Agatha Christie's True Crime Inspirations

by Mike Holgate

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  STRANGER THAN FICTION

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  At an inquest held in Coventry in November 1985, it was alleged that a killer was walking free because the only witness had changed his statement and told lies in a case where every possible suspect was known but difficult to determine, as in Agatha Christie’s ‘locked’ or ‘sealed room’ murder mysteries, such as Hercule Poirot’s Christmas.

  Joe Jenkins, age twenty-two, had died during a drinking session at the home of his friend, Hugh Barclay. Two other men were present, David Cassidy and Peter McMahon. The latter told the jury that an argument over cannabis had broken out between the other three and they went into the kitchen. Shortly afterwards, Joe Jenkins returned with blood pumping from a chest wound that caused his death. The police investigation was hampered by McMahon, who then made two different statements accusing first one and then the other of his drinking companions of the crime. The jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing after hearing the coroner state, ‘The story you have heard today has every ingredient of a fictional film or novel’. This view was shared by the solicitor acting on behalf of the deceased man’s family, who accused McMahon of deliberately lying so that the killer could not be brought to justice: ‘I do not know who is the murderer but there is a murderer in this case and I submit that you do. It is rather like the “sealed room” in Agatha Christie… You know who it was that killed that man’.

  25

  DAME MARGARET RUTHERFORD

  Murder Most Foul

  I never really wanted to play Miss Marple. I have always hated violence of any kind and murder in particular.

  Margaret Rutherford (1972)

  Oscar-winner Dame Margaret Rutherford (1892-1972), the well-loved ‘spaniel-jowled’ actress of whom acid-tongued critic Kenneth Tynan once affectionately observed, ‘The unique thing about Ms Rutherford is that she can act with her chins alone’ was the niece of Sir Joshua Benn and the cousin of politician Tony Benn, but throughout her life hid a terrible secret about her family’s past. In her autobiography, completed shortly before her death, she glossed over the fate of her parents by simply commenting, ‘My father died in tragic circumstances soon after my mother, and so I became an orphan’. Behind this fabricated understatement lay the fact that she was tormented by a grisly murder, far more bloody than any she was to investigate in her later role as Agatha Christie’s fictional sleuth Miss Marple.

  Ten years before Margaret’s birth her father, William Rutherford Benn, who had recently been released from an asylum where he had received lengthy treatment for mental health problems, suffered a complete psychotic breakdown and battered his clergyman father’s head to a pulp with a chamber pot before making a vain bid to end his own life by slashing his throat with a knife. After spending seven years in Broadmoor, the recovered patient was discharged into the care of his devoted wife, Florence. Changing their surname from Benn to Rutherford, the family made a new start in India soon after their only child, Margaret, was born, but when the infant was aged three her depressive mother hanged herself from a tree in the garden of their home in Madras. Returning to England, the grief-stricken husband was re-admitted permanently to Broadmoor. Young Margaret was then raised in London by a kindly aunt who thought it best to shield her from the terrible truth of family murder, madness and suicide by allowing her to believe that both parents were dead. At the age of twelve, Margaret learned the terrible truth from her aunt after the shocked young girl answered the door to a dishevelled man who delivered a message from her father purportedly sending his love. These horrifying revelations precipitated bouts of depressive illness brought on by an irrational fear that her mad father might escape and harm her.

  As an adult, Margaret earned a living by teaching the piano and giving elocution lessons before turning to professional acting at the age of thirty-three. Finally realising a long-held ambition to join the Old Vic Co., she fell in love with fellow actor Stringer Davis, who cared for his ailing mother for a further fifteen years before popping the question; the devoted couple eventually married when the groom was forty-six and the bride fifty-three.

