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

by John Curran

  The other area for speculation is the parentage of Colin Lamb. When they meet, Poirot asks after Colin’s father and wonders why he is not using the family name. In G.C. Ramsay’s Mistress of Mystery (1967) Christie is quoted as confirming that Colin is Superintendent Battle’s son.

  In Notebook 4, on a page dated 1961, an alphabetical list of plot ideas includes the inspirations for The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and A Caribbean Mystery; on that list idea F is a brief outline of The Clocks. And a year later the tentative title appears on a listing of future books.

  F. The Clock – as beginning – typist – dead body – blind old lady

  1962

  Notes for 3 books

  Y. The Clocks (?)

  Z. Carribean [sic] Mystery

  X. Gypsy’s Acre

  But in fact the plot for The Clocks goes back a lot further than that. In late 1949 Agatha Christie set a competition for which she wrote the opening of a short story that competitors were asked to complete. It concerned a typist, Nancy, arriving at a house and letting herself in to the front room. There she finds a collection of clocks, a dead man and a blind woman. Twelve years later Christie herself resurrected the story and set about expanding it. The main difference between the two is that the clocks in the short story all show different, and wrong, times whereas the clocks of the novel all show the same, but equally wrong, time. Unsurprisingly the character names are also different, as is the street address; but the similarities are striking – the description of the clocks is identical and the ‘Rosemary’ clock is specifically mentioned; the telephone call making the appointment is a mystery and the blind woman, it transpires, is Nancy’s mother. Overall the explanation of the presence of the clocks is more convincing in the prize-winning solution than in the novel.

  In its earlier incarnation the short story is called ‘The Clock Stops’; this is also the title used in Notebook 8 where most of the plotting, about 50 pages, is contained. A list of possible characters, most of whose names will change, and a possible motive, are the first considerations:

  Mildred Pebmarsh – fiftyish – blind – had been a librarian – now teaches Braille

  Alice Dale – young stenographer (Is her second name Rosemary) Does Alice, flying out of house, collide with Colin

  Dead Man

  Miss Curtis Head of typing firm

  Colin Lamb – young man – journalist? Doctor? Investigator? On vacation

  Christie sketches the motive scenario more than once. Elements of each sketch were used in the final version, which has much in common – an unexpected arrival from abroad endangering a criminal impersonation – with Dead Man’s Folly:

  Money involved – something with money (gain)

  A middle aged woman inherits vast fortune from an uncle in Canada? (Advertised?) S. America? (or written to Mrs. Bristow?) Actually real Mrs. Bristow is dead and Bristow has remarried (or not?). He decides that he and his wife will claim – was he small builder? Bankrupt – settled in her place. Anyway no one knows he has a first wife. But senior partner of firm of solicitors knows real Mrs. B. So he comes down to (No. 6? 19?) is received, drugged and killed. Taken across diagonal to No. 19 – 61?

  Unsatisfactory person marries nice girl – goes abroad – actually she dies and he marries again – a woman who was sec[retary] to det. story writer – his wife poisoned but he won’t marry her. Fortune left her – she plays invalid. Papers brought for her to sign – O.K. Later someone who knows her well comes – they prepare – plot hers – (from favourite employer) her name is Rosemary – uses old clock. Is girl’s name Alice Rosemary called after his mother? Mother is dead – some mystery about her. A. is illegitimate

  Further elaboration follows; the first possible explanation of the clocks is (thankfully) discarded and the second one adopted:

  Point of various things

  (1) Clocks – the time (Fast?) (Slow?) 3–25

  Possibly – Rosemary faded carriage clock – press 3 – 2 – 5 contains a secret compartment – clocks works have been taken out (a reference to time of a murder – it took place on a Saturday night in Oct. (daylight saving!)

  (2) Rosemary – the name of someone connected with Martindale – Alice or M. Pebmarsh

  The whole is a plot – invented by Rosemary Western (a Mrs. Oliver) now dead and adapted for use as camouflage by her secretary who is – Martindale? Pebmarsh? Mrs. Bristow at No. 61 Pam or Geraldine

  Fortune left to Mrs X (Argentine? Australia? S. Africa?). Actually she has died abroad and husband remarried almost at once. Only one person knows Mrs X by sight. It is this member of law firm who has come over. They plan murder – but not to let him be identified. Elaboration and clocks etc. is suggested by plot of an unpublished book. Mrs X or Miss Martindale was private secretary to a Creasey detective story writer.

  The reference to ‘a Creasey detective story writer’ is unexpected. John Creasey was a hugely prolific writer – producing over 500 titles under a variety of pen names – of most types of crime novel, with the exception of detective stories. In Chapter 28 Poirot explains the original meaning of the clocks as they feature in the unpublished manuscript; it was a code to the combination to the safe, concealed behind a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, containing the jewels of the Russian royal family. He describes the plot as ‘Un tas de bêtises, the whole thing’, in other words, nonsense.

  The all-important story of Edna and her damaged shoe appears alongside the timetable for the fateful lunch-hour:

  Edna in outer office with stiletto heel that has come off – describing where and how she bought buns and came back to office

  Timing here to be consistent

  1.30 – 2.30 Alice lunch interval

  12.30 – 1.30 L[unch] interval for ?

