Agatha Christie

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Agatha Christie Page 58

by Laura Thompson


  26 Ibid

  27 Ibid

  28 To Gillian Franks, in one of several newspaper interviews that Agatha gave in September 1970, at the time of her eightieth birthday

  29 In the interview given to the Imperial War Museum, accession number 493, recorded 16/10/1974

  30 Ibid

  31 Ibid

  32 Archie Christie to AC, 26/11/1916

  33 From The Seven Dials Mystery

  34 From The Secret of Chimneys

  35 From White Heat – the New Warfare by John Terraine (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1982)

  36 Dr Haydock, who looks after Miss Marple and appears in several books, is one of Agatha’s most likeable portraits. He is humorous, compassionate, broad-minded and sceptical about ‘new-fangled’ ideas: the kind of person she most liked. Dr Lord in Sad Cypress is also an attractive personality, as is Dr Stillingfleet in Third Girl, and Dr Christow in The Hollow is impressive if flawed. But Dr Bauerstein in Styles is sinister and irritating; Dr Nicholson in Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? is a drug addict; Dr Thomas in Murder is Easy and Dr Donaldson in Dumb Witness are cold fish. Furthermore, four of Agatha’s doctors (five, if one counts Dr Armstrong in And Then There Were None) are murderers

  37 From Taken at the Flood

  38 With Lord Snowdon. After Agatha’s death this inverview became the subject of controversy when the BBC asked for a copy for its sound archives. Rosalind Hicks (Agatha’s daughter) rejected the request on the grounds that the interview had been taped ‘illegally’ by Lord Snowdon, who was supposed only to be taking photographs: ‘it was not authorised as you know and my mother throughout her life always refused to give interviews in this way’. The tape was indeed suppressed, although an abridged version of the interview appeared in Australian Woman’s Weekly. ‘I don’t think the remarks after lunch of an old lady – she was over eighty at the time, and didn’t know she was giving an interview even – should be a great benefit to generations in the future . . .’. Rosalind was right, in principle, although in fact the full-length tape portrays Agatha in a charming and sympathetic light

  39 In fact Eden Philpotts, in a letter to AC dated 4/10/1955, wrote I always set Poirot above Sherlock Holmes for the reason that he is a living man, as interesting in himself as his adventures. One develops a personal regard – almost an affection – for him . . .’

  40 Sister of Hilaire Belloc, her most famous work was The Lodger, which was filmed by Hitchcock

  41 From the 1969 Observer interview

  42 From The Hollow

  43 From Endless Night

  The Child

  1 Agatha herself was not precise about how many publishing houses rejected Styles-, sometimes she said five, sometimes six. John Lane’s nephew, Allen, later started Penguin Books, and in 1935 Agatha was one of the first authors to offer him her books. He became a good friend. In 1955, on the Close Up programme broadcast on the Light Programme, Allen Lane said that Styles was ‘by way of being a new departure for us – for the Bodley Head was renowned for encouraging the poets of the ’nineties, and had been called “a nest of singing birds” . . . So the appearance of a new woman writer of detective fiction was unexpected’

  2 According to Jared Cade’s book Agatha, Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, ’Agatha was so impoverished that one of her greatest pleasures when visiting Nan was to be invited to examine the contents of her affluent friend’s wardrobe’. As the sole source for Mr Cade’s book is Nan’s daughter Judith (and her husband Graham), this may be true; although Judith, born in 1916, would have needed a highly acute childhood memory to be sure about it. As usual with this book, the story about Agatha going through Nan’s clothes is a) without external corroboration and b) presented as gospel truth by the author

  3 Her only subsequent literary reference to St John’s Wood was in The Body in the Library, in which the local squire Colonel Bantry is suspected of having had an affair with the sexy blonde dumped dead in his home. A village gossip, who has seen him get into a London taxi, offers this evidence of his transgressive behaviour: ‘I distincdy heard him tell the driver to go to – where do you think ?’ ‘An address in St John’s Wood! . . . ‘That, I consider, proves it’

