Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

Description of bow and arrow P.127

Description of Scribe outfit P.14

Description Foundation dynasty P. 51

Description mummification etc. P.55 and P.57

Notebook 46 contains the initial sketch for the family. Although some of the names do not correspond with those in the novel, the characters are all recognisable:

Middle Kingdom Setting Characters

Ipi—(old mother) Tyrant? Devil? Wise? [Esa]

Father—old fusser—kindly—a nuisance [Imhotep]

Meru—(elder son) Good boy of family—a bit dull—inwardly resentful? [Yahmose]

S—? Bad boy of family—not at home—Troublemaker [Sobek]

H—Spoilt young son—precocious [Ipy]

Concubine—Victim? Beautiful in danger or Evil—full of power [Nofret]

M’s wife—a shrew [Satipy]

S’s wife—gentle creature or an Emilia? [Kait]

A daughter—energy—resolve [Renisenb]

N—family friend—shrewd—lawyer like maybe tell in 1st person [Hori—but the ‘1st person’ idea was not pursued]

Hepshut—mischief maker [Henet]

The basic situation is described in Notebook 13:

Nofret arrives—everyone cruel to her—she is fierce to them—her tales of foreign cities—the way she stirs up strife—Hori says always there underneath. She writes by scribe to Imhotep—Imhotep replies furious to family—he returns—settlement of land on her. She dies—scorpion stung her—everyone knew—Rensenb troubled—then remembers a scene between Nebet and Seneb

The notes for this novel include another example of Christie’s system of arranging scenes by allocating letters to them. It is interesting to look at the following page from the Notebooks and compare it to the novel. Although it is headed Chapter 15, the scenes are in fact scattered through Chapters 15, 16 and 17. But her final decision (‘A.C.D.—then BB’) is followed through. I have added the relevant chapter headings to each scene:

Chapter XV

A Esa and Henet [15 iii]

B Henet and Imhotep [16 i]

C Renisenb and ‘Everything is Fear’—meets Aapene—Why do you look at me strangely? Then sees Yahmose—discusses it with him—who could it be? [15 iv]

D Renisenb Yahmose and his father—Y. more authority [15 v]

E Kait and Renisenb [15 vii]

F Renisenb. Teti and Kameni—his eyes on her—strong children [15 vii]

G Renisenb and her father—marriage [17 i]

H Ren. and Kameni—love talk—the amulet—broken—she goes home—looks in box—Henet finds her with it —H’s hints [17 ii and iii]

Who dies next?

A.A. Esa—from unguent—or perfumed oil

B.B. Aahene [Ipy]

Yes, B.B. after cheeking Henet [15 vi] who complains to Imhotep

So: A.C.D.—then B.B.

And this is the order as it appears in the published novel:

A Esa and Henet [15 iii]

C Renisenb and ‘Everything is Fear’—meets Aapene—Why do you look at me strangely? Then sees Yahmose—discusses it with him—who could it be? [15 iv]

D Renisenb Yahmose and his father—Y. more authority [15 v]

B.B. Aahene [Ipy]. Yes, B.B. after cheeking Henet [15 vi]

The Notebooks offer a solution to at least one tantalising puzzle concerning this novel. In her Autobiography, Christie writes:

Stephen [Glanville] argued with me a great deal on one point of my denouement and I am sorry to say that I gave in to him in the end…If I think I’ve got a certain thing right in a book—the way it should be—I’m not easily moved from it. In this case, against my better judgement, I did give in. It was a moot point, but I still think now, when I re-read the book, that I would like to re-write the end of it…but I was a little hampered by the gratitude I felt to Stephen for all the trouble he had taken and the fact that it had been his idea in the first place.

It is not entirely clear what she means by ‘the end of it’—does she mean the identity of the killer or the manner of revelation? If she means a more dramatic final scene we shall never know, although this would seem unlikely as the setting of the denouement clearly echoes the earlier murders of both Nofret and Satipy. But if she had a different killer in mind, she had already lined up a few candidates:

Henet—hated wife—and all children—eggs on Ibneb—then kills her

Henet—loves old boy—killed first wife—and second ‘sister’—determined to destroy Ibneb—pretends to suck up to her

Hori—in league with Ib? She is to gain ascendancy over old woman—Hori has speculated—blame is to be put on Meru