Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets From Her Notebooks (21 page)

People

(Josie!) Josephine Turner

Ruby Keene

Raymond Clegg
[Starr]

Conway Jefferson

Adelaide Jefferson – Rosamund?

Peter Carmody

Mark Gaskell

Then

Bob Perry (car trader)

Michael Revere
Basil Blake

Diane Lee Dinah Lee

Mrs
Revere
Blake

Hugo
Trent
Curtis McClean (Marcus)

Pam Rivers
[Reeves]

Basil Penton

George Bartlett

Reason why Miss Marple knows

Bitten nails

Teeth go down throat (mentioned by Mark). ‘Murderers always give themselves away by talking too much’
[Chapter 18]

Abandoning her list of chapters, Christie briefly sketches some scenes all of which appear in the second half of the novel, although the combination of characters sometimes varies:

A. Interviewing girls – Miss M present
[14 ii]

B. Col Clithering interviews Edwards
[14 i]

C. Col C and Ramon
[13 iii but with Sir Henry]

D. Addie and Miss M
[12 ii but with Mrs. B]

E. Mark and Mrs B or Miss M
[12 iv but with Sir Henry]

F. Mrs B and Miss M
[13 iv]

G. Doctor and Police
[13 i]

In her specially written Foreword for the 1953 Penguin edition of
The Body in the Library
, Christie explains that when she tackled one of the clichés of detective fiction – the body in the library – she wanted to experiment with the convention. So she used Gossington Hall in St Mary Mead and Colonel Bantry’s very staid, very English library but made her corpse a very startling one – young and blonde, with cheap finery and bitten fingernails. But, as so often happens in a Christie novel, what may seem to be mere dramatics is actually a vital part of the plot.
Three Act Tragedy
,
Death on the Nile
,
Sparkling Cyanide
,
A Murder is Announced
– all feature a dramatic death, but in each case the scene in question is part of an artfully constructed plot; and so it is with
The Body in the Library.
Christie also considered the opening of this novel – Mrs Bantry’s dream of winning the Flower Show is interrupted by an hysterical maid with the early morning tea – the best she had written; and it is difficult not to agree.

Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

22 September 1975

A frail Poirot summons Hastings to Styles, the scene of their first investigation and now a guest house. Poirot explains that a fellow-guest is a murderer. Convinced that another killing is imminent he asks Hastings to help prevent it. But who is the killer and, more importantly, who is the victim?

‘Do you know, Poirot, I almost wish sometimes that you would commit a murder.’

‘Mon cher!’

‘Yes, I’d like to see how you set about it.’

‘My dear chap, if I committed a murder you would not have the slightest chance of seeing – how I set about it! You would not even be aware, probably, that a murder had been committed.’

‘Murder in the Mews’

‘I shouldn’t wonder if you ended up by detecting your own death,’ said Japp, laughing heartily. ‘That’s an idea, that is. Ought to be put in a book.’

‘It will be Hastings who will have to do that,’ said Poirot, twinkling at me.

The A.B.C. Murders, Chapter 3

These telling and prophetic exchanges, both between Poirot and Inspector Japp, may have sowed the seeds of an idea in Christie’s fertile brain.
The A.B.C. Murders
was begun in 1934 and ‘Murder in the Mews’ was completed in early 1936, so both pre-dated
Curtain
. But, as will be seen, she had been considering a plot very like it for some years.

Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
is the most dazzling example of legerdemain in the entire Christie output. It is not only a nostalgic swan song, but also a virtuoso demonstration of plotting ingenuity culminating in the ultimate shock ending from a writer whose career was built on her ability both to deceive and delight her readers. It plays with our emotional reaction to the decline, and eventual demise, of one of the world’s great detective creations, and it also recalls the heady days of the first case that Poirot and Hastings shared, also in the unhappy setting of the ill-fated country house Styles.

