Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making: More Stories and Secrets From Her Notebooks (23 page)

H
[astings]
has conversation with Nurse. She asks about Styles – was in murder case once. Talks about Mrs Franklin. Boyd Carrington comes up ‘Good looking girl’ – come and see house. H goes with him – the house – his uncle – a very rich man – has everything – lonely. About Col L – fine shot
[Chapter 7 iii]

There are three sketches of Hastings’ proposed murder and two of his unintentional murder, all from Notebook 60.

H decides (goaded by Langton) to kill ‘seducer’ of Judith – J. very secretive – plants Boyd as decoy – really when with Franklin. Boyd a boaster – fond of travel – carrying on with pretty hospital nurse. P. drugs H so that he wakes up next morning and has not killed B – his relief

Hastings plans a murder. Gets tablets from Poirot’s room or from Boyd’s own room – P drugs him

Conversation between BC, Langton, Judith and H. BC – his magnetic personality – goes off. Langton tries to persuade Judith she wouldn’t have the courage etc. He comes to reassure Hastings she wouldn’t really do anything. Then tries to warn him – is it wise to let her see so much of Atherton – married etc. He looks through glasses – shows his bird – then snatches them away – changes subject – he can see the figures. Goes in very unhappy – very worried. Personal problem ousts all others. Judith comes out of his room – H upset – speaks to her – she flares out – nasty mind – spends a night of increasing anxiety – the following day Langton tells him – rather unlovely story (quote him) – Atherton and a girl – she committed suicide. He goes to Judith – real row – H. is miserable. Hangs about – I could kill the fellow – Langton says not really – one hasn’t the guts when it comes to it. H goes upstairs to see P (with L) – passes A’s room – he is talking to someone – (nurse) that’s fine, my dear – you run up to town – I go so and so – send a wire you can’t get back – will go to other D – etc. Finds L – pulling him away. I’ll go to her – No, you’ll make things worse. L goads him – one feels responsible. H makes up his mind – it’s his duty to save her. Gets drug – waits up – P makes him drugged chocolate. He sleeps. Next morning – his relief – tells P – P reassures him – you can’t lead other people’s lives for them – points out just how he would have been found out
[Chapters 11 and 12]

More points

It is
Hastings
who kills Mrs F. He changes glasses or cups so that she gets it, not husband

Everyone asked up afterwards. She is lying on divan – coffee – makes it herself. Crossword – everyone there – at least
Nurse
F. J. BC. Coles and H. Col and Mrs L L. Miss Cole. The stars – they go out to look – H puzzling over crossword. BC comes back – picks up Mrs
[Franklin]
in his arms – carries her out laughing and protesting. H’s eyes fill remembering Bella. J comes in – he disguises his feeling by pretending to look in bookcase – swings it round – muddle about ‘Death.’ J gives him correct word – he replaces book. Goes out with her – they come back – take their places. J by request brings medicine – F goes off to work. Dead the next day
[Chapter 13]

There is an irony in the fact that having ‘saved’ Hastings from an intentional murder, Poirot is unable to save him from committing an accidental murder. And, arguably, the explanation of Mrs Franklin’s death is as big a surprise to the reader as the explanation in Poirot’s letter at the end of the book.

There are also a few versions of the death of Langton/Norton, all of them in Notebook 60, but none of them include a shooting:

Langton tells H he has an idea about murder. P stops him ‘Dangerous’ – he goes to P’s room that evening. Chocolate put in trintium. He dies at once. H woken by striking against his door – looks out – Sees L – go into own room – limp, dressing gown etc. Next day – found dead – key of his room in own pocket – locked. P says gave him trintium tablets 1/10 – by mistake in 1/100 box. P says
his
fault – H knows better – says to P same method – always a mistake – P agrees

P has had door key stolen – had new one made – (old room!) (a mention of P coming
after
Langton) P has trintium tablets for high blood pressure – takes them – induces tolerance. Shares chocolate with L – L dies. P wheels him to room – returns and plays part of L in dressing gown – hair – his own is wig – fake moustache – deliberately for Hastings. Goes in and locks door

Mrs Langton – Emilia – realises truth – tells Hastings so – kills herself – cuts throat. Langton arrested – P’s machination – limp – razor blade dropped – blood on it etc. fingerprint – L and Hast.
only
– L put in invalid chair and pushed to room

Emilia realises L is insane. First writes letter saying she is afraid of him, then
cuts her
shows herself in his dressing gown and limping, hides razor (wiped) with blood on it – then cuts her throat. P’s point is to lie – say L left him at 12.10. Or guillotine idea – L to put his head down – steel shutter

