John Curran - Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

Act II The house in the Desert—native servants—Lady E—all in Arab dress. Sends him off on errand to Damascus—will be away for a month—then turns on her slave—tells girl she won’t be allowed to see Alan—M retorts—turns on her—as tall and as strong as you—she walks backwards—falls. New British Consul is due to call—she throws over breakfast tray—puts on ring—lets him in—receives him as Lady E.

The major difference between the original and the proposed adaptation is that information we are given in the short story through conversation between Pyne and the English Consul is played out on stage. The first scene sets the background to the story and the second shows the accident that precipitates the masquerade. This means that the audience is fully aware earlier of the revelation at the end of the story. But we have no way of knowing if Christie had another surprise in mind—there are no notes for a last act.

Mrs Adela Chester asks Parker Pyne to convince her son, Basil, to abandon his girlfriend Betty, whom she considers unsuitable.

There are brief notes in Notebooks 66 and 20 for this lighthearted Parker Pyne short story. The only question was where to set it. A non-crime trifle, it was obviously written for the magazine market:

Excited woman wants M PP to stop her son marrying a girl—they won’t be happy—son asks whether PP will help him.

Corsica? Majorca?

A mother and her son—a girl he likes—parents—trousers—Madeleine comes out—this scene—the boy distracted

Despite warning the protagonists, Hercule Poirot is unable to prevent a murder in his Rhodes holiday hotel. But he can solve it by correctly interpreting the fatal triangle.

The genesis of this short story is complicated. There are variant texts in the US and the UK appearances, while there are copious notes for its dramatisation. And as it was expanded and altered for the novel Evil under the Sun, some of the notes overlap and intersect. It is not possible to date the Notebooks accurately, but the following in Notebook 20 succinctly summarises the plot:

The triangle—Valerie C. loved by Commander C. and Douglas Golding

It went through a few changes before arriving at the version we know. These notes, complete with Christie’s sketches of the various ‘eternal triangles’, are on either side of those for ‘Problem at Pollensa Bay’. To complicate matters even more, two separate and totally different settings and sets of characters are listed:

Soviet Russia

Room at hotel—

In train—

The Triangle

George and Edna

Anna and Ivan

The Gordons—Lloyd and Jessica

Rhodes—Bathing—Emily Renault (Joan Heaslip)

The Courtneys—beautiful—faded—empty-headed The Goldings arrive—man—plain wife—a shock to discover they are on honeymoon—his devotion to Mrs C—bowled over—antagonism between him and C—a quarrel at dinner—everyone talking about it.

Quiet woman comes to PP…what shall she do? He says leave the island at once—you are in danger—(PP says to himself where has he seen her—remembrance of murder trial). Lee a chemist—Golding has his usual drink—gin and ginger tonic—Mrs Golding drinks it instead and dies

The setting of Soviet Russia (perhaps inspired by a brief foray there while returning from Ur in 1931) would have been unique for Christie and very unusual for crime fiction in general at the time. It is perhaps not surprising that this version was never developed. The other scenario is nearer to the published version, but it was still to go through further refinements. Note also that this early draft has it as a case for Parker Pyne.

Eventually in Notebook 66 we arrive at the ‘real’ version. The short précis below of the plot is in the middle of the notes for The A.B.C. Murders, a position which tallies with the publication dates of each. That this plot and setting should suddenly appear, fully formed, while Christie was plotting one her greatest novels is yet another example of her creative fertility.

Poirot story—Chantries—she beautiful, empty headed, he a strong silent man of personality—The Goldings—G infatuated with Mrs G—Mrs G in despair comes to Poirot—you are in danger. Various scenes if book—actually Chantries and Mrs G are lovers—the gin and tonic—Gold—is supposed to want to kill C—Mrs C drinks it instead—and dies

Note the words in the middle of this jotting—‘Various scenes if book’. She obviously thought, and correctly, that this situation had great potential for elaboration. And she did just that a few years later in Evil under the Sun, although the plots are quite different. Both feature a triangle situation in a beach setting and neither triangle is the one the reader has anticipated, but the motivation for the crimes is different and the eternal triangle theme is given yet another variation in the later work. There is also a distinct similarity to the method of poisoning adopted by the killer in The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, over 25 years later.

Finally, the following in Notebook 58 may seem like a rough note for ‘Triangle at Rhodes’, although it actually occurs in the middle of the jottings for A Caribbean Mystery:

Triangle idea (Rhodes)

Lovely siren—her husband—devoted, dark, cynical—little brown mouse, nice little woman, wife—plain stupid husband—dark husband really has liaison with mouse. They plan to do away with siren—stupid husband is to be suspected

There are similarities between the two—the quartet of two husbands and wives in an exotic beach setting. But in fact it is included at this point in the Notebook as a plot resumé to herself as she considered possibilities for her new Caribbean quartet.

When Amy Leatheran accepts a nursing job on an archaeological dig looking after the neurotic Mrs Leidner she little suspects that she will be involved in the investigation of her patient’s murder. But how did the killer gain access to his victim when the room was under constant observation?

From the time of her marriage to Max Mallowan, Christie accompanied him annually to Iraq on his archaeological expeditions. These travels gave her background for her foreign travel novels but the one that most closely matches her own experiences is Murder in Mesopotamia. The setting is an archaeological dig and, apart from the detective plot, there is much detail of day-to-day living, written from first-hand experience.

The surviving notes are not extensive, less than 15 pages in total scattered over four Notebooks. Notebook 66 has a oneline jotting in a list dated January 1935; she wrote the novel during that year with hardback publication in July 1936:

Dig murder 1st person Hospital Nurse?

A list of characters given in Notebook 20 tallies with the published novel (although some of the men are not definitely recognisable), as does the basic situation outlined immediately following:

The People

1. Dr. L[eidner]

2. Mrs L[eidner]

3. Architect B. man of 35 taciturn attractive [Richard Carey]

4. Epigraphist P. moody man—hypochondriac or Priest (not really a priest!) [Fr. Lavigny]

5. Young man R. inclined to be garrulous or naïve [David Emmott]

6. Miss Johnson—middle aged—devoted to L.

7. A wife—not archaeological—pretty—frivolous [Mrs. Mercado]