The return to Styles was inspired; it encompasses the idea of a life come full circle, as Poirot revisits the scene both of his momentous reacquaintance with Hastings, and of his first great success in his adopted homeland. Like Poirot himself, Styles has deteriorated from its glory days and, instead of having a family gathered under its roof, is now host to a group of strangers; and one of them (at least) has, as in yesteryear, murder in mind. And the claustrophobic atmosphere of the novel is accentuated by having only two short scenes – those depicting Mrs Franklin’s inquest and funeral and the visit to Boyd Carrington’s house – set elsewhere. The novel also toys with the vexed question of natural versus legal justice. This is not the first time that a classic Christie has explored this theme.
And Then There Were None
and
Murder on the Orient Express
are both based on this difficult concept; and
Ordeal by Innocence
,
Five Little Pigs
,
Mrs McGinty’s Dead
and ‘Witness for the Prosecution’, in both short story and stage versions, further explore this theme.

But as usual with Christie, and certainly the Christie of the era in which she wrote
Curtain
, almost everything is subservient to plot; as it was throughout her career, the theme of justice – natural versus legal, justice in retrospect, posthumous free pardons – is merely the starting point for a clever plot. Two of her best and most famous titles –
And Then There Were None
and
Murder on the Orient Express
– are predicated on this theme but in each case the moral dilemma is secondary to the machinations of a brilliant plot. In each case, in order to make her plot workable and credible she needed a compelling reason to motivate her characters. Lawrence Wargrave in the former novel, despite his status as a retired judge, needs to be provided with a convincing reason for his ingenious plan for mass murder; the murderous conspirators on board the famous train need an even more persuasive one. In each case miscarriage of justice fitted the bill as a motivating force better than any other;
Murder on the Orient Express
carries an added emotional factor – the killing of a kidnapped child despite the ransom being paid. In 1934 few more heinous crimes could be imagined, or at least written about. Discussion of justice is perfunctory in each title; plot mechanics override any philosophical consideration.

When was
Curtain
written? In
Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks
I showed that the writing of Miss Marple’s last case,
Sleeping Murder
, took place much later than was formerly believed, and certainly not during the Blitz of the Second World War. Because there are no dated pages among the notes for
Curtain
, the case here is less clear.
Sad Cypress
, mentioned in Chapter 3 (‘the case of Evelyn [Elinor] Carlisle’), was published in March 1940 with a US serialisation beginning in November 1939. The address on the manuscript of
Curtain
is ‘Greenway House’, which Christie left in October 1942 on its requisition by the US navy. These are the two parameters on the writing of
Curtain
.

But from the evidence of the Notebooks it would seem that it was written earlier, rather than later, than previously supposed. The clearest evidence for this is in Notebook 62. The early pages of this Notebook contain the notes for the stories that make up
The Labours of Hercules
, beginning with ‘The Horses of Diomedes’ on page 3 and ‘The Apples of the Hesperides’ on page 5. The first page contains a short list of ‘Books read and liked’ and the latest publication date involved is 1940. (The list includes
Overture to Death
, the 1939 Ngaio Marsh title and her first to be published by Collins Crime Club.) Sandwiched between this list and the first page of notes for ‘The Horses of Diomedes’ is a page headed unequivocally ‘Corrections Curtain’; page 4 continues with the corrections and the final revisions appear below the half-page of notes for ‘The Apples of the Hesperides’; these stories were published in
The Strand
in June and September 1940 respectively. Combined with the reference on the first page of the novel to ‘a second and a more desperate war’, this would seem to place the writing of this novel in the early days of the Second World War.

For the reader, the main difficulty with
Curtain
is one of fitting the case into the Poirot casebook, containing as it does inevitable chronological inconsistencies for a book written 35 years before its 1975 publication. It is impossible to state with any certainty when the book is set. Although he has been married for over 50 years, Hastings has a 21-year-old daughter. Poirot has declined dramatically since his previous appearance three years earlier in
Elephants Can Remember
; and even the most generous estimate must place his age at around 120. In Chapter 3 there are references to cases that were all written, and published, during the late 1930s or early 1940s – ‘Triangle at Rhodes’,
The A.B.C. Murders
,
Death on the Nile
,
Sad Cypress
; the main character in the last of these is, oddly, referred to as Evelyn, instead of Elinor, Carlisle. Countess Vera Rosakoff (
The Big Four
, ‘The Capture of Cerberus’, ‘The Double Clue’) is also mentioned in the same chapter and the bloodstained butcher, also from
The Big Four
, is mentioned in passing in Chapter 5. There is a reference in Chapter 15 to the original Styles case as happening ‘20 years ago and more’; the earlier case could not have been simply ignored and this reference is vague enough to have little chronological significance.

