John Curran - Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

Petra Murder

The Platt family at Mena House—then on boat to Palestine

People

Mrs Platt [Mrs Boynton]

Jefferson Platt [replaced by Lennox]

Nadine his wife

Marcia [Carol]

Lennox [becomes Raymond in the novel]

Ginevra

Sarah Grey [Sarah King]

Amos Cope (in love with Nadine) [becomes Jefferson Cope

in the novel]

Lady Westholme M.P.

Dr Gerard—French doctor

Sir Charles Westholme [does not appear]

A. Sarah Grey and Gerard discuss Mrs Platt—S says sadistic [Part I Chapter 6]

B. Marcia and Lennox—‘It can’t go on—Why shouldn’t it? It always has—She’ll die some day—There’s no one to help us. [Part I Chapter 1]

C. Mrs Platt and Ginevra—you’re tired tonight my dear—ill—she forces her to be ill [Part I Chapter 4]

D. Nadine and Amos—Why are you here? Leave it all [Part I Chapter 5]

E. Nadine and Jefferson—she begs him—he cries Don’t leave me [Part I Chapter 8]

F. Nadine and Mrs Platt—She does not feel spell [Part I Chapter 8]

G. N and Marcia who has overheard conversation—I wouldn’t blame you if you did go

H. Amos and Mrs P—latter says she is ill—can only have her own family—a snub [Part I Chapter 5]

I. Marcia and Sarah Grey [Part I Chapter 7]

J. Lennox and Sarah—she tells him to leave—I can’t—I’m weak—I’m no good to you [Part I Chapter 9]

K. Sarah and Gerard she admits I’ve fallen for him [Part I Chapter 9]

L. Lennox and Marcia—we’ve got to kill her—It would—it would set us all free—HP overhears that last sentence [Part I Chapter 1]

Interestingly, both Appointment with Death and the following book, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, published six months later, feature Christie’s most monstrous creations, Mrs Boynton and Simeon Lee respectively. Both of them bully their family, although in neither case is their tyranny the motivation for their murders. The alternate solution propounded in the stage version of Appointment with Death takes the domination to new heights. This novel also features an early example of a young professional woman in Christie, Dr Sarah King. There had been independent young women in earlier novels—apart from Tuppence Beresford there is Emily Trefusis in The Sittaford Mystery, Frankie in Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? and Anne Beddingfeld in The Man in the Brown Suit —but Dr King is the first of her profession.

There is much speculation in the notes as to the method of murder, lending strength to the argument that this was a character-driven, rather than a plot-driven, book. And it is not insignificant that in the stage version it is not only a different villain that is unmasked but also a totally different method adopted by the villain. As can be seen, Christie considered quite a few poisons before settling on digitoxin:

Method of Crime etc.

Sarah’s drug stolen

Abricine—Sarah’s stolen—sudden violent illness of Mrs Pl[att]

Prussic acid in smelling salts?

Digitalin

Narcotic at lunch

One servant takes up genuine drink (tea?)—One Lady M who takes false tea

If poison—Coniine—Digitoxin—Coramine

If coniine or coramine—did Lady MacMartin and Miss Pierce go up and speak to her—she did not answer

If insulin Mrs P injected herself

Point of coniine (or coramine) the muscular paralysis

The old woman sits—each of family goes up and speaks to her—they all see she is dead—but no one says so

The stage adaptation, up to the denouement, is largely the same as the novel. However, as with some of the other stage plays— The Hollow, Death on the Nile, Go Back for Murder/Five Little Pigs and Cards on the Table (although not dramatised by Christie)—Poirot is dropped. The major difference is the new ending but there is also a discussion in Act II, Scene I of Mrs Boynton’s previous career as a wardress. Both of these are discussed in the notes. And it is the seemingly insignificant Miss Price who supplies the vital information leading to the solution, as Christie sketches the revelatory dialogue:

Do you know—have you done perhaps done rescue work? A wardress. Miss P uncomfortable—gets up goes away. Sarah who is sitting nearby—then breaks in—‘That explains a lot of things—you didn’t give up your job when you married—you’ve carried on with it. The need to dominate etc.’

To be a drug addict—so very sad for the family

S: Miss Pierce what are you saying

Miss P: Nothing—nothing at all

S: Are you saying that Mrs. Boynton took drugs

Miss P: I found out—quite by accident—of course. I knew it was far worse

S: But that means…Mrs. Boynton was a drug addict

Miss P: Yes dear, I know

S: Tell me—you’ve got to tell me

Miss P: No, I shall say nothing. The poor woman is dead and…

S: Tell me—what did you see or hear—

Miss P tells what she saw—put into stick. Sarah calls Col. Carbury—all come—takes out from stick

While holidaying in the West Indies, Miss Marple is subjected to the endless reminiscences of Major Palgrave. After his sudden death she regrets not paying more attention when he talked about a murderer he knew. Is it possible that the same killer is planning another crime on St Honore?

In A Caribbean Mystery Christie used memories of a holiday in Barbados from a few years earlier. It is Miss Marple’s only foreign case, although sending her abroad had been considered shortly before Christie began Four-Fifty from Paddington:

Miss Marple—somewhere on travels—or at seaside

The notes for A Caribbean Mystery are scattered over 14 Notebooks, although many of these are no more than jottings of isolated ideas that Christie subsumed into A Caribbean Mystery when she came to write it in 1963. Notebook 4 shows early musings and in Notebook 48 we find speculation about two couples:

1961 Projects

Carribean [sic]—Miss M—after illness—Raymond and Wife—Daughter—or son? Bogus major Taylor—like a frog—he squints.

Idea A Couples Lucky and Greg Evelyn and Rupert [Edward]

Greg very rich American—Lucky wants to marry young chap—however pretends it is Rupert—has affair with him. Point is to be R. kills Greg or Evelyn kills G by mistake for R. Really it is young man kills Greg

Despite the presence of two couples with almost identical names in the novel, none of the various permutations and combinations considered here found their way into A Caribbean Mystery. And in Notebook 35 she lists what were to become three novels, although the alphabetical sequence is odd. Perhaps this is the order in which she intended to write them, although they were actually published in the order below:

1962 Notes for 3 books

Y. The Clocks (?)

Z. Carribean [sic] Mystery

X. Gypsy’s Acre

Some of the ideas Christie jotted down in the various Notebooks—the frog-faced Major, someone telling longwinded stories about murder, the administration of hallucinogenic drugs and a husband who ‘saves’ his wife a few times only to ‘fail’ to save her at some later stage—do appear in the novel. She also reminds herself a few times about ‘The Cretan Bull’ from The Labours of Hercules and its use of hallucinogenic drugs:

Look up datura poisoning as administered by Indian wives to husbands—and re-read Cretan Bull

Book about Cretan Bull idea—insanity induced by doses of Belladonna

Play or Book—depending on root idea of Murder Made [sic] Easy or Cretan Bull—everything closing round one person gradually—engineered by someone else