Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets From Her Notebooks (15 page)

[Chapter 10]

Vicar goes home – Miss Cram with Griselda – about Guides – really curious – she goes. Vicar and Mary – about shot. What time – she is amazed. Griselda says about Archer the poacher. Colonel and Slack arrive. They go into study.

[Chapter 11]

Miss Marple with Griselda – Miss M says it reminds her of things etc. etc. – the washerwoman and the other woman – hate. I wish you would tell me the 7
[suspects]
. She shook her head. The note – the curious point about it.

[Chapter 12]

They go to interview Lawrence. He tells – arrived there to say I couldn’t leave after all – found him dead. Pistol – it was mine – I picked it up and rushed. I felt demented. You were sure it was Anne? He bowed his head. I thought that after we had parted that afternoon she had gone back and shot him. No, he had never touched the clock. Mrs P, we know you didn’t do it. Now – will you tell me what you did? She does. If anyone else confesses to the murder, I will go mad.

[Chapter 13]

Miss Hartnell
[actually changed to Mrs Price-Ridley]
indignant complaint about being rung up – a degenerate voice. It threatened me – asked about shot. Yes, I did hear something down in the wood – just one odd shot – but I didn’t notice it particularly

[Chapter 14]

Haydock says about Hawes – Encephalitis lethargica. Mention of Dennis age by Haydock.

Although the novel is narrated by the vicar, it is not until Chapter 15 that ‘I’, the narrator, appears. Note the fluctuation thereafter between first and third person narrative:

Note from Mrs. Lestrange – I go there. Has hardly greeted her before the Inspector arrives – she asks vicar to stay – questions. She refuses information.

[Chapter 16]

It was after tea time that I put into execution a plan of my own – whoever committed the murder etc. Goes into wood – meets Lawrence with large stone in his hands. He explains – for Miss Marple’s rock garden

[Chapter 18]

Inquest that morning
[afternoon]
– Vicar and doctor and Lawrence give evidence. Anne Protheroe – her husband in usual spirits – Mrs Lestrange – Dr Haydock gave medical certificate. Murder by person or persons unknown.

[Chapter 19]

Then drops into Lawrence’s cottage. He describes how he got on at Old Hall – a tweenie overheard something – wasn’t going to tell the police.

[Chapter 20]

Vicar goes home – finds Lettice has been there – Mary very angry – has come home and found her searching in study – yellow hat.

[Chapter 21]

After dinner – Raymond West – the crime – Mr Stone. Raymond says it wasn’t him. Great excitement – tell the police. Another peculiar thing – I told him about the suit case.

[Chapter 22]

Letter from Anne – Vicar goes up to see her – a very extraordinary occurrence. Takes me to attic – the picture with the slashed face. Who is it? The initials E.P. on trunk.

[Chapter 23]

Vicar on way back knows police are searching barrow – his sudden brain wave – finds suitcase – takes it to police station – old silver.

[Chapter 24]

Vicar goes home – Hawes there – says will vicar preach – reference to headache powder. Notes 3 by hand – one in box – anonymous one.

[Chapter 25]

Mrs Price Ridley – her maid, standing at gate, saw something or heard somebody sneeze. Or a tennis racquet in a hedge – on the way back along footpath.

Near the end of the notes is a draft of the schedule that appears in Chapter 26. This also tallies in general with the published version. Minor details – the date of the month and a difference of minutes in some of the timetable – are, however, changed, as can be seen from a comparison with the published version.

