Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets From Her Notebooks
Page 29
The other interesting point concerns the reference to ‘The Late Mrs. Dane’. The first page of Notebook 19, during the planning of what was to become Sleeping Murder, is headed:
Cover Her Face
The Late Mrs. Dane
They Do It with Mirrors
The promising title ‘The Late Mrs Dane’ was not pursued although the name itself appears in the early sketches for Sad Cypress and The A.B.C. Murders. Thirty years later, in 1965, we can see that the elderly Christie was still toying with it; and it is a great title.
Mrs Oliver’s visits to Borodene Mansions in Chapters 3 and 7, and Poirot’s to High Basing in Chapters 4 and 5, are sketched thoroughly in Notebook 26:
Mrs Oliver visits Borodene Court – a flat – 3 girls
Claudia – confident, efficient good background
Frances – Arts Council or Art Gallery.
Norma
Milkman mentions to Mrs O. Lady pitched herself down from 7th floor. Mind disturbed – had only been in flat a month
Decoration of flat – all similar built-in furniture and wallpaper – one wall with huge Harlequin
Poirot at High Basing – visits Restaricks – pretends to know Sir Rodney. On leaving has a snoop before he and Mary encounter the Peacock (David) also snoopy. Later Poirot gives lift to David
And the essence of the plot is captured in the following paragraph from Notebook 42:
Frances in an art racket – David works with her – gallery ‘in’ it. She runs picture shows abroad – he forges pictures. She meets McNaughton, he and Restarick whose brother dies suddenly – he takes R’s place – R’s passport faked by her. She goes back to England – once there assumes part of Mary – blonde and wig – Mrs Restarick – visit Uncle Rodney – furniture in store – picture ‘cleaned’ – substitute painted by David of McNaughton. Katrina found by Mary – dailies – Mary up and down to London, Frances to Manchester – Liverpool – Birmingham etc. Frances gets Norma to Borodene Court – she seldom sees F – but thinks she is going mad because she dreams F is M
Most of the salient points of the plot are covered but the words ‘assumes part of Mary’ are easier to read than to imagine. They involve a character playing a continuing dual role. It is difficult for the reader to believe that, even in Norma’s drug-induced twilight existence, the same person could have been accepted as her flatmate and her stepmother. Impersonation has frequently played an important part in Christie’s fiction – Carlotta Adams in Lord Edgware Dies, Sir Charles Cartwright in Three Act Tragedy, Miss Gilchrist in After the Funeral, Romaine in ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ – but in each of these cases the impersonation is a one-off episode and not a long-term arrangement. And in three of these instances the impersonator is a professional actor.
The sequence of events in Chapter 22 is outlined in Notebook 42:
Frances speaks to porter, goes up in lift – inserts key etc. Hand rises slowly to throat – sees herself in glass – her look of frozen terror. Then screams and runs out of flat – grips someone – killed – she has just returned from Manchester? Dead body – 2 hours dead. F. comes by train from Bournemouth? – changes to Mary – meets David – where are Claudia? Andrew? Mary?
And there are flashes of Christie’s old ingenuity – the odd/even numbers, the different/same room scenario – in this extract from Notebook 49; elements of this note surfaced in the book although the practicality of the idea is questionable. The reference to ‘Swan Court’ is to the actual apartment block in which Christie had a flat for much of her life:
An idea
Girl or (dupe of some kind) taken to flat – go up in lift – one of kind you can’t see or count floors. Room has very noticeable wall paper – Versailles? Cherries? Birds? She swears to this – believing it – describes it minutely. Actually that room and wallpaper is somewhere else. Wallpaper is put on same night – it is all prepared – cut etc. – pasted on – would take a couple of hours not more – but it would have to dry off and therefore would be described as a damp room – ‘had patches’ of damp on it or a room with the noticeable paper would be papered over with another paper. The similarity of rooms in a block like Swan Court in, say, opposite sides of building – odd and even numbers if some flats furniture would be the same
Much of the detail explored in the following extract from Notebook 50 was to change but some concepts – the drugging and scapegoating, the fake portrait and the subterfuge with regard to flat numbers – remained:
Girl doped by other girls (Claudia? Frances?) friends hears a shot – comes to find herself shooting out of window – other girl supporting her and pistol really discharged by her – Lance they get in and fix him up – bandages etc. He and (Cl?) (Frances?) are ‘in it’ together against simple Norma. Later she is again ‘doped’ a second brain storm – result – a young artist is shot – girls give evidence for Norma – police can’t shake them but don’t believe them.
(B)? The Picture by Levenheim A.R.A. is of her mother Lady Roche in country house. Actually picture is copied by young David McDonald – only face of (Mary?) is substituted – then David is shot. Norma suspected and believes herself she did it. Thought to be a sexy crime.
C. Or is Arthur Wells – Mary’s husband – painted into picture
D. Or Arthur and Mary – Sir R – can’t see A very well but believes he is his nephew. A man with a stroke – is bribed to impersonate Arthur at a specialist.
[E] Painting – a Lowenstein – (L is dead) worth £40,000 – insured. Copy false – seen on one evening – party
Points of interest
Double flat – 71 7th floor (faces W), 64 6th floor (faces E) Police called to which?
Finally, in the following extracts, all from Notebook 51, there are glimpses of the Christie of yesteryear with the listing of ideas and the consideration of possible combinations of conspirators (throughout these sketches the David of the book appears as Paul):
Norma – are her words connected with home – stepmother? Her own mother – Sonia – old boy?
Or
3rd girl activities – is boy friend (Paul) a Mod – like a Van Dyk [sic] – brocade waistcoat – long glossy hair – is he the evil genius – is he in it with Claudia? with Frances? Narcotics?
Does Norma get keen on him – she acts as a go between for them? A girl – an addict – dies really because she is found to be a police agent getting evidence – killed by Paul or Claudia – (Frances) – they make Norma believe that she brought her an over strength dose of purple [hearts] (some new name) Technically she might be accused of murder – they do this to get her finished and say they will protect her – she really is fall guy if necessary – she thinks of getting help from Poirot – they decide she is danger – they’ll get rid of her. What is Norma’s job? Cosmetics Lucie Long powders etc. N[orma] packs things
2nd idea
Paul is really police spy – he tangles with the girls
3rd idea
Paul is in it with Sonia
4th idea
Paul is in it with Mary Wells. Sir Rodney – rich – his nephew and wife come to live – or his niece and her husband. Niece dies – widower is married – 2nd wife sucks up to old man – then Sonia arrives also sucks up to him – he alters his will
5th idea
Sonia and Sir Paul linked together – he is impersonating real Sir R
6th idea
Mary Restarick – her beautiful blue eyes – tells Poirot how she got Norma to leave home – better for her – because she hates me. Shows Poirot a chemist’s analysis – arsenic? Or morphia. Norma says – I hate her – I hate her – does boy friend old boy dies see her (he says) walking in sleep – puts something in glass. He tells her – will of old Rodney forged – by Norma?
7th
Poirot and Mary – her beauty – blue eyes – about Norma – glad she went – I didn’t know what to do – takes from locked drawer an analyst’s report – Arsenic? Or morphia? – hated me because of her mother
By the Pricking of my Thumbs
11 November 1968
* * *
On a visit to Tommy’s Aunt Ada in Sunny Ridge Nursing Home, Tuppence meets Mrs Lancaster. Her subsequent disappearance intrigues Tuppence, who decides to investigate. This quest brings her to the village of Sutton Chancellor where the mystery is finally solved, but not before Tuppence’s own life is in danger.
* * *
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are the only Christie characters to age gradually between their first appearance and their last. In their first adventure, The Secret Adversary from 1922, they are ‘bright young things’, in 1941’s N or M? they are worried parents and by the time of By the Pricking of my Thumbs they are middle-aged. The chronology of their lives and ages does not bear close scrutiny, however, and gets even more complicated and, in fact, inexplicable, by the time of their final adventure Postern of Fate in 1973.
The notes for By the Pricking of my Thumbs are more unfocused than usual. They repeat the same scene with only minor variations, suggesting a lack of clarity as to where the book was going. And although the scenes in Sunny Ridge are intriguing, they are not enough to sustain an entire book. When Tuppence embarks on her investigation, the novel begins to flag and, unlike Christie’s plotting in her heyday, with a minimum of tweaking the final revelation could have been completely different with a totally different villain unmasked. Ironically, in Notebook 36 we find a note Christie wrote to herself: ‘Rewriting of first half – not so verbose – 1st three or four chapters good – but afterwards too slow’.
Notes are contained in two Notebooks, 28 and 36, and extend to just over 50 pages. We have, in Notebook 36, a clearly dated starting point for the writing of this novel just over a year before it appeared in the bookshops. The early pages of this Notebook encapsulate the opening of the plot. The first and second sections of the novel, ‘Sunny Ridge’ and ‘The House on the Canal’, are then sketched between Notebooks 28 and 36:
Behind the Fireplace – Oct. 1967
Tommy and Tuppence go to visit disagreeable Aunt Ada – she takes dislike to Tuppence who goes and sits in the lounge – old lady in there sipping milk – says it’s a very nice place – are you coming to stay here?
It wasn’t your poor child, was it?
No – I wondered – the same every day – behind the fireplace – at ten minutes past eleven exactly.
Then she goes out with her milk – Aunt Ada dies in her sleep four days later
Possible ideas for this
Is Mrs Nesbit the aunt or mother of a Philby or a Maclean [i.e. the British spies] – some well-known public character who defected to an enemy country. Were there papers? Hidden behind grate? Child knew secrets of Priest’s Hole. Aunt Ada dies – funeral – call at the home – does Tuppence see picture
Notebook 28 begins again with, broadly speaking, the same scene and set-up. And in it, we find the only Notebook reference to one of the most sinister and incomprehensible motifs in all of Christie – that of the child’s body behind the fireplace, a bizarre episode that also surfaces in The Pale Horse and Sleeping Murder. A possible explanation from within the plot of the novel, as distinct from within Christie’s own life, is offered by the extract above; but it is not very convincing. The idea is repeated but not developed, and the suggested reasons are not utilised in the finished novel.
Grandmother’s Steps
T and T – they visit nursing home for aged or slightly mental – Tommy’s Aunt Amelia – (scatty? Tommy Pommy Johnnie?) Tuppence left in sitting room – old lady sipping milk
‘Was it your poor child? It’s not quite time yet – always the same time – twenty past ten – it’s in there behind the grate, everyone knows but they don’t talk about it. It wouldn’t do’ Shakes her head.
‘I hope the milk is not poisoned today – sometimes it is – if so, I don’t drink it, of course’
Tuppence (on drive home) begins idly to think about it. ‘I wonder what she had in her head – whose poor child? I’d like to know Tommy’ [Chapters 2/3]
The House – kindly witch – the jackdaw – heard through wall? They go in – jackdaw flies away – a dead one – the doll. Tuppence makes enquiries – goes to churchyard – vicar – elderly – a bossy woman doing flowers in church. Vicar introduces her to Tuppence – she invites Tuppence in to coffee. Tuppence goes to house agent in Market Basing [Chapters 7/8/9]
A month later more plot developments, as well as possible characters, are considered. Some of these ideas – the painted boats and the superimposed name – were adopted, while it is possible that ‘The House by the Canal’ was under consideration as a title:
Nov 1st [1967]
The House by the Bridge or the Canal
Some points
The picture is of a small hump-backed bridge over a canal – across the bridge is a white horse on the canal bank – there is a line of pale green poplar trees – tied up to the bank, under the bridge are a couple of boats. An idea is that boats are an afterthought added some time after the picture was painted. Suppose a name was painted John Doe – murderer – over that the boats were painted. Someone either knew about this or someone did it
Ideas to pursue – or discard
1. Picture – boat superimposed – beneath it – ‘Murder’ [or] ‘Maud’
‘Come in to the garden, Maud’ a clue
‘The black bat, Night, hath flown’ – who painted it?
