One writer who enables us to do this is Agatha Christie. We’ve discussed, a little, some of the techniques she uses in getting this particular effect. But there is no finally convincing explanation of how a middle-class woman, courteous and conventional and somewhat conformist in her ways, should so often have been able to weave the spell.
A Very English Lady MICHAEL GILBERT
The writers of exciting books rarely seem to lead exciting lives. The adventurous conception, the interplay of characters, the crises, the tensions and the climaxes are locked up inside their own heads. As for real life that goes on its easy way, year follows year, each year marked by the milestone of another book or play.
A glance at the entry under ‘Agatha Christie’ in the 1975 edition of Who’s Who suggests exactly this. It is not, of course, true. No one could have lived for eighty-five years, through two world wars, two marriages and a number of visits to the more deserted parts of the Middle East without encountering a fair measure of tragedy, comedy and romance.
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on 15 September 1890 at a house called Ashfield on the outskirts of Torquay. Her father was an American, Frederick Alvah Miller, a man in easy circumstances, whose income was said to be derived ‘from a business in New York’. It was a business which seemed to flourish without any personal attention from him. The family group consisted of the mother, who was English, and to whom Agatha was devoted; a sister, Madge, and a brother, Monty, both older than her. Madge later wrote a number of books and turned the case of the Tichborne Claimant (a sensational Victorian imposture) into a play which was acted with success on the London stage.
This was the golden evening of the Victorian era. Mr Miller entertained his friends and neighbours and was patron of the Torquay Cricket Club. Life at Ashfield was a comfortable and undemanding round of social engagements. Mrs Miller sent Madge off to Roedean to absorb the traditional boarding-school education for girls. For Agatha, her ideas were different. Possibly she considered her an unsuitable subject for the rough and tumble of boarding-school life. She was kept at home and taught by her mother and a succession of governesses.
Sir Max Mallowan, Agatha’s second husband, whom I introduce here ahead of chronology, agrees that this lack of contact with other children may have contributed to making her unusually shy and introverted. He says: ‘It is true that she had singing lessons in Paris and had considered becoming a professional opera singer, but her voice was not strong enough and she had reluctantly to abandon this intention. At one time, also, she considered becoming a concert pianist but her music master advised her that she was too nervous to consider playing in public concerts. Since a considerable measure of self-confidence was part of a professional player’s equipment she abandoned her intention of playing professionally, but was a competent executant and practised seriously.’
A lot of pleasant things came to an end for a lot of people in 1914; among them the happy and self-sufficient family life of the Millers. 1914 was an important year for Agatha. She had been engaged for some time past to Archibald Christie, and married him in the summer of that year. He went straight off to the war, in the course of which he was to win the DSO and to receive the CMG. Agatha, after taking various first-aid courses, was accepted as a VAD nurse in the hospital which had been established in the Town Hall in Torquay. After two years there she moved into a dispensary. This may have been one of those climactic moments in a career which is not recognized at the time, but becomes clearly apparent in retrospect.
In his book, Agatha Christie: Mistress of Mystery, G. C. Ramsey quotes the remarkable poem, written by her at about this time, and published by Geoffrey Bles in 1925. It was called ‘The Road of Dreams’. It is easy to see that it was with the eye of an artist, not of a doctor or a scientist, that this twenty-six-year-old woman looked at the bottles on the shelves of that Torquay dispensary.
Here heavy syrups, thick and sweet
Prepared with skill and toil
And there, distilled in precious drops
Stand many a spiced oil
Lavender, Nutmeg and Sandalwood
Cinnamon, Clove and Pine,
While above, in palest primrose hue
The Flowers of Sulphur shine.
And then:
High on the wall, beneath Lock and Key
The powers of the Quick and the Dead
Little low bottles of blue and green
Each with a legend red
In the depths beneath their slender necks
There is Romance and to spare
Oh, who shall say where Romance is?
If Romance is not here.
Where, if not in that dispensary, in 1916, when an idea was already germinating in Agatha’s mind? It was going to be a most mysterious affair. It was going to involve the use, or misuse, of poisons. It was going to feature a detective with distinctive characteristics, a stage Frenchman – or perhaps a Belgian, in honour of the Belgian refugees who had come to Torquay in 1914.
There is a story that Agatha was provoked into writing by some remark made by her sister, but to attach any importance to this is to confuse the occasion and the cause. People do not undertake the labour of writing because of some casual remark made by a friend. They undertake it because of what is already inside their heads, screaming to be let out.
It was to be four years, and six publishers later, before The Mysterious Affair at Styles eventually saw the light of day in 1920 over the imprint of John Lane of the Bodley Head.
(In parenthesis, who were those six publishers who turned it down? One of them, if one can believe a comment made by Agatha to Sir Max, was Heinemann. Who were the other five? And how on earth could they have rejected this particular manuscript? Perhaps they didn’t bother to read it?)
