John Curran - Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

The following year it is listed with her proposed titles for 1963 and 1964, after The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side had been delivered to Collins. There is no mention yet of the eventual title and the references to it throughout the notes are always as ‘Gypsy’s Acre’, the scene of the legend that seems, from the dedication, to have provided the germ of the book. Nor is there any indication at this early stage of the method of telling—one of the main features of the novel. Note also that ‘Gypsy’s Acre’ is listed as X—an indication, perhaps, that she intended to work on this before the other two, which are listed as Y and Z.

1962

Notes for 3 books

Y. The Clocks (?)

Z. Carribean [sic] Mystery

X. Gypsy’s Acre

X Gypsy’s Acre

Piece of land and road—tea at pub—story about accidents there—husband plans to kill wife—faked motor accident?

Two years before publication we find a further elaboration. And, indeed, much of this early jotting finds its way into the novel. The gypsy, the story, the horse, the ‘accident’ and the death are all utilised in Endless Night

The dedication of Endless Night is ‘To Nora Prichard from whom I first heard the legend of Gypsy’s Acre’. Nora Prichard was Mathew Prichard’s other grandmother—his father’s mother. She lived in the real location of Gypsy’s Acre near Pentre-Meyrich in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, where many years earlier a nearby gypsy encampment was cleared and the head gypsy cursed the land. After numerous road accidents subsequently occurred in the vicinity, this possibly apocryphal tale gathered support.

Oct 1st 1965

A. Gypsy’s Acre

Place where accidents happen—etc.—A woman seen (gypsy?) by husband—asks people—really has heard story already—but pretends it is the first time—a bit upset—a sceptical young fellow—but therefore more easily upset. Wife interested—not nervous—then one day, wife sees gypsy figure—and so on—working things up. Does gypsy figure catch bridle of horse—(stick pin in). Husband at accident—someone sees it from window—she is badly injured—shock—dies—really morphine

One definite omission from the novel is the reference to the husband as ‘a sceptical young fellow’; this is not a description that could ever apply to Michael Rogers. And of course he is not present at Ellie’s ‘accident’. Note also that at this stage there is still no mention of the husband as the architect of his wife’s death, much less as the narrator of the story.

Notebook 28 adds an important plot device or, to be strictly accurate, borrows it from ‘The Case of the Caretaker’:

The Cyanide Murder—capsules—the tranquilliser. Someone dies (W)—falls down stairs—thrombosis?—heart?—an open window. Body found 2 or 3 hours after death. Y—gives friend one of her capsules; Z—dead—a link is apparent between Z and W—this leads everyone astray

Originally this idea was to have been a different type of book but, as can be seen from below, the cyanide capsule was instead subsumed into Endless Night. The jotting also observes the important medical fact that the body must be either in the open air or not seen by a medical person until some time after death, in order for the potassium cyanide fumes to dissipate.

By October 1966 the novel was taking shape in the form in which we know it. Before she settled on Greta, however, Christie experimented with various other female characters, although it is difficult to see either of them as Ellie Rogers, the heiress to a multi-million pound fortune:

1966—Oct.—(in U.S.A.) Projects—Gypsy’s Acre Adventurer—Jason—good looking—Australian? American? His meeting with old Mrs. Lee—the story—Accident Mile or Claire Holloway—teaches at a Girl’s School or College—her old friend Anne—Marie—Claire—cousin—Jason—or an au pair girl Sidonie—her brother or Hildegarde—point is Hildegarde and J—are in it together—contrived accident. H is a Valkyrie girl. Use Pot. Cyanide idea—capsule

The idea of a good-looking foreigner, Jason, is abandoned for Michael Rogers, a drifter from a working class background. I can only speculate that the 75-year-old Christie felt more comfortable narrating in the voice of a fellow-countryman than in that of a ‘foreign adventurer’. And as soon as she adopts a change of name from Hildegarde to Greta we have arrived at the lethal pairing at the heart of the novel. In fact, Greta is compared to a Valkyrie a few times in the course of Endless Night.

