Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

Everything the same every day—nothing ever happening. Not like St. Mary Mead where something was always happening.

A Caribbean Mystery, Chapter 1

SOLUTIONS REVEALED

Appointment with Death (play) • ‘The House at Shiraz’ • The Man in the Brown Suit • Murder in Mesopotamia • Triangle at Rhodes’

More than any of her contemporaries Agatha Christie used ‘abroad’ as a background throughout her career. As early as her third title, The Murder on the Links, she despatched Poirot to France. In her first decade of writing three further titles—The Man in the Brown Suit, The Big Four and The Mystery of the Blue Train—feature predominantly foreign settings. And as late as 1964 Miss Marple brought her knitting to the Caribbean. Many of Christie’s thrillers have similar backgrounds— They Came to Baghdad, Destination Unknown, Passenger to Frankfurt. And Poirot solves some of his most famous cases far away from Whitehaven Mansions—Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express, Murder in Mesopotamia and Appointment with Death. All of this reflected Christie’s own lifelong love of travel.

The Man in the Brown Suit 22 August 1924

When she is suddenly orphaned, Anne Beddingfeld comes to London where she witnesses a suspicious death in a Tube station. A further death in the deserted Mill House convinces Anne to investigate and she boards a ship bound for South Africa, where she becomes involved in a breathless adventure.

Christie’s fourth novel drew extensively on her experiences with her first husband Archie when they both travelled the world in 1922. Although it starts in England, much of the novel is set on a ship travelling to South Africa and the climax of the novel takes place in Johannesburg. It is not, strictly speaking, a detective story but it does have a whodunit element. An exciting story featuring murder, stolen jewels, a master criminal, mysterious messages and a shoot-out, it is an apprentice work before Christie found her true profession as a detective novelist. Nevertheless it is a hugely enjoyable read with a surprise solution. And this is why it is an important entry in the Christie canon—it presages her most stunning conjuring trick by two years and does it in a most subtle and ingenious way. And it also adopts the technique of using more than one narrator, a scheme that appears, in various guises, throughout her career in novels as diverse as The A.B. C. Murders, Five Little Pigs and The Pale Horse.

This unpublished photograph, from her 1922 world tour with Archie, shows Agatha Christie buying a wooden giraffe beside a train, exactly as her heroine, Anne, does in Chapter 23 of The Man in the Brown Suit.

The real-life Major Belcher, who employed Archie as a business manager for the round-the-world trip, convinced Christie to include him as a character in her next novel. And he was not satisfied to be just any character; he wanted to be the murderer, whom he considered the most interesting character in a crime novel. He even suggested a title, Mystery at Mill House, the name of his own house. In her Autobiography she says that although she did create a Sir Eustace Pedler, using some of Belcher’s characteristics, he was not actually Belcher.

She also relates in her Autobiography that when the serial rights of The Man in the Brown Suit were sold to the Evening News they changed the title to Anne the Adventuress. She thought this ‘as silly a title as I had ever heard’—and yet the first page of Notebook 34 is headed ‘Adventurous Anne’.

The surviving dozen pages of notes in Notebook 34 reflect the course of the story and represent all that remain of the plotting. Their accuracy suggests that they represent a synopsis of earlier, rougher notes, but as Christie began the notes for this book in South Africa it is understandable that they no longer exist.

Chapter I—Anne—her life with Papa—his friends…his death—A left penniless…interview with lawyer left with ?95.

Chapter II—Accident in Tube—The Man in the Tube—Anne comes home.

Announcement in paper ‘Information Wanted’ solicitor from Scotland Yard—Inspector coming to interview Anne—her calmness—Brachycephalic—not a doctor. Suggest about being a detective—takes out piece of paper— smells mothballs—realises paper was taken from dead man 17 1 22

III—Visit to Editor (Lord Northcliffe)—takes influential card from hall—her reception—if she makes good. The order to view—Does she find something? Perhaps a roll of films?

V—Walkendale Castle—her researches—The Arundel Castle—Anne makes her passage

VI—Major Sir Eustace Puffin [Pedler]—changing cabins—13—to—17—general fuss—Eustace, Anne and Dr Phillips and Pratt all laying claim to it

Or man rushes in to ask for aid—after stewardess has come she finds he is stabbed in the shoulder—Doctor enters ‘Allow me’—She is suspicious of him—he smiles—in the end man is taken into doctor’s cabin and Ship’s doctor attends him

The reference to Lord Northcliffe, the famous newspaperman, suggests that Christie intended to base Lord Nasby, whom Anne visits in Chapter 5 to ask for a job, on him. And both the alternative scenarios involving the changing of cabins and the stabbed man featured in the novel.

‘The House at Shiraz’ June 1933

Why has Lady Esther Carr secluded herself in her house in Persia? What really happened to her maid? Parker Pyne investigates.

This short story, from Parker Pyne Investigates, is a minor Christie, but it nevertheless features a plot device similar to ‘The Companion’ in The Thirteen Problems and, much later and more elaborately A Murder is Announced. There are references in Notebook 63—all, surprisingly, to a stage adaptation which was never realised as a script. It seems a very unlikely possibility for a stage transformation; but then so, probably, did ‘Witness for the Prosecution’! Here Christie toys with various titles, all of which have a relevance to the story:

The Worlds Forgetting (Play? House at Shiraz) Desert Lady

The notes for the adaptation include a sketch for two acts and three scenes:

Hotel—jumping off places—Lady Esther Carr—scene between her and old lady or old gentleman—globetrotter friend of her mother—the chauffeur—her fury—ran way with him—he left her—old friend says man mad. Conversation between Lady E and girl—Muriel—nice normal girl—or has been nursery governess—she is engaged— chauffeur—a pilot—hard-bitten young man. At the interview he talks to other girl—likes her—they get friendly.

Act II The house in the Desert—native servants—Lady E—all in Arab dress. Sends him off on errand to Damascus—will be away for a month—then turns on her slave—tells girl she won’t be allowed to see Alan—M retorts—turns on her—as tall and as strong as you—she walks backwards—falls. New British Consul is due to call— she throws over breakfast tray—puts on ring—lets him in—receives him as Lady E.

The major difference between the original and the proposed adaptation is that information we are given in the short story through conversation between Pyne and the English Consul is played out on stage. The first scene sets the background to the story and the second shows the accident that precipitates the masquerade. This means that the audience is fully aware earlier of the revelation at the end of the story. But we have no way of knowing if Christie had another surprise in mind—there are no notes for a last act.