  4 From An Autobiography

  5 From Unfinished Portrait

  6 Ibid

  7 In her autobiography Agatha wrote that in 1919 ‘I had £100 a year which I still received under my grandfather’s will’, although six years earlier the money had been used ‘to support mother’. This apparent contradiction is not explained in the book, whose factual content is not entirely reliable. It would seem that Agatha regained control of her £100 when Archie returned from the war and the couple needed a home of their own. Madge – or her husband James – continued to give money to Clara, who also received an additional £300 or so a year after the death of Margaret Miller

  8 From An Autobiography

  9 Ibid

  10 In her autobiography Agatha wrote of ‘the night when we knew Rosalind would be born’; although of course she could not have known such a thing for certain

  11 In a piece published in the Spectator in 1970, in memory of Allen Lane of Penguin Press

  12 Ibid

  13 From An Autobiography

  14 In the book the baby, which has kicked actively in the womb, is called Judy ‘as being the next thing to Punch’. It was also the name by which Nan Pollock’s daughter was usually known

  15 From A Daughter’s a Daughter

  16 From The Thirteen Problems

  17 From Endless Night

  18 From the poem ‘Progression’

  19 From An Autobiography

  20 George Joseph Smith, known as the Brides in the Bath Murderer, killed three wives for their life insurance between 1912 and 1914, and was hanged in 1915

  21 The stories appeared in the Sketch from March 1923 onwards and were later published in book form. Poirot Investigates, a collection of eleven stories, appeared in Britain in 1924, and an extended version of fourteen stories was published in America in 1925. Poirot’s Early Cases was published in 1974; among other stories it again contained the first twelve written for the Sketch. One of these, ‘The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim’, was the unlikely vehicle for Poirot’s first-ever television appearance when it was shown in America, not very successfully, in 1962. Much later, between 1990 and 1993, all the short stories would be broadcast in the ITV Poirot series starring David Suchet

  22 Very much like the Great Exhibition of 1851, this was a showcase for products from Britain and its then Dominions

  23 From The Man in the Brown Suit

  24 From ‘Progression’

  25 From the poem ‘Love Passes’

  26 From The Man in the Brown Suit

  27 AC to CM, 3/5/1922

  28 AC to CM, 9/5/1922

  29 The Rand Rebellion, caused by the attempts to replace white workers in the gold mines with cheaper black labour

  30 Francis Bates was the model for Sir Eustace Pedler’s secretary, Guy Padgett, in The Man in the Brown Suit. Agatha appeared to be creating a stereotype by giving Padgett a saturnine, sinister air, which she then typically subverted: Padgett’s dark secret turns out to be a wife and four children

  31 AC to CM, 21/2/1922

  32 AC to CM, 3/5/1922

  33 AC to CM, 6/2/1922

  34 AC to CM, 3/4/1922

  35 AC to CM, 21/2/1922

  36 AC to CM, 19/10/1922

  37 As described by his son, also called Archie, in conversation with the author, 2006

  38 AC to CM, 1/5/1922

  39 Guilford was an effervescent correspondent; in one of his letters to Rosalind he wrote ‘I had forgotten, and am appalled all over again to remember, that you like cricket’. After Agatha’s death Rosalind wrote, in reply to his letter of condolence, ‘you were always one of her favourites’

  40 From ‘Progression’

  41 Ibid

  The Secret Adversary

  1 By Diana Gunn, daughter of Archie’s friends Sam and
Madge James, in conversation with the author, 2006

  2 From the poem ‘Love Passes’

  3 Agatha had written a long story called ‘Vision’ in around 1908-9, which she attempted to foist on to the Bodley Head as the fifth and last book of her contract. Of course they refused it. Agatha wrote to them: ‘I really do not see why you should have thought that this was not submitted as one of the works provided for in the main agreement. Whether it would have been advisable to publish it or not is another matter . . .’ She did this not in the belief that the Bodley Head would accept ‘Vision’, but to force them to accept that her short stories, Poirot Investigates, constituted one of the five books. ‘I certainly do not feel inclined to sign the agreement relating to the short stories, in which you have stipulated that these are not to count as a book under the terms of the main agreement, without getting the point about “Vision” cleared up first’

  4 Agatha had been approached by the BBC to give a talk on the Third Programme explaining why she was ‘violently allergic’ to the organisation, as the Observer put it in a brief 1948 profile. ‘A most sporting offer!’ she replied. She denied that she was anti-BBC: ‘but I am awfully allergic to its remuneration!’

