Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

‘Triangle at Rhodes’ and ‘The House at Shiraz’, as well as an original, Command Performance. And earlier, and later, in the same Notebook there are detailed notes for the dramatisation of the novel Death on the Nile. Interestingly, with the exception of Three Act Tragedy, all of the titles share a foreign setting.

Death in the Clouds 1 July 1935

The mysterious and silent death of Madame Giselle high over the English Channel on a flight from Paris challenges Hercule Poirot—especially as he is a suspect. His investigation involves a visit to Paris, a blowpipe, a detective novelist and a wasp.

All of the notes for this title are included in Notebook 66 and comprise 30 pages with some fascinating diagrams. The notes follow fairly closely the plan of the novel, although there are some minor deviations mentioned below. Oddly, an allimportant list of the passengers’ possessions, which contains the main clue in the novel and which first draws Poirot’s attention to the killer, is not included in the notes.

The first page succinctly states the plot:

Aeroplane Murder—A special knife with thin pointed blade. Man gets up—goes into lavatory (blue pullover) comes back in white coat—darting like a steward—leans over talks about menu card stabs man—gives low sneeze at same time—goes back—returns in blue pullover and sits down again

From the beginning of the notes the killer is a man and, perhaps surprisingly, even the detail of the blue pullover he wears is retained. The idea of a low sneeze (an echo of The Murder at the Vicarage) was, however, discarded and the victim changed to a woman.

In later pages the plot is further elaborated:

Chapter II

The steward—discovers the body—asks for doctor. B[ryant] comes

HP at his elbow—the ways—the Duponts suggest it—Mr Ryder agrees—mark on neck—P picks up thorn—Mr Clancy—blowpipe—arrow poison.

Arrival at Croydon—everyone kept in first car—Inspector—in plain clothes—another Inspector—Japp—

Why, it’s Mr Hercule Poirot—Or asks stewards who he is—they say they know him by sight etc.

Some pages earlier the idea of a blowpipe or an arrow as a murder weapon was considered. But, with typical Christie ingenuity, they were both to be used as a weapon for stabbing:

Stabbed by an arrow ' by dart (poison) from blow pipe

This appears as Idea C on a list of plot ideas. Idea H on the same list is ‘Aeroplane murder’. When she settled down to plotting Death in the Clouds Christie incorporated the blowpipe dart idea, while the arrow idea was used many years later in ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’. In Mrs McGinty’s Dead, Mrs Oliver complains bitterly about pedantic readers who write to her to point out mistakes in her books. She instances the blowpipe she used in her novel The Cat it was who Died, ‘where I made a blow-pipe a foot long and it’s really six feet’ (Chapter 12). This sounds very like a rueful Agatha Christie!

Most of the characters were also settled from early on although, as happens with most titles, names were to change. Some were dropped altogether and replaced. I have indicated below the probable changes:

People on the plane

Mr Salvey and Mr Rider—Business acquaintances [James Ryder and, possibly, Daniel Clancy]

Mr Ryder Long—a dentist [Norman Gale]

Lady Carnforth—a gambler—husband won’t pay her debts [Countess of Horbury]

Jane Holt—a girl who has a humdrum career who has won a prize in the Irish Sweep [Jane Grey]

M. Duval—pere et fils—Archaeologists [the Duponts]

Venetia Carr (who wants to marry Carnforth) [Venetia Kerr]

James Leslie younger brother of Carnforth [possibly replaced completely by Dr. Bryant]

Madeleine Arneau—maid to Lady Carnforth [‘Madeleine’]

And during the subsequent investigation, the plot developments are observed, although not their final sequence:

Then Lady Carnforth—Japp and P—P stays behind and gets her to suggest his staying behind—tells her the truth and frightens her [Chapter 19]

Venetia Carr—P and J?—P plays on her dislike of Lady C [apart from a brief appearance in Chapter 12 Venetia Kerr does not feature again]

Mr Ryder—all fairly straightforward—business difficulties etc. [Chapter 18]

The Duponts—M. Dupont is to lecture at Antiquarian Society but perhaps they see them in Paris [Chapter 22]

Bryant—Japp interviews him—P goes as patient—may be a drug supplier—or someone who has done an Illegal operation—or guilty of non-professional conduct [Chapter 20/23]

Clancy—received the little man very hospitably—very chatty [Chapter 15]

An odd point about the interrogation of witnesses is that Venetia Kerr is not questioned either by Poirot or any of his fellow-investigators. Note also her address—Little Paddocks, 15 years later the scene of a dramatic murder in A Murder is Announced. And the subterfuge adopted by the Countess of Horbury to disguise her cocaine—labelling it ‘Boracic powder’—is the same as that adopted by the criminal 20 years later in Hickory Dickory Dock.

With her customary plot fertility, Christie came up with a few possibilities for Gale’s partner in crime:

Motive

Inheritance of money by daughter Anne

A. Anne is Jane Holt—Jane Holt and Angell [Norman Gale] plan the murder

B. Anne is Jane Holt—she is unaware of this—but Angell determines to marry her

C. Angele Morisot is Anne—she is in it with Angell—creates disturbance by coming in and speaking to her mistress at moment of murder—also gives damaging evidence against her

D. Angele Morisot is Anne—but is not guilty—she is engaged to Angell but never sees him on liner. He gets engaged to her under a false name—James Clare—a novelist—has a flat in London

E. Real False Angele Morisot presents herself with full proofs of identity to recover fortune (Real one Jane)

The most striking is the idea of Jane Grey as a fellow criminal, which would have provided an attractive surprise element. It was however abandoned in favour of the maid, and Idea C was utilised.

These sketches from consecutive pages of Notebook 66 show great attention to detail during the plotting of Death in the Clouds. Vitally, Norman Angell’s seat in the earliest two sketches is beside the WCs…

…but he is subsequently moved to the opposite end of the cabin, as dictated by the plot. Note the inclusion of the pilot’s cabin, the kitchen and pantry, the WCs, and the fact that some seats face each other.

The notes stop at Chapter 16, although the chapters in the notes do not correspond exactly to those in the novel. And, oddly, Norman Gale is never actually named in the notes as the killer.

The notes for Death in the Clouds feature diagrams illustrating the disposition of the passengers in the plane seats. Both from these and the novel as a whole, it can be seen that the interior of a plane cabin in the 1930s was very different to that of a modern plane. There are only 18 seats and a mere 11 passengers and of the possible nine aisle seats, only two are occupied. And a feature common to all three sketches