published in 1957, and The Unexpected Guest, first staged in 1958. Notebook 47 contains many of the notes for Dead Man’s Folly as well as preliminary notes for the expansion of ‘Baghdad Chest’ (as Christie refers to it) and ‘The Third Floor Flat’. The former, as ‘The Mystery of the Spanish Chest’, appeared alongside ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’ in The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding but the latter was never completed.
Many themes and ideas from earlier stories make brief and partly disguised appearances in ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’. The mistress/housekeeper impersonation appeared 35 years earlier in ‘The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge’ and more recently in the 1953 novel After the Funeral. The weapon normally used from a distance but employed at close quarters featured in Death in the Clouds, the fake policeman appeared in The Mousetrap and ‘The Man in the Mist’ from Partners in Crime, and unsuspected family connections had been a constant element of Christie’s detective fiction for years. And below, we see the reappearance of an old reliable idea – that no one looks properly at a parlour maid or, in this case, a policeman.
The main plot device, as well as the choice of detective, is briefly outlined at the beginning of Notebook 3, while Notebook 47 sketches the opening pages as well as unequivocally stating the title:
Miss M
Hinges on policeman – not really a policeman – like parlourmaid one does not really look at policemen. Man (or woman) shot – householder rushes out – Policeman bending over body tells man to telephone – a colleague will be along in a moment
Greenshaw’s Folly
Conversation between Ronald [Horace] who collects monstrosities and Raymond West – photograph – Miss Greenshaw
Notebook 47 considers two possible plot developments. The first is clearly the seed of the Poirot novel The Clocks, to be written five years later. Most of the ideas noted here were incorporated into that novel apart from the reason for the presence of the clocks. ‘The Dream’ is a Poirot short story from 1938 and it contains elements of the plot of ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’ – the impersonation, by the killer, of the victim and the consequent faking of the time of death.
Typist sent from agency to G’s Folly alone there – finds body – or blind woman who nearly steps on it. Clocks all an hour wrong. Why? So that they will strike 12 instead of 1.
The Dream
Wrong man interviews woman – girl gives her instruction – she goes into next room to type. Then finds apparently same woman dead – really dead before – has said secretary is out or faithful companion – faithful companion seen walking up path. Combine this with policeman – girl is typing – looks up to see police constable silhouetted against light.
The Notebooks show vacillation between Alfie and the nephew as murderer or, at least, conspirator. As can be seen, much thought and planning went into the timetable of the murder and impersonation, and this element of the plot is undoubtedly clever.
Are Mrs C. and Alfie mother and son?
Are Mrs C. and nephew mother and son?
Mrs C. and Alf do it. Get Miss G. to make will – then one of them impersonates Miss G.
A. Alfie then is seen to leave just before real policeman appears
e.g. 11.55 Alfie leaves whistling or singing
12 Alfie as policeman arrives. Fake murder – Mrs C. yells Help etc. Alfie then in pub
12.5 Alfie as policeman
B. Nephew is the one who does it. An actor in Repertory – Barrie’s plays
Alfie leaves 11.55 12 o’clock. Nephew steals in, locks doors on Lou and Mrs. C, kills Aunt, then strolls, dressed as Aunt, across garden – asks time.
Mrs C. and N[at or nephew]
12.15 – Fake murder – with Mrs C.
12.20 – Policeman
12.23 – Real police
12.25 – Nephew arrives
Alfred gets to lunch – so he is just all right – or meets pal and talks for a few minutes
Or
Mrs C. and Alfred
Fake murder Mrs C. 12.45 (Alfred in pub)
Policeman (Alfred) 12.50
Real police 12.55
Alfred returns 12.57
Nephew 1 o’clock (has been given misleading directions)
The following very orderly list has a puzzling heading; why ‘things to eliminate’? Few of them actually are eliminated; most of them remain in the finished story:
Things to eliminate
Will idea (Made with R[aymond] and H[orace] as witness) left to Mrs C. or Alfie too
Policeman idea
Alfie is nephew
Alfie Mrs C.’s son
Alfie is not nephew but pretends to be – Riding master and Mrs C.’s son)
Nephew and policeman’s uniform ( Barries’ plays)
Nephew and Alfie are the same
Mrs C. plays part of Miss G.
As we have seen, Christie toyed with alternative versions of the plot and solution before she eventually settled on one that is, sadly, far from foolproof; the mechanics of the plot do not stand up to rigorous scrutiny. Would the ‘real’ police, for example, not query the presence and identity of the first ‘policeman’, despite Miss Marple’s assertion that ‘one just accepts one more uniform as part of the law’? And we have to accept that someone would work for nothing on the basis of expectations from a will. The will itself poses more problems. The conspirators assume it leaves the money to them, either to the housekeeper, as promised, or to the nephew, as inheritan
ce. But, in reality, the estate is left to Alfred, thereby ensnaring him in the fatal trio of means, motive and opportunity. But if the conspirators knew this they had no motive; and if they didn’t know it, framing Alfred was never a possibility.
Cat among the Pigeons
2 November 1959
* * *
As the headmistress, Miss Bulstrode, welcomes the pupils for the new term at Meadowbank School she little realises that before term ends a pupil will be kidnapped, four staff will be dead and a murderer will have been unmasked. It’s just as well that Julia Upjohn called in Hercule Poirot.
* * *
With a serialisation beginning the previous September, Cat among the Pigeons was the 1959 ‘Christie for Christmas’. It is a hugely readable mixture of domestic murder mystery and international thriller with a solution that reflects both situations. In this, the unmasking of two completely independent killers, it is a unique Christie. It was the first Poirot since 1956 and there would not be another one until The Clocks, four years later. The reader’s report on the manuscript, dated June 1959, was enthusiastic (‘highly entertaining’) rather than ecstatic (‘not a dazzling performance’). Described as having ‘enough of the crossword puzzle element towards the end to satisfy the purists, even though the solution shows that plot to be rather far-fetched’ and to be ‘more saleable than [the previous year’s title] Ordeal by Innocence’, the reader recommended including the book in a new contract. Although the reader was viewing the manuscript in purely commercial terms, few Christie aficionados would agree with the view that it would outshine Ordeal by Innocence, a far superior crime novel.
As will be seen, Christie toyed with the idea of having Miss Marple solve the murders at Meadowbank School and this might not have been such a bad idea. Miss Marple having a relative in the school is more credible than a school-girl ‘escaping’ to consult Poirot; and Meadowbank is a girls’ school. That said, Miss Marple had already had a busy decade with four major investigations, and another minor one; and she would not, perhaps, have been as adept with the international segment.