P sends for L – confronts him with story. L admits it all, shows himself in his true colours –Emilia hears it all. P gives him narcotic – goes to Emilia’s room. She has killed herself with razor. P takes L along, lets him hold razor – blood on it, on him. Then leaves room waking up H – shows himself in L’s dressing gown hiding razor in pot. H finds it

It is difficult to think of any advantage to the method, in which Mrs Langton (Emilia) plays a large and blood-soaked part, over the shooting Christie eventually settled on. Especially as the bullet-wound has the added symbolic resonance of the Mark of Cain; this was also a significant clue in
And Then There Were None
, making one wonder which came first. The ‘guillotine’ idea is one of the most bizarre in the entire Christie opus.

The notes for
Curtain
, in both volume and invention, show a professional working at the height of her considerable powers. The manipulation of plot variations, the exploration of character possibilities, the evocation of earlier crimes, all culminating in an elegiac letter from the dead, combine to display the unique gifts of the Queen of Crime.

UNUSED IDEAS: THREE

SOLUTIONS REVEALED

Death in the Clouds • The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side • A Murder is Announced • One, Two, Buckle my Shoe • Peril at End House • Sparkling Cyanide • Three Act Tragedy

Batch three of Unused Ideas includes a number of sketches for possible plays.

THE MOUSETRAP II

Mousetrap II?

A reunion dinner – the survivors of revolution? war (Airman and passengers lost in desert)

Man gate crashes – a lawyer? elderly? Mannered? Felix Aylmer type or a
[Sir Ralph]
Richardson.

A murder – here – one of group is a murderer – one of group is a victim. Doesn’t know victim

End of Scene – I’m the prospective victim amn’t I? (Really murderer)

Possibility of house in street Soho hired for party – waiters hired for joke! One man is waiter – brings drink to guest – later enters as guest – with moustache.

Death at the Dinner – man drinks – dies – a doctor present says this glass must be kept. It is then he puts poison in it – real drink was poisoned earlier – before dinner

(A mixture of 3 Act Tragedy (Sir Charles) and Sparkling Cyanide?) Is wrong person killed?

The biggest mystery about this sketch is the reason for calling it ‘Mousetrap II’, as it has nothing in common with that famous play. Perhaps it was so called in the hope of another stage success that might rival the record-breaking title? It is also difficult to date this extract as most of the contents of Notebook 4, from which these notes are excerpted, remain unpublished. Much of it is taken up with notes for the relatively unknown play
Fiddlers Five
(later
Fiddlers Three
), first staged in 1971, so it seems reasonable to assume this extract dates from the late 1960s. Strength is also lent to this argument by the fact that by then
The Mousetrap
was a record-breaker.

As Christie herself states, there are strong similarities with
Three Act Tragedy
– the subterfuge with glasses, the cryptic note ‘Doesn’t know victim’, the guest disguised as a waiter/butler – and
Sparkling Cyanide
– the unexpected death at the dinner table and a similar waiter/guest ploy. This ruse is also a variation on that adopted by the killer in
Death in the Clouds
. The oddly specific reason outlined for the reunion – survivors of a revolution – has echoes of the revolution in Ramat that culminated in murder at Meadowbank School in
Cat among the Pigeons
. And the prospective victim as murderer was a favourite throughout Christie’s career –
Peril at End House
,
One, Two, Buckle my Shoe
,
A Murder is Announced
,
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
. Despite these echoes of earlier novels, this late in her career Christie was still coming up with original ideas: the trick with the glass did not feature in any of her earlier poisonings.

The actor Felix Aylmer played Sir Rowland Delahaye in the first production of
Spider’s Web
in 1954; and Sir Ralph Richardson would play, many years later, one of Christie’s most famous creations, Sir Wilfrid Robards, in a 1983 TV remake of
Witness for the Prosecution
.

THE REUNION DINNER

Reunion Dinner 3 Act Play

Collinaris Restaurant

Waiter – old man like a tortoise

Waiter – young Italian type (conversation between them about this dinner)

Victor Durel – business type (approves menu etc. – wines)

Valentine Band (Clydesdale? Harborough?) – rich furs and so on

Major Allsop – sharp practice type company partner

Isadore Cowan – old Jew

Janet Spence – Middle aged, forthright (missionary? UNESCO?!)

Captain Harley ex pilot – now rich

Lowther – Company lawyer

Canon Semple (not a Canon – an actor pretending)

The Dinner

Before it begins Durel makes speech – object of dinner

The plane came down – our miraculous preservation –
two
three of our number left us – to the memory of our missing friends – Joan Arlington – Gervase Cape – Richard Dymchurch. Canon says grace – For what we are about to receive may the Lord

Conversation?

