Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

[B] Real—invalid mother and daughter—dau[ghter] does it [Wetherby]

And, later in the same Notebook, she considers which of her characters could fit the profiles of one of the earlier crimes, the Kane murder case:

Could be

Robin’s mother (E. Kane)

Robin (EK’s son)

Mrs Crane (EK)

Their daughter (EK’s dau)

Mrs Carter (EK’s dau)

Young William Crane (EK’s son)

Mrs Wildfell (EK’s dau)

In Notebook 39 Christie rattles off six (despite the heading!) plot ideas, covering within these brief sketches kidnapping, forgery, robbery, fraud, murder and extortion:

4 snappy ideas for short Stories

Kidnapping? [The Adventure of] Johnnie Waverley again—Platinum blonde—kidnaps herself?

Invisible Will? Will written on quite different document

Museum robbery—celebrated professor takes things and examines them?—or member of public does

Stamps—Fortune hidden in them—gets dealer to buy them for him

An occurrence at a public place—Savoy? Dance?

Debutantes tea? Mothers killed off in rapid succession?

The Missing Pekingese

The ‘snappy’ suggests that these were jotted down while she waited for the kettle to boil—as, indeed, they probably were. The accurate dating of this extract is debatable. The reference ‘missing Pekingese’ is to ‘The Nemean Lion’, collected in The Labours of Hercules but first published in 1939. This, taken in conjunction with the reference to the ‘Debutantes tea’, probably indicates a late 1930s date when Christie’s daughter, Rosalind, would have been a debutante. Only two of the ideas appear in print (‘Invisible Will’ in ‘Motive Vs Opportunity’ in The Thirteen Problems and ‘Stamps’ in ‘Strange Jest’ and Spiders Web), although not quite as they appear here.

In Notebook 47 Christie is in full flight planning a new short story, possibly a commission as she specifies the number of words. The following is all contained on one page and was probably written straight off:

Ideas for 7000 word story

A ‘Ruth Ellis’…idea?

Shoots man—not fatally—other man (or woman) eggs her on

Say this 2nd person was—

A. Sister in law? Brother’s wife—her son or child would get this money and not be sent to boarding school away from her influence—a gentle soft motherly creature

B. A mannish sister determined brother should not marry Ruby

C. Man (with influence over Ruby) works her up while pretending to calm her. X has some knowledge concerning him. He wants to marry X’s sister

D. Man formerly Ruby’s lover/husband—has it in for her and X

Unfortunately, she did not pursue this idea and no story resulted; she returned, four pages later, to plotting the play The Unexpected Guest, so the extract probably dates from the mid-1950s. (Ruth Ellis was the last woman to hang in the UK, in July 1955 after her conviction for the shooting of her lover David Blakely.)

Destinations Unknown

When she sat down to consider her next book, even before she got as far as plotting, Christie would rattle off possible settings. The next extract appears in Notebook 47 a few pages before notes for Four-Fifty from Paddington (and this list contains the germ of that book) and so would seem to date from the mid-1950s:

Book

Scene

Baghdad?

Hospital

Hotel [At Bertram’s Hotel]

Flat Third Floor Flat idea

Baghdad Chest idea [‘The Mystery of the Spanish Chest’ and The Rats]

Small house in London husband and wife, children etc.

Park Regent’s Park

School Girl’s school [Cat among the Pigeons]

Boat Queen Emma? Western Lady

Train seen from a train? Through window of house or vice versa? [Four-Fifty from Paddington]

Beach And Boarding house [possibly Afternoon at the Seaside]

Although difficult to date exactly, the following extract would seem to date from the very late 1940s. It is just after notes for Mrs McGinty’s Dead (although with a totally different plot outline) and They Do It with Mirrors (also with a completely different plot) and is followed by a list of her books in her own handwriting, the latest title of which is The Hollow (1946).

Ideas for Mise-en-scene?

Conditions like The White Crow. Start with the murder—a prominent person—such as a minister—

(Aneurin Bevan type?)—on holiday? Interrogation of his personnel—His wife—Female secretary

Male [secretary]—Difficulties as I don’t know about Ministers

Chief pharmacist in a Hospital? Young medical man doing research on Penicillin?

A brains trust? Local one? BBC Mrs AC arrives to broadcast—Dies—not the real Mrs AC?

A big hotel? Imperial? No—done Shop?

Worth’s during mannequin parade—Selfridges—in a cubicle during Sale

Some of the references in this extract may need clarification. The White Crow is a 1928 novel by Crime Club writer Philip MacDonald; it concerns the murder of an influential businessman in his own office (as in A Pocket Full of Rye). Aneurin Bevan was UK Minister of Health, 1945-51. The position of chief pharmacist was one with which Christie would have been familiar both from her early life and from her experience in the Second World War (The Pale Horse contains a gesture in this direction). ‘Imperial’ is a reference to Peril at End House, although the hotel is disguised as the Majestic. And Worth’s, like Selfridge’s, is a famous department store.

‘Mrs AC arrives to broadcast’ reminds us that although Christie refused countless requests throughout her career to broadcast on either radio or television, she did, at least once, take part in a Desert Island Discs type programme, In the Gramophone Library, broadcast in August