Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

Case of Constance Kent—had governess she adored—mother died. Governess married Father. She had a little boy—Constance very fond of him—he is found in earth closet—killed

  Crippen and Le Neve

In Notebook 43 Eva Crane from Mrs McGinty’s Dead is compared to Ethel Le Neve, the partner of the notorious Dr Crippen. The reference to Crippen himself, in Notebook 56, appears during the planning of an unwritten book based on the discovery of a body some years after the commission of the crime. Crippen was hanged in 1910 for the murder of his wife Cora, whose body was discovered, buried in the cellar of their home—although recent forensic developments have cast some doubt on this verdict.

Janice [Eva in the book] Crane—former Ethel Le Neve—husband—Crane a bloodless lawyer whom she adores

Murder discovered afterwards—(5 years) (2 years) like Crippen?

  Charles Bravo

In Notebooks 27 and 36, during the plotting of Third Girl and By the Pricking of my Thumbs, there is reference to this still unsolved murder. In April 1876, four months after marrying Florence Ricardo, Charles Bravo died an agonising death from antimony poisoning. A subsequent Coroner’s inquest found that there was insufficient evidence to identify his murderer. Again, Christie was using the basic situation as a starting point:

Arthur (innocent husband)—Katrina—suspicious, passionate for money—looks after old boy—she has boy friend…chemical research—or doctor—Bravo framework

The Bravo idea—would entail woman (widow) having affair with a doctor. She gives up liaison—he goes back to wife—she marries again

Finally, in Notebook 2, and notes for A Caribbean Mystery, some unused dialogue between Miss Marple and Major Palgrave, who is discussing his own story of a murderer he knew, lists four murderers from high-profile British murder cases:

No, No—it’s a pattern all right—Smith—Armstrong—Buck—Haig[h]—chap gets away with the first one and thinks he’s OK because he’s so clever

Joseph Smith, who drowned three ‘wives’, is the infamous ‘Brides in the Bath’ murderer who was hanged in August 1915. Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong was convicted in May 1922 for the murder of his wife although his original arrest was for the attempted murder of a professional rival. In September 1935 Dr Buck Ruxton murdered his wife and housemaid and dismembered the bodies; his conviction owed much to the groundbreaking forensic evidence. John Haigh, the acid-bath murderer, was convicted for the murder of six people and hanged in 1949.

6 The Girl in the Train: Murder Aboard

’Trust the train, Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it’

The Mystery of the Blue Train, Chapter 23

SOLUTIONS REVEALED

Death in the Clouds • ‘Death on the Nile’ (short story) • Four-Fifty from Paddington • ‘Problem at Sea’

Modes of transport provided an attractive setting for Christie throughout her career. As early as The Secret Adversary the sinking of the Lusitania is the starting point of a complicated plot and two years later, in 1924, The Man in the Brown Suit is set largely on a ship. Some of her most famous titles are set aboard modes of transport—trains (Murder on the Orient Express), ships (Death on the Nile) and planes (Death in the Clouds). The advantages with this type of setting are obvious: it provides a credible means of isolating suspects, it eliminates Scotland Yard and its technical know-how which could, in some cases, short-circuit the plot, and, in the case of Agatha Christie, it also puts to good use her personal experience. They also provide variety as a background, which, at the time, tended to revolve around country houses, offices and villages.

‘Death on the Nile’ (short story) July 1933

Aboard SS Fayoum Lady Grayle approaches Parker Pyne with a story of being poisoned by her husband. But is it just a story?

The notes for ‘Death on the Nile’ are contained in Notebook 63:

Wife confides to P (…or clergyman)

That she thinks her husband is poisoning her. She has money—apparently duel between husband and P— really husband is victim—wife is dupe—young man paying attention to niece is engineering it all—making love to auntie

The death scene in this short story has strong echoes of The Mysterious Affair at Styles and the overall plot has distinct similarities with ‘The Cornish Mystery’. The resemblances are so strong that this extract could indicate ‘The Cornish Mystery’. But the wife in ‘Death on the Nile’ has money whereas Mrs Pengelly, from the former, has not, so I believe that this is a sketch for the exotic version of the plot.

One notable revelation from the above extract was that Christie intended the story to involve Hercule Poirot (‘P. P.’ was her shorthand for Parker Pyne). In fact it was published as a Parker Pyne story; the idea was abandoned probably because Poirot had appeared in ‘The Cornish Mystery’ almost ten years earlier.

And two further pages of notes in Notebook 63 also reveal that Christie considered a dramatisation of the story:

Play PP version Death on the Nile

Lady Grayle—hard boiled—45

Sir George—50 good fellow—sportsman

Miss McNaughton—hospital nurse

Pam—lovely, nice

Michael—Sir G’s secretary

Dr. Crowthorne

Act II

She is poisoned—Miss M thinks it is Sir G—Doctor takes charge—strychnine found on Sir G—Miss M loses her head

Act III

Young people—Pam says Miss M did it—puts it up to doctor—he gets to work on her—Michael and Doctor

These notes follow the story closely, with no indication of the elaboration which would have been necessary for a ten-page short story. The reason for this may be deduced from the surrounding pages of the Notebook, where Christie experimented with other possible dramatic scenarios. On either side of this sketch there are similar brief outlines for stage adaptations (none of which were pursued) of Three Act Tragedy,