One day, when I was speaking in a worried voice about the difficulties of keeping up Ashfield, Archie said (very sensibly): ‘You know, really it would be much better for your mother to sell it and live elsewhere.’
‘Sell Ashfield!’ I spoke in a voice of horror.
‘I can’t see what good it is to you. You can’t go there very often.’
‘I couldn’t bear to sell Ashfield, I love it. It’s–it’s–it means everything.’
‘Then why don’t you try and do something about it?’ said Archie. ‘What do you mean, do something about it?’
‘Well, you could write another book.’
I looked at him in some surprise. ‘I suppose I might write another book one of these days, but it wouldn’t do much good to Ashfield, would it?’
‘It might make a lot of money,’ said Archie.
I didn’t think that was likely. The Mysterious Affair at Styles had sold close on 2000 copies, which was not bad at that time for a detective story by an unknown author. It had brought me in the meagre sum of £25–and this not for the royalties on the book, but from a half share of the serial rights, which had been sold, rather unexpectedly, to The Weekly Times for £50. Very good for my prestige, said John Lane. It was a good thing for a young author to have a serial accepted by The Weekly Times. That might be, but £25 as the total income from writing a book did not encourage me to feel that I was likely to earn much money in a literary career.
‘If a book has been good enough to take, and the publisher has made some money by it, which I presume he has, he will want another. You ought to get a bit more every time.’ I listened to this and agreed. I was full of admiration for Archie’s financial know-how. I considered writing another book. Supposing I did–what should it be about?
The question was solved for me one day when I was having tea in an A.B.C. Two people were talking at a table nearby, discussing somebody called Jane Fish. It struck me as a most entertaining name. I went away with the name in my mind. Jane Fish. That, I thought, would make a good beginning to a story–a name overheard at a tea shop–an unusual name, so that whoever heard it remembered it. A name like Jane Fish–or perhaps Jane Finn would be even better. I settled for Jane Finn–and started writing straight away. I called it The Joyful Venture first–then The Young Adventurers–and finally it became The Secret Adversary.
Archie had been quite right to settle in a job before he resigned from the Flying Corps. Young people were desperate. They had come out of the Services and had no jobs to go to. Young men were always ringing our doorbell, trying to sell stockings or offering some household gadget. It was a pathetic sight. One felt so sorry for them that one often bought a pair of rather nasty stockings, just to cheer them up. They had been lieutenants, naval and military, and now they were reduced to this. Sometimes they even wrote poems and tried to sell them.
I conceived the idea of having a pair of this kind–a girl who had been in the A.T.S. or the V.A.D. and a young man who had been in the army. They would both be rather desperate, looking for a job, and then they would meet each other–perhaps they would already have met in the past? And then? Then, I thought, they would be involved in–yes, espionage: this would be a spy book, a thriller, not a detective story. I liked the idea–it was a change after the detective work involved in The Mysterious Affair at Styles. So I started writing, in a sketchy kind of way. It was fun, on the whole, and much easier to write than a detective story, as thrillers always are.
When I had finished it, which was not for some time, I took it to John Lane, who didn’t like it much: it was not the same type as my first book–it would not sell nearly so well. In fact they were undecided whether to publish it or not. However, in the end they decided to do so. I did not have to make so many changes in this one.
As far as I remember it sold quite well. I made a little in royalties, which was something, and again I sold the serial rights to The Weekly Times, and this time got £50 doled out to me by John Lane. It was encouraging–though not encouraging enough to make me think that I had as yet adopted anything so grand as a profession.
My third book was Murder on the Links. This, I think, must have been written not long after a cause celebre which occurred in France. I can’t remember the name of any of the participants by now. It was some tale of masked men who had broken into a house, killed the owner, tied up and gagged the wife–the mother-in-law had also died, but only apparently because she had choked on her false teeth. Anyway, the wife’s story was disproved, and there was a suggestion that it was the wife who had killed her husband, and that she had never been tied up at all, or only by an accomplice. It struck me as a good plot on which to weave my own story, starting with the wife’s life after she had been acquitted of the murder. A mysterious woman would appear somewhere, having been the heroine of a murder case years ago. I set it in France, this time.
