Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets From Her Notebooks (31 page)

Unusually for a short story, there are 25 pages of notes in two Notebooks. Those in Notebook 3 are alongside notes for
4.50 from Paddington
, published in 1957, and
The Unexpected Guest
, first staged in 1958. Notebook 47 contains many of the notes for
Dead Man’s Folly
as well as preliminary notes for the expansion of ‘Baghdad Chest’ (as Christie refers to it) and ‘The Third Floor Flat’. The former, as ‘The Mystery of the Spanish Chest’, appeared alongside ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’ in
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
but the latter was never completed.

Many themes and ideas from earlier stories make brief and partly disguised appearances in ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’. The mistress/housekeeper impersonation appeared 35 years earlier in ‘The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge’ and more recently in the 1953 novel
After the Funeral
. The weapon normally used from a distance but employed at close quarters featured in
Death in the Clouds
, the fake policeman appeared in
The Mousetrap
and ‘The Man in the Mist’ from
Partners in Crime
, and unsuspected family connections had been a constant element of Christie’s detective fiction for years. And below, we see the reappearance of an old reliable idea – that no one looks properly at a parlour maid or, in this case, a policeman.

The main plot device, as well as the choice of detective, is briefly outlined at the beginning of Notebook 3, while Notebook 47 sketches the opening pages as well as unequivocally stating the title:

Miss M

Hinges on policeman – not really a policeman – like parlourmaid one does not really look at policemen. Man (or woman) shot – householder rushes out – Policeman bending over body tells man to telephone – a colleague will be along in a moment

Greenshaw’s Folly

Conversation between Ronald
[Horace]
who collects monstrosities and Raymond West – photograph – Miss Greenshaw

Notebook 47 considers two possible plot developments. The first is clearly the seed of the Poirot novel
The Clocks
, to be written five years later. Most of the ideas noted here were incorporated into that novel apart from the reason for the presence of the clocks. ‘The Dream’ is a Poirot short story from 1938 and it contains elements of the plot of ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’ – the impersonation, by the killer, of the victim and the consequent faking of the time of death.

Typist sent from agency to G’s Folly alone there – finds body – or blind woman who nearly steps on it. Clocks all an hour wrong. Why? So that they will strike 12 instead of 1.

The Dream

Wrong man interviews woman – girl gives her instruction – she goes into next room to type. Then finds apparently same woman dead – really dead before – has said secretary is out or faithful companion – faithful companion seen walking up path. Combine this with policeman – girl is typing – looks up to see police constable silhouetted against light.

The Notebooks show vacillation between Alfie and the nephew as murderer or, at least, conspirator. As can be seen, much thought and planning went into the timetable of the murder and impersonation, and this element of the plot is undoubtedly clever.

Are Mrs C. and Alfie mother and son?

Are Mrs C. and nephew mother and son?

Mrs C. and Alf do it. Get Miss G. to make will – then one of them impersonates Miss G.

A. Alfie then is seen to leave just before real policeman appears

e.g. 11.55 Alfie leaves whistling or singing

12 Alfie as policeman arrives. Fake murder – Mrs C. yells Help etc. Alfie then in pub

12.5 Alfie as policeman

B. Nephew is the one who does it. An actor in Repertory – Barrie’s plays

Alfie leaves
11.55
12 o’clock. Nephew steals in, locks doors on Lou and Mrs. C, kills Aunt, then strolls, dressed as Aunt, across garden – asks time.

Mrs C. and N
[at or nephew]

    12.15 – Fake murder – with Mrs C.

    12.20 – Policeman

    12.23 – Real police

    12.25 – Nephew arrives

Alfred gets to lunch – so he is just all right – or meets pal and talks for a few minutes

Or

Mrs C. and Alfred

Fake murder Mrs C. 12.45 (Alfred in pub)

Policeman (Alfred)  12.50

Real police    12.55

Alfred returns    12.57

Nephew    1 o’clock  (has been given misleading directions)

The following very orderly list has a puzzling heading; why ‘things to
eliminate
’? Few of them actually are eliminated; most of them remain in the finished story:

Things to eliminate

Will idea (Made with R
[aymond]
and H
[orace]
as witness) left to Mrs C. or Alfie too

Policeman idea

Alfie is nephew

Alfie Mrs C.’s son

Alfie is not nephew but pretends to be – Riding master and Mrs C.’s son)

Nephew and policeman’s uniform ( Barries’ plays)

Nephew and Alfie are the same

Mrs C. plays part of Miss G.

As we have seen, Christie toyed with alternative versions of the plot and solution before she eventually settled on one that is, sadly, far from foolproof; the mechanics of the plot do not stand up to rigorous scrutiny. Would the ‘real’ police, for example, not query the presence and identity of the first ‘policeman’, despite Miss Marple’s assertion that ‘one just accepts one more uniform as part of the law’? And we have to accept that someone would work for nothing on the basis of expectations from a will. The will itself poses more problems. The conspirators assume it leaves the money to them, either to the housekeeper, as promised, or to the nephew, as inheritance. But, in reality, the estate is left to Alfred, thereby ensnaring him in the fatal trio of means, motive and opportunity. But if the conspirators knew this they had no motive; and if they didn’t know it, framing Alfred was never a possibility.

Cat among the Pigeons

2 November 1959

As the headmistress, Miss Bulstrode, welcomes the pupils for the new term at Meadowbank School she little realises that before term ends a pupil will be kidnapped, four staff will be dead and a murderer will have been unmasked. It’s just as well that Julia Upjohn called in Hercule Poirot.