But some ideas were abandoned and never progressed further than the Notebooks:

Gypsy’s Acre—up for sale—auction—talk at pub where auction is held. Auctioneer a stranger to neighbourhood—hints round about—it goes for very little—auctioneer puzzled. Old man tells him You’m foreigner here—accidents—bad luck on it—Old Mrs. Lee

‘Whoever you’re acting for, you’ve done a bad turn to him—no credit to him—he’ll be dead within the year—(They have been paid by someone wanting to get it cheap)

There are a few problems with the minutiae of the plot of Endless Night, mainly concerning the characters Claudia Hardcastle and the gypsy, Mrs Lee. First, we are expected to believe that Claudia has visited The Folly in the grounds of Gypsy’s Acre, for reasons unspecified, and picked up a poisoned capsule carelessly dropped by Michael and Greta when they are doctoring Ellie’s capsules (how many did they make?); she takes the capsule and subsequently dies. At the same time Claudia manages to drop a highly identifiable cigarette lighter. Even for the most indulgent Christie fan, this is completely incredible. If Christie had retained her earlier idea of Ellie giving a capsule to a friend (see above) this would have made the situation credible.

Then, on the day of Ellie’s death Greta has planned to meet Claudia to spend the day shopping (Chapter 17). We later discover, almost by accident, that this never happened because relatives of Claudia arrived unexpectedly. In Janet Morgan’s 1984 biography she mentions that Collins asked Christie to increase the whodunit element by boosting the part played by one of Ellie’s trustees. This may account for the unlikely coincidence of the arrival of Cora on the day of Ellie’s death. But it also means that Greta’s whereabouts are unaccounted for at the time of the death, although this is not mentioned at any stage.

Also, when is Mrs Lee actually killed? And why does Michael draw attention to her disappearance? We know he has killed her (at the end of Chapter 23), so surely it is in his interest to keep the fact of her death quiet? In fact, when does he actually kill her? Four days after his arrival in New York he receives a letter from Major Phillpot informing him that Mrs Lee’s body has been found in the quarry and that she has been ‘dead some days’. If Phillpot’s letter arrived four days after he arrived, that would suggest that it was posted on the day Michael docked in America, which, in turn, suggests that he murdered Mrs Lee just before he left for America. So where was she between that and her disappearance (Chapter 21)?

What is the explanation of the stone with the note wrapped around it saying ‘It was a woman who killed your wife’ (Chapter 20)? The supposition is that this is another part of the plot (otherwise why mention it at all?) and yet it seems pointless, as it is never again mentioned. And if it is in fact genuine, does it mean that Greta is after all the woman in the red cloak mentioned by the rosy-faced woman in Chapter 18 and at the inquest in Chapter 19? We have been already told (Chapter 16) that she owns a red cloak.

The answer to most of these difficulties may lie with Collins’ insistence on an increase in the whodunit element. An earlier, and significantly different, typescript shows that all of these developments were added, in Christie’s own handwriting, at a later stage. In this previous draft Mrs Lee does not die but returns to Market Chadwell having spent some time with another band of gypsies elsewhere in the country; Ellie unwittingly gives Claudia, a fellow hay fever sufferer, a capsule (Christie’s original idea) from the poisoned batch before Greta and Michael have replaced them with innocent ones; and all references to the red cloak are also handwritten additions. Four paragraphs from ‘Four days after my arrival in New York’ to ‘It seemed like an impossible coincidence’ have been inserted, on a handwritten page, into Chapter 22. Also appearing as a handwritten insertion is the line ‘I want more than pushing an old woman over a quarry’ towards the end of Chapter 23. I have no doubt that all these amendments were made to accommodate an editor’s misguided idea that this novel should be a whodunit. Instead, they introduced loose ends into an already watertight plot. The Queen of Crime should have been left to her own devices—literally.