The old man waits about watching – pours wine

Possibilities

1. Wine – a truth drug?

2. Wine – poison for somebody

3. Canon is shown to be not a canon – but CID? Or oil surveyor

4. Victor Durel points out – item out paper tonight – two skeletons have been found on an oil survey –

Joan A
[rlington]
? R
[ichard Dymchurch]
? G
[ervase Cape]
?

5. Isadore asks Harley about circumstances – dismissed for error of judgement – but very well off?

Suggests: was it an error of judgement? Or were you paid to put down jet there

These very detailed notes from Notebook 52 may be connected to the previous entry, from Notebook 4, although the two Notebooks seem to date from different years. The idea of survivors of an air crash is common to both and there are indications that, in each case, poison is the murder method. The full names (even of the missing characters) and backgrounds included would seem to indicate that considerable thought went into this idea. But there is no script, not even a rough draft – nothing but these intriguing notes. This Notebook also contains the notes for
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
and
The Clocks
, both published in the early 1960s, and is directly ahead of the notes for the screen adaptation of Dickens’s
Bleak House
, on which Christie worked in 1962. Puzzlingly, therefore, it would seem that this more detailed sketch preceded the first sketch, discussed above. UNESCO had recently designated Christie the most translated writer, apart from the Bible, so the exclamation mark after their name may be a private joke.

In many ways this is uncharted and untypical Christie territory – survivors of a plane crash, someone paid to ‘put a jet down’, skeletons found during an oil survey, a truth drug. During the 1950s she published two ‘foreign travel’ titles –
They Came to Baghdad
and
Destination Unknown
– and the latter does contain much air travel as well as a crashed plane. But while the background to the plot outlined above may contain adventurous concepts, the murder plot is Christie on home ground: a poisoning during dinner at a restaurant (‘Yellow Iris’,
Sparkling Cyanide
); a clergyman who is not a clergyman (
Murder in Mesopotamia
); a middle-aged missionary (
Murder on the Orient Express
); a detective in disguise (
The Mousetrap
,
And Then There Were None
). The description of the elderly waiter as ‘like a tortoise’ has distinct echoes of Lawrence Wargrave from Chapter 13 of
And Then There Were None
; this possibility is further strengthened when we read the ‘old man waits about watching’. And is it pure coincidence that there are ten characters listed – eight guests and two servants?

Chapter 7
Miss Marple and ‘The Case of the Caretaker’s Wife’

‘Miss Marple insinuated herself so quickly into my life that I hardly noticed her arrival.’

SOLUTIONS REVEALED

Endless Night • ‘
The Sign in the Sky’
• ‘
The Case of the Caretaker’s Wife’

The Miss Marple short story ‘The Case of the Caretaker’ was first published in the UK in
The Strand
in January 1942, followed by ‘Tape Measure Murder’ in February and ‘The Case of the Perfect Maid’ in April. These short stories can be seen as preludes to Miss Marple’s looming investigation of
The
Body in the Library
in May 1942. Between
The Thirteen Problems
in 1932 and the publication, in quick succession, of these three short stories UK readers had seen the elderly detective in action only in the slight ‘Miss Marple Tells a Story’ in 1935. In the USA the
Chicago Sunday Tribune
published ‘The Case of the Caretaker’ in July 1942.

Apart from being a very typical Marple murder-in-a-village case – the ‘big house’, the local doctor, gossiping neighbours, the post office – this short story is important in the Christie output as it is the precursor of the last great novel that she was to write over a quarter-century later,
Endless Night
. The similarities are remarkable – wealthy heiress marries ne’er-do-well charmer, builds a house in the country and is menaced by a peculiar old woman. Her death, following a horse-riding ‘accident’, is shown to have been orchestrated by her husband and his lover. What distinguishes the plot in the novel is the manner of its telling, the characterisation of the main protagonists and the shock ending.

In common with many short stories, there is little Notebook material relating to ‘The Case of the Caretaker’. The first brief note below, reflecting the theme and the final poignant words of the story, appears in Notebook 60 and its accompanying page contains notes for the companion story, ‘The Case of the Perfect Maid’. The surrounding pages of this Notebook contain early notes for what would become
The Moving Finger
(1943) and
Curtain
, so a composition date of 1940/41 is confirmed.

Poor little rich girl

Old Mr Murgatroyd turned out – shakes fist etc. – really is
paid
by husband – accident at home – she is called in. Miss M tells Haydock what to look for

The second, slightly elaborated note below is from Notebook 62. There, the inspiration is one of a list of one-sentence short story ideas, many of which remained undeveloped. The list is followed by the detailed notes for
N or M?
(1941) and then a page headed ‘Books 1941’, so it is reasonable to assume that the following was also written during 1940.

A. Poison Pen

B. A Cricket story

C. Committee crime

D. Infra Red photograph

E. ‘Facing up’ story

F. District Nurse

G. Charwoman comes to Miss M.

H. Arty spinster friends

I. Poor little rich girl

J. Lady’s maid and parlour maid

K. Stamp story

L. Dangerous drugs stolen

M. Legless man

N. Extra gong at dinner

Idea A became
The Moving Finger
, K became ‘Strange Jest’, G and J were combined in ‘The Case of the Perfect Maid’, and I became ‘The Case of the Caretaker’. Idea N remains a mystery; both versions of this idea – ‘The Second Gong’ in 1932 and the more elaborate adaptation ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’, in 1937’s
Murder in the Mews
– had previously appeared by this time, as cases for Hercule Poirot. At a later date, to judge from the different pen and less sprawling handwriting, Christie begins to expand ideas I, G, C and J and then added ideas K, L, M and N. This expansion is an accurate sketch of ‘The Case of the Caretaker/Caretaker’s Wife’:

I.

Esme Harley, rich heiress, married to self serving man (politician? younger son ne’er-do-well?) unused to country life – old woman (or man) curses her when she is out riding – horse swerves. Horse shot with air gun – bolts – Esme is thrown. Clare Wright (doctor’s daughter?) comes up to her – injects digitalin? Heart gives out as she is taken home.

Or

Husband does it – the clock tower gives time. Yes, but he winds it or butler winds it (like ‘Sign in the Sky’)

As can be seen, this draft is very similar to the published version – an heiress, a ne’er-do-well son, a bolting horse and an injection – but there also differences. As frequently happens, the names change, but there is also uncertainty about the sex of the caretaker, and the doctor’s daughter is sketched in as the villain of the piece. The second possibility, the clock tower, contains an explicit reference to the Mr Quin story ‘The Sign in the Sky’; there the murderer alters the time of the clocks in his house in order to give himself an alibi. But altering the domestic clocks is far removed from changing the tower clock and thereby attempting to fool an entire population, which seems a very impractical and unconvincing idea. Wisely, Christie abandoned it.

The ‘doctor’s daughter’ as murderer idea is more complicated. In the published version it is the chemist’s wife, a former lover of the husband, who conspires with him by supplying the poison, although she does not actually administer the injection. In the Notebook at this stage the husband is not the first choice for murderer, but trying to arrange for the innocent-seeming presence of the doctor’s daughter in order for her to administer an injection is perhaps one of the reasons for her replacement with Esme’s husband.

Dr Haydock’s niece – not daughter – Clarice is one of the main characters in the story; and she also, unsuspectingly, provides a subsidiary motive for the murder. But as Dr Haydock appears throughout Miss Marple’s detective career, starting with
The Murder at the Vicarage
and making his final appearance in
Sleeping Murder
, it would hardly be fitting for her to alight on his daughter as the killer. Hence the name ‘Clare Wright’ and the question mark in the Notebook.

Both the UK and US versions of the short story are identical. But among Christie’s papers is a second, significantly different version, and this version is published here for the first time.

Why this second version should exist is open to speculation. Most Christie short stories were originally published in magazines and many of her novels appeared, prior to book publication, in newspapers and periodicals. Editors were notorious for their predilection for changing stories and cutting novel serialisations, often for reasons of space. Christie complained about this when asked to change
Dumb Witness
(see
Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks
) and a 1944 letter from her agent talks about the ‘serial version’ of
Towards Zero
that Christie had prepared ‘in accordance with their [
Colliers Magazine
] instructions’. In Chapter 4 I discuss the different versions of
Three Act Tragedy
, also accounted for, in all likelihood, by an editor. So the different versions of ‘The Case of the Caretaker/Caretaker’s Wife’ may well be explained away that simply. But if that is the explanation, it means that the edited version was the one also submitted to the US for its subsequent appearance; and as the newly discovered version remains the more straightforward and logical one, it would seem an odd decision.

One of the main differences between the known version (Version A) and the new version (Version B) is the method of narration. In Version A the story is told in the form of a manuscript prepared, for reasons never made clear, by Dr Haydock and given to Miss Marple to read while recovering from flu; Version B tells a similar story directly, without the device of the manuscript, and this certainly makes for a more convincing narration. But the differences are not merely in the manner of telling.