With a serialisation beginning the previous September,
Cat among the Pigeons
was the 1959 ‘Christie for Christmas’. It is a hugely readable mixture of domestic murder mystery and international thriller with a solution that reflects both situations. In this, the unmasking of two completely independent killers, it is a unique Christie. It was the first Poirot since 1956 and there would not be another one until
The Clocks
, four years later. The reader’s report on the manuscript, dated June 1959, was enthusiastic (‘highly entertaining’) rather than ecstatic (‘not a dazzling performance’). Described as having ‘enough of the crossword puzzle element towards the end to satisfy the purists, even though the solution shows that plot to be rather far-fetched’ and to be ‘more saleable than [the previous year’s title]
Ordeal by Innocence
’, the reader recommended including the book in a new contract. Although the reader was viewing the manuscript in purely commercial terms, few Christie aficionados would agree with the view that it would outshine
Ordeal by Innocence
, a far superior crime novel.

As will be seen, Christie toyed with the idea of having Miss Marple solve the murders at Meadowbank School and this might not have been such a bad idea. Miss Marple having a relative in the school is more credible than a school-girl ‘escaping’ to consult Poirot; and Meadowbank is a girls’ school. That said, Miss Marple had already had a busy decade with four major investigations, and another minor one; and she would not, perhaps, have been as adept with the international segment.

In the opening chapter there is a variation on the ploy of a character seeing something momentous – ‘“Why!” exclaimed Mrs Upjohn, still gazing out of the window, “how extraordinary!”’ – that has an important bearing on subsequent events. This has often taken the form of seeing something over the shoulder of another character, as do Lawrence Cavendish in the bedroom of the dying Mrs Inglethorp in
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
, Mrs Boynton in the hotel foyer in
Appointment with Death
and Satipy on the path from the tomb in
Death Comes as the End
. In each case a death soon follows and the unidentified sight forms part of the explanation. If Miss Bulstrode had been listening properly to Mrs Upjohn, much of the ensuing mayhem might have been avoided. Two further telling examples of this ploy would appear within the next five years: when Marina Gregg, in
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
, looks down her own staircase and sees something that transfixes her, and when the unfortunate Major Palgrave, in
A Caribbean Mystery
, recognises a killer over Miss Marple’s shoulder, just before his own murder. As with other novels from Christie’s later period –
Hickory Dickory Dock
,
4.50 from Paddington
,
Ordeal by Innocence
,
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
– there is an unnecessary and ‘rushed’ murder in the closing stages. It features the future victim talking to an unseen, and unnamed, killer, also a feature of
Hickory Dickory Dock
.

There are over 80 pages of notes devoted to
Cat among the Pigeons
in three Notebooks, 70 of them in Notebook 15. The intricacy of the plot, with an unusually large cast of characters, two separate plot strands and scenes set in Ramat and Anatolia, as well as some beyond the grounds of Meadowbank, account for these extensive notes.

The first page of Notebook 15 is headed ‘Oct. 1958 Projects’, and goes on to list the ideas that would become
The Pale Horse
,
Passenger to Frankfurt
and
Fiddlers Five/Three
, along with the possibility of plays based on either
Murder is Easy
(or, as it appears in the Notebook, ‘Murder Made Easy’) or ‘The Cretan Bull’, from
The Labours of Hercules
. Idea C on this list became
Cat among the Pigeons
.

The earliest notes show Christie considering basic possibilities, which detective to use and how they might be brought into the story. At this stage also the princess/schoolgirl impersonation is under consideration, carrying echoes of a similar plot device in ‘The Regatta Mystery’.

Book

Girl’s school? Miss Bulstrode (Principal)

Mrs. Upjohn – or parent – rather like Mrs. Summerhayes in Mrs. McGinty, fluffy, vague but surprisingly shrewd

Miss Marple? Great niece at the school?

Poirot? Mrs. U sits opposite him in a train?

Someone shot or stalked at school sports?

Princess Maynasita there or an actress as pupil or an actress as games mistress

There were two contenders for the book’s title. The rejected one, which is not at all bad, is briefly mentioned at the start of Chapter 8 when the two policemen first hear of the murder:

Death of a Games Mistress

Cat among the Pigeons

A list of characters in Notebook 15 is remarkably similar to those in the published novel, although the number of characters would increase considerably:

Possible characters

Bob Rawlinson

Mrs. Sutcliffe (his sister)

Frances [Jennifer] Sutcliffe (her daughter)

Angele Black

Fenella (pupil at school)

Mademoiselle Amelie Blanche

Miss Bolsover
[Bulstrode]
Principal of School ‘Meadowbank’

Miss Springer – Gym Mistress

Mrs. Upjohn (rather like Mrs. Summerhayes)

Julia Upjohn

Mr Robinson

It seems likely that Angele Black and Amelie Blanche were amalgamated into Angele Blanche. It would seem that the character ‘Fenella’ was originally intended to be another agent, but masquerading as a pupil, possibly as well as Ann Shapland, within the school. The comparison of Mrs Upjohn with Maureen Summerhayes refers to Poirot’s inefficient landlady in his disreputable guest house in
Mrs McGinty’s Dead
, and it is an apt one. Both are disorganised, voluble and immensely likeable; and each is the possessor of a valuable piece of information which imperils their safety.

The set-up on the opening day of the new term is sketched, including the all-important Mrs Upjohn and her sighting, although at this stage what, or more strictly, whom she sees is still undecided:

Likely opening gambit

First day of summer term – mothers etc. – Mrs. U sees someone out of window. Could be New Mistress? Domestic Staff? Pupil? Parent?

The letters that constitute Chapter 5, and that contain much that is later significant, are considered in Notebook 15:

Letters

Julia

Jennifer

Angele Blanche

Chaddy