Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

Lena in London—D. telephones her—goes to station—sees station master—Swings out of express as it leaves—returns to White Hart though window—Knifes E.A.—leaves as clue something he has already missed (lighter?)—goes to call box

L. telephones Anne 9.18

D. “ “ “ (London wants you)

Here we see the set-up of the faked telephone call that establishes Hunter’s alibi. But he doesn’t knife ‘E.A.’ (Enoch Arden) as he finds him already dead from a head wound when he gets there. For much of the notes, meanwhile, Rowley is the villain:

Rowley arranges L’s suicide (in London) has to go to see a bull etc

Does Rowley play the part of Underhay in London—with Lena

While he is not indictable at the end of the novel, Rowley does have two deaths on his conscience. But his playing the part of Underhay in London could be seen as a complication too far. Another suggestion was that Rowley and Frances should work together:

Rowley—jealous of David—has plans—he and Frances agree to blackmail—but Rowley’s idea is to inherit—so Lena must die

In fact Rowley and Frances work independently in the novel, although without any idea of killing Rosaleen.

Possibly button from Lena’s dress found by E.A.’s body—or does Rowley take it away. Shot heard as Anne and R and D are approaching house. Suggested that R could have laid timing fuse to cartridge

A timing fuse to fake a gunshot, thereby confusing the time of death, is a plot device in The Murder at the Vicarage, but otherwise Christie depended only rarely on mechanical means to achieve her effects (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd being a notable exception) and, thankfully, did not start here.

Although it is preceded by a number of rejected ideas—Nathaniel/Jeremy does not resort to blackmail and murder—the last line of the following note does reflect the reality of the novel. Major Porter, a poignant portrait, agrees, through poverty, to perjure himself but later, in a final futile attempt to regain his self-respect, kills himself:

Cover her Face

Nathaniel who has embezzled a lot of trust funds—wife is Rose—‘county’—shrewd—fond of him but knows his weakness—gallant and sticks to sinking ship. Says at last ‘Of course I always knew he was a crook’…Family all rather crooked—but Rose is straight—(nice!). Enoch is steady character he has come across—conversation in club inspires him to hire Enoch to sound out Lena and levy blackmail. Enoch turns screws on him—he kills Enoch—(a) tries to fasten crime on Lena—or (b) suicide—then goes to Porter—gets him to identify dead man as Underhay Porter desperately poor agrees.

The following, while an interesting plot twist, would have been a difficult one to carry off:

U. is alive—reads inquest—arrives at Doon—sees—Lena—falls in love with her?

It would mean Underhay falling in love with the woman masquerading as his dead wife and, effectively, robbing his fortune.

But the most intriguing of the ideas Christie rejected concern the book’s possible title:

Cover her eyes face—mine eyes dazzle—she died young—outburst by David. Why?

Exactly—why? Why would David Hunter have exclaimed these words? The quotation ‘Cover her face—mine eyes dazzle—she died young’ is from The Duchess of Malfi, and concerns the murder of a sister by a brother. Presumably David would have used it upon the death of Rosaleen—his ‘sister’? Now we understand why Cover Her Face was considered as a title. Or perhaps it was the other way round—Christie saw it as a good title, which it is, and was anxious to work it in? Whatever is the case, echoing, as it does, the critical scene in Chapter 3 of Sleeping Murder (see Chapter 7), it can be seen as further confirmation that Sleeping Murder was written later than formerly assumed.

The Pale Horse

6 November 1961

And I looked, and behold a Pale Horse, And his name that sat on him was Death

Revelation 6:8

A list of names is found on the body of a murdered priest but what do they have in common? Is there such a thing as murder by suggestion? Are the elderly women in Much Deeping really practising black magic?

Although written in 1960 and published the following year, The Pale Horse had an inspiration from many years earlier. Mr P was a pharmacist who, almost 50 years earlier, instructed Agatha Christie in the preparation and dispensing of drugs. One day he showed her a dark-coloured lump that he took from his pocket, explaining that it was curare and he carried it around with him because it gave him a feeling of power. As she writes in her Autobiography: ‘He struck me, in spite of his cherubic appearance, as a possibly dangerous man. His memory remained with me so long that it was still there waiting when I first conceived the idea of writing my book The Pale Horse.’

One of the strongest titles of the last 15 years of her career, The Pale Horse has a horribly plausible plot, a very unusual poison and a genuine feeling of menace over and above the usual whodunit element. At first it seems as if Agatha Christie has changed literary tracks and is writing black magic but, as with many of her titles, what you think you see is not what you get.

Notebook 58 has two pages of Notes on ‘Voodoo’ just before the notes for The Pale Horse. Phrases such as ‘Blood Pact—the sacrifice of a pig—snake vertebrae mingled—the asson or sacred rattle—Legba, the God who removes the barrier—Abobo, a ritual exclamation’ are all noted. The application of these researches can be seen in Chapter 6 of the novel.

Although thallium—the murder method in The Pale Horse— was used many years earlier by her great contemporary Ngaio Marsh in her novel Final Curtain, it was Christie’s novel that gained notoriety in the UK in June 1972 when Graham Young was convicted of the murder of two workmates and the attempted murder of two more using the same poison. Both the novel and Agatha Christie were mentioned during the trial. Although Young denied having read The Pale Horse, an enterprising reporter contacted Christie to get her reaction. She explained that she had used it in the novel as it was unusual and interesting for a detective novelist, being tasteless and odourless as well as difficult to detect.

Although the notes are scattered over five Notebooks, the basic plot was established early on, as were some of the characters. Notebook 38 contains a sketch of the opening pages although the woman is not found dead, but dies shortly after Father Gorman’s ministrations. It seems that from the beginning thallium was to be the murder method. And the coffee bar scene, with the important hair-pulling incident, appears in the novel exactly as it does here:

The Thallium Mystery

Start somehow with a list of names e.g.

Sarah Montfort

Anthony West

Mrs. Evershed

Lilian Beckett—

Jaspar Handingly—All of them dead

A woman—hospital nurse—found dead—the place ransacked—she says list—all dead

They are all dead