Agahta Christie: An autobiography

by Agatha Christie

  How about calling my little man Hercules? He would be a small man–Hercules: a good name. His last name was more difficult. I don’t know why I settled on the name Poirot, whether it just came into my head or whether I saw it in some newspaper or written on something–anyway it came. It went well not with Hercules but Hercule–Hercule Poirot. That was all right–settled, thank goodness.

  Now I must get names for the others–but that was less important. Alfred Inglethorpe–that might do: it would go well with the black beard. I added some more characters. A husband and wife–attractive–estranged from each other. Now for all the ramifications–the false clues. Like all young writers, I was trying to put far too much plot into one book. I had too many false clues–so many things to unravel that it might make the whole thing not only more difficult to solve, but more difficult to read.

  In leisure moments, bits of my detective story rattled about in my head. I had the beginning all settled, and the end arranged, but there were difficult gaps in between. I had Hercule Poirot involved in a natural and plausible way. But there had to be more reasons why other people were involved. It was still all in a tangle.

  It made me absent-minded at home. My mother was continually asking why I didn’t answer questions or didn’t answer them properly. I knitted Grannie’s pattern wrong more than once; I forgot to do a lot of the things that I was supposed to do; and I sent several letters to the wrong addresses. However, the time came when I felt I could at last begin to write. I told mother what I was going to do. Mother had the usual complete faith that her daughters could do anything.

  ‘Oh?’ she said. ‘A detective story? That will be a nice change for you, won’t it? You’d better start.’

  It wasn’t easy to snatch much time, but I managed. I had the old typewriter still–the one that had belonged to Madge–and I battered away on that, after I had written a first draft in longhand. I typed out each chapter as I finished it. My handwriting was better in those days and my longhand was readable. I was excited by my new effort. Up to a point I enjoyed it. But I got very tired, and I also got cross. Writing has that effect, I find. Also, as I began to be enmeshed in the middle part of the book, the complications got the better of me instead of my being the master of them. It was then that my mother made a good suggestion.

  ‘How far have you got?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I think about halfway through.’

  ‘Well, I think if you really want to finish it you’ll have to do so when you take your holidays.’

  ‘Well, I did mean to go on with it then.’

  ‘Yes, but I think you should go away from home for your holiday, and write with nothing to disturb you.’

  I thought about it. A fortnight quite undisturbed. It would be rather wonderful.

  ‘Where would you like to go?’ asked my mother. ‘Dartmoor?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, entranced. ‘Dartmoor–that is exactly it.’

  So to Dartmoor I went. I booked myself a room in the Moorland Hotel at Hay Tor. It was a large, dreary hotel with plenty of rooms. There were few people staying there. I don’t think I spoke to any of them–it would have taken my mind away from what I was doing. I used to write laboriously all morning till my hand ached. Then I would have lunch, reading a book. Afterwards I would go out for a good walk on the moor, perhaps for a couple of hours. I think I learnt to love the moor in those days. I loved the tors and the heather and all the wild part of it away from the roads. Everybody who went there–and of course there were not many in wartime–would be clustering round Hay Tor itself, but I left Hay Tor severely alone and struck out on my own across country. As I walked I muttered to myself, enacting the chapter that I was next going to write; speaking as John to Mary, and as Mary to John; as Evelyn to her employer, and so on. I became quite excited by this. I would come home, have dinner, fall into bed and sleep for about twelve hours. Then I would get up and write passionately again all morning.

  I finished the last half of the book, or as near as not, during my fortnight’s holiday. Of course that was not the end. I then had to rewrite a great part of it–mostly the over-complicated middle. But in the end it was finished and I was reasonably satisfied with it. That is to say it was roughly as I had intended it to be. It could be much better, I saw that, but I didn’t see just how I could make it better, so I had to leave it as it was. I re-wrote some very stilted chapters between Mary and her husband John who were estranged for some foolish reason, but whom I was determined to force together again at the end so as to make a kind of love interest. I myself always found the love interest a terrible bore in detective stories. Love, I felt, belonged to romantic stories. To force a love motif into what should be a scientific process went much against the grain. However, at that period detective stories always had to have a love interest–so there it was. I did my best with John and Mary, but they were poor creatures. Then I got it properly typed by somebody, and having finally decided I could do no more to it, I sent it off to a publisher–Hodder and Stoughton–who returned it. It was a plain refusal, with no frills on it. I was not surprised–I hadn’t expected success–but I bundled it off to another publisher.

  IV

  Archie came home for his second leave. It must have been nearly two years, since I had seen him last. This time we had a happy leave together. We had a whole week, and we went to the New Forest. It was autumn, with lovely colourings in the leaves. Archie was less nervy this time, and we were both less fearful for the future. We walked together through the woods and had a kind of companionship that we had not known before. He confided to me that there was one place he had always wanted to go–to follow a signpost that said ‘To No Man’s Land’. So we took the path to No Man’s Land, and we walked along it, then came to an orchard, with lots of apples. There was a woman there and we asked her if we could buy some apples from her.

