Agatha Christie - Agatha Christie’s Complete Secret Notebooks

Young wife recognised by someone who knows she is married already – blackmail?

I can adapt one of the treasure hunts I’ve done for Mathew and work in the Boathouse somehow … and invent Mrs Oliver’s hunt … I could use the Cluedo idea of weapons and suspects … but with a real body instead of a pretend one …

Mrs Oliver’s plan

The Weapons

Revolver – Knife – Clothes Line

Who will I murder? The foreign student … no, she has to be part of the plan … someone very unexpected then … how about the lord of the manor? … no, too clichéd … needs to have impact … what about a stranger? … but who … and that brings a lot of problems … I’ll leave that for next year maybe … How about a child? … needs to be handled carefully but I could make it a not-very-nice child … perhaps the pretend body, could be one of the scouts, turns out to be really dead … or, better again, a girl guide … she could be nosy and have seen something she shouldn’t … Don’t think I’ve had a child victim before …

Points to be decided – Who first chosen for victim?

(?a) ‘Body’ to be Boy Scout in boat house – key of which has to be found by ‘clues’

She gazes abstractedly into the distance, blind to the panoramic view of the river and the wooded hillside opposite. She is Poirot, taking afternoon tea in the drawing room, carefully exiting through the French windows and wandering down through the garden. She is Hattie, intent on preserving her position and money at all costs. She is Mrs Oliver, distractedly plotting, discarding, amending, changing …

Next bits – P at house – wandering up to Folly – Finds?

Hattie goes in as herself – she changes her clothes and emerges (from boathouse? Folly? fortune teller’s tent?) as student from Hostel

Now, I have to provide a few family members … how about an elderly mother … she could live in the Gate Lodge. If I make her mysterious, readers will think she is ‘it’ … little old ladies are always good as suspects. Could she know something from years earlier? … perhaps she knew Hattie from somewhere … or thinks she does … or make Poirot think she does, which is almost as good … Let’s see …

Mrs Folliat? suspicious character – really covering up for something she saw. Or an old crime – a wife who ‘ran away’

She stops writing and listens as a voice approaches the Battery calling ‘Nima, Nima.’

‘Here, Mathew,’ she calls and a tousled 11-year-old runs down the steps.

‘I found the treasure, I found the treasure,’ he chants excitedly, clutching a half-crown.

‘Well done. I hope it wasn’t too difficult?’

‘Not really. The clue in the tennis court took me a while but then I spotted the ball at the base of the net.’

‘I thought that one would puzzle you,’ she smiles.

She closes the notebook and puts it away in her bag. Hercule Poirot’s questioning of Mrs Folliat and the identity of a possible second victim will have to wait.

‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Let’s see if there is anything nice to eat in the house.’

Agatha Christie, Queen of Crime, is finished for the day and Agatha Christie, grandmother, climbs the steps from the Battery in search of ice-cream for her grandson.

And the Christie for Christmas 1956 was Dead Man’s Folly .

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