2. Baby farmer idea (at Sunny Ridge? Before Old Ladies Home?) Child really was dead and buried in chimney of sitting room there
3. Could cocoa woman be the killer woman
Possible people involved?
The artist Sidney Boscowan
The friendly witch Mrs Perry
Big lumbering husband Mr Perry
Vicar Rev. Edmund Shipton
Active woman Mrs Bligh
Tommy features little in the book until Chapter 10 when he starts to track Tuppence. One of his first tasks is to find out more about the painting in Aunt Ada’s room:
How does Tommy start his search?
Picture gallery – Bond St. – Boscowan – quite a demand for them again. Mrs. Boscowan lives in country. Tommy goes to see her – has Tuppence been there? Interested in her husband’s pictures. Tells her how this picture was given him by aunt now dead – she was given [it] by an old lady, a Mrs. Lancaster – no reaction. [Chapters 10 and 12]
Some of the ideas Christie noted in November 1967 were not pursued at all; others were partially adopted. The first one below was rejected possibly because of its similarity to a plot device in The Clocks, five years earlier; the second has elements that were utilised – the pregnant actress and the name Lancaster – but the surrounding ideas were discarded:
Does this really centre round a paperback – a thriller read by old Mrs Lancaster? Does Tommy find that out? He reads it in train, goes to Sunny Ridge, finds book was in library – Mrs L. very fond of crime stories – comes home triumphantly and debunks Tuppence
Country small lonely house – to it comes down beautiful girl – actress – going to have child. Man marries her – but he now wants to marry rich boss’s daughter so wedding is kept quiet (in local church) – under another name – he tells girl baby is dead? Or he kills girl. Who is Mrs Lancaster? Someone who lives near churchyard – sees body being buried in old grave
Five further sketches of the murderous back-plot appear; but as can be seen, each sketch is substantially the same, apart from a brief consideration of a homicidal Sir Philip Starke:
Nov. 12 [1967]
; Alternatives
X Mrs Lancaster – alias Lady Peele – of batty family – barren – went queer. Husband loved children – she ‘sacrificed’ them. He gets his devoted secretary Nellie Blighe – sends her to nursing Old Ladies Home
Dec[ember]
Sir Philip Starke – loved children – his wife Eleanor – mental – (abortion) jealous of children – kills little girls. Nellie Bligh secretary – is also mental nurse.
Disappearance of child (Major Henley’s) – Does Nellie and Philip bury one of them in churchyard – Lady S – in various homes. Friendly witch’s husband was Sexton.
Was she Lady Peele – barren – had had abortion – was haunted by guilt – it was she, jealous, who killed any protégés of her husband. In asylum – released – then husband employs a faithful secretary to put her in old people’s home – ‘Miss Bates’ the one who was doing the church – she adores Peele
Candidates for murder
Lady Sparke – neurotic – mental. Did she kill her children? She was released – Philip and Nellie Bligh hid her – took her to homes. Does an elderly woman go in also – does she die? Mrs. Cocoa?
Story gets about that Sir Philip’s wife left him because he was the killer
Coming directly after the shocking and inventive Endless Night, By the Pricking of my Thumbs suffers, inevitably, by comparison. But although for the most part the book is a series of reminiscences with little solid fact, the opening chapters are certainly intriguing, conveying something of the old Christie magic, and the denouement is unsettling. The underlying themes of madness and child murder, combined with scenes set in graveyards and deserted houses, could well have justified, as suggested by the first-edition blurb which was written by Christie herself, the more appropriate title By the Chilling of your Spine.