  ‘You don’t need to buy from me, my dears,’ she said. ‘You’re welcome to the apples. Your man is in the Air Force, I see–so was a son of mine who was killed. Yes, you go and help yourselves to all the apples you can eat and all you can take away with you.’ So we wandered happily through the orchard eating apples, and then went back through the Forest again and sat down on a fallen tree. It was raining gently–but we were very happy. I didn’t talk about the hospital or my work, and Archie didn’t talk much about France, but he hinted that, perhaps, before long, we might be together again.

  I told him about my book and he read it. He enjoyed it and said he thought it good. He had a friend in the Air Force, he said, who was a director of Methuen’s, and he suggested that if the book came back again he should send me a letter from this friend which I could enclose with the MS and send to Methuen’s.

  So that was the next port of call for The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Methuen’s, no doubt in deference to their director, wrote much more kindly. They kept it longer–I should think about six months–but, though saying that it was very interesting and had several good points, concluded it was not quite suitable for their particular line of production. I expect really they thought it pretty awful.

  I forget where I sent it next, but once again it came back. I had rather lost hope by now. The Bodley Head, John Lane, had published one or two detective stories recently–rather a new departure for them–so I thought I might as well give them a try. I packed it off to them, and forgot all about it.

  The next thing that happened was sudden and unexpected. Archie arrived home, posted to the Air Ministry in London. The war had gone on so long–nearly four years–and I had got so used to working in hospital and living at home that it was almost a shock to think I might have a different life to live.

  I went up to London. We got a room at a hotel, and I started round, looking for some kind of a furnished flat to live in. In our ignorance we started with rather grand ideas–but were soon taken down a peg or two. This was wartime.

  We found two possibles in the end. One was in West Hampstead–it belonged to a Miss Tunks: the name stuck in my mind. She was exceedi
ngly doubtful of us, wondering whether we would be careful enough–young people were so careless–she was very particular about her things. It was a nice little flat–three and a half guineas a week. The other one that we looked at was in St. John’s Wood–Northwick Terrace, just off Maida Vale (now pulled down). That was just two rooms, as against three, on the second floor, and rather shabbily furnished, though pleasant, with faded chintz and a garden outside. It was in one of those biggish old-fashioned houses, and the rooms were spacious. Moreover it was only two and a half guineas as against three and a half a week. We settled for that. I went home and packed up my things. Grannie wept, mother wanted to weep but controlled it. She said; ‘You are going to your husband now, dear, and beginning your married life. I hope everything will go well.’

  ‘And if the beds are of wood, be sure there are no bed bugs,’ said Grannie.

  So I went back to London and Archie, and we moved into 5 Northwick Terrace. It had a microscopic kitchenette and bathroom, and I planned to do a certain amount of cooking. To start with, however, we would have Archie’s soldier servant and batman, Bartlett, who was a kind of Jeeves–a perfection. He had been valet to dukes in his time. Only the war had brought him into Archie’s service, but he was devoted to ‘The Colonel’ and told me long tales of his bravery, his importance, his brains, and the mark he had made. Bartlett’s service was certainly perfect. The drawbacks of the flat were many, the worst of which was the beds, which were full of large, iron lumps–I don’t know how any beds could have got into such a state. But we were happy there, and I planned to take a course of shorthand and book-keeping which would occupy my days. So it was goodbye to Ashfield and the start of my new life, my married life.

  One of the great joys of 5 Northwick Terrace was Mrs Woods. In fact I think it was partly Mrs Woods which decided us in favour of Northwick Terrace rather than the West Hampstead flat. She reigned in the basement–a fat, jolly, cosy sort of woman. She had a smart daughter who worked in one of the smart shops, and an invisible husband. She was the general caretaker and, if she felt like it, would ‘do for’ the members of the flats. She agreed to ‘do for’ us, and she was a tower of strength. From Mrs Woods I learned details of shopping which had so far never crossed my horizon. ‘Fishmonger done you down again, Love’, she would say to me. ‘That fish isn’t fresh. You didn’t poke it the way I told you to. You’ve got to poke it and look at its eye, and poke its eye’. I looked at the fish doubtfully; I felt that to poke it in its eye was taking somewhat of a liberty.

  ‘Stand it up on its end too, stand it up on its tail. See if it flops or if it’s stiff. And those oranges now. I know you fancy an orange sometimes as a bit of a treat, in spite of the expense, but that kind there has just been soaked in boiling water to make them look fresh. You won’t find any juice in that orange.’ I didn’t.

  The big excitement of my and Mrs Woods’ life was when Archie drew his first rations. An enormous piece of beef appeared, the biggest piece I had seen since the beginning of the war. It was of no recognisable cut or shape, did not seem to be topside or ribs or sirloin; it was apparently chopped up according to weight by some Air Force butcher. Anyway, it was the handsomest thing we’d seen for ages. It reposed on the table and Mrs Woods and I walked round it admiringly. There was no question of if going in my tiny oven. Mrs Woods agreed kindly to cook it for me. ‘And there’s such a lot,’ I said, ‘you can have it as well as us.’

  ‘Well, that’s very nice of you, I’m sure–we’ll enjoy a good go of beef. Groceries, mind you, that’s easy. I’ve got a cousin, Bob, in the grocery–as much sugar and butter as we want we get, and marge. Things like that, family gets served first.’ It was one of my introductions to the time-honoured rule which holds good through the whole of life: what matters is who you know. From the open nepotism of the East to the slightly more concealed nepotism and ‘old boys’ club’ of the Western democracies, everything in the end hinges on that. It is not, mind you, a recipe for complete success. Freddy So-and-So gets a well-paid job because his uncle knows one of the directors in the firm. So Freddy moves in. But if Freddy is no good, the claims of friendship or relationship having been satisfied, Freddy will be gently eased out, possibly passed on to some other cousin or friend, but in the end finding his own level.

  In the case of meat, and the general luxuries of wartime, there were some advantages for the rich, but on the whole, I think, there were infinitely more advantages for the working class, because nearly everyone had a cousin or a friend, or a daughter’s husband, or someone useful who was either in a dairy, a grocery, or something of that kind. It didn’t apply to butchers, as far as I could see, but grocers were certainly a great family asset. Nobody that I came across at that time ever seemed to keep to the rations. They drew their rations, but they then drew an extra pound of butter and an extra pot of jam, and so on, without any feeling of behaving dishonestly. It was a family perk. Naturally Bob would look after his family and his family’s family first. So Mrs Woods was always offering us extra titbits of this and that.

  The serving of the first joint of meat was a great occasion. I cannot think it was particularly good meat or tender, but I was young, my teeth were strong, and it was the most delicious thing I had had for a long time. Archie, of course, was surprised at my greed. ‘Not a very interesting joint,’ he said.

  ‘Interesting?’ I said. ‘It’s the most interesting thing I have seen for three years.’

  What I may call serious cooking was done for us by Mrs Woods. Lighter meals, supper dishes, were prepared by me. I had attended cookery classes, like most girls, but they are not particularly useful to you, when you come down to it. Everyday practice is what counts. I had made batches of jam pies, or toad-in-the-hole, or etceteras of various kinds, but these were not what were really needed now. There were National Kitchens in most quarters of London, and these were useful. You called there and got things ready cooked in a container. They were quite well cooked–not very interesting ingredients, but they filled up the gaps. There were also National Soup Squares with which we started our meals. These were described by Archie as ‘sand and gravel soup’, recalling the skit by Stephen Leacock on a Russian short story–‘Yog took sand and stones and beat it to make a cake.’ Soup squares were rather like that. Occasionally I made one of my specialities, such as a very elaborate souffle. I didn’t realise at first that Archie suffered badly with nervous dyspepsia. There were many evenings when he came home and was unable to eat anything at all, which rather discouraged me if I had prepared a cheese souffle, or something at which I fancied myself.

  Everyone has their own ideas of what they like to eat when they feel ill, and Archie’s, to my mind, were extraordinary. After lying groaning on his bed for some time, he would suddenly say: ‘I think I’d like some treacle or golden syrup. Could you make me something with that?’ I obliged as best I could.

  I started a course of book-keeping and shorthand to occupy my days. As everyone knows by now, thanks to those interminable articles in Sunday papers, newly married wives are usually lonely. What surprises me is that newly married wives should ever expect not to be. Husbands work; they are out all day; and a woman, when she marries, usually transfers herself to an entirely different environment. She has to start life again, to make new contacts and new friends, find new occupations. I had had friends in London before the war, but by now all were scattered. Nan Watts (now Pollock) was living in London, but I felt rather diffident about approaching her. This sounds silly, and indeed it was silly, but one cannot pretend that differences in income do not separate people. It is not a question of snobbishness or social position, it is whether you can afford to follow the pursuits that your friends are following. If they have a large income and you have a small one, things become embarrassing.

  I was slightly lonely. I missed the hospital and my friends there and the daily goings on, and I missed my home surroundings, but I realised that this was unavoidable. Companionship is not a thing that one needs every
day–it is a thing that grows upon one, and sometimes becomes as destroying as ivy growing round you. I enjoyed learning shorthand and book-keeping. I was humiliated by the ease with which little girls of fourteen and fifteen progressed in shorthand; at book-keeping, however, I could hold my own, and it was fun.

  One day at the business school where I took my courses the teacher stopped the lesson, went out of the room and returned, saying ‘Everything ended for today. The War is over!’

  It seemed unbelievable. There had been no real sign of this being likely to happen–nothing to lead you to believe that it would be over for another six months or a year. The position in France never seemed to change. One won a few yards of territory or lost it.

  I went out in the streets quite dazed. There I came upon one of the most curious sights I had ever seen–indeed I still remember it, almost, I think with a sense of fear. Everywhere there were women dancing in the street. English women are not given to dancing in public: it is a reaction more suitable to Paris and the French. But there they were, laughing, shouting, shuffling, leaping even, in a sort of wild orgy of pleasure: an almost brutal enjoyment. It was frightening. One felt that if there had been any Germans around the women would have advanced upon them and torn them to pieces. Some of them I suppose were drunk, but all of them looked it. They reeled, lurched and shouted. I got home to find Archie was already home from his Air Ministry.

  ‘Well, that’s that’, he said, in his usual calm and unemotional fashion.