  Edna leaves office 12.30 o’clock – returns by

  12.50 – no call comes through before 1.30

  1.30 Miss M goes out

  or

  Edna goes out 1.30 – back 1.50 – better

  No call before 2.30

  Miss M goes out 12.30 – 1.30

  Christie experimented throughout the Notebook with various neighbours, some of whom made it into the novel. Aspects of the following jottings – ‘quiet gardening type’, ‘Cat lover woman’, and the children – appear, but adapted and rearranged. Interestingly, the ‘secretary to a bestseller writer’ becomes a major plot feature; but the character chosen for this important role is not a resident of Wilbraham Crescent. Despite the alteration of house numbers between Notebook and novel, and the cryptic illustration in Chapter 6, these are not important elements. The use of a Crescent is a useful, though not entirely convincing, method of isolating the suspects:

  A sketch from Notebook 8 during the plotting of The Clocks. Christie was experimenting with a combination of the numerals from a clock-face and a possible sketch of Wilbraham Crescent.

  Neighbours

  No. 60 Man wife children – man sporty talkative, wife v. quiet

  62 Couple of women – Pam and Geraldine – develop their characters

  No. 18 Mainly cats?

  No. 19 Middle aged man – a gardener – invalid wife? Got a blind spinster sister

  Where is my murder and why

  (1) Quiet gardener man – carries victim in sack

  (2) One of the two women – Geraldine? – has been secretary to a bestseller writer (Mrs. O?!!) – has taken various details from one of her discarded plots

  (3) Heart man with wife and children

  (4) Miss Pebmarsh

  Neighbours

  16. Cat lover woman with draperies, accusative of one of the others (? which) because he killed my cat [Mrs Hemming at No. 20]

  20. 2/3? awful children (later one of them says something) like B.B.’s children 10, 7, 3? Harassed fond mother children like Miss P [the Ramsays]

  61. Mr. Bland – unimaginative man, sandy hair, freckled, commonplace – builder in small way near bankrupt – then wife comes into money. Thinking of living abroad – the wife
would like it – I don’t know myself – can’t get any decent food abroad [no. 69]

  62. 2 women? One former secretary to thriller writer or young man living with mother. He is weakly looking – she is really a man? Arty husband and wife – a son Thomas

  69 60. Middle-aged man – quiet gardening type – went with wheelbarrow sacks etc. [Mr McNaughton] Could have a flirty spinster sister

  One of the problems with the book, though, is that there are too many neighbours and that they are not clearly enough delineated to fix them in the mind, while the lengthy interviews with them offer little in the way of information, either for the police or the reader.

  Christie also toyed with ideas that were not pursued in the finished novel, but some of which were to be used at a later stage. The first has an element of the plot of the next Poirot novel, Third Girl, where a female character has two distinct ‘lives’ miles apart, the family of each unaware of the existence of the other:

  Clocks

  Miss Pebmarsh – forty? fifty? blind – who is she?

  Idea – Really a Miss or Mrs X has a well authenticated life in small town Torquay or Wallingford; companion lives with her or perhaps she has a room as P[aying] G[uest] in people’s house – goes away occasionally to stay with relations – ‘Universal Aunt’ sees her across London. Returns in due course – says she is a missionary – sister of a missionary. Came home with ill health – there was such a person – but lost track of.

  And, as can be seen below, another early possibility was to combine the ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’ idea with The Clocks; in the short story a secretary does indeed go to Greenshaw’s Folly to begin work:

  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

  Further ideas followed, some of which – the ‘thriller’ plot, the claimed husband, the postcards from abroad – found their way into the book:

  Man next door does murder of blackmailer. Takes advantage of Miss P’s blindness – kills man with dagger? Or strangles? – carries him in through window – then rings up typewriting agency. Some reason for asking for that particular girl? Is her name Rosemary – clocks just a fancy touch (obvious really – contrived) mistake – one clock is at a quarter to nine

  A ‘thriller’ plot – some secret process – man almost gets it – is killed – scrawls a few words – 61 – L

  A woman whose lover is murdered

  ” ” daughter ” A 14

  ” ” son ” (revenge)

  Idea put about is that a woman Mrs U meets Mr C at hotel – is to take him down in car. Later she calls for baggage – goes to Victoria . . . and travels with man like him (passport?) latter sends p.cs from abroad or his luggage is in hotel unclaimed. Mr C at Cresc. is killed . . . taken across to 19 – Mr Curry – later woman will turn up and claim him as husband. Mr C disappears

  Vasall like – plans photographed during [lunch?] hour – 2 overcoats alike? – or bus or train. Miss Pebmarsh – (caraway seed? aniseed?) Found by agent – or agent writes it as dying

  This last outline is very cryptic. ‘Vasall’ is a reference to the real-life spy John Vassall, a British civil servant who was arrested as a spy in September 1962 and subsequently convicted. This would have been a high-profile event during the genesis of The Clocks. The ‘2 overcoats’ is probably a ploy used to effect a quick change of appearance in order to avoid detection; the bus/train possibility is probably another escape route plan. The caraway seed/aniseed reference is probably to the hoary old plot device of using either as a means of tracking a quarry, a variation of which is used in the denouement of N or M?