  5 A short story published in The Listerdale Mystery

  6 Her son-in-law Anthony Hicks, in conversation with the author, 2004

  7 From the 1974 interview with Lord Snowdon

  8 Jared Cade, in Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days took a sensationalist view. According to his sources, Judith and Graham Gardner, Archie ‘had begun to resent the attention [Agatha] was starting to receive’. There may have been some truth in this but Cade presents it as unarguable fact

  9 A letter sent to the Sketch from Brook House, Park Lane, in March 1924 has Lord Mountbatten presenting his compliments and offering the idea that, in an epistolary detective novel, the ‘writer of the chief letters in the book’ should be the criminal. In essence this was very much like The Man in the Brown Suit, although it was taken further in the extended scenario that Lord Mountbatten also offered (which included a scene in which Poirot was suspected of the murder). Agatha replied that ‘the idea was most ingenious’ and she intended to use it. In 1969 the two exchanged letters again, and Agatha wrote politely, if inaccurately: ‘Thank you for presenting me with a first class idea – no-one else ever has’

  10 From A Pocket Full of Rye

  11 From Unfinished Portrait

  12 A letter of complaint was written by a reader to The Times; the News Chronicle inexplicably described the book as ‘tasteless’, the Detection Club committee proposed a motion that Agatha should be expelled as she had broken the ‘rules’: only a vote by Dorothy L. Sayers saved her, although it is hard to believe that she would have much cared either way. Although Agatha became honorary president of the Detection Club she was a lone wolf when it came to her writing. Swearing to abide by the rules of detective fiction with one hand on Eric the Skull – part of the Club’s initiation ritual – was not really her style

  13 AC to CM, sent from Carezza al Lago in Italy, no date

  14 Subsequently published in The Listerdale Mystery and filmed as Love from a Stranger in 1937. The film starred Ann Harding and Basil Rathbone. Joan Hickson, later the BBC’s peerless Miss Marple, took a minor role; she also appeared in Murder; She Said, the 1961 adaptation of 4.50 from Paddington, in which Miss Marple was played by Margaret Rutherford

  15 From The Burden

  16 According to Jared Cade, it had been Agatha's whim to call her secretary ‘Carlotta’, ‘because she thought it sounded more exotic, although it was apparent that Charlotte did not much care for this’. There is no evidence to support this assertion. More likely the name was Rosalind’s invention

  17 In conversation with the author, 2006

  18 In Jared Cade’s Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days

  19 CM to AC, sent from Ashfield, no date

  20 From Unfinished Portrait

  21 CM to AC, sent from Abney, no date

  22 AC to MM, 5/11/1930

  23 From ‘Progression’

  24 From An Autobiography

  25 In conversation with the author, 2003

  26 Nancy Neele was never secretary to Major Belcher, although she did know him. In the film Agatha starring Vanessa Redgrave – a feeling but fanciful account of Agatha’s disappearance – Nancy is portrayed as Archie’s secretary, an inaccuracy that is sometimes cited as truth. In fact Nancy worked at the Imperial Continental Gas Association in the City'

  27 From An Autobiography

  28 In conversation with the author

  29 In conversation with the author

  30 This version of events is described in Jared Cade’s Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days

  31 From Unfinished Portrait

  32 Diana Gunn, in conversation with the author

  33 Archie Christie to AC, no date

  34 From The Rose and the Yew Tree

  35 Anthony Hicks in conversation with the author, 2004

  36 From ‘Progression’

  37 From Jared Cade’s Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days

  38 Archie Christie to AC, sent from RFC Netheravon, no date

  The Quarry

  1 From the fragment of short story about the young widow

  2 Quotations from, respectively: Sad Cypress, Death on the Nile, Five Little Pigs and the short story ‘The Edge’

  3 In May 1930 Agatha wrote to Max Mallowan about the publication of her collection, The Mysterious Mr. Quin: ‘Two of the stories in Mr Quin I consider good – “Harlequin’s Lane” and “The Man from the Sea” . . .’