  Margaret Rutherford gave several memorable stage and film performances during the 1930s before winning a special place in the hearts of cinema audiences as the bicycle-riding medium in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit in 1945. That same year, the actress made her first appearance in an Agatha Christie work in the touring company of the stage hit Appointment with Death. It was over fifteen years later that she accepted an offer from MGM to play Miss Marple in Murder She Said (1961), loosely adapted from the murder mystery 4.50 From Paddington (1957). Fully aware of the unsympathetic treatment that her novels were to receive at the hands of the producers, a resigned Agatha Christie watched the knockabout comedy at the ABC Cinema, Torquay, and wrote to her agent: ‘Don’t think I’m upset by Murder She Said. I’m not. It’s more or less what I expected all along’. Agatha was shocked further when a Poirot case, After the Funeral, (1953) was converted into a vehicle for Miss Marple in the movie Murder At the Gallop (1963). The third outing caused even more consternation when another Poirot novel, Mrs McGinty’s Dead (1952), was converted into a horrendous title the author had conceived in the short story ‘Mr Eastwood’s Adventure’ (1934), where a thriller writer submits a story to a publisher predicting he will probably change it to ‘something rotten’ like ‘Murder Most Foul’. Despite her objections to the next production, Agatha Christie suffered her worst indignity when the scriptwriters invented a totally original storyline for the final film of the series, Murder Ahoy!, released in 1964.

  Although the creator’s misgivings at the distortion of her characters and plots were understandable, the films proved extremely popular at the box office and were well received by reviewers. Alexander Walker in the Evening Standard praised the star’s performance:

  Margaret Rutherford fills the spinster’s tweeds of the renowned detective Miss Marple splendidly. She is hugely enjoyable. With chin wagging like a windsock on an airfield and eyes that are deceptively guileless, she clumps her way through lines, situations and disguises that would bunker an actress of less imperial aplomb.

  Rutherford recalled in her autobiography how Christie had reacted to her casting:

  I didn’t know it at the time, but she was not keen on me playing Miss Marple. It was not a question of my acting, just that I didn’t look at all like her idea of the detective. She saw her as a kind of fragile, pink-and-white lady, not physically like me at all! But when we met face to face on the set of Murder She Said, we instantly clicked and became friends. We became admirers of each other’s work - hers is the world of the pen, and mine is of speech. Agatha even dedicated to me one of her Miss Marple books, The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side.

  Although there is no doubt that the author’s gracious dedication was genuine, the book itself, featuring a series of murders on a film set, seemingly reflects the author’s unflattering view of a film industry riddled with neurotics, egomaniacs, backstabbers and blackmailers.

  26

  ROY JAMES

  At Bertram’s Hotel

  Oh well, those days don’t seem to last when you’re living hard and fast, And life is sweet all down the line:

  But when you’re counting stars looking through them prison bars, Thirty years is a long, long time.

  Song chorus, The Great Train Robbery (1964)

  The Great Train Robbery of 1963 was still fresh in the public mind when Agatha Christie wrote At Bertram’s Hotel (1965). The novel features Miss Marple, who is staying at a restored London hotel which, she discovers, is also the headquarters of a criminal mastermind and his gang that includes a jet-setting racing driver who handles a getaway car in the ‘Irish Mail train robbery’. This character was doubtless inspired by a real-life thief with a talent for racing, Roy James, who played a leading role in the most audacious heist of the twentieth century.

  Long before his involvement in the infamous train robbery, Roy James had served period
s of imprisonment for theft, often using the proceeds to fund his involvement in motorsport where he showed great promise and often lined up on the grid with the likes of future Grand Prix World Champions Jack Brabham, Denny Hulme and Jackie Stewart. While competing in Monte Carlo in 1962, he and an accomplice, Mickey Ball, also stole £144,000 worth of jewellery and on their return to England took part in a daylight robbery at Heathrow Airport, stealing a payroll protected by an armoured car. James needed all of his motoring skills to escape from the scene of the crime in one of two stolen Jaguars. While exiting through a gate in the airport’s perimeter fence, he bounced off an Austin A40 trying to block his way; then, once on the main road, he balked traffic in the middle of an intersection, allowing his mate Mickey Ball to catch up and pass through a red light. In the ensuing investigation, Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad quickly rounded up James and Ball, suspecting that they had orchestrated the daring getaway. A confession was extracted from Ball, who was jailed, but the case against James collapsed and he used his share of the spoils to purchase a top of the range racing car to enter a Formula Junior race, which he won in 1963.