Hercule Poirot had been quite a success in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, so it was suggested that I should continue to employ him. One of the people who liked Poirot was Bruce Ingram, editor at the time of The Sketch. He got in touch with me, and suggested that I should write a series of Poirot stories for The Sketch. This excited me very much indeed. At last I was becoming a success. To be in The Sketch–wonderful! He also had a fancy drawing made of Hercule Poirot which was not unlike my idea of him, though he was depicted as a little smarter and more aristocratic than I had envisaged him. Bruce Ingram wanted a series of twelve stories. I produced eight before long, and at first it was thought that that would be enough, but in the end it was decided to increase them to twelve, and I had to write another four rather more hastily than I wanted.
It had escaped my notice that not only was I now tied to the detective story, I was also tied to two people: Hercule Poirot and his Watson, Captain Hastings. I quite enjoyed Captain Hastings. He was a stereotyped creation, but he and Poirot represented my idea of a detective team. I was still writing in the Sherlock Holmes tradition–eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp–and I now added a ‘human foxhound’, Inspector Giraud, of the French police. Giraud despises Poirot as being old and passe.
Now I saw what a terrible mistake I had made in starting with Hercule Poirot so old–I ought to have abandoned him after the first three or four books, and begun again with someone much younger. Murder on the Links was slightly less in the Sherlock Holmes tradition, and was influenced, I think, by The Mystery of the Yellow Room. It had rather that high-flown, fanciful type of writing. When one starts writing, one is much influenced by the last person one has read or enjoyed.
I think Murder on the Links was a moderately good example of its kind–though rather melodramatic. This time I provided a love affair for Hastings. If I had to have a love interest in the book, I thought I might as well marry off Hastings! Truth to tell, I think I was getting a little tired of him. I might be stuck with Poirot, but no need to be stuck with Hastings too.
The Bodley Head were pleased with Murder on the Links, but I had a slight row with them over the jacket they had designed for it. Apart from being in ugly colours, it was badly drawn, and represented, as far as I could make out, a man in pyjamas on a golf-links, dying of an epileptic fit. Since the man who had been murdered had been fully dressed and stabbed with a dagger, I objected. A book jacket may have nothing to do with the plot, but if it does it must at least not represent a false plot. There was a good deal of bad feeling over this, but I was really furious and it was agreed that in future I should see the jacket first and approve of it. I had already had one slight difference with The Bodley Head, and that was in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, over the spelling of the word cocoa. For some strange reason, the house spelling of cocoa–meaning by that a cup of cocoa–was coco, which, as Euclid would have said, is absurd. I was sternly opposed by Miss Howse, the dragon presiding over all spelling in The Bodley Head books. Cocoa, she said, in their publications, was always spelt coco–it was the proper spelling and w
as a rule of the firm. I produced tins of cocoa and even dictionaries–they had no impression on her. Coco was the proper spelling, she said. It was not until many years later, when I was talking to Allen Lane, John Lane’s nephew, and begetter of Penguin Books, that I said, ‘You know I had terrible fights with Miss Howse over the spelling of cocoa.’
He grinned. ‘I know, we had great trouble with her as she got older. She got very opinionated about certain things. She argued with authors and would never give way.’
Innumerable people wrote to me and said, ‘I can’t understand, Agatha, why you spelled cocoa ‘coco’ in your book. Of course you were never a good speller.’ Most unfair. I was not a good speller, I am still not a good speller, but at any rate I could spell cocoa the proper way. What I was, though, was a weak character. It was my first book–and I thought they must know better than I did.
