John Curran - Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

This jotting, which appears in a list dated January 1935, is the basis for Murder Is Easy, although without a murdered vicar or a girl taking a village job. The novel itself is one of the few for which there are no notes.

Death on the Nile, Endless Night • The Hollow • The Man in the Brown Suit • The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side • The Murder of Roger Ackroyd • The Mysterious Affair at Styles • The Pale Horse • Sad Cypress • Taken at the Flood

Throughout her life Agatha Christie was a voracious reader. Her childhood was filled with books and Postern of Fate discusses them at length— The Cuckoo Clock, Four Winds Farm, Winnie the Pooh, Little Grey Hen, The Red Cockade, The Prisoner of Zenda. Her Notebooks are littered with lists of books, which apart from many crime titles, included novels by Graham Greene, Alan Sillitoe, Muriel Spark, Rumer Godden, John Steinbeck and Nevil Shute. So it is not surprising that some of her titles, including those of the Mary Westmacotts, derive from quotations from a variety of sources—Shakespeare, Flecker, Tennyson, Blake, Eliot. Apart from titles, extracts appear throughout her books, and some novels ( The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and Appointment with Death) end poignantly with appropriate quotations.

Elinor Carlisle is on trial for the murder of Mary Gerard.

The case against her seems foolproof as only she had the means, motive and opportunity to introduce poison at the fatal lunch. Dr Lord thinks there is more to it than meets the eye and approaches Hercule Poirot.

This sketch appears, inexplicably, in Notebook 35 during the plotting of Five Little Pigs (1943) but is unmistakably the cover design for Sad Cypress (1940). Alongside the tree is, possibly, a coffin—of cypress wood perhaps, as per the quotation?

Although published in March 1940, Sad Cypress had appeared in serial form in the USA at the end of the previous year. It is another example of a novel with characters more carefully drawn than many other novels, and although there is a clever plot device at the core there is less emphasis on clues and timetables and the minutiae of detection. As other commentators have pointed out, however, there is also a flaw in the plot; and there is a second problem.

Notebook 20 has a version of the plot device of Sad Cypress and it is unequivocally stated, and dated, in Notebook 66. As early as this 1935 date, note that the murderer was to be female:

Rose without thorns—a thornless white rose mentioned by front door—later apomorphine injected by murderer into herself

Jan 1935

A. Rose without thorn mentioned by front door—later murderess injects apomorphine into herself—draws attention to prick as having been caused by thorn

Four pages later in the same Notebook we find a second reference to it showing that, over two years later, it was still in the planning process:

Feb 1937

A (as before)

A. Illegitimate daughter—Begins hospital nurse attending old wealthy woman—(she learns about daughter supposedly d[aughter] of gardener) then kills off patient by sweets sent from niece—later niece and Mary antagonistic over a young man—nurse poisons Mary—Evelyn (niece) thought to have done it.

Notebook 21 adds some detail, while item G on an alphabetical list in Notebook 66 also includes a similar plot device—but in a very different setting:

Retired hospital nurse—apomorphine stunt—Evelyn Dane—inherits from Aunt—Mary is really daughter—actually companion—Jeremy is cousin who has loved Evelyn and now loves Mary—Nurse pretends to be surprised to see Mrs. D’s picture—she attended her for the birth of a child etc.

Poison—man injects apomorphine after sharing some dish—small tube with morphia on it found later—really apomorphine. Family reunion—old father killed—who did it?—he has whisky and soda for tea—others have tea—fresh tea

The family reunion mentioned in the latter extract was changed but the idea of disguising the poison in freshly brewed tea was retained.

Like some other works, the Notebooks contain little that is different from the finished novel, leading to the suspicion that there were discarded notes that no longer exist. Apart from some name changes—Roger becomes Roddy, Mrs Dacres is changed to Mrs Welman and the first Nurse becomes O’Brien—the notes follow the course and detail of the novel almost exactly:

Beginning

Elinor in London—anonymous letter—accusing undue influence—Elinor about to destroy it—then rings up Roger

Old Mrs. Dacres very ill—nurses in charge of case—gossip Mrs. Nurse Chaplin—a local nurse—Nurse Hopkins—they talk together—A photograph Mrs. D—asks for—signed Lewis—her husband’s name was Roger Henry

Somewhat sudden death of old lady—suspicious absence of morphine?—Nurses not sure—she dies intestate

The characters also were settled early on and, apart from their names, did not change. The eternal triangle too was defined from the beginning:

The relations—in house

Mary Dane [Gerrard]—daughter of gardener—acted as companion

Evelyn her niece arrives—and Roger Dacres—nephew by marriage

She is a real character—hard up—fascinating—antagonism between her and Mary

Roger falls in love with Mary—Eve gives her a sum of money—Mary comes to life—Nurse Chaplin advises her to make a will

Dr. Lord—good-looking young man—fall in love with Elinor?

The nurses—Moira O’Brien resides in house—Nurse

Hopkins from village—comes every morning to give a hand.

As Nurse C leaves—Mary accompanies her—says her Auntie in Australia is a hospital Nurse

Mary’s death? She is at cottage—Elinor asks her to come up to the house for lunch—a cold lunch—Sandwiches—Nurse offers to make them a nice cup of tea—(apomorphine in kitchen)—the sandwiches—Mary to have salmon ones as she is a Catholic—gets her excited and then drowsy—Nurse Hopkins doesn’t like the look of her—sends for doctor—difficult to get him—morphine poisoning

One of the flaws in the plot of Sad Cypress is that at the fatal lunch the killer cannot know that Elinor Carlisle will not also drink the poisoned tea along with Mary. The short note in Notebook 21 to the effect that ‘Mary to have salmon ones as she is a Catholic’ may have been an early solution to the problem of ensuring that only the intended victim ingested the poison, by attempting to guarantee that Mary would be limited in the type of sandwich (assumed erroneously to be the means of poisoning) she could eat. However, as the murder occurs on a Thursday (Chapter 7), Mary would not, in fact, be limited in her choice; the restriction on eating meat applied only to Fridays. And, in the event, the killer did not prepare the supposedly poisoned sandwiches anyway, so could not have stage-managed that aspect of the scene. It does seem as if this is a definite problem.