  The airport robbery had netted the gang £62,000, but the same ‘firm’ set its sights much higher for the next job, when leader Bruce Reynolds meticulously devised a plan to hit the Edinburgh to London night train carrying £2.6 million in used bank notes, on their way to be destroyed at the Royal Mint. On 7 August 1963, the train was duly stopped by rigging a railway signal located on an isolated stretch of track at Cheddington, near Leighton Buzzard. The cab was stormed and the driver, Jack Mills, coshed over the head for initially refusing to move the train along the track to the waiting vehicles. Once this manoeuvre had been completed by the semi-concussed driver, a human chain was formed to load 150 moneybags onto an old Army truck. On this occasion, fast driving skills were not required as Roy James sedately transported some of his accomplices the short distance to a rented farmhouse at the wheel of a Land Rover.

  Like a scene from an Ealing comedy, the jubilant crooks counted their ill-gotten gains and passed the time by playing Monopoly with the stolen banknotes – carelessly leaving their fingerprints on the board. When the police located the gang’s hideout at Leatherslade Farm, they found an embarrassment of evidence and made short work of rounding up the majority of the culprits. James went into hiding but was caught early in December after failing to make his escape with a rooftop dash and a daring 30ft leap to the ground, where the police were waiting to apprehend him. Savage sentences were handed out at the trial of the train robbers with seven of them – Ronnie Biggs, Gordon Goody, Robert Welch, Thomas Wisbey, James Hussey, Charley Wilson and Roy James – receiving terms of thirty years. His dream of becoming a top racing driver finally over, James became the first train robber to be released on parole in 1975, only to discover that a friend he had entrusted with his share of the money had spent it all while he was in prison.

  When At Bertram’s Hotel was published in 1965, the Great Train Robbery was still hot news with the recent high-profile prison escapes by Charley Wilson and Ronnie Biggs, whilst criminal mastermind Bruce Reynolds remained at large until an international manhunt came to an end in November 1968. He was also sentenced to thirty years imprisonment after being arrested in a dawn raid mounted by the Flying Squad in Torquay. For the previous two months, the career criminal had revisited the resort where he had spent childhood holidays with his parents. Accompanied by his wife, Frances, and their six-year-old son, Nicholas, they resided at a rented luxury villa with panoramic views of Torbay. Reynolds planned to move to New Zealand, but after five years on the run with periods spent in Canada and Mexico, his share of the bank loot had dwindled from £150,000 to just £5,000. Ten days before his capture, Reynolds had a slight brush with the law for parking too close to a zebra crossing. A policeman asked him to produce his driving documents at the local police station and Britain’s most wanted man calmly took his son along with him and was not recognised during the routine check. Using a false name, the robber had recently taken a driving test at nearby Newton Abbot and passed despite his nervousness when the examiner revealed that he had previously been a member of the Flying Squad. During their brief stay, the Reynolds were also members of Torquay Library, enrolling under their current alias ‘Miller’, which coincidentally was the maiden name of the town’s famous crime author, Agatha Christie!

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  LORD MOUNTBATTEN

  The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

  I do not mind death as long it is reasonably peaceful and satisfying death.