Occurrences in connection with the death of Colonel Protheroe

To be explained
[and]
arranged in chronological order

Wednesday
Thursday – 20th

11.30 Col. Protheroe alters time of appointment to 6.15 – easily overheard

12.30 Mrs Archer says pistol was still at Lawrence Redding’s cottage – but has previously said she didn’t know

5.30 Fake call put through to me from East Lodge – by whom?

5.30 Col and Mrs P leave Old Hall in car and drive to village

6.14 Col. P arrives at my house Vicarage and is shown into study by maid Mary

6.20 Anne Protheroe comes to study window – Col P not visible (writing at desk)

6.23 L and A go into studio

6.30–6.35 The shot

6.30–6.35 Call put through from LR’s cottage to Mrs PR

6.45 L.R. visits vicarage finds body

6.50 I find body

The attempted murder of Hawes and the text of the ambiguously worded but apparently incriminating letter of Chapter 29 are sketched in the closing stages of the notes, which end abruptly with the revelation of the guilty names:

[Chapters 27/28]

The call – I – I want to confess. Can’t get number. Goes there – finds letter on table.

[Chapter 29]

Dear Clement

It is a peculiarly unpleasant thing I have to say – after all I think I prefer writing it. It concerns the recent peculations. I am sorry to say that I have satisfied myself beyond any possible doubt of the identity of the culprit. Painful as it is for me to have to accuse an ordained priest of the Church . . .

The Notebook has no mention of Miss Marple’s explanation, although her casual mention of the names of the guilty is reflected in the book:

Melchett arrives – Hawes ill – they send for Haydock – overdose of sulphanol.

Miss M says Yes – that’s what he wants you to think – the confession of the letter – the overdose – that he took himself. It all fits in – but it’s wrong. It’s what the murderer wants you to think.

The murderer?

Yes – or perhaps I’d better say Mr Lawrence Redding

[Chapter 30]

They stare at her.

Of course Mr R is quite a clever young man. He would, as I have said all along, shoot anyone and come away looking distraught.

But he couldn’t have shot Col Protheroe.

No – but
she
could.

Who?

Mrs Protheroe.

As the first Marple novel, the place of
The Murder at the Vicarage
in crime fiction history is an important one. Miss Marple is the most famous, and arguably the most able, of the elderly female detectives. She was not the first; that honour goes to Miss Amelia Butterworth, who solved her first case in
The Affair Next Door
in 1897. Created by Anna Katherine Green, sometimes called the Mother of the Detective Story, Amelia’s career was predicated on a combination of leisure and inquisitiveness, as distinct from the professional female whose motivation was mainly economic. Other well-known contemporary female sleuths included spinster schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers, the creation of Stuart Palmer; mystery writer Susan Dare, the creation of M.G. Eberhart; professional psychologist Mrs Bradley, the creation of Gladys Mitchell; and private enquiry agent Miss Maud Silver, the creation of Patricia Wentworth. All these were contemporaries of Miss Marple, although only the heroine of St Mary Mead can be classified as a complete amateur.

The Murder at the Vicarage
is a typical village murder mystery of the sort forever linked with the name of Agatha Christie; although, with ten books already published, it was only the second such novel she had produced, the other being
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
. Its central ploy – the seemingly impregnable alibis of a pair of murderous adulterers – was one to which Christie would return throughout her career. It had already featured in
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
;
Death on the Nile
,
Evil under the Sun
and
Endless Night
are other prime examples.

The Sittaford Mystery

7 September 1931

During a séance at Sittaford House the death of Captain Trevelyan is predicted. The worst fears of his friend Major Burnaby are realised when he finds the Captain’s body, murdered in his own home, six miles away. Inspector Narracott investigates with the unsought help of Emily Trefusis, whose fiancé has been arrested.

Despite the full-length debut of Miss Marple in
The Murder at the Vicarage
the previous year and the absence of Hercule Poirot since
The Mystery of the Blue Train
in 1928, Christie submitted a non-series novel to The Crime Club in 1931.
The Sittaford Mystery
had a six-part serialisation in the USA, as
Murder at Hazelmoor
, six months prior to its UK release.