I had had some nice reviews for The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but the one which pleased me best appeared in The Pharmaceutical, Journal. It praised ‘this detective story for dealing with poisons in a knowledgeable way, and not with the nonsense about untraceable substances that so often happens. Miss Agatha Christie,’ they said, ‘knows her job.’
I had wanted to write my books under a fancy name–Martin West or Mostyn Grey–but John Lane had been insistent on keeping my own name, Agatha Christie–particularly the Christian name: he said, ‘Agatha is an unusual name which remains in peoples’ memories.’ So I had to abandon Martin West and label myself henceforth as Agatha Christie. I had the idea that a woman’s name would prejudice people against my work, especially in detective stories; that Martin West would be more manly and forthright. However, as I have said, when you are publishing a first book you give way to whatever is suggested to you, and in this case I think John Lane was right.
I had now written three books, was happily married, and my heart’s desire was to live in the country. Addison Mansions was a long way from the park. Pushing the pram there and back was no joke, either for Jessie Swannell or for me. Also there was one permanent snag: the flats were scheduled to come down. They belonged to Lyons, who intended to build new premises on the site. That is why the lease was only a quarterly one. At any moment notice might be given that the block was to be pulled down. Actually, thirty years later, our particular block of Addison Mansions was still standing–though now it has disappeared. Cadby Hall reigns in its stead.
Among our other activities at the weekend, Archie and I sometimes went by train to East Croydon and played golf there. I had never been much of a golfer, and Archie had played little, but he became keenly appreciative of the game. After a while, we seemed to go every weekend to East Croydon. I did not really mind, but I missed the variety of exploring places and going long walks. In the end that choice of recreation was to make a big difference to our lives.
Both Archie and Patrick Spence–a friend of ours who also worked at Goldstein’s–were getting rather pessimistic about their jobs: the prospects as promised or hinted at did not seem to materialise. They were given certain directorships, but the directorships were always of hazardous companies–sometimes on the brink of bankruptcy. Spence once said, ‘I think these people are a lot of ruddy crooks. All quite legal, you know. Still, I don’t like it, do you?’
Archie said that he thought that some of it was not very reputable. ‘I rather wish,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I could make a change.’ He liked City life and had an aptitude for it, but as time went on he was less and less keen on his employers.
And then something completely unforeseen came up.
Archie had a friend who had been a master at Clifton–a Major Belcher. Major Belcher was a character. He was a man with terrific powers of bluff. He had, according to his own story, bluffed himself into the position of Controller of Potatoes during the war. How much of Belcher’s stories was invented and how much true, we never knew, but anyway he made a good story of this one. He had been a man of forty or fifty odd when the war broke out, and though he was offered a stay-at-home job in the War Office he did not care for it much. Anyway, when dining with a V.I.P. one night, the conversation fell on potatoes, which were really a great problem in the 1914–18 war. As far as I can remember, they vanished quite soon. At the hospital, I know, we never had them. Whether the shortage was entirely due to Belcher’s control of them I don’t know, but I should not be surprised to hear it.
‘This pompous old fool who was talking to me,’ said Belcher, ‘said the potato position was going to be serious, very serious indeed. I told him that something had to be done about it–too many people messing about. Somebody had got to take the whole thing over–one man to take control. Well, he agreed with me. “But mind you,” I said, “he’d have to be paid pretty highly. No good giving a mingy salary to a man and expecting to get one who’s any good–you’ve got to have someone who’s the tops. You ought to give him at least–”’ ‘and here he mentioned a sum of several thousands of pounds. ‘That’s very high,’ said the V.I.P. ‘You’ve got to get a good man,’ said Belcher. ‘Mind you, if you offered it to me, I wouldn’t take it on myself, at that price.’
That was the operative sentence. A few days later Belcher was begged, on his own valuation, to accept such a sum, and control potatoes. ‘What did you know about potatoes?’ I asked him.