The years after the war started happily enough. Colonel Christie was home from France, his honours thick upon him. A house was bought and named ‘Styles’ after the first novel. In 1919 a daughter, Rosalind, was born. Further books appeared; two of them were what were just beginning to be called ‘Who-dunnits’; two were thrillers; and one was a collection of short stories; the latter a traditional ragbag of Missing Wills, Veiled Ladies, Million Dollar Robberies and a Kidnapped Prime Minister (presumably a blend of Mr Asquith and Mr Lloyd George).
Underneath, things were not going smoothly. It was a mixed-up time of success and unhappiness.
On the success side of the balance sheet stood The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. This has long been accepted as one of the finest of Agatha’s detective stories. There was an element of leg-pull about it, but it was a scrupulously fair leg-pull. As Dorothy L. Sayers commented, the only people who complained that the book was unfair were people who had been booby-trapped by it.
It was an immediate and unqualified success. It received the compliment, rare with a detective story, of being serialized in the Daily News. It made Agatha’s name known to a wide circle of readers and ensured that her next books would be welcomed and discussed.
(My mother, who was an avid reader of who-dunnits, but perennially hard-up, scraped together the money to buy a first edition, which I still possess. We took it with us on a holiday to Belgium that August and I identified four different characters, with confidence, as the murderer; in each case incorrectly.)
At ‘Styles’, there was trouble. Differences had been developing between Agatha and Colonel Christie. It may have been the fault of neither side. There must have been a lot of marriages broken up by four years’ enforced separation of the husband at the front and the corresponding immersion of the wife in her own life and her own work. Whatever the reason, things came to a head in December of 1926.
Colonel Christie had formed an attachment for a Miss Neele, who lived at Godalming. On the morning of 4 December he took advantage of Agatha’s absence from the house, packed his bags and left for Miss Neele’s house. When Agatha got back the news was broken to her by her secretary. At nine o’clock that night she got out the car, which she had recently learned
to handle, and drove off. The secretary telephoned Colonel Christie, who came back in a hurry.
The next known fact is that George Best, a fifteen-year-old gipsy lad, found the car toppled over an embankment near the Silent Pool at Newlands Corner on the Surrey escarpment.
It was as though someone had pressed a button which released an astonishing outpouring of publicity. Reading the pages of the newspapers which came out in the next few days, one is staggered by the importance attached by the press to this event. Banner headlines span two and three columns of print. Every day brings a ‘development’. Eminent public characters comment and speculate.
On 7 December the Daily News offered a reward of £100 for information. When Colonel Christie’s attention was drawn to it, he said: ‘I would gladly give £500 if I could only hear where my wife is.’ He added, disingenuously, that he had been away for the weekend and was not at home when his wife’s disappearance was reported. The Daily News, exercising its prerogative of innuendo, added: ‘The fact that she was not wearing a wedding ring at the time of her disappearance is considered to be of no special significance.’
On 8 December a local chemist, a Mr Gilling, revealed that Agatha had often discussed with him different methods of committing suicide, and a Mrs Kitching came forward and created some excitement by saying that she had seen a woman at midday on that Saturday walking in a dazed fashion near Albury. She had never met Agatha, but identified her positively from photographs published in the press. On the following day a woman’s right-foot patent-leather shoe was found.
On 10 December Colonel Christie, who was being harried by the press, scouted the suggestion of suicide, and put forward, for the first time, an unkind suggestion which was to acquire currency as time went on. He told the Daily News, which was leading the hunt: ‘My wife said to me, some time ago, that she could disappear at will and would defy anyone to find her. This shows that the possibility of engineering her disappearance was running through her mind.’
Next day a powder puff was found, in a lonely hut. This was handed over to a clairvoyant who said that the body of its owner would be found in a log house. The hint was taken, and a log house was quickly discovered, but disappointingly no body in it.
Edgar Wallace, whose play The Ringer was pulling in the audiences at Wyndham’s Theatre, declared that what had happened was a typical example of mental reprisal. He said: ‘Her intention seems to have been to spite an unknown person who would be distressed by her disappearance.’ The readers of the Daily Mail, in which this comment appeared, cannot have had much difficulty in identifying the person referred to.
By the weekend the search had escalated into the realms of fantasy. Hundreds of policemen, thousands of enthusiastic amateurs, Scouts, dogs, aeroplanes, diviners and divers were scouring the countryside and the pools for clues and propounding theories for the press.
Then, quite suddenly, it all stopped. On 13 December a member of the staff of the Hydro Hotel at Harrogate claimed the £100 reward. He said that Agatha had been staying there for nine days, having arrived in a taxi-cab after lunch on the previous Saturday. The other guests at the hotel, who had been charmed by Agatha’s manner, all agreed that she was obviously suffering from loss of memory. The whole of her actions, they said, had been so perfectly normal that this was the only possible explanation.
The press, who were feeling piqued, were not so certain. The Daily News sent (and published) a telegram: ‘In view wide-spread criticism your disappearance strongly urge desirability authentic explanation from yourself to thousands of public who joined in costly search and cannot understand your loss of memory theory.’
Colonel Christie, who had hurried to Harrogate, said that neither he nor his wife were making any further statements.
What was really behind it?
