Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making - Includes Two Unpublished Poirot Stories. John Curran

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       Two pages of random word puzzles, probably the rough work for a crossword.

       is stolen papers at an informal weekend-party of the Cabinet, and the other’s a murder in Borneo in a rubber planter’s bungalow.’

       ‘But the essential point on which the story turns is the same,’ said Poirot. ‘One of your neatest tricks.’

      So it is with Christie. She reused plot devices throughout her career; and she recycled short stories into novellas and novels—she often speculates in the Notebooks about the expansion or adaptation of an earlier title. The Notebooks demonstrate how, even if she discarded an idea for now, she left everything there to be looked at again at a later stage. And when she did that, as she wrote in her Autobiography, ‘What it’s all about I can’t remember now; but it often stimulates me.’ So she used the Notebooks as an aide-mémoire as well as a sounding board.

      The first example dates from the mid-1950s and relates to the short stories ‘Third Floor Flat’ and ‘The Adventure of the Baghdad Chest’; it is surrounded by notes for ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’ and Four-Fifty from Paddