Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets From Her Notebooks (19 page)

Chapter 5
‘How I Created Hercule Poirot’

‘Why not make my detective a Belgian?’

SOLUTIONS REVEALED

Death on the Nile

Agatha Christie wrote the article that follows to herald the
Daily Mail
’s serialisation of
Appointment with Death
(or, as they renamed it,
A Date with Death
) on 19 January 1938, prior to the publication of the novel by Collins Crime Club in May of that year.

The appearance of the ‘latest Agatha Christie’ in a newspaper or magazine was mutually advantageous. Both author and periodical enjoyed a boost in sales and publicity. Although not every novel had a pre-publication appearance, as early in her career as
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
and as late as
Sleeping Murder
Christie was regularly serialised on both sides of the Atlantic. Changes to the title and often to the text were tolerated, as the financial rewards were significant. The
Saturday Evening Post
in America paid $14,000 for
Cards on the Table
and $16,000 for
Dumb Witness
. But the enterprise was not without its pitfalls. A competition to accompany the serialisation of
The A.B.C. Murders
, in which readers were invited to send in their solutions, was won by a reader who got every detail of the plot correct.

Christie’s account of the genesis of Hercule Poirot has appeared in print only once since, in the
Agatha Christie Centenary Celebration
book, edited by Lynn Underwood and published in September 1990. The version below is reproduced from the pages of Notebook 21 and I have left intact many of the original deletions, made by Christie herself. This will help to show how fluently she could produce 1,400 words with a minimum of cutting and rearrangement. Unusually, the text in Notebook 21 is continuous and, apart from the slightly amended drafts of the final paragraphs, would seem to have been completed at one sitting. It is impossible at this stage to be absolutely certain that this was the case, but it is all written with the same ink and, until the final stages, in the same handwriting on 12 consecutive pages. The earlier 1990 publication is shorter and slightly different; some paragraphs were there rearranged to create a more coherent structure – for example the discussions of Poirot’s earlier cases were brought together – but I include here the entire text exactly as it was first written.

How did the character of Hercule Poirot come into being?

Difficult to say –
he came perhaps about accidentally that is
I realise that he came into being not at all as he himself would have wished
it
. ‘Hercule Poirot first,’ he would have said. ‘And then a plot to display his remarkable talent to the best advantage.’ But it was not so. The
idea often
plot of the story,
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
, was roughed out and then came the dilemma: a detective story – now what kind of detective? It was
wartime
in the early autumn
days
of 1914 – Belgian refugees were in most country places.
²²
Why not have a Belgian refugee,
for a detective,
a former shining light of the Belgian Police force.

What kind of man
he
should he be? A little man perhaps, with a somewhat grandiloquent name. Hercule – something – Hercule Poirot – yes, that would do. What else about him? He should be very neat – very orderly (Is that because I was a wildly untidy person myself?)
²³

Such was the first rough outline – mostly, you will note, externals – but certain fad traits followed almost automatically. Like many small dandified men, he would be conceited and he would, of course, (why ‘of course?’) have a l
uxuriant
handsome moustache. That was the beginning. Hercule Poirot emerged from the mists and took concrete shape and form.
but he was a particularly
Once
he was
that had happened he took charge, as it were, of his own personality – there were all sorts of things about him that I did not know, but which he proceeded to
develop
show me. There was more in this little man than I had ever suspected. There was, for instance, his intense interest in the psychology of every case. As early as
The Murder on the Links
he was showing his appreciation of the mental processes of
the
a murderer – and insisting that
planning of a
every crime had a definite signature.
²⁴

Method and order still meant much to him – but not nearly so much as before. In
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
he was at his best investigating a crime in a quiet country village and using his knowledge of human nature to get at the truth. For the terrible death on the Blue Train
he was
I have always suspected
not I have always thought he was not, I think, quite
he was not at his best but the solution of Lord Edgware’s death was, I consider, a good piece of work on his part, though he gives some of the credit to Hastings.
²⁵
Three Act Tragedy
he considers one of his failures though most people do not agree with him – his final remark at the end of the case has amused many people
[but]
Hercule Poirot cannot see why!
²⁶
He considers that he merely stated an obvious truth.

And now, what of the relation between us – between the creator and the created? Well – let me confess it – there has been at times a coolness between us. There are moments when I have felt ‘Why, why, did I ever invent this detestable, bombastic tiresome little creature? Eternally straightening things, forever boasting, always twirling his moustaches and tilting his ‘egg-shaped head.’ Anyway, what is an egg-shaped head? Have I ever seen an egg-shaped head? When people say to me, ‘Which way up is the egg? – do I really know
[?]
I don’t, because I never do see pictorial things clearly. But nevertheless, I know that he has an egg-shaped head covered with black, suspiciously black, hair
²⁷
and I know that his eyes occasionally shine
and some
with a green light. And
once or
twice in my life I have actually seen him – once on a boat going to the Canary Islands
²⁸
and once having lunch at the Savoy. I have said to myself, ‘Now if you had only had the nerve you
would
could have snap-shotted the man in the boat and then when people have said “Yes, but what is he like? I could have produced that snap shot and said ‘This is what he is like.’ And in the Savoy perhaps I would have gone and explained the matter but life is full of lost opportunities. If you are doubly burdened – first by acute shyness and secondly by only seeing the right thing to do or say twenty-four hours late – what can you do?
Except
only write about quick-witted men and resourceful girls whose reactions are like greased lightning!

Yes, there have been moments when I have disliked M. Hercule Poirot very much indeed –when I have rebelled bitterly against being yoked to him for life (usually at one of these moments that I receive a fan letter saying ‘I know you must love your little detective by the way you write about him.)
²⁹
But now, I must confess it, Hercule Poirot has won. A reluctant affection has sprung up for him. He has become more human, less irritating. I admire certain things about him – his passion for the truth, his understanding of human frailty and his kindliness.
I did not understand suspect before that he felt so strongly so strictly not for the punishment of the guilty but for the vindication of the innocent
. And he has taught me something – to take more interest in my own characters; to see them more as real people and less as pawns in a game. In spite of his vanity he often chooses deliberately to stand aside and let the main drama develop. He says in effect, ‘It is their story – let them show you why and how this happened.’ He knows, of course, that the star part is going to be his all right later. He may make his appearance at the end of the first act but he will take the centre of the stage in the second act and his big scene at the end of the third act is a mathematical certainty.

He has his favourite cases.
Cards on the Table
was the murder which won his complete technical approval;
³⁰
the
Death on the Nile
saddened him.
³¹
Since
Appointment with Death
is
sub judice
he must not comment on it here; let me only say that three points in it appealed to him strongly. Firstly the fact that desire for truth on the part of another man coincided with his own strong feelings on that point.
[Secondly]
the limitations of his investigation also appealed to him – the necessity of getting at the truth in twenty four hours with no technical evidence, post-mortems or the usual facilities of his background resources And thirdly he was fascinated by the peculiar psychological interest of the case and
particularly
by the strong malign personality of the dead woman.
³²

Well, I have told you all I can of Hercule Poirot – it is possible he has not finished with me yet – there may be more of him – facts to know which I have not fathomed.

Having drawn a line, literally, under the essay at this point Christie then decides to redraft the last paragraph and expand it slightly, although she omits the third reason for including
Appointment with Death
among Poirot’s favourite cases:

Firstly that he undertook the case at the express desire of a man whose passion for truth was equal to his own.
³³
Secondly the technical difficulty of the investigation
put him on his mettle
made a special appeal to him and the necessity of reaching the truth in twenty four hours without the help of expert
brilliance
evidence of any kind

Well, I have given you some of my impressions of Hercule Poirot – they are based on an acquaintance of many years standing. We are friends and partners. I must admit that I am considerably beholden to him financially. Poirot considers that I could not get along without him
but
on the other hand I consider that but for me Hercule Poirot would not exist.

There are times when I, too, have been tempted to commit murder.
³⁴
I am beholden to him financially. On the other hand, he owes his very existence to me. In moments of irritation I point out that by a few strokes of the pen (or taps on the typewriter) – I could destroy him utterly. He replies grandiloquently ‘Impossible to get rid of Hercule Poirot like that – he is much too clever!
To permit such a thing to happen
And so, as usual, the little man has the last word!

Chapter 6
The Third Decade 1940–1949

‘I never found any difficulty in writing during the war . . . ’

SOLUTIONS REVEALED

And Then There Were None • The Body in the Library • Curtain • Murder on the Orient Express • N or M?

During the Blitz of the Second World War Agatha Christie lived in London and worked in University College Hospital by day; and, as she explains in her
Autobiography
, she wrote books in the evening because ‘I had no other things to do.’ She worked on
N or M?
and
The Body in the Library
simultaneously and found that the writing of two totally different books kept each of them fresh. During this period she also wrote the final adventure of Hercule Poirot,
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
; although it was always asserted that Miss Marple’s last case,
Sleeping Murder
, was written at around the same time, I showed in
Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks
that the date of composition of that novel is much later. And it was at this time too that she worked on
Come, Tell Me How You Live
(1946), her ‘meandering chronicle’ of life on an archaeological dig.

Production slowed down during the 1940s, but only slightly. Thirteen novels, all but one,
N or M?
(1941), detective stories, were published; and a collection of short stories appeared towards the end of the decade. But if the quantity decreased, the quality of the writing increased. While still adhering to the strict whodunit formula Christie began, from
Sad Cypress
(1940) onwards, to take a deeper interest in the creation of her characters. For some of her 1940s titles, the characters take centre stage and the detective plot moves further backstage than heretofore. The central triangle of
Sad Cypress
is more carefully portrayed, and the emotional element is stronger, than most of the novels of the 1930s, with the possible exception of
Death on the Nile
. Similarly
Five Little Pigs
(1943),
Towards Zero
(1944),
Sparkling Cyanide
(1945) and especially
The Hollow
(1946) all contain more carefully realised characters than many previous novels.

In 1946 Christie wrote an essay, ‘Detective Writers in England’, for the Ministry of Information. In it she discusses her fellow writers in the Detection Club – Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh,
³⁵
John Dickson Carr, Freeman Wills Crofts, R. Austin Freeman, H.C. Bailey, Anthony Berkeley. She then adds a few modest words about herself, including this interesting remark: ‘I have become more interested as the years go on in the preliminaries of crime. The interplay of character upon character, the deep smouldering resentments and dissatisfactions that do not always come to the surface but which may suddenly explode into violence.’
Towards Zero
is an account of the inexorable events leading to a vicious murder at the zero hour of the title;
Five Little Pigs
, her greatest achievement, is a portrait of five people caught in a maelstrom of conflicting emotions culminating in murder;
Sparkling Cyanide
, adopting a similar technique to
Five Little Pigs
, is a whodunit told through the individual accounts of the suspects, many of them caught in the fatal consequences of an adulterous triangle. And the ‘deep smouldering resentments’ of her essay are more evident than ever in the prelude to the sudden explosion of violence at a country-house weekend in
The Hollow
. This novel, which could almost be a Westmacott title, features Poirot, although when Christie dramatised it some years later, she wisely dropped him. For once, his presence is unconvincing and the detective element almost a distraction, although the denouement is still a surprise. Through all of this, she managed the whodunit factor though with less emphasis on footprints and fingerprints, diagram and floor plans, and initialled handkerchiefs and red kimonos.

And still she experimented with the detective novel form –
Death Comes as the End
(1945), set in Ancient Egypt in 2,000 BC, is a very early example of the crime novel set in the past;
N or M?
is a wartime thriller;
The Body in the Library
(1942) takes the ultimate cliché of detective fiction and dusts it off; and for
Crooked House
(1949) she wrote an ending so daring that her publishers asked her to change it.

