Agatha Christie: Agatha Christie’s Complete Secret Notebooks

From Notebook 4 a tantalising glimpse of a project, never realised, from the 1960s.

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Fully revised and expanded edition published 2016

First published in Great Britain in two volumes by HarperCollins Publishers as Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks and Murder in the Making 2009, 2011

Copyright © John Curran 2009, 2011, 2016

Agatha Christie Notebooks, The Man Who Knew , The Incident of the Dog’s Ball , The Case of the Caretaker’s Wife and The Capture of Cerberus copyright © Christie Archive Trust 2009, 2011

Quotations copyright © Agatha Christie Limited 2009, 2011

Agatha Christie®, Poirot®, Marple® and the Agatha Christie Signature are registered trade marks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere.

All rights reserved

www.agathachristie.com

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2016

Cover design by Henry Steadman

Photograph of Agatha Christie © Popperfoto/Getty Images

John Curran asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008129620

Ebook Edition © October 2016 ISBN: 9780008129644

Version: 2017-04-11

For

Joseph, Conor,

Francis, Oisin and Lorcan

And for

Mathew, Lucy and Mahler,

without whom …

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction

Preface: Shadows in Sunlight

1. The Beginning of a Career

2. The Evidence of the Notebooks

3. Agatha Christie at Work

4. Rule of Three

5. Crime Writers in the Notebooks

Part I: The First Decade

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Man in the Brown Suit

The Secret of Chimneys/Chimneys

The Mystery of the Blue Train

My Favourite Stories and ‘The Man Who Knew’

Part II: The Second Decade

‘The Bird with the Broken Wing’

‘Manx Gold’

The Murder at the Vicarage

The Sittaford Mystery

‘The Mystery of the Baghdad/Spanish Chest’

Peril at End House

‘The Second Gong’

‘Death on the Nile’

Lord Edgware Dies

Three Act Tragedy

Death in the Clouds

‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’

TheABC Murders

‘Problem at Sea’

‘Triangle at Rhodes’

‘The Regatta Mystery’

Murder in Mesopotamia

‘Murder in the Mews’

Dumb Witness

‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’

Death on the Nile

‘The Dream’

Appointment with Death

‘How I Created Hercule Poirot’

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

And Then There Were None

Part III: The Third Decade

Sad Cypress

One,Two, Buckle my Shoe

‘Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds’

Evil under the Sun

N or M?

‘The Case of the Caretaker’s Wife’

The Body in the Library

Five Little Pigs

The Moving Finger

Towards Zero

‘Strange Jest’

Death Comes as the End

Sparkling Cyanide

The Hollow

Three Blind Mice/The Mousetrap

The Labours of Hercules

‘The Capture of Cerberus’

Butter in a Lordly Dish

Taken at the Flood

Crooked House

Part IV: The Fourth Decade

A Murder is Announced

They Came to Baghdad

Mrs McGinty’s Dead

They Do It With Mirrors

After the Funeral

A Pocket Full of Rye

Personal Call

Destination Unknown

Spider’s Web

Hickory Dickory Dock

Dead Man’s Folly

‘Greenshaw’s Folly’

4.50 from Paddington

The Unexpected Guest

Ordeal by Innocence

Cat among the Pigeons

Part V: The Fifth Decade

The Pale Horse

The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

Rule of Three

The Clocks

A Caribbean Mystery

At Bertram’s Hotel

Third Girl

Endless Night

By the Pricking of my Thumbs

Hallowe’en Party

Part VI: The Sixth Decade

Passenger to Frankfurt

Nemesis

Fiddler’s Three

Elephants Can Remember

Akhnaton

Postern of Fate

Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

Sleeping Murder

Postscript: Unused Ideas

Appendix I: Chronology of Titles

Appendix II: Alphabetical List of Titles

Endnotes

Index of Titles

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

When John Curran’s book Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks was published in 2009, the reading public was given something very rare: perhaps the most complete document for any author of the notes and sketches of their novels. Reading the book was like studying the preliminary sketches of any great artist, and in doing so we automatically found ourselves searching for clues. It gave us an insight into the workings of Agatha Christie’s mind – plus the gift of two new unpublished Poirot stories!

John Curran not only gives us the facts of what is written in Mrs Christie’s notebooks, but he uses conjecture firmly based upon these facts to show us how her remarkable novels came to be written. He even manages to get into her mind and into her psychology. He studies her life and her relationships (both personal and professional), and places these facts together with what is in her ‘secret’ notebooks to inform us how she wrote and how her writings were influenced by her daily life and the current affairs of the time.

Poirot is often heard to exclaim to Hastings, ‘ The facts, Hastings … the facts! ’ These for Poirot are the most important matters to ‘arrange’. And now John Curran in his book becomes himself the veritable Hercule – well … almost!