In The Mysterious Affair at Styles we are satisfied that Alfred Inglethorp is both too obvious and too dislikeable to be the murderer; and, on a more mundane level, he was absent from the house on the night of his wife’s death. So we discount him. As a further strengthening of the double-bluff, part of his plan depends on being suspected, arrested, tried and acquitted, thus ensuring his perpetual freedom. Unless carefully handled this solution runs the risk of producing an anticlimax. Here it is skilfully avoided by uncovering the presence of an unexpected co-conspirator in the person of hearty Evelyn Howard, who, throughout the novel, has denounced her employer’s husband (her unsuspected lover) as a fortune hunter—as indeed he is.
Productivity
Although no one, least of all Christie herself, knew it at the time, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was to be the first in a substantial corpus of books that were to issue from her typewriter over the next 50-odd years. She was equally successful in the novel and the short story form and alone among her contemporaries she also conquered the theatre. She created two famous detectives, a feat not duplicated by other crime writers. During the height of her powers publication could hardly keep pace with creation—1934 saw the publication of no fewer than four crime titles and a Mary Westmacott, the name under which she wrote six non-crime novels published between 1930 and 1956. And this remarkable output is also a factor in her continuing success. It is possible to read a different Christie title every month for almost seven years; and at that stage it is possible to start all over again safe in the knowledge that you will have forgotten the earliest. And it is possible to watch a different Agatha Christie dramatisation every month for two years. Very few writers, in any field, have equalled this record.
And so Christie’s work continues to transcend every barrier of geography, culture, race, religion, age and sex; she is read as avidly in Bermuda as in Balham, she is read by grandparents and grandchildren, she is read on e-book and in graphic format in this twenty-first century as eagerly as in the green Penguins and The Strand magazine of the last. Why? Because no other crime writer did it so well, so often or for so long; no one else has ever matched her combination of readability, plotting, fairness and productivity.
And no one ever will.
2
Dumb Witness: The Evidence
of the Notebooks
Like a conjuror, he whipped from a drawer in the desk two shabby exercise books.
Although mentioned by both of her biographers, Janet Morgan and Laura Thompson, Agatha Christie’s Notebooks remain a closely protected, and largely unknown, treasure. After the death of her mother, Rosalind Hicks ensured their safety in Greenway House and, with the exception of Torquay Museum, they have never been publicly displayed. But Christie does briefly mention them in her Autobiography:
Of course, all the practical details are still to be worked out, and the people have to creep slowly into my consciousness, but I jot down my splendid idea in an exercise book. So far so good—but what I invariably do is lose the exercise book. I usually have about half a dozen on hand, and I used to make notes in them of ideas that had struck me, or about some poison or drug, or a clever little bit of swindling that I had read about in the paper. Of course, if I had kept all these things neatly sorted and filed and labelled, it would save me a lot of trouble. However, it is a pleasure sometimes, when looking vaguely through a pile of old note-books to find something scribbled down, as: Possible plot—do it yourself—girl and not really sister—August—with a kind of sketch of a plot. What it’s all about I can’t remember now; but it often stimulates me, if not to write that identical plot, at least to write something else.
A closer examination of some of these remarks will give a clearer idea of what she meant. Using Christie’s own words as a guide, we can begin to see the part these Notebooks played in her creative process.
Considered as the notes, drafts and outlines for the greatest body of detective fiction ever written (and in many cases, unwritten) these Notebooks are unique and priceless literary artefacts. Viewed as physical objects they are somewhat less impressive. They are before me as I write these words and, at a passing glance, look like the piles of exercise books gathered by teachers at the end of class in schools the world over. Because most of them are just that—exercise books. Red and blue and green and grey exercise books, coverless copybooks ruled with wide-spaced blue lines, small black pocket-sized notebooks: The Minerva, The Marvel, The Kingsway, The Victoria, The Lion Brand, The Challenge, The Mayfair exercise books, ranging in price from The Kingsway (Notebook 72) for 2d to The Marvel (Notebook 28) for a shilling (5p); Notebook 5 represented particularly good value at 4 for 71/2d (3p). Inside covers often have ‘useful’ information—a map of the UK, capitals of the world, decimal conversion rates (obviously bought just before or after the introduction of decimal coinage in February 1971). There are covers illustrated by the New York skyline (Notebook 23) or a Mexican volcano (Notebook 18).
Some of them are more worthy recipients of their contents—hard-backed multi-paged notebooks with marbled covers or spiral binding with embossed covers; some are even grandly inscribed on the cover ‘Manuscript’. Notebook 7 is described inside the back cover as ‘spongeable PVC cover from WHS’, and Notebook 71 is a ‘Cahier’ with ‘Agatha Miller 31 Mai 1907’ written on the cover and containing French homework from her time in Paris as a young woman. Notebook 31 is an impressive wine-coloured hardback from Langley and Sons Ltd., Tottenham Court Rd. and costing 1s 3d (6p).
In a few cases the very availability and unpretentiousness of the Notebooks are now a liability as some of them have suffered on their journey down the years—they have lost their covers (and perhaps some pages—who knows?), staples have become rusted, pencil has faded and in some cases the quality of the paper, combined with the use of a leaky biro, has meant that notes written on one page have seeped on to the reverse also. And, of course, as many of them date from the war years, paper quality was often poor.
It would seem that some Notebooks originally belonged to, or were temporarily commandeered by, Christie’s daughter Rosalind, as her name and address in her own neat handwriting appears on the inside cover (Notebook 41). And Notebook 73, otherwise blank, has her first husband Archie Christie’s name in flowing script inside the front cover. The name and address lines on the front cover of Notebook 19 have been filled in: ‘Mallowan, 17 Lawn Road Flats’.
The number of pages Christie used in each Notebook varies greatly—Notebook 35 has 220 pages of notes while Notebook 72 has a mere five. Notebook 63 has notes on over 150 pages but Notebook 42 uses only 20. The average lies somewhere between 100 and 120.
Although they are collectively referred to as ‘The Notebooks of Agatha Christie’, not all of them are concerned with her literary output. Notebooks 11, 40 and 55 consist solely of chemical formulae and seem to date from her days as a student dispenser; Notebook 71 contains French homework and Notebook 73 is completely blank. Moreover, she often used them for making random notes, sometimes on the inside covers—there is a list of ‘furniture for 48’ [Sheffield Terrace] in Notebook 59; Notebook 67 has reminders to ring up Collins and make a hair appointment; Notebook 68 has a list of train times from Stockport to Torquay. And her husband Max Mallowan has written accurately in his small, neat hand, ‘The Pale Horse’ on the front of Notebook 54.