Her only short story collection of this decade,
The Labours of Hercules
(1947), is also her greatest (its genesis and history is discussed in detail in
Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks
). Apart from her detective output she also published two Westmacott novels. One of them,
Absent in the Spring
(1944), was written in ‘a white-heat’ over a weekend; this was followed three years later by
The Rose and the Yew Tree
. As further proof of her popularity, she made publishing history in 1948 when she became the first crime writer to have a million Penguin paperbacks issued on the same day, 100,000 each of ten titles.

After a lacklustre stage adaptation, by other hands, of
Peril at End House
in 1940, she wrote her own stage adaptation of
Ten Little Niggers
in 1943, thoroughly enjoying the experience; and dramatisations of two of her ‘foreign’ novels,
Appointment with Death
and
Death on the Nile
, followed onstage in 1945 and 1946 respectively. And the last play of the decade was Miss Marple’s stage debut,
Murder at the Vicarage
, not adapted by Christie herself, appeared in 1949. One of the best screen versions of a Christie work, René Clair’s wonderful film
And Then There Were None
, appeared in 1945 and was followed two years later by an inferior second version of
Love from a Stranger
, the inaptly titled film of the excellent short story ‘Philomel Cottage’.

Her most enduring monument,
The Mousetrap
, began life in May 1947 as the radio play
Three Blind Mice
, written as a royal commission for Queen Mary’s eightieth birthday. In October of that year it also received a one-off television broadcast. The following year another play written directly for radio,
Butter in a Lordly Dish
, was broadcast.

During her third decade of writing Agatha Christie consolidated her national and international career, attracted the attentions of royalty and Hollywood, and experimented with radio. In continuing to extend the boundaries of detective fiction she graduated from a writer of detective stories to a detective novelist.

N or M?

24 November 1941

Which of the guests staying at the guest house Sans Souci is really a German agent? A middle-aged Tommy is asked to investigate and although Tuppence’s presence is not officially requested, she is determined not to be left out. Which is just as well, because Tommy disappears . . .

N or M?
marked the return of Tommy and Tuppence. We last met them in 1929 in
Partners in Crime
, although the individual stories that make up that volume had appeared up to five years earlier. So this was the first time Christie had written about them for 15 years. By now they are the parents of twins Derek and Deborah, although the chronology of their lives does not bear much scrutiny. At the end of
Partners in Crime
Tuppence announces that she is pregnant, which would make her eldest child a teenager, at most; and yet both children are involved in the war effort. Like Miss Marple’s age and the timescale of
Curtain
, the chronology should not interfere with our enjoyment.

N or M?
was serialised six months ahead of book publication in UK and two months earlier again in the USA. This tallies with a November 1940 letter from Christie to her agent, Edmund Cork, wondering if she should rewrite the last chapter. It was her intention to set it in a bomb shelter where Tommy and Tuppence find themselves after their flat has been bombed. As she explains in her
Autobiography
, she worked on this book in parallel with
The Body in the Library
, alternating between the two totally different books, thereby ensuring that each one remained fresh. This combination is mirrored in the brief mention – very formally as ‘Mr and Mrs Beresford’ – below, from Notebook 35.

As a couple, Tommy and Tuppence have not lost their sparkle and the subterfuge undertaken by Tuppence in the early chapters, which enables her to overcome the reluctance of Tommy and his superiors to involve her in events, is very much in keeping with earlier manoeuvres in both
The Secret Adversary
and
Partners in Crime
. In the novel Christie manages to combine successfully the spy adventure and the domestic murder mystery. There is the overriding question of the fifth-column spy but also the more personal mystery of the kidnapped child. With customary ingenuity Christie brings them both together.