‘I didn’t know a thing,’ said Belcher. ‘But I wasn’t going to let on. I mean, you can do anything–you’ve only got to get a man as second-in-command who knows a bit about it, and read it up a bit, and there you are!’ He was a man with a wonderful capacity for impressing people. He had a great belief in his own powers of organisation–and it was sometimes a long time before anyone found out the havoc he was causing. The truth is that there never was a man less able to organise. His idea, like that of many politicians, was first to disrupt the entire industry, or whatever it might be, and having thrown it into chaos, to reassemble it, as Omar Khayyam might have said, ‘nearer to the heart’s desire’. The trouble was that, when it came to reorganising, Belcher was no good. But people seldom discovered that until too late.
At some period of his career he went to New Zealand, where he so impressed the governors of a school with his plans for reorganisation that they rushed to engage him as headmaster. About a year later he was offered an enormous sum of money to give up the job–not because of any disgraceful conduct, but solely because of the muddle he had introduced, the hatred which he aroused in others, and his own pleasure in what he called ‘a forward-looking, up-to-date, progressive administration’. As I say, he was a character. Sometimes you hated him, sometimes you were quite fond of him.
Belcher came to dinner with us one night, being out of the potato job, and explained what he was about to do next. ‘You know this Empire Exhibition we’re having in eighteen months’ time? Well, the thing has got to be properly organised. The Dominions have got to be alerted, to stand on their toes and to co-operate in the whole thing. I’m going on a mission–the British Empire Mission–going round the world, starting in January.’ He went on to detail his schemes. ‘What I want,’ he said, ‘is someone to come with me as financial adviser. What about you, Archie? You’ve always had a good head on your shoulders. You were Head of the School at Clifton, you’ve had all this experience in the City. You’re just the man I want.’
‘I couldn’t leave my job,’ said Archie.
‘Why not? Put it to your boss properly–point out it will widen your experience and all that. He’ll keep the job open for you, I expect.’
Archie said he doubted if Mr Goldstein would do anything of the kind.
‘Well, think it over, my boy. I’d like to have you. Agatha could come too, of course. She likes travelling, doesn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ I said–a monosyllable of understatement.
‘I’ll tell you what the itinerary is. We go first to South Africa. You and me, and a secretary, of course. With us would be going the Hyams. I don’t know if you know Hyam–he’s a potato king from East Anglia. A very
sound fellow. He’s a great friend of mine. He’d bring his wife and daughter. They’d only go as far as South Africa. Hyam can’t afford to come further because he has got too many business deals on here. After that we push on to Australia; and after Australia New Zealand. I’m going to take a bit of time off in New Zealand–I’ve got a lot of friends out there; I like the country. We’d have, perhaps, a month’s holiday. You could go on to Hawaii, if you liked, Honolulu.’
‘Honolulu,’ I breathed. It sounded like the kind of phantasy you had in dreams.
‘Then on to Canada, and so home. It would take about nine to ten months. What about it?’
We realised at last that he really meant it. We went into the thing fairly carefully. Archie’s expenses would, of course, all be paid, and outside that he would be offered a fee of £1000. If I accompanied the party practically all my travelling costs would be paid, since I would accompany Archie as his wife, and free transport was being given on ships and on the national railways of the various countries.
We worked furiously over finances. It seemed, on the whole, that it could be done. Archie’s £1000 ought to cover my expenses in hotels, and a month’s holiday for both of us in Honolulu. It would be a near thing, but we thought it was just possible.
Archie and I had twice gone abroad for a short holiday: once to the south of France, to the Pyrenees, and once to Switzerland. We both loved travelling–I had certainly been given a taste for it by that early experience when I was seven years old. Anyway, I longed to see the world, and it seemed to me highly probable that I never should. We were now committed to the business life, and a business man, as far as I could see, never got more than a fortnight’s holiday a year. A fortnight would not take you far. I longed to see China and Japan and India and Hawaii, and a great many other places, but my dream remained, and probably always would remain, wishful thinking.
Agahta Christie: An autobiography Page 36
