LITMIR.BIZ

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Surprise, Surprise!

      But the biggest surprise in the Notebooks is the fact that many of the best plots did not necessarily spring from a single devastating idea. She considered all possibilities when she plotted and did not confine herself to one idea, no matter how good it may have seemed. In very few cases is the identity of the murderer a given from the start of the plotting.

      The most dramatic example is Crooked House. By the mid-1940s she had experimented with the narrator-murderer, the policeman-murderer, the everybody-as-murderer and the everybody-as-victim gambits. With its startling revelation that the killer is a child, Crooked House remains one of the great Christie surprises, in the same class as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, Curtain and Endless Night. (To be entirely fair, at least two other writers, Ellery Queen in The Tragedy of Y and Margery Allingham in The White Cottage Mystery had already exploited this idea but far less effectively.) But a child-killer was not the raison d’être of this novel; the shattering identity of the murderer was only one element under consideration and not necessarily the key element. Even a cursory glance at Notebook 14 shows that Christie also considered Sophia, Clemency and Edith as well as Josephine when it came to potential murderers. It was not a case of arranging the entire plot around Josephine as the one unalterable fact.

      Again, at no point in the notes for her last devastating surprise, Endless Night, is there mention of the narrator-killer. It was not a case of simply repeating the Ackroyd trick; in fact, at only one point in the Notebook is there mention of telling the story in the first person. The inspiration for the shock ending came to her as she plotted rather than the other way round.

      Arguably the last of the ingeniously clued detective novels, A Murder is Announced, would seem to allow of only one solution, and yet at one stage Letitia Blacklock is under consideration as the second victim of Mitzi, who has already murdered her own husband Rudi Sherz. It was not a case of deciding to write a novel featuring a supposed victim actually murdering her blackmailer during a carefully devised game. Nor did Murder in Mesopotamia always revolve around a wife-killing husband with a perfect alibi; Miss Johnston and, in fact, Mrs Leidner herself were also considered for the role of killer. The setting, the archaeological dig, would seem to have been the fixed idea for this novel and the rest of the plot was woven around it rather than vice versa.

      Although this still seems surprising, it is in keeping with Christie’s general method of working. Her strengths lay in her unfettered mental fertility and her lack of system. Her initial inspiration could be as vague as a gypsy’s curse (Endless Night), an archaeological dig (Murder in Mesopotamia) or a newspaper advertisement (A Murder is Announced). After that, she let her not inconsiderable imagination have free rein with the idea and hey, presto! a year later the latest Christie appeared on the bookshelves. And some of the ideas that did not make it into that masterpiece might well surface in the one to be published the following year; or ten years hence.

      Dotted throughout the Notebooks are dozens of phrases that show Agatha Christie the resourceful creator, Agatha Christie the critical professional, Agatha Christie the sly humorist at work. In many cases she ‘thought’ directly on to the page and there are many instances where she addresses herself in this way. Sometimes it is idle speculation as she toys with various ideas before settling on just one:

      ‘How about this’ … as she works out the timetable of ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’

      ‘A good idea would be’ … this, tantalisingly, is on an otherwise blank page

      ‘or – a little better’ … firming up the motive in Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

      ‘How about girl gets job’ … from early notes for A Caribbean Mystery

      ‘Who? Why? When? How? Where? Which?’ … the essence of a detective story from One, Two, Buckle my Shoe

      ‘Which way do we turn?’ … in the middle of Third Girl

      ‘A prominent person – such as a minister – (Aneurin Bevan type?) – on holiday? Difficulties as I don’t know about Ministers’ … rueful while looking for a new idea in the mid-1940s

      When she has decided on a plot she often muses about the intricacies and possibilities of a variation:

      ‘Does Jeremy have to be there then’ … pondering on character movements for Spider’s Web

      ‘Contents of letter given? Or Not’ … in the course of Cat among the Pigeons

      ‘How does she bring it about … What drug’ … while planning A Caribbean Mystery

      ‘Yes – better if dentist is dead’ … a decision reached during One, Two, Buckle my Shoe

      ‘Why? Why??? Why?????’ … frustration during One, Two, Buckle my Shoe

      ‘He could be murderer – if there is a murder’ … a possibility for Fiddlers Three

      Like all true professionals she is self-critical:

      ‘unlike twin idea – woman servant one of them – NO!!’ … a decision during The Labours of Hercules

      ‘NB All v. unlikely’ … as she approaches the end of Mrs McGinty’s Dead

      ‘All right – a little elaboration – more mistresses?’ … not very happy with Cat among the Pigeons

      She includes reminders to herself:

      ‘Look up datura poisoning … and re-read Cretan Bull’ … as she writes A Caribbean Mystery

      ‘Find story about child and other child plays with him’ … probably her short story ‘The Lamp’

      ‘Possible variant – (read a private eye book first before typing)’ … a reminder during The Clocks

      ‘A good idea – needs working on’ … for Nemesis

      Things to line up’ … during Dead Man’s Folly

      And there are the odd flashes of humour:

      From Notebook 35 and One, Two, Buckle my Shoe – the essence of detective fiction distilled into six words.

      ‘Van D. pops off’ … during A Caribbean Mystery

      ‘Pennyfather is conked’ … a rather uncharitable description from At Bertram’s Hotel

      ‘Elephantine Suggestions’ … from, obviously, Elephants Can Remember

      ‘Suspicion of (clever!) reader to be directed toward Nurse’ … a typically astute observation from Curtain when the nurse is completely innocent (note the use of the exclamation mark after ‘clever’)

      We now have a clearer idea of Christie’s approach to the construction of her stories. Using the Notebooks as a combination of sounding board and literary sketchpad, she devised and developed; she selected and rejected; she sharpened and polished; she revisited and recycled. And, as I hope to show by a more detailed analysis in the following chapters, out of this seeming chaos she produced a unique and immortal body of work.

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       Rule of Three

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