Notebook 35 considers the as-yet-unnamed novel:

3 Books

Remembered death
[published in the UK as
Sparkling Cyanide
]

The Body in the Library

Mr and Mrs Beresford

And six pages later she sketches in the opening of the book. It would seem from the notes that the fundamentals of the plot were clear before she began it. Most of the notes in Notebooks 35 and 62 are in keeping with the completed novel, although there are the usual minor name changes. Many of the notes for
N or M?
are telegrammatic in style, consisting mainly of combinations of names. These short scenes are often jumbled together in the final draft, the whole not needing as much detailed planning as a formal whodunit with its timetables, clues and alibis.

In the middle of the notes there are some pages of ‘real’ spy detail culled, presumably, from a book. It is a fascinating glimpse into a relatively unknown area of the Second World War, and somewhat surprising that Christie was able to access this information while the war was still in progress:

Holy figures of Santa containing Tetra (explosive)

Man in telephone booth – are numbers rearranged

Cables on bottom of Atlantic – submarines can lay wires and copy messages

Mention of ‘illness’ means spying is under observation. Recovery is at risk

And Christie experiments with creating a code herself. In Notebook 35 she sketches the notes of the musical scale and the lines and spaces of the musical stave. She adds words – CAFE, BABE, FACE – all composed from the notes of the scale, ABCDEFG. And she outlines a possible character who combines a musical background and a workplace with musical-scale initials: ‘A pianist at the BBC’.

Christie next considers potential characters, most of them very cryptically.

T and T

T (for Two)

Tommy approached by MI – Tuppence on phone – really listens – when T turns up at Leahampton – first person he sees is Tuppence – knitting!

Possible people

Young German, Carl – mother a German?

Col Ponsonby – old dug out
[Major Bletchley]

Mrs Leacock (who keeps guest house)
[Mrs Perenna]

Mr Varney
[Mr Cayley]

Mrs Varney
[Mrs Cayley]

Daughter with baby comes down to stay
[Mrs Sprot]

Later in the same Notebook, she unequivocally states the ‘main idea’ of the book, though this description is only partly reflected in the novel itself:

Main idea of T and T

Woman head of espionage in England?

In fact, in the opening chapter we read of the ‘accidental’ death of the agent Farquhar who, with his dying breath, managed to say ‘N or M,’ confirming the suspicion that two spies, a male, N and a female, M, are at work in England. The concealment of this dangerous female is as clever as anything in Christie’s detective fiction and few readers will spot her; in particular, the psychology of the concealment is ingenious.

Notebook 13 has a concise and accurate outline of the book. Details were to change but this is the essence of the plot and would seem to be the first jottings. Not all of these details were to be included and others, not listed here, were to appear, but as a rough initial sketch it is possible to see that Christie had a good idea of where the book was going. The alternative title indicates that Christie possibly considered the book as a ‘second innings’ for Tommy and Tuppence:

N or M

2nd innings

Possible course of plot

T and T walk – meet – plan of campaign – T’s sons
[Chapter 2]

Following incidents

Sheila and Carl together
[Chapter 2]

Tuppence and Carl
[Chapter 2]

Golf with Major Quincy (Bletchley) ‘too many omen’ – Commander Harvey
[Haydock]
has house on cliff – a coast watcher
[Chapter 3 ii]

Mrs. O’Rourke
[Chapter 4]

Mildred Skeffington – ‘Betty’
[Chapter 2]

Mr. and Mrs. Caley – (Varleys?)

Miss Keyes
[Minton] [Chapter 3]

Mrs. Lambert and son

The foreign woman – speaks to Carl in German
[Chapter 5 iii]

Kidnapping of child
[Chapter 7 ii]

Carl tries to gas himself

Does T hide in Commander’s house?

Is he kidnapped on golflinks? Or go to Commander’s house – and be drugged there – the sailing boat
[Chapter 9 ii]

A reference to ‘Little Bo Peep’ – ‘Mary has a little lamb’ Jack Warner Horner
[Chapter 14 i]

Mrs. O’Rourke – her voice loud and fruity – really drugged teas with Mrs Skeffington