Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets From Her Notebooks (36 page)

No – I wondered – the same every day – behind the fireplace – at ten minutes past eleven exactly.

Then she goes out with her milk – Aunt Ada dies in her sleep four days later

Possible ideas for this

Is Mrs Nesbit the aunt or mother of a Philby or a Maclean
[i.e. the British spies]
– some well-known public character who defected to an enemy country. Were there papers? Hidden behind grate? Child knew secrets of Priest’s Hole. Aunt Ada dies – funeral – call at the home – does Tuppence see picture

Notebook 28 begins again with, broadly speaking, the same scene and set-up. And in it, we find the only Notebook reference to one of the most sinister and incomprehensible motifs in all of Christie – that of the child’s body behind the fireplace, a bizarre episode that also surfaces in
The Pale Horse
and
Sleeping Murder.
A possible explanation from within the plot of the novel, as distinct from within Christie’s own life, is offered by the extract above; but it is not very convincing. The idea is repeated but not developed, and the suggested reasons are not utilised in the finished novel.

Grandmother’s Steps

T and T – they visit nursing home for aged or slightly mental – Tommy’s Aunt Amelia – (scatty? Tommy Pommy Johnnie?) Tuppence left in sitting room – old lady sipping milk

‘Was it your poor child? It’s not quite time yet – always the same time – twenty past ten – it’s in there behind the grate, everyone knows but they don’t talk about it. It wouldn’t do’ Shakes her head.

‘I hope the milk is not poisoned today – sometimes it is – if so, I don’t drink it, of course’

Tuppence (on drive home) begins idly to think about it. ‘I wonder what she had in her head – whose poor child? I’d like to know Tommy’
[Chapters 2/3]

The House – kindly witch – the jackdaw – heard through wall? They go in – jackdaw flies away – a dead one – the doll. Tuppence makes enquiries – goes to churchyard – vicar – elderly – a bossy woman doing flowers in church. Vicar introduces her to Tuppence – she invites Tuppence in to coffee. Tuppence goes to house agent in Market Basing
[Chapters 7/8/9]

A month later more plot developments, as well as possible characters, are considered. Some of these ideas – the painted boats and the superimposed name – were adopted, while it is possible that ‘The House by the Canal’ was under consideration as a title:

Nov 1st
[1967]

The House by the Bridge or the Canal

Some points

The picture is of a small hump-backed bridge over a canal – across the bridge is a white horse on the canal bank – there is a line of pale green poplar trees – tied up to the bank, under the bridge are a couple of boats. An idea is that boats are an afterthought added some time after the picture was painted. Suppose a name was painted John Doe – murderer – over that the boats were painted. Someone either knew about this or someone did it

Ideas to pursue – or discard

1. Picture – boat superimposed – beneath it – ‘Murder’
[or]
‘Maud’

‘Come in to the garden, Maud’ a clue

‘The black bat, Night, hath flown’ – who painted it?

2. Baby farmer idea (at Sunny Ridge? Before Old Ladies Home?) Child really was dead and buried in chimney of sitting room there

3. Could cocoa woman be the killer woman

Possible people involved?

The artist Sidney Boscowan

The friendly witch Mrs Perry

Big lumbering husband Mr Perry

Vicar Rev. Edmund Shipton

Active woman Mrs Bligh

Tommy features little in the book until Chapter 10 when he starts to track Tuppence. One of his first tasks is to find out more about the painting in Aunt Ada’s room:

How does Tommy start his search?

Picture gallery – Bond St. – Boscowan – quite a demand for them again. Mrs. Boscowan lives in country. Tommy goes to see her – has Tuppence been there? Interested in her husband’s pictures. Tells her how this picture was given him by aunt now dead – she was given
[it]
by an old lady, a Mrs. Lancaster – no reaction.
[Chapters 10 and 12]

Some of the ideas Christie noted in November 1967 were not pursued at all; others were partially adopted. The first one below was rejected possibly because of its similarity to a plot device in
The Clocks
, five years earlier; the second has elements that were utilised – the pregnant actress and the name Lancaster – but the surrounding ideas were discarded:

Does this
really
centre round a paperback – a thriller
read
by old Mrs Lancaster? Does Tommy find that out? He reads it in train, goes to Sunny Ridge, finds book was in library – Mrs L. very fond of crime stories – comes home triumphantly and debunks Tuppence

Country small lonely house – to it comes down beautiful girl – actress – going to have child. Man marries her – but he now wants to marry rich boss’s daughter so wedding is kept quiet (in local church) – under another name – he tells girl baby is dead? Or he kills girl. Who is Mrs Lancaster? Someone who lives near churchyard – sees body being buried in old grave

Five further sketches of the murderous back-plot appear; but as can be seen, each sketch is substantially the same, apart from a brief consideration of a homicidal Sir Philip Starke:

Nov. 12
[1967]

Alternatives

X Mrs Lancaster – alias Lady Peele – of batty family – barren – went queer. Husband loved children – she ‘sacrificed’ them. He gets his devoted secretary Nellie Blighe – sends her to
nursing
Old Ladies Home

Dec
[ember]

Sir Philip Starke – loved children – his wife Eleanor – mental – (abortion) jealous of children – kills little girls. Nellie Bligh secretary – is also mental nurse.

Disappearance of child (Major Henley’s) – Does Nellie and Philip bury one of them in churchyard – Lady S – in various homes. Friendly witch’s husband was
Sexton.

Was she Lady Peele – barren – had had abortion – was haunted by guilt – it was she, jealous, who killed any protégés of her husband. In asylum – released – then husband employs a faithful secretary to put her in old people’s home – ‘Miss Bates’ the one who was doing the church – she adores Peele

Candidates for murder

Lady Sparke – neurotic – mental. Did she kill her children? She was released – Philip and Nellie Bligh hid her – took her to homes. Does an elderly woman go in also – does she die? Mrs. Cocoa?

Story gets about that Sir Philip’s wife left him because he was the killer

Coming directly after the shocking and inventive
Endless Night
,
By the Pricking of my Thumbs
suffers, inevitably, by comparison. But although for the most part the book is a series of reminiscences with little solid fact, the opening chapters are certainly intriguing, conveying something of the old Christie magic, and the denouement is unsettling. The underlying themes of madness and child murder, combined with scenes set in graveyards and deserted houses, could well have justified, as suggested by the first-edition blurb which was written by Christie herself, the more appropriate title
By the Chilling of your Spine
.

UNUSED IDEAS: FIVE

All the Unused Ideas in this selection have strong connections with published works.

MURDER-DISCOVERED-AFTERWARDS

Mirrors or some other book

Murder discovered afterwards – 5 years or 2 years like Crippen? Statements taken – all quite definite – no result. (Poirot goes over it or Miss M) talk to people – or poison case because poison is so difficult to trace (exhumation)

Possibility of husband being accused – liked a young woman (secretary?)

Resented by his family – particularly eldest son – She is
marries him
going to marry him afterwards – son won’t speak to her – real rift (actually son and girl are in it together)

This jotting immediately follows notes for
The Mousetrap
and
They Do It with Mirrors
, so it is reasonable to assume that it comes from the late 1940s or early 1950s. The phrase ‘Statements taken’ contains echoes of
Five Little Pigs
, the husband and secretary idea foreshadows
Ordeal by Innocence
and the proposed solution is somewhat similar to that of
They Do It with Mirrors
. The staged ‘rift’ has appeared before in Christie as early as
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
and in
Death on the Nile
, and would again in
Endless Night
. But while elements of the note appear in various titles, this combination of ideas does not appear in a finished work. The reference to
Mirrors
at the beginning is further evidence of the complicated genesis of that novel and title, as discussed in Chapter 8.

THE VICTORY BALL

Victory Ball idea

Six people going to dance or dance in house

Murderer is Harlequin? Or Pierrot?

Possible people?

Janey facial surgeon (murdered?)

