Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets From Her Notebooks (26 page)

‘Not if
I
can help it,’ said Haydock grimly.

Satisfied, Miss Marple went out into the clear sunshine of the morning.

She said under her breath:

‘Poor little rich girl . . .’

THE END

Two interesting amendments that appear in the original typescript merit mention. The first time the name Clarice appears, in section ii, it has been inserted in handwriting and the following has been deleted: ‘Griselda Clement, the young and pretty wife of the vicar . . .’ This is the only appearance in the typescript of Griselda and by the top of the next page, and thereafter, ‘Clarice’ has been typed. Possibly as she wrote Christie decided to make Clarice part of the motive, something that she could not have done with happily married mother Griselda, whom her readers knew from
The Murder at the Vicarage
. The second change was to the scene in the chemist’s shop (section vi), when Bella and Harry’s conversation is witnessed by Clarice and Miss Harmon/Hartnell. Here again, ‘Clarice’ is inserted in handwriting and ‘Miss Marple’ is deleted. And the closing paragraph of this section, here reinstated, is omitted in Version A, to the detriment of the plot; the information given here is an indication of collusion between Harry and Bella.

Version A has the totally incredible account, given by Dr Haydock in the closing scene, in which Harry, the newly widowed murderer, drops a hypodermic syringe out of his trouser pocket. No murderer, regardless of circumstance, would resort to this potentially hazardous, not to mention probably painful, method of concealment. I cannot believe that Agatha Christie ever envisioned such a scene; this
must
be the invention of a (poor) magazine editor.

Despite her last-minute substitution and insertion in the two instances mentioned above, Clarice plays a more pivotal role in Version B. Although in both versions she provides part of the motive, it is more unequivocal and less covert in Version B than in the earlier version, where her interest in Harry is peripheral.

Overall, this newly discovered version is longer, more convincing and more coherent than its predecessor. The awkward, not to mention unmotivated, manuscript ploy is replaced by a more straightforward narration in which Miss Marple takes centre stage – where she belongs.

Chapter 8
The Fourth Decade 1950–1959

‘So I was happy, radiantly happy, and made even more so by the applause of the audience.’

SOLUTIONS REVEALED

After The Funeral • Appointment with Death •
‘The Case of the Perfect Maid’
• Cat among the Pigeons • Death in the Clouds • Death on the Nile • Destination Unknown • Endless Night •
‘Greenshaw’s Folly’
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles • The Mystery of the Blue Train • Sparkling Cyanide • Taken at the Flood • They Came to Baghdad • They Do It with Mirrors • Three Act Tragedy • The Unexpected Guest

While she still produced her annual ‘Christie for Christmas’, the 1950s was Agatha Christie’s Golden Age of Theatre. Throughout this decade her name, already a constant on the bookshelf, now became a perennial on the theatre marquee as well. In so doing she became the only crime writer to conquer the stage as well as the page; and the only female playwright in history to have three plays running simultaneously in London’s West End. Other playwrights wrote popular stage thrillers – Frederick Knott’s
Dial M for Murder
and
Wait until Dark
or Francis Durbridge’s
Suddenly at Home
– and some of her fellow crime writers wrote stage plays – Dorothy L. Sayers’
Busman’s Honeymoon
, Ngaio Marsh’s
Singing in the Shrouds
– but Christie is still the only crime writer to achieve equal fame and success in both media.

The decade began well with the publication, in June, of her fiftieth title,
A Murder is Announced
. This is a major title not simply thanks to its jubilee status but also because it is one of Christie’s greatest detective novels and Miss Marple’s finest hour. To celebrate the occasion Collins hosted a party in the Savoy Hotel; photos of the event show a relaxed and smiling Agatha Christie chatting with Billy Collins and fellow crime writer Ngaio Marsh as well as with actress Barbara Mullen, then appearing in the West End as Miss Marple in
Murder at the Vicarage
.

Her 1950s novels reflected the new social order of a post-war Britain. Elements of the plot of
A Murder is Announced
depend on food rationing, identity cards, fuel shortages, and a new social mobility.
They Do It with Mirrors
(1952) is set in a reform home for delinquents;
Mrs McGinty’s Dead
(1952) finds Poirot staying at an unspeakable guest-house while he solves the murder of a charwoman.
Hickory Dickory Dock
(1955) is set in a student hostel and
Ordeal by Innocence
(1958) is a dark novel about a miscarriage of justice. The female protagonist of
4.50 from Paddington
(1957) makes a living, despite a university degree, as a short-term domestic help;
Cat among the Pigeons
(1959) combines a murder mystery with international unrest and revolution. And two titles –
They Came to Baghdad
(1951) and
Destination Unknown
(1954) – represent a return, after almost 30 years and
The Man in the Brown Suit
, to the foreign thriller.