  4 From Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King

  5 This was the title given to the serialised version of the book

  6 The poison used by Dr Crippen to murder his wife

  7 Edith Thompson’s much younger lover, Frederick Bywaters, murdered her husband in a crime passionel; both were hanged as it was said that Edith had incited the murder. In fact she almost certainly knew nothing about it, but had been condemned as immoral because of her love affair

  8 Throughout, this newspaper was very much like a modern-day tabloid : it was sensational, sceptical and highly readable. Yet very much later Rosalind received a letter from Trevor Allen, who had covered the story for the Gazette and was now writing his autobiography, asking for her ‘true explanation of the disappearance’. She replied with the ‘official’ version, which Allen then used, telling Rosalind ‘I regard this as the complete and final explanation’

  9 In 1960 Agatha received a letter from an old friend of James Watts, who wrote that back in 1926 he had ‘got a long letter about you from him cursing the beastly press reporters who lay siege to the place’

  10 In an article published in the Sunday Chronicle, 11/8/1929, on the subject of the Croydon murder case in which three members of the same family were poisoned

  11 New Statesman 30/1/1976

  12 An adaptation of Agatha by Kathleen Tynan (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979)

  13 Rosalind brought a lawsuit in 1978 (a suit was also brought in the name of Agatha’s estate) but a federal judge refused to block distribution of the film. In 1977 Rosalind also wrote to The Times: ‘I would like to take this opportunity of saying that this film is being made entirely without consultation with any of my parents’ family, is altogether against our wishes and is likely to cause us great distress.’ The identification of her parents was ‘particularly objectionable and morally beneath contempt’. Referring to the film’s producer, David (now Lord) Puttnam, she wrote: ‘Let Mr Puttnam have his fairytale, if he must, but please do not let my family be brought into it.’ Puttnam replied to Rosalind personally: ‘It is of course not our intention for the film to cause unhappiness to anybody.’

  But family friends were appalled by the prospect and rallied round Rosalind with (albeit useless) support. Richard (now Lord) Attenborough also wrote to Rosalind in reply to her request for advice. ‘I fear, from all I can ga
ther, that there is little one can do about it.’

  Of Kathleen Tynan’s Agatha, an American reviewer wrote: ‘Christie would have hated this book’. Nevertheless an interview with Mrs Tynan did show her to have had some understanding of her subject, although her idiom was not exactly Agatha’s: ‘She was just going through a terrific growth period as a woman. The way she went about it may not have met the Victorian standards that she grew up with, and she always seemed bothered by that . . .’

  A final note: the part of Agatha was played, exquisitely, by Vanessa Redgrave, who donated her £40,000 fee from the film to the Workers’ Revolutionary Party. Her then partner Timothy Dalton (also excellent) played Archie, although when asked if he was similarly intending to donate his fee he replied: ‘Am I hell’

  14 The Westminster Gazette reported that Agatha could drive to London in fifty-five minutes: from Sunningdale to the centre is about twenty-five miles

  15 Mr Pettelson’s daughter also wrote to Rosalind in November 1977, explaining the circumstances in which Agatha and Mr Pettelson had met at Harrogate: ‘your dear mother offered to accompany him on the piano . . . There was a particular song your mother enjoyed playing, entitled “Angels Guard Thee” (Berceuse de Jocelyn) which my father always sang so beautifully. This particular sheet of music was chosen and signed by your mother – “Tressa Neele” [sic]’

  16 By her daughter, in conversation with the author, 2006

  17 Berkshire reported extra costs of £6 or so, which Archie presumably thought had been reasonably incurred: he paid them

  18 This statement was made in Gwen Robyns’s The Mystery of Agatha Christie (Doubleday, 1978)

  19 The Times 16/2/1928

  20 From Agatha’s poem ‘There Where My Lover Lies’

  21 All personal quotations are from conversations with the author

  The Second Husband

  1 From Memories of Men and Women (Eyre Methuen, 1980)

  2 Diana Gunn, in conversation with the author, 2006

  3 In conversation with the author, 2006

  4 Diana Gunn

  5 In conversation with the author, 2004

  6 From Memories of Men and Women

  7 ‘It was my idea to meet him,’ says Mathew Prichard, but Archie died just before the proposed meeting

 

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