The setting of St Mary Mead is firmly established by the second sentence of Version B, but in Version A we have to wait until four pages from the end for confirmation of this, despite the fact that ‘the village’ is mentioned but unnamed on the second page. Version B features Miss Marple’s neighbours, familiar to readers from their appearances in
The Murder at the Vicarage
and the soon-to-be-published
The Body in the Library
– Mrs Price Ridley, Miss Hartnell and Miss Wetherby; Version A has the vaguely analogous Mrs Price, Miss Harmon and Miss Brent. These changes are not only completely inexplicable in themselves but it is very difficult to see how they were explained or justified to Christie and/or her agent. To confuse the issue still further, ‘Harmon’ is the name of the vicar’s wife in another Marple book,
A Murder is Announced
, as well as the later Marple short story ‘Sanctuary’.

Version B finds Miss Marple playing a much more central role; she talks to Mrs Murgatroyd, and Clarice and the doctor, and generally acts as the observant old lady that she is. While the circumstances of reading the doctor’s manuscript and then propounding her solution is adequate, and similar to the plan of the short stories in
The Thirteen Problems
, it seems cumbersome and unnecessary in view of the now-published alternative.

The title of Version B also makes more sense than its predecessor. Mrs Murgatroyd’s husband was the caretaker and he has been dead for two years in both versions; so why call the story ‘The Case of the Caretaker’? And Notebook 62, as we have seen, vacillates about this anyway. The title of version B is more logical and accurate.

In this first-ever publication, some minor errors of spelling and punctuation have been corrected.

The Case of the Caretaker’s Wife

‘And where is the bride?’ asked old Miss Hartnell genially.

The village of St Mary Mead was all agog to see the rich and beautiful young wife that Harry Laxton had brought back from abroad. There was a general indulgent feeling that Harry, wicked young scapegrace, had all the luck! Everyone had always felt indulgent towards Harry. Even the owners of windows that had suffered from his indiscriminate use of a catapult had found their just indignation dissipated by young Harry’s abject expressions of regret. He had broken windows, robbed orchards, poached rabbits, and later ran into debt, got entangled with the local tobacconist’s daughter, been disentangled, and sent off to Africa – and the village as represented by various ageing spinsters had murmured indulgently:

‘Ah well. Wild oats! He’ll settle down.’

And now, sure enough, the prodigal had returned – not in affliction, but in triumph. Harry Laxton had ‘made good’ as the saying goes. He had pulled himself together, worked hard, and had finally met and successfully wooed a young Anglo-French girl who was the possessor of a considerable fortune.

Harry might have lived in London, or purchased an estate in some fashionable hunting county – but at least he was a faithful soul. He came back to the part of the world that was home to him. And there, in the most romantic way, he purchased the derelict estate in the Dower House of which he had passed his childhood.

Kingsdean House had been unoccupied for nearly seventy years. No repairs were ever done to it and it had gradually fallen into decay and abandon. It was a vast unprepossessing grandiose mansion, the gardens overgrown with rank vegetation, and as the trees grew up higher around it, it seemed more and more like some gloomy enchanter’s den. An elderly caretaker and his wife lived in the habitable corner of it.

The Dower House was a pleasant unpretentious house and had been let for a long term of years to Major Laxton, Harry’s father. As a boy, Harry had roamed over the Kingsdean estate and knew every inch of the tangled woods, and the old house itself had always fascinated him.

Major Laxton had died some years ago, so it might be thought that Harry would have had no ties to bring him back. But on his marriage, it was to St Mary Mead that he brought his bride. The ruined old Kingsdean House was pulled down. An army of builders and contractors swooped down upon the place and in an almost miraculously short space of time, (so marvellously does wealth tell!) the new house rose white and gleaming amongst the trees.

Next came a posse of gardeners and after them a procession of furniture vans. The house was ready. Servants arrived. Lastly a Rolls Royce deposited Harry and Mrs Harry at the front door.

St Mary Mead rushed to call, and Mrs Price Ridley who owned the large house near the Vicarage and who considered herself to lead society in the place sent out cards of invitation for a party to ‘meet the bride.’

It was a great event in St Mary Mead. Several ladies had new frocks for the occasion. Everyone was excited, curious, anxious to see this fabulous creature. It was all so like a fairy story.

A page of the typescript of ‘The Case of the Caretaker’s Wife’ with Christie’s handwritten amendments. As can be seen, sometimes a typewritten page can be as illegible as a handwritten one!