Crime Writers and Other Animals

by Simon Brett

  APPENDIX I – THE NAME ‘POIROT’

  The much-bruited suggestion that Agatha Christie selected the name Poirot randomly is patently ridiculous. Apart from its assonantic association with the heavily symbolic ‘parrot’ (discussed more fully above in reference to Skelton’s Speke Parrot), the name also reverberates with nuances from the French language. The ‘poire’ or, in English, ‘pear’ is an obvious subliminal reference to the distinctive shape of the detective’s bald head. That shape is again shadowed in the French word ‘poirée’, which means ‘white beet’ and conforms with the frequently mentioned pallor of the detective’s complexion.

  Though ‘poireau’, the French word closest in sound to the name Christie chose, with its double meanings of ‘leek’ and ‘wart’, appears to have no obvious connection with the detective, the word ‘poirier’, meaning a ‘pear-tree’ offers a much more fruitful area for investigation. Its sound provided the first syllable of Poirot’s name, ‘poir’, and for the second one need look no further than the French word ‘perdreau’, meaning ‘a young partridge’. The unusual juxtaposition of these two words can only be a subconscious association in the author’s mind with the well-known carol, The Twelve Days of Christmas, whose repetitive chorus ends, ‘And a partridge in a pear-tree.’

  The truth of this conjecture would seem to be confirmed by Agatha Christie’s choice of titles for the 1938 volume Hercule Poirot’s Christmas and the 1960 collection The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and a Selection of Entrées.

  APPENDIX II – THE NAME ‘HASTINGS’

  The name of Poirot’s occasional assistant is no less carefully chosen than that of Agatha Christie’s main protagonist. His nomenclature has a very respectable literary history. Shakespeare hinted at the essence of the character in Richard III, Act Three Scene One, when the young Prince of Wales, with a knowledge beyond his years, cries:

  ‘Fie! what a slug is Hastings.’

  Goldsmith, at the end of She Stoops to Conquer has Hastings say:

  ‘Come, madam, you are now driven to the very last scene of all your contrivances.’

  – surely a parallel prefiguring (together with the Burns poem) of all those occasions when Christie’s Hastings would be delegated to assemble the suspects for Poirot’s latest denouement.

  And Hastings’ habit of pipe-smoking was clearly taken from Thomas Hood, who in a poem of 1839 wrote:

  ‘’Twas August – Hastings every day was filling.’

  SIMON BRETT WRITES:

  Though, as I mentioned, I was unable to make contact with Mr Mint, a letter accompanying his essay did make clear the unfortunate fact that its standard – or perhaps the startling originality of its thinking – did not meet with the examiners’ approval. Osbert Mint was not awarded his doctorate. When last heard of – in the early seventies – he had returned to the United States and was apparently working in a fast food restaurant.

  POLITICAL CORRECTIONS

  There was a large and, to the minds of many observers, unconventional house party assembled for Christmas at Stebbings. The Dowager Duchess of Haslemere had never had any inhibitions about mixing her guests, though the composition of the assembly would have been unthinkable had her husband, the Duke, still been alive.

  Apart from her two children, Hubert – who had inherited the title – and his sister Lady Cynthia, none of the Dowager Duchess’s guests was quite the goods. There was Adolphus Weinburg, the well-to-do Hebrew financier, whose—

  ‘I’m sorry. We can’t have this.’

  Tilson Gutteridge did not lift the nicotine-yellowed finger that was following the lines of faded typescript, but raised his eyes to the young woman beside him. She was undeniably pretty, but in a way that didn’t appeal. The dark red hair was too geometrically cut, the blue eyes behind the dark-rimmed round glasses were too pale and humourless to accord with his, perhaps old-fashioned, taste.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked ingenuously.

  ‘This is anti-semitic,’ said Juanita Rainbird. ‘We can’t say

  “Hebrew financier”.’

  ‘Why not? It just means that he’s Jewish.’

  ‘We can’t say that nowadays. It’s discriminatory.’

  ‘But look, that’s what Eunice Brock wrote. It was the kind of thing they all wrote in the thirties. You’ll find the same in Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, the lot of them.’

  ‘We still can’t say it. Not in something we’re publishing for the first time in the nineteen-nineties.’ Her accent became more American as her assertiveness grew.

  ‘But all Eunice Brock’s other books have been reprinted as she wrote them.’

  ‘Some of the titles have been changed. Like The Company of Ishmaels became The Company of Fraudsters.’

  ‘That amendment can hardly have been considered very flattering to the Jews, can it?’

  ‘It has made for an acceptable title,’ Juanita Rainbird replied evenly. ‘And think how many changes Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Niggers has been through. First it became Ten Little Indians—’

  ‘Then Ten Little Native Americans . . .?’ Tilson Gutteridge suggested mischievously.

  The editor was unamused. ‘No. Now it’s known as Then There Were None . . . And I’m sure if its manuscript arrived today on the desk of any editor in the country, it would be re-edited for publication.’

  ‘Hm. Shall we press on?’

  His finger hadn’t moved from the line of text. As his eyes reverted to the typescript, Juanita Rainbird looked at her visitor without enthusiasm. Tilson Gutteridge was a man in his sixties, wearing the shapeless tweeds and knitted tie of another generation. A whiff of cherrywood tobacco, whisky and something else less wholesome hung around him. It was only with difficulty that Juanita had convinced him there were no exceptions to Krieper & Thoday’s no-smoking policy and persuaded him to put the noisome pipe back into his bulging pocket.

  There was something over-the-top, almost operatic, about the man’s appearance. The pebble glasses seemed too thick, the eyebrows too bushy, the ill-fitting false teeth too yellowed. Tilson Gutteridge looked a parodic archetype of a literary figure who had never succeeded and was now long past any possible sell-by date.

  Still, Juanita knew she had to humour him. He was yet to reveal how he’d come by the manuscript, but it was undoubtedly a valuable commodity. Krieper & Thoday were still doing very well from the sales stimulated by the continuing Wenceslas Potter television series. The discovery of a new Eunice Brock would be just the sort of publishing coup to endear Juanita Rainbird to her new Australian managing director, Keith Chappick.

  The publicity department could get a lot of mileage out of a long-lost manuscript. Regardless of the quality of the book, after some judicious editing it would sell well on curiosity value alone.

  And with a bit of luck there wouldn’t be any royalties to pay. Eunice Brock had died in 1939. For the fifty years after her death, the royalties on the Wenceslas Potter books had gone to her niece, Dierdre Townley, who had conveniently passed on in 1990, leaving no heirs. Dierdre hadn’t made much out of her inheritance. Though the books had remained more or less in print, the real revival of interest in Eunice Brock had started in 1992 with the first Wenceslas Potter television series. That was when the estate had started to be worth something, and by then of course all the profits went direct to Krieper & Thoday.

  Increasingly Juanita Rainbird wondered where Tilson Gutteridge had found the manuscript they were perusing, and whether or not he had any rights in it. If he could prove ownership, he’d have to be paid something for the typescript. If he could prove he also owned the copyright, he and his heirs would receive royalties for fifty years after the book’s publication.

  Juanita knew she must move cautiously, suppress her instinctive curiosity and play the scene at her guest’s pace. The information she needed would come in time.

  ‘Could I offer you something to drink . . .?’ she suggested, to thaw the developing atmosphere between them. ‘Coffee .
. . or something from the fridge . . .?’

  Tilson Gutteridge’s eye gleamed. ‘Something from the fridge, please.’

  She reached to the side of her desk and swung the door open to reveal the fridge’s packed interior. ‘Orange juice or Perrier?’

  The man’s face fell. ‘I’ll have a black coffee, thanks.’

  Before she filled a cup for him from the machine, Juanita Rainbird explained severely, ‘I should just point out that my getting coffee for you is not an expression of any subservient gender role-play. I would be equally ready to get coffee for a guest of my own sex.’

  Tilson Gutteridge looked bewildered. ‘Fine,’ he murmured.

  Juanita Rainbird placed the cup of coffee on the desk in front of him. ‘Right, let’s get back to the text, shall we?’

  His finger moved along under the lines as they both silently read on.

  . . . the well-to-do Hebrew financier . . .

  Without comment, Juanita Rainbird stuck a yellow Post-it sticker in the margin beside these words, and scribbled a pencil note on her clipboard.

  . . . whose hair, black, thick and naturally curly, exuded the fragrance of some violet-scented pomade. He had fleshy, prominent features, his long nose curving down almost in mirror image of his jutting chin . . .

  ‘That’s unacceptable too.’

  ‘She’s just saying what the bloke looked like,’ Tilson Gutteridge protested wearily.

  ‘Yes, but couched in those terms it becomes a racist slur.’

  ‘Oh, come on, that’s how everyone talked in the thirties. For heaven’s sake, don’t make such a meal of it, darling.’

  Juanita’s eyes beamed blue fire at her visitor. ‘I am sorry, Mr Gutteridge, but I must ask you to refrain from the use of diminishing sexist endearments.’

  ‘Er . . .?’

  She took no notice of his puzzlement, but returned to the typescript.

  Another of the Dowager Duchess’s guests also aspired to, but failed to meet, the qualification of an English gentleman. Though not of the Semitic brotherhood, he too was an oily cog in the machinery of finance . . .

  Juanita Rainbird’s pencil, once again offended, raced across her pad.

  Ras Gupta was an oriental gentleman who had made a killing from firms about to go smash, scooping up their shares at cat’s meat prices . . .

  Tilson Gutteridge’s finger stopped and he looked up solicitously to Juanita. ‘Any worries about complaints from the cat protection lobby?’

  The editor pursed her lips. ‘Let’s just press on, shall we?’

  This dark-complexioned aspirant’s attempts to pass himself off as the genuine article were let down by the flashiness of the loud attire he favoured, not to mention a native predilection for shoddy jewellery. The ridiculousness of his appearance was accentuated by his dwarfish stature, which qualified him better for a circus ring than the drawing room of a Dowager Duchess.

  Juanita Rainbird could restrain herself no longer. ‘That’ll have to be changed,’ she blurted out.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s sizeist.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The emphasis on the man’s non-average altitudinal endowment could cause offence to readers similarly afflicted.’ She realized her mistake and moved quickly to limit the damage. ‘That is, I don’t use the word “afflicted” in any pejorative sense. In no way do I wish to imply that someone vertically challenged has less validity or viability as a human being than someone of more traditional anatomical configuration.’

  ‘Er . . .?’ Tilson Gutteridge looked at her blankly. ‘So what are you saying – Ras Gupta can’t be described as short . . .?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘. . . even though the plot hinges on the fact that he is the only one of the house guests small enough to have crawled out of the scullery window on Christmas night after the Dowager Duchess had been murdered?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Juanita Rainbird was momentarily checked. Then her pencil dashed down another note. ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to find an alternative formula of words to deal with that problem.’

  Tilson Gutteridge shrugged and readdressed his attention to the typescript.

  Another of the guests at the Stebbings gloried in the name of the Vicomte de Fleurie-Rizeau. An effeminate Gallic lounge lizard, whose fractured English was uttered in an affected lisp and whose movements were almost ladylike in their dainty—

  ‘This won’t do,’ said Juanita Rainbird. But before she could launch into her homophobia lecture, she caught sight of the watch on her wrist. ‘Oh, goodness, I didn’t realize it was so late. It’s lunchtime.’

  Tilson Gutteridge grinned. ‘Splendid. Where are we going? Needn’t be too lavish. Just an Italian or something. So long as they serve a decent red wine, eh?’

  Juanita Rainbird looked at him primly. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gutteridge. That was not an invitation. I’m already committed to sharing a working sandwich with my managing director.’

  ‘Oh well, have to do it another time, won’t we?’

  ‘I should also point out that Krieper & Thoday have recently instituted an across-the-board no-lunching policy. The only exception to that rule being the lunching on publication day of authors whose previous works have made the Sunday Times bestseller lists.’

  ‘Oh. I thought lunch was one of the main activities of publishers.’

  ‘You have a rather dated image of our industry, I’m afraid, Mr Gutteridge,’ said Juanita Rainbird austerely. ‘Anyway, it’s not as if you’re even an author, are you?’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘So . . . what? We’ll continue going through the manuscript another time?’

  ‘Yes. Unless you’d like to leave it with me and I’d—’

  His hands were instantly out to snatch up the typescript and clutch it protectively to his chest. ‘I’m not letting this out of my sight.’

  ‘Well, maybe you’d like to stay here while one of my assistants—’ She quickly corrected herself ‘—one of my coworkers photocopies—’

  Tilson Gutteridge shook his head firmly. ‘This stays with me and is not reproduced until we’ve sorted out a deal.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Juanita Rainbird paused, selecting her next words with care. ‘This does of course bring us on to the question of ownership . . . more specifically, perhaps, how you came to be in possession of the manuscript . . .?’

  The man grinned complacently.

  ‘. . . and indeed what rights – if any – you might have in the property . . .?’

  ‘Oh, it’s mine all right,’ he assured her.

  ‘It may be yours in the sense that you physically have the typescript in your possession, but the issue of copyright is a totally different—’

  ‘The copyright is mine too.’

  Juanita Rainbird allowed herself a little laugh. ‘I don’t see how that could be possible, Mr Gutteridge.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ he told her, ‘because I have recently discovered something of my family history.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I have always known myself to be illegitimate. I was adopted as a baby. It was only last month that I found out the identity of my real mother.’

  He played the silence for a little more than it was worth.

  ‘My real mother was Eunice Brock.’

  Juanita Rainbird said nothing, but her mind was racing.

  ‘So I am not only the owner of the physical manifestation of this manuscript, but also of its copyright.’

  The editor did the sums quickly in her head. It wasn’t a disaster. So they’d have to pay royalties on the one book; their profits on the rest of the Eunice Brock œuvre would remain intact.

  ‘Not only that,’ Tilson Gutteridge went on gleefully, ‘I am also the copyright holder on the rest of my mother’s published work.’

  Juanita Rainbird gave a confident smile as, politely but deftly, she dashed his aspirations.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gutteridge, but I’m afraid your mother’s published works went out of copyright in 1989.�
�

  ‘I know that, Juanita sweetie.’ He didn’t give her time to object to the sexist diminutive as he went on. ‘But I’m sure I don’t have to tell someone in publishing that, as of summer 1995, the period of copyright is to be extended from fifty to seventy years after an author’s death . . .’

  Juanita Rainbird gaped.

  ‘. . . so my mother’s works are about to come back into copyright, where they will remain until the year 2009.’

  Keith Chappick didn’t know much about books, but he was good at sacking people, so he was doing very well in publishing. In his native Australia he’d started by sacking people in newspapers, then moved on to sacking people in television. It was as a television executive that he’d arrived in England, and the move to sacking people in publishing had been a logical one. He had been through two other publishing houses before taking up the appointment at Krieper & Thoday. In each one he’d sacked more people and been given a higher-profile job with more money.

  The Keith Chappick management style had been quickly imposed on Krieper & Thoday. On his first day he’d sacked the publishing director and two senior editors; thereafter he ruled by simple terror. The staff, secure in nothing save the knowledge that their jobs were permanently on the line, spread themselves ever thinner, taking on more and more work, putting in longer and longer hours. Uncomplaining, they annexed the responsibilities of sacked colleagues, knowing that refusal of any additional burden was a one-way ticket to the dole queue. Within six months of the new managing director’s arrival, the same amount of work was being done by a third of the previous staff. Krieper & Thoday’s shareholders were delighted.

  Complaints about Keith Chappick’s idiosyncratic management techniques became as improbable as complaints about workload. No one demurred when the nine o’clock half-hour of Aikido was made mandatory for all staff. They trotted off like lambs to the slaughter of paint-ball combat weekends. Even the no-lunching diktat was accepted without a murmur by people who had hitherto been among the most dedicated contributors to the profits of Orso, Nico Ladenis and the Groucho Club.