Columbine – sister S. American

Pierette – girl who might have married Monteith

Pulchinella – Mrs Carslake

Harlequin – brother S. American

Pierrot – Lord Monteith – in love with Lola
[possibly Columbine]

Pulchinello – brother of Monteith (heir)

This was, presumably, to be a more elaborate variation on the very first Poirot short story, ‘The Affair at the Victory Ball’, published in
The Sketch
on 7 July 1923 and collected in
Poirot’s Early Cases
. In this story the solution turns on the murderer assuming at different times the costumes of both Harlequin and Pierrot. And, of course, the Harlequin theme provided Christie with one of her other characters,
The Mysterious Mr Quin
. There are also brief notes dated ‘June 1944’ in Notebook 31, for a play, or possibly a ballet, based around the Harlequin figures. ‘A Masque from Italy’, one of the poems in
Road of Dreams
, her 1924 poetry collection, is based on the same characters. Inspiration for all of these came from the china figures in the drawing room of her home, Ashfield, and they can now be seen in the restored drawing room of Greenway House. Oddly, the plastic surgeon idea (see Unused Ideas – One) recurs here in somewhat unexpected surroundings.

THE ‘PRIME MINISTER’ AND COMPANION

Man like Asquith or Burdett Coutts
[both British MPs]
– very ambitious – Junior clerk in firm – marries rich woman – head or daughter in firm – older than he is – she dies very conveniently for him. He becomes a big noise with the unreserved power she has left him.

Now – Did he really do away with her? Evidence of weird servant or companion acquits him absolutely but girl in question knows something. Say, e.g. like Gladys in 13 Problems she really committed crime quite unwittingly following his orders – later blackmails him. Or servant girl helped him – afterwards talking with friend – confidential friend etc. helps her in 2nd murder

Some of the ideas explored here did surface in a few later titles. Notebook 35, where these notes appear, also contains the notes for
One, Two, Buckle my Shoe
and there are distinct echoes of Alistair Blunt from that novel in the biographical sketch. The connivance, albeit unwitting, of a servant girl is an element of both the short story ‘The Tuesday Night Club’, the first of
The Thirteen Problems
, and the novel
A Pocket Full of Rye
. The variation of a friend helping the servant to commit a second murder is however a fresh, and distinctly original, development.

THE FORTUNE TELLER

Fortune teller found dead Japp and Poirot

Greta Moscheim found by some bright young people – one of them’s a friend of Greta

Michael O’Halloran – P. says saved him from a murder charge – Ah, now a little matter of a defaulting bookmaker.

People – cocktail party

Jane Brown

John Colley B.B.C. young man

Lady Monica Trent

Greta Moscheim – last person to see her alive

Mrs. Edgerton – a letter (found in flat?) from her young man in East Africa (but she hadn’t heard from him for 4 months). Greta was helping her – so psychic – husband – (suspicious) was reading her – Mrs Edgerton – says woman with a deep melancholy voice – deep contralto voice

Death of Zenobia

P. visits Japp have found Michael O’Halloran – they go along – flat – divisional surgeon and inspect the body

Fortune teller woman – Mrs De Lucia. She is very successful because in partnership with young man (or girl) who tips her off. If young man – he pretends to disapprove violently – she also blackmails. Young man is in love with Sue – sister to someone in a matrimonial tangle. De Lucia is really his wife so he has to get rid of her. Stages quite a drama over someone’s fortune – something about letters? The post? Brought in from door – puts her death after 6.30 pm or whatever it is. So p
[artner?]
comes to flats – kills De L – goes on up to Sue – they go out to cinema. Comes back – no key – he goes up in lift – discovers body etc.

The murder of a fortune teller appears in four Notebooks but these are the two most detailed versions. As can be seen, it was to be a variation, or an elaboration, of the short story ‘The Third Floor Flat’, first published in January 1929. The second outline appears sandwiched between pages elaborating ‘The Market Basing Mystery’ into ‘Murder in the Mews’, so this idea seems to date from the early to mid 1930s. And the presence of Japp also indicates an early 1930s outline.

It may well be that Christie was toying with the elaboration of early short stories and this was her version of ‘The Third Floor Flat’. If so, it is indeed an elaboration, as the only plot devices common to both are the use of the service lift and the ‘finding’ of the body. A fortune-teller is an aspect ‘The Blue Geranium’ from
The Thirteen Problems
. But the surrounding detail is completely different.