In this decade the final Mary Westmacotts were published,
A Daughter’s a Daughter
in 1952 and
The Burden
in 1956. And in April 1950 Agatha Christie began to write her
Autobiography
, a task that would take over 15 years; it would not materialise in print until after her death. Despite this impressive range of projects, throughout the 1950s her output remained steady, although 1953, with
After the Funeral
and
A Pocket Full of Rye
, was the last year that saw more than one ‘Christie for Christmas’. During the 1950s, to the probable chagrin of Collins Crime Club, Christie concentrated her literary efforts on the stage.

Exactly a year after her fiftieth title became a best-seller,
The Hollow
, her 1946 Poirot novel, made its debut as a play, despite the prognostications of Christie’s daughter Rosalind, who tried to dissuade her mother from adapting what she saw as unsuitable dramatic material. The play was a success and buoyed by its reception Christie began in earnest to turn her attention to the stage. In her
Autobiography
she explains that writing a play is much easier than writing a novel because ‘the circumscribed limits of the stage simplifies things’ and the playwright is not ‘hampered with all that description that . . . stops [the writer from] getting on with what happens’.

In 1952
The Mousetrap
began its unstoppable run. Although it began as a radio play, written at the express request of Queen Mary, who celebrated her eightieth birthday in 1947, Christie subsequently adapted it as a long short story and, finally, as a stage play. After tryouts in Nottingham, it opened at London’s Ambassadors Theatre on 25 November 1952. By the mid 1960s it had broken every existing theatrical record and it still sailed serenely on. The following year her greatest achievement in theatre,
Witness for the Prosecution
, opened and confirmed Agatha Christie’s status as a crime dramatist. The year after that the play duplicated its London success on Broadway, earning for its author an Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of America.

The previous three plays had been her own adaptations of earlier titles, but she now began producing original work for the stage.
Spider’s Web
(1954) was the first, followed by
Verdict
and
The Unexpected Guest
(both 1958). Although all three contained a dead body, something audiences had come to expect from a Christie play, in most other respects they were surprises and showed that her talents were not confined to the printed page.
Spider’s Web
was another commission, this one written at the request of the actress Margaret Lockwood, and was a light comedy with a whodunit element.
Verdict
, the only failure of the decade, was, despite its title and the presence of a murdered body, not a whodunit at all; and
The Unexpected Guest
was a brooding will-they-get-away-with-it – or so it seems until the final surprise. In between these titles
Towards Zero
, an adaptation of her 1943 novel, opened to a lukewarm reception in 1956. It was her only collaboration and it was co-adapted by Gerald Verner, a now-forgotten crime writer with a long list of titles to his credit.

On radio Tommy and Tuppence, played by
The Mousetrap
’s husband-and-wife team of Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim, appeared in a 13-part adaptation of
Partners in Crime
beginning in April 1953. The following year the BBC broadcast an original radio play,
Personal Call
. The artistically and critically acclaimed Billy Wilder version of
Witness for the Prosecution
arrived on screen in 1957 and remains the best film version of any Christie material. And in 1956 US television cast (the unlikely) Gracie Fields in the role of Miss Marple in
A Murder is Announced
.

The 1950s saw The Queen of Crime expanding her literary horizons from phenomenally successful crime novelist to equally impressive crime dramatist. And in 1956, in recognition of her exceptional contribution to both, Agatha Christie was awarded a CBE.

They Came to Baghdad

5 March 1951

After losing her job and falling for a young man she meets in a London park, Victoria Jones travels to Baghdad, where she becomes involved, not entirely unwillingly, in murder, mystery and international intrigue.

‘It is difficult to believe that Mrs Christie regards this as more than a joke.’ This was the verdict from the first person at Collins to read
They Came to Baghdad
. Phrases such as ‘far-fetched and puerile . . . not worthy of Mrs Christie . . . wildly improbable’ pepper the report, but it goes on to say ‘it is eminently readable’ and that ‘its sheer vitality and humour and the delightful . . . Victoria Jones carry it through.’ It should be remembered that this book followed on from
Crooked House
and
A Murder is Announced
, both first-class Christie detective novels; Collins, not unreasonably, expected another in the same vein.
They Came to Baghdad
, the first foreign adventure story since
The Man in the Brown Suit
a quarter of a century earlier, was obviously a shock. And there are, undoubtedly, far-fetched aspects to the plot.

Although published in March there had been a serialisation in
John Bull
in January 1951. The manuscript was received by Collins in late July or early August 1950 and Christie’s agent, Edmund Cork, wrote to her on 21 August asking for clarification, for the Collins reader, of two small points – why does Carmichael use the name ‘Lucifer’ instead of ‘Edward’, when he is dying in Chapter 13; and the question of the scar on Grete Harden’s lip early in Chapter 23 which resulted in the insertion of the sentence beginning ‘Some blotchily applied make-up . . .’ In the USA, a radio and TV version were broadcast in September 1951 and on 12 May 1952 respectively. For such an atypical Christie title it is surprising that it should have been adapted so quickly for other media.

The notes for this novel are contained in three Notebooks – 31, 49 and 56. The majority of them, 95 pages, are in Notebook 56, the opening page of which reads:

The House in Baghdad

A. A ‘Robinson’ approach. Disgruntled young man – turned down – by girl – light hearted

B. T and T

C. Woman about to commit suicide in Baghdad

D. Smell of fear

As can be seen, the working title of the book was
The House in Baghdad
and the planning of it, to judge from a letter dated 3 October of that year, went back as far as October 1947. The ‘Robinson’ reference is puzzling but the first notes otherwise reflect the basic set-up. But the biggest surprise in this list is B – the inclusion of Tommy and Tuppence. As we shall see, they also feature in the more detailed notes later in the same Notebook, although all of their published adventures (both in novel and short story form) are firmly based in the UK. Idea C is clearly the forerunner of
Destination Unknown
, which was to follow three years later, and throughout the notes for
They Came to Baghdad
, the name Olive, the main protagonist of
Destination Unknown
, appears frequently, together with some of the plot of the later novel. The phrase ‘smell of fear’ runs like a motif throughout the notes, where it occurs 17 times, and it appears in the novel in Chapter 6
.

Notebook 31 continues the Tommy and Tuppence idea:

Baghdad Mystery May 24th

T and T – went into Consulate – didn’t come out

Points

At Consulate – Kuwait chest – Tup. looks inside – nothing – but something showing that gunman had been there. He hid in the chest?

Sir Rupert Stein – great traveller – was to meet S. He came from Kashmir – found dead in Baghdad later – really kidnapped before?

They went to Baghdad

Beginning in Basrah – the hunted man – into the Consulate – the man through – up the stairs – meets man coming down – through door to bedroom.

Miss Gilda Martin – attention paid to her – goes to the Zia hotel – she has a little red book.

Archaeologists – including Mrs. Oliver and her brother – latter is learned gentleman horrified by her inaccurate Professor Dorman. A question of poison arises – Mrs O. tries to get it – finally does get it – then it disappears – she is very upset.

The ‘May 24th’ reference is less definite than it might at first seem. It is most likely to be 1949. If Christie was correcting the text in September 1950, after the manuscript had been read and discussed at Collins, it is unlikely that the rough notes for the novel had been first sketched at the end of May, three months earlier. (A page of Notebook 56 is dated unequivocally ‘Oct. 1949’.) At this point Tommy and Tuppence are still in the book and there are certainly some similarities between Victoria and Tuppence – resourcefulness, courage, determination and a sense of humour. There is no mention of Tommy in any of the notes. Perhaps the inclusion of the Beresfords is not that surprising when you remember that they had not appeared in print since
N or M?
in 1941 and would not actually appear again for another 17 years, in
By the Pricking of my Thumbs.

There is a definite foreshadowing of Sir Stafford Nye from
Passenger to Frankfurt
in the sketch of Sir Rupert Stein and, indeed, in the eventual Sir Rupert Crofton Lee in the novel. Both characters, each with an international reputation, make their appearance in airports and both favour the dramatic look by wearing long cloaks with hoods. Sir Stafford survives his airport adventure but Sir Rupert is not so lucky.

The second shock is the mention of Mrs Oliver; and not just Mrs Oliver but her brother also. This could have been a very amusing pairing and would have probably given Christie herself an opportunity to vent her spleen on some of the nit-picking observations of critics and readers. The ‘question of poison’ would suggest a more traditional whodunit rather than a spy adventure.

The ‘Kuwait chest’ has echoes of the earlier short story ‘The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest’ and its more elaborate form ‘The Mystery of the Spanish Chest’, and
The Rats
, the one-act play from
Rule of Three
. In each case a body is discovered in such a chest. Gilda Martin may have been an early version of Victoria.

To judge from the amount of notes (well over 100 pages, many more than for any other title) and the amount of repetition in those notes, this book gave more trouble than other, more densely plotted whodunits. Again and again in Notebook 56 the opening chapters are sketched, each of them with only minor differences. This is unique within the Notebooks. These are not alternatives or an example of her usual fertility of invention – this is repetition of just one scene, which, apart from the name change, remains substantially the same throughout. Victoria Jones does not appear until 50 pages into the planning, at which point Olive is put aside until
Destination Unknown
. The following nine examples are some of the notes for the opening of the book and, as can be seen, there are only minor differences between them.