A good and balanced account of the episode was written for the New Statesman by Ritchie Calder. Unlike many commentators he did know what he was talking about, having been himself engaged in the search as a very junior reporter on the staff of the Daily News. He says: ‘In retrospect, it is difficult to decide who were most responsible, the police or the press, for a “missing person” enquiry being blown up into the sensation of the century.’ This seems a just verdict.
Let us put the last word into the mouth of Hercule Poirot: ‘You are suggesting, my dear Hastings, that it was what you might term a publicity stunt. Yes? But consider two points. First that the lady had, by that time, not the slightest need for publicity. She had a full measure of it already. Secondly a more important point, which must always be considered in matters of this sort. The known character of the suspect. Can you really visualize a lady of genuine modesty, with a retiring disposition and an extreme dislike of public intervention in her affairs deliberately making herself the centre of a cause célèbre and bringing down on herself the country-wide attention of the sensational press. If you have no better solution to offer than that, mon cher Hastings, I suggest that you keep silent.’
Hastings retires, abashed.
Life gradually resumed its routine. The divorce, which followed not long after, revived a flicker of interest. Then writing was resumed.
In 1927 there was a thriller. In 1928 a who-dunnit, in 1929 a thriller again, The Seven Dials Mystery, and in the same year a reappearance of that happy-go-lucky pair Tommy and Tuppence as Partners in Crime.
The clouds were lifting and Agatha decided that a holiday would be in order. After much thought and careful discussions with a helpful travel agent she selected the West Indies as her destination. Tickets were bought and reservations were made. Then, at the eleventh hour, she changed her mind. She announced that she would go to Baghdad.
Agatha was normally punctilious about honouring obligations and carrying out plans. Why did she make such an uncharacteristic gesture? She met someone who enchanted her with his account of Baghdad, the River Tigris and the ancient cities being excavated thereabouts. The travel agent took it badly, but rallied round. All arrangements were changed. She went to Baghdad. To punish her for her wilfulness fate here threw her into the company of ‘a lobster of a woman’. (She was to reappear in many novels.) To escape her claws, Agatha presumed on a slight acquaintance with Sir Leonard Woolley who was in charge of the joint British Museum and Museum of the University of Pennsylvania Expedition to Ur of the Chaldees.
Sir Leonard Woolley’s wife, Lady Katharine, found Agatha agreeable company. Not only was she accorded the unusual honour of being invited to remain with the digging team, but she was urged to join them again in the following year. She accepted, and it was then that she met Max Mallowan, one of the Archaeologist Assistants on the Woolleys’ staff who had been away on the previous occasion having his appendix removed. When the digging season of 1929-30 was nearly over, in March, Lady Woolley decreed that Max should conduct Agatha back to England on the Orient Express. Lady Woolley’s decrees were never questioned. The pair departed. In September of that same year they were married.
Having allowed Max to sneak into the story by a side door, it is now time to introduce him formally.
He was born in London in 1904, educated at Lancing and New College, Oxford, and his assignment at Ur of the Chaldees was the first of the countless archaeological expeditions and excavations which have led him steadily to the top of his chosen profession. He is a fellow of All Souls, a Professor Emeritus of Western Asiatic Archaeology in the University of London, a Trustee of the British Museum, the author of half a dozen books and of numerous articles in newspapers and learned journals and the holder of enough chairmanships, presidencies, editorships, lectureships, medals and memberships of learned bodies, British and foreign, to fill twenty closely printed lines in Who’s Who. He was knighted in 1968.
At the point at which we left him, he was a young archaeologist, busy setting up house in Sheffield Terrace, Kensington. Agatha decorated the whole interior with enthusiasm and taste and established a music room for herself on the top floor.
It was not long before a jo
int digging and writing venture was planned. By 1935 Max was no longer an assistant. He was in charge. First, in 1933, at Arpachiyah. Then, between 1934 and 1936, at Chagar Bazar and Brak in Syria. It is at this point that we reach the only full-length piece of autobiography published in Agatha’s lifetime. She called it ‘an inconsequent chronicle’, an answer to the question which cropped up so often. ‘So you dig in Syria? Do tell me about it. How do you live? In a tent?’
‘Most people,’ she says, ‘probably do not want to know. It is just the small change of conversation. But there are, now and then, one or two people who are really interested.’
The book was started before the war, finished in 1944, published in 1946 and revised and reprinted in 1975. It must have been one of the last volumes that Agatha saw. I suspect that it was her favourite.
The title, Come, Tell Me How You Live, is taken from the piece of light verse which prefaces the book. It is a dedication, in rhyme, to Max. (A ‘tell’, by the way, is a bump in the earth which may, when investigated, produce an archaeological treasure trove; or, equally often, may not.)
I’ll tell you everything I can
If you will listen well
I met an erudite young man
A-sitting on a Tell
‘Who are you, sir?’ to him I said
‘For what is it you look?’
His answer trickled through my head
Like bloodstains in a book.
He said, ‘I look for aged pots
Of prehistoric days,
And then I measure them in lots
And lots of different ways.
And then (like you) I start to write,
My words are twice as long
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