  The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, published the previous year, and A Caribbean Mystery, the following year were the last ‘pure’ whodunits Christie was to write but The Clocks, despite its promising opening, remains an inexplicably disappointing offering.

  Third Girl

  14 November 1966

  * * *

  When ‘third girl’ Norma Restarick approaches Poirot with a story of ‘a murder that she might have committed’, he is intrigued. When she disappears, and a murder is committed at her apartment block and his friend Mrs Oliver is coshed, Poirot enters the unfamiliar world of Swinging Sixties London.

  * * *

  Having made little more than a cameo appearance in his previous case, The Clocks, Poirot tackles old problems in a new setting in Third Girl and this time his involvement is more active. Like some other novels from Christie’s last decade, Third Girl is wordy; there are many passages, and indeed chapters, which could, and arguably should, have been omitted, such as the detailed description of Long Basing (Chapter 4) and much of Mrs Oliver’s trudge around London (Chapter 9). The plot itself, despite its promising beginning, requires a considerable suspension of disbelief, while the Swinging Sixties background is largely unconvincing. The impersonation disclosed in the final explanation is difficult to accept, calling into question the entire basis of the novel. Third Girl is the weakest book of the 1960s.

  This uncertainty is mirrored in the notes. They are scattered over six Notebooks and 90 pages but they are repetitive, unlike the Christie of yesteryear. There are nevertheless ideas that she considered but ultimately rejected, although, as we shall see, some of them were utilised, three years later, in Hallowe’en Party.

  When we meet Poirot in the opening chapter he has just completed his magnum opus on detective fiction, a project on which he had previously been working during The Clocks. Mrs Oliver makes her second appearance of the decade having already featured, sans Poirot, in The Pale Horse. She would appear again in Hallowe’en Party and for the last time in Elephants Can Remember. It can be no coincidence that Mrs Oliver, and the now very elderly Miss Marple, both characters with which Dame Agatha had now much in common, appear in over half of the last dozen novels.

  A major element of the plot of Third Girl concerns the drugging of Norma Restarick. This has echoes of A Caribbean Mystery when Miss Marple discovered that Molly Kendal was the victim of a similar plot; and 25 years earlier the poisoning of Hugh Chandler in ‘The Cretan Bull’, the seventh Labour of Hercules, is undertaken for a similar sinister reason.

  Mr Goby from After the Funeral makes a brief appearance. And is Chief Inspector Neele the same policeman, though not of the same rank, who investigated, alongside Miss Marple, the deaths at Yewtree Lodge in A Pocket Full of Rye? Is Dr Stillingfleet, moreover, the medical man who featured in ‘The Dream’?

  The intriguing opening scene is sketched over half a dozen times, with little variation, in four separate Notebooks. This premise would seem to have been the starting point of the novel and the one unalterable idea throughout the notes.

  Poirot breakfast – Girl – Louise – I may have committed a murder. 3 girls in a flat Louise and Veronica – Judy – (Claudia Norma Townsend). One of these three girls. What does she mean by ‘she thinks she may have committed’

  Poirot at breakfast – girl calls ‘She thinks she may have committed a murder.’ ‘Thinks’ Doesn’t she know? No clearness – no precision. ‘I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have told you – you’re too old’

  Poirot at breakfast table – Norma (an unattractive Ophelia) says she may have committed a murder – then tells Poirot he is ‘too old.’

  Suggestions – Chap I – P. at breakfast

  Poirot at the breakfast table – thinks she may have committed a murder. Disappointed by P – too old – recommended by Mrs. Oliver – makes excuse – goes. Poirot worried

  Idea A July – 1965

  Poirot at his breakfast table (The Late Mrs. Dane). P. at breakfast – George40 announces – a – pause – young lady. I do not see people at this hour. She says she thinks she may have committed a murder. ‘Thinks? It is not a subject on which one should be in doubt.’ Girl – unkempt – Poirot regards her with pain etc. G[eorge] and P discuss – neurotic?

  This last sketch merits d
iscussion. It appears in Notebook 27 a page after the final notes for At Bertram’s Hotel, the previous year’s book. To judge by the date heading this note, Christie was mulling over ideas for her 1966 book having just despatched the 1965 Christie for Christmas to Collins. In the notes that follow we find, using an alphabetical sequence, the germs of Endless Night, Nemesis and Hallowe’en Party.

  Idea B, four pages later, is ‘Gypsy’s Acre – place where accidents always happen’ (this became Endless Night). Idea C is a variation on ‘The Cornish Mystery’, though it did not generate a subsequent novel: ‘Wife thinks her husband is poisoning her . . . niece’s young man writes love letters to her – but to Aunt also’. Idea D toys with the possibility of a ‘National Trust Tour of Gardens’, later developed into Nemesis. And Idea E, headed ‘Mary, Mary, Quite contrary’, concerns a foreign girl who is left everything in the will of her wealthy employer. Christie urges herself at the end of this note, ‘Good idea – needs working on’; after further work this became Hallowe’en Party.