  Lord Mountbatten (BBC interview, 1979)

  In 1974, Agatha Christie made her final public appearance at the London premiere of Murder on the Orient Express, attended by Queen Elizabeth, one of many members of the royal family said to be avid readers of Christie. The author was escorted to the glittering cinematic event by Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900-1979). The revered royal figure, who was the great-grandson of Queen Victoria and the great uncle of the present heir to the throne, the Prince of Wales, had acted as an emissary on behalf of his son-in-law, film producer Lord John Brabourne (1924-2005), and gently persuaded the reluctant author to give her consent to the project. It was well known that Agatha Christie had little faith in the film industry’s ability to do her stories justice and she had previously only enjoyed Billy Wilder’s adaptation of Witness for the Prosecution (1957). The decision to give the go-ahead to Lord Brabourne and his co-producer Richard Goodwin heralded a whole new era of lavish Agatha Christie films brought to the screen. The first in the series, starring Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, was nominated for six Oscars, and in a star-studded cast Ingrid Bergman received the award for Best Supporting Actress.

  Following the death of Poirot’s creator in 1976, Peter Ustinov took over the role of the detective for a further three films: Death on the Nile (1978), Evil Under the Sun (1981) and Appointment with Death (1987). During this period, violent deaths were suffered by Mountbatten and members of the Brabourne family who were victims of a despicable act of terrorism committed in Ireland by the Provisional IRA.

  In August 1979, the Mountbatten-Brabourne family took their annual one-month holiday at a castle in the fishing village of Mullaghmore, Donegal. On Monday 27 August, the party boarded the Shadow V for a relaxing cruise along the coast, unaware that Provo Thomas McMahon had sneaked aboard the boat and planted a remote-controlled bomb. The terrorist then stationed himself on a cliff overlooking the harbour and waited for his chance to detonate the charge and cause carnage. Shortly before noon the craft set off to inspect lobster pots that Lord Mountbatten had placed earlier. Suddenly, a terrific explosion blew the boat into smithereens and all seven occupants were hurled into the sea. Local boatmen rushed to the spot and fished out Lord Mountbatten, whose legs had been almost torn off by the blast, and he died within minutes. Doctors worked throughout the night in a vain attempt to save the life of Lord Brabourne’s mother, Dowager Lady Brabourne, while her grandson Nicholas and an Ulster boat boy Paul Maxwell also died, having been found floating face down in the bloodstained water. The only survivors to recover from their serious injuries were Lord Brabourne, his wife Patricia, and their son, Nicholas’s identical twin brother, Timothy.

  The IRA triumphantly issued a sickening statement claiming credit for the outrage: ‘The IRA claim responsibility for the execution of Lord Mountbatten. This operation is one of the discriminate ways we can bring to the attention of the English people the continuing occupation of our country’. Three hours after the murder, Thomas McMahon was arrested at a roadblock. Evidence of nitro-glycerine and flakes of paint from Shadow V were found on the killer’s clothing, and he was convicted of the assassination and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in 1998 as part of the Ulster agreement that restored peace to the province.

  In his entry for Who’s Who, Lord Mounbatten conceded, ‘I am the most conceited man I know’. Another proud boast of his concerned his involvement in coming up with the key element for the ending u
sed in Agatha Christie’s masterpiece, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), an idea that had also been mooted by her brother-in-law James Watts. In response to Lord Mountbatten’s advice, Agatha replied that ‘the idea was most ingenious’ and, in response to his request many years later, she sent a copy of the book with a handwritten inscription: ‘To Lord Mountbatten in grateful remembrance of a letter he wrote to me forty-five years ago which contained the suggestion which I subsequently used in a book called The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’. Her solution to the mystery is the most controversial of the brilliant surprise endings for which she became famous and it instantly elevated her to the front rank of writers. Although the book was Agatha Christie’s first big seller, some readers and reviewers felt aggrieved that her choice of the narrator as the murderer had broken the unwritten rules of crime fiction. These ‘rules’ were addressed two years later when the Detection Club was formed by writers to maintain high standards about the use of evidence. Agatha Christie became a member of the association whose authority came too late to prevent the clever and perfectly acceptable deception, for whom the author generously acknowledged the role of her co-conspirator Lord Mountbatten: ‘Thank you for presenting me with a first-class idea – no one else ever has’.

  28

  SIR PETER USTINOV

  Evil Under the Sun