Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

Elinor in London—anonymous letter—accusing undue influence—Elinor about to destroy it—then rings up Roger

Old Mrs. Dacres very ill—nurses in charge of case—gossip Mrs. Nurse Chaplin—a local nurse—Nurse Hopkins—they talk together—A photograph Mrs. D—asks for—signed Lewis—her husband’s name was Roger Henry

Somewhat sudden death of old lady—suspicious absence of morphine?—Nurses not sure—she dies intestate

The characters also were settled early on and, apart from their names, did not change. The eternal triangle too was defined from the beginning:

The relations—in house

Mary Dane [Gerrard]—daughter of gardener—acted as companion

Evelyn her niece arrives—and Roger Dacres—nephew by marriage

She is a real character—hard up—fascinating—antagonism between her and Mary

Roger falls in love with Mary—Eve gives her a sum of money—Mary comes to life—Nurse Chaplin advises her to make a will

Dr. Lord—good-looking young man—fall in love with Elinor?

The nurses—Moira O’Brien resides in house—Nurse

Hopkins from village—comes every morning to give a hand.

As Nurse C leaves—Mary accompanies her—says her Auntie in Australia is a hospital Nurse

Mary’s death? She is at cottage—Elinor asks her to come up to the house for lunch—a cold lunch— Sandwiches—Nurse offers to make them a nice cup of tea—(apomorphine in kitchen)—the sandwiches—Mary to have salmon ones as she is a Catholic—gets her excited and then drowsy—Nurse Hopkins doesn’t like the look of her—sends for doctor—difficult to get him—morphine poisoning

One of the flaws in the plot of Sad Cypress is that at the fatal lunch the killer cannot know that Elinor Carlisle will not also drink the poisoned tea along with Mary. The short note in Notebook 21 to the effect that ‘Mary to have salmon ones as she is a Catholic’ may have been an early solution to the problem of ensuring that only the intended victim ingested the poison, by attempting to guarantee that Mary would be limited in the type of sandwich (assumed erroneously to be the means of poisoning) she could eat. However, as the murder occurs on a Thursday (Chapter 7), Mary would not, in fact, be limited in her choice; the restriction on eating meat applied only to Fridays. And, in the event, the killer did not prepare the supposedly poisoned sandwiches anyway, so could not have stage-managed that aspect of the scene. It does seem as if this is a definite problem.

But there is a further problem, also of a practical nature—how could Nurse Hopkins have known that Elinor would call herself and Mary from the Lodge to the house for the fatal lunch? And how did she have a hypodermic and apomorphine with her? Her original plan to poison Mary in her own (Hopkins’) cottage, as surmised by Poirot in the final chapter, does not answer the question either, as that scenario, even if it were to include Elinor, would be so unlikely as to be suspicious. Unfortunately the Notebooks give no indication as to whether Christie considered this difficulty.

The aftermath of the murder is also accurately reflected in Notebook 21, with little deviation from the finished novel:

Death of old lady—no will—her fortune goes to Elinor as next of kin

E and Roger—a little stiffness—she says it doesn’t matter which of us has it—he again feels there is a coolness between them.

R. and Mary—incipient love affair—she is pleased—Mary’s young man Edmund is angry—they quarrel

Elinor sees them together—R. is ringing her

Elinor gives Mary ?1000 pounds—she accepts

And ultimately…

Dr. Lord comes to Poirot—insists it wasn’t her—can’t be Hopkins she had nothing to do with sandwiches— just made tea which they both drank—little bit of paper with morphine under the stove—the kitchen—it was open —someone could have got in there while the others were down in the Lodge

  The Moving Finger

14 June 1943

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ moves on

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Shortly after Jerry Burton and his sister move to the idyllic village of Lymstock, a series of anonymous letters horrifies the inhabitants and culminates in the death of the local solicitor’s wife. The vicar’s wife decides to send for an expert in wickedness—Miss Marple.

This is another example of a novel narrated by a male. Apart from the Hastings novels, seven other titles (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Murder at the Vicarage, The Moving Finger, Crooked House, Endless Night; and both The Pale Horse and The Clocks are partly male-narrated) have male narrators while only two (Murder in Mesopotamia and, for the most part, The Man in the Brown Suit) have female ones. While it is by no means extraordinary for a female writer to write as a male, this may have been dictated from the beginning of Christie’s career when, having created Hastings as Poirot’s chronicler, she grew accustomed to the idea of telling the story as a male. It would have been inconceivable for Poirot to have a close female friend with whom he lived and shared his cases. And equally inconceivable, but for different reasons, is the possibility that they would be recounted by his wife! In The Moving Finger it is also odd that Jerry Burton narrates the entire story without ever telling us anything about his background or that of his sister. Apart from the fact that he was a pilot and that Joanna has a busy social life we learn nothing about them.

Not only was The Moving Finger published almost a year earlier in the USA but the US and UK editions are significantly different, although this did not come to light until the mid-1950s. When Penguin Books published the title in 1953 a flurry of correspondence drew Edmund Cork’s attention to these discrepancies. He had supplied Penguin with a US edition for their reprint, as the agent’s own file copy of the UK edition had been a war casualty. When he contacted Christie’s US agent in July 1953 seeking an explanation of the inconsistencies it was difficult, even then, to say how the mistake happened. The most likely explanation, according to them, was that the US publishers had worked from a copy used by the publishers of the serial, Colliers Magazine, who had ‘cut’ the manuscript. The mistake has been perpetuated ever since. While the basic story remains the same, many minor characters have disappeared from the US edition and some passages, including the opening scene, are significantly different. Apart from puzzling references to characters who do not (seemingly) exist the overall effect is to leave the US edition a shorter book.

The same situation, and probable explanation, applies to Murder is Easy.

Miss Marple was indicated as the detective from the beginning, which makes her non-appearance until Chapter 10 (of the UK edition) all the more peculiar. It is almost a cameo appearance, less than a dozen pages. The setting, however, is very much Miss Marple territory and Lymstock is the typical English village associated with Agatha Christie. Apart from St Mary Mead the number of similar villages in Christie novels is actually surprisingly small, despite the common perception that they are all set in such surroundings.

The Moving Finger also has the most unusual denouement of any Christie novel. We learn who the killer is before Miss Marple’s explanation. The ploy to trap the murderer is known to the reader as we watch him attempt another killing. This is at variance with similar ruses in, for example, The Body