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which makes the disclosure of a surprise murderer more difficult. This very limited circle makes Christie’s achievement in a debut detective novel even more impressive. The clichéd view of Christie is that all of her novels are set in country houses and/or country villages. Statistically, this is inaccurate, as fewer than thirty (i.e. little over a third) of her books are set in such surroundings. And as Christie herself said, you have to set a book where people live.

      Some ideas that feature in The Mysterious Affair at Styles would appear again throughout Christie’s career. The dying Emily Inglethorp calls out the name of her husband, ‘Alfred … Alfred’, before she finally succumbs. Is the use of his name an accusation, an invocation, a plea, a farewell; or is it entirely meaningless? Similar situations occur in several novels over the next 30 years. One novel, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, is built entirely around the dying words of the man found at the foot of the cliffs. In Death Comes as the End, the dying Satipy calls the name of the earlier victim, ‘Nofret’; as John Christow lies dying at the edge of the Angkatells’ swimming pool, in The Hollow, he calls out the name of his lover, ‘Henrietta.’ An extended version of the idea is found in A Murder is Announced when the last words of the soon-to-be-murdered Amy Murgatroyd, ‘she wasn’t there’, contain a vital clue. In both Murder in Mesopotamia – ‘the window’ – and Ordeal by Innocence – ‘the cup was empty’ and ‘the dove on the mast’ – dying words indicate the method of murder. And the agent Carmichael utters the enigmatic ‘Lucifer … Basrah’ before he expires in Victoria’s room in They Came to Baghdad.

      The idea of a character looking over a shoulder and seeing someone or something significant makes its first appearance in Christie’s work when Lawrence looks horrified at something he notices in Mrs Inglethorp’s room on the night of her death. The alert reader should be able to tell what it is. This ploy is a Christie favourite and she enjoyed ringing the changes on the possible explanations. She predicated at least two novels – The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and A Caribbean Mystery – almost entirely on this, and it makes noteworthy appearances in The Man in the Brown Suit, Appointment with Death and Death Comes as the End, as well as a handful of short stories.

      In the 1930 stage play Black Coffee – whose original title was to have been After Dinner – the only original script to feature Hercule Poirot, the hiding-place of the papers containing the missing formula is the same as the one devised by Alfred Inglethorp. And in an exchange very reminiscent of a similar one in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, it is a chance remark by Hastings that leads Poirot to this realisation.

      In common with many crime stories of the period there are two floor-plans and no less than three reproductions of handwriting, all with a part to play in the eventual solution. And here also we see for the first time Poirot’s remedy for steadying his nerves and encouraging precision in thought: the building of card-houses. At crucial points in both Lord Edgware Dies and Three Act Tragedy he adopts a similar strategy, each time with equally triumphant results. The important argument overheard by Mary Cavendish through an open window in Chapter 6 foreshadows a similar and equally important case of eavesdropping in Five Little Pigs.

      In his 1953 survey of detective fiction, Blood in their Ink, Sutherland Scott describes The Mysterious Affair at Styles as ‘one of the finest “firsts” ever written’. Countless Christie readers over almost a century would enthusiastically agree.

The Man in the Brown Suit

      22 August 1924

      When she is suddenly orphaned, Anne Beddingfeld²⁰ 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 a detective story but includes a whodunit element in tandem with 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 and is hugely enjoyable, complete with a surprise solution which presages by two years her most stunning conjuring trick. And it also adopts the technique of using more than one narrator, a format that appears, in various guises, throughout her career in novels as diverse as The ABC Murders, Five Little Pigs and The Pale Horse.

      The real-life Major Belcher, who employed Archie Christie as a business manager for the round-the-world trip, convinced Agatha 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 any crime novel. He even suggested a title, Mystery at Mill House, the name of his own house. In An Autobiography Christie admits that although she did create a Sir Eustace Pedler, using some of Belcher’s characteristics, he was not actually the Major.

      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.

      She also relates in An 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’ – although the first page of Notebook 34 is headed ‘Adventurous Anne’.

      The accuracy of the dozen pages in Notebook 34 suggests earlier, rougher notes, but as Christie wrote much of 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?

      [There is no IV in the notebook]

      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

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