The question that has to be asked, but unfortunately cannot be answered, is: Did Christie write
Curtain
intending that it would appear long after many ‘future’ cases of Poirot had been published, or did she write it
as if
she was writing it after many such cases had been published? Are references to ‘long ago’ (Chapter 7)
actually
to long ago or to the ‘long ago’ Christie imagined would have elapsed by the time the book was published? There is no indication on any of the the original typescripts of any major deletions or updating, putting paid to the theory that the resurrected manuscript received major surgery to remove obvious chronological anomalies. One of the surviving typescripts contains minor corrections, and these correspond to the list of corrections in Notebook 62, which seems to date from the early 1940s, possibly 1940 itself.

But if you accept that the book was written many years prior to publication and treat it as a ‘lost’ case, then these problems disappear and it is possible to enjoy this masterwork of plotting for what it is – the ultimate Christie conjuring trick. Technically it is a master class in plotting a detective story. Arguably there is no murder, although there are three deaths. The breakdown is as follows: Colonel Luttrell attempts to murder his wife, while Mrs Franklin attempts to murder her husband; Hastings proposes to murder Allerton and is responsible for the unintentional murder (i.e. manslaughter) of Mrs Franklin; and Poirot’s ‘execution’ of Norton is followed by his own death.

Hastings’ intended murder of Allerton is foiled by Poirot, who realises what he means to do. Mrs Franklin, thanks to an innocent action on the part of Hastings, is hoist with her own petard when she unintentionally drinks the poison she intended for her husband. Colonel Luttrell’s shooting of his wife is a failure because, as Poirot puts it, ‘he wanted to miss.’ And Poirot, in effect, executes Norton. In this regard, it should be remembered that Poirot was not above taking the law into his own hands and had done so, to a greater or lesser degree, throughout his career. In
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
,
Peril at End House
,
Dumb Witness
,
Death on the Nile
,
Appointment with Death
and
The Hollow
, he ‘facilitated’ (at least) the suicide of the culprit. And in
Murder on the Orient Express
and ‘The Chocolate Box’ he allowed the killers to evade (legal) justice.

The references to
Curtain
are scattered over nine Notebooks. Notebooks 30, 44 and 61 each have a one-page reference, while half a dozen other Notebooks have a few pages each, but the bulk of the plotting is contained in Notebooks 62 and 65 (ten pages each) and Notebook 60 with over 40 pages. It is difficult to be sure if this was because Christie mulled it over for a long time, jotting down a note whenever she got an idea, or because the plotting of it presented a challenge to her creativity. I would incline towards the latter theory, as many of the jottings are a reiteration of the same situation with changes of name, character, profession or other minor detail. This would seem to indicate that the basic idea (Styles as a guest house and Poirot as an invalid inhabitant) remains the same and that, as she intended this to be Poirot’s swan song (and the notes would back this up), she wanted it to be stunning; as indeed it is.

In
Curtain
Agatha Christie played her last great trick on her public. Throughout her career she fooled readers into believing the innocent guilty and, more importantly, the guilty innocent. Her first novel made the most obvious parties the guilty ones; a few years later she made the narrator the murderer. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s she rang the changes on the least likely character – the investigating policeman, the child, the likeable hero, the supposed victim; she had everyone guilty and everyone victim. She repeated the Ackroyd trick in her last decade but made it unrecognisable until the last chapter. By the time of
Curtain
her only remaining least likely character was the one she chose – Poirot, her little Belgian hero. And in so doing, her title was also the only possible one –
Curtain
.