The small bungalows, each with a quarter-acre of ground, described in Chapter 1 of
The Sittaford Mystery
owe their inspiration, according to an early draft of Christie’s
Autobiography
, to the granite bungalow in Throwleigh, Dartmoor purchased for £800 by Christie and her sister Madge for their brother Monty on his return from Africa in 1923. The background of Dartmoor, and the sub-plot of the escaped convict, inevitably recalls Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes novel
The
Hound of the Baskervilles
(1896), which uses the same evocative and atmospheric setting as well as a similar sub-plot. Conan Doyle himself is referenced in Chapter 11 when Charles Enderby plans to write to him for an opinion on séances; this is a reference to Conan Doyle’s enthusiasm for spiritualism, an interest that dominated the last years of his life. Despite the passing reference in Chapter 7 to Trevelyan’s will, dated 13 August 1926, having been written ‘five or six years ago’, the mention of Conan Doyle indicates that
The Sittaford Mystery
was written, at the latest, in early 1930, as Conan Doyle died in July of that year.

As a plot device, the supernatural appeared spasmodically throughout the works of Agatha Christie. Two years after
The Sittaford Mystery
Christie published
The Hound of Death
, a collection of short stories, most of them published years earlier in various magazines, whose overall theme is the supernatural. It includes stories about a psychic in ‘The Hound of Death’, second sight in ‘The Gipsy’, a ghost in ‘The Lamp’, possession in ‘The Strange Case of Sir Arthur [sometimes Andrew] Carmichael’; and in ‘The Last Séance’ and ‘The Red Signal’ a séance, also the main plot device of
The Sittaford Mystery.
In the later novels
Dumb Witness
and
The Pale Horse
, the supernatural plays a part; and in
Taken at the Flood
it is her psychic ‘gift’ that directs Katherine Cloade to approach Hercule Poirot. However, in the case of the novels, the paranormal is merely a smokescreen used by the author (and a character) to conceal a clever plot. And so it is with
The Sittaford Mystery.
The table-turning
is not merely atmospheric but a vital part of the plot concocted by the murderer (i.e. the author) to camouflage his intentions and, essentially, provide him with an alibi.

All of the notes for
The Sittaford Mystery
are contained in 40 pages of Notebook 59. Also in this Notebook are the notes for
Lord Edgware Dies
and brief notes for some of the Mr Quin stories. The
Sittaford
notes are very organised and there is little in the way of extraneous material. Most of the chapters are sketched accurately and even some of the chapter headings are included, although the chapter numbers in the Notebook do not correspond exactly with those of the published novel. Unusually, most of the characters’ names, with the exception of the Inspector, are also as published. The notes for the two novels sketched in this Notebook follow each other in an orderly fashion and there are no shopping lists, no breaking off to plan a stage play, no digressions to a different novel. The year 1931 was also the last of the decade in which Christie had only one title published. From 1932 onwards, starting with
Peril at End House
and
The Thirteen Problems
, Collins Crime Club published more than one Christie title per year. This increased rate of production is probably one of the reasons that the subsequent Notebooks become more chaotic.

Following in the footsteps of Tuppence Beresford in
The Secret Adversary
and more recently,
Partners in Crime
, Anne Beddingfeld from
The Man in the Brown Suit
and ‘Bundle’ Brent from
The Secret of Chimneys
, Emily Trefusis in
The Sittaford Mystery
is another young Christie heroine with an independent mind and a yearning for adventure. She also foreshadows Lady Frances (Frankie) Derwent in
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
and, 20 years later, Victoria Jones in
They Came to Baghdad.

The first four chapters of the novel are accurately reflected in the early notes, although the time of death in the novel is amended to 5.25. Oddly, the secret of the novel upon which the alibi is based, is not mentioned at this stage and the brief summary below, while the truth, is not the whole truth.

The séance

Burnaby insists on going off to see his friend. Starts in the snow, goes up to house, rings and then goes in. Finds body, rings up doctor. Hit by sand bag (put under door for draughts). Dead two hours; could he have died at 6.15? Yes – very probably.

Inquest – Scotland Yard

Inspector – he questions Major Burnaby: Why did you say 6.15? Hums and haws – at last explains. Goes to see friend who is scientific.

Following this, Christie rather chaotically considers possible suspects before returning to the beginning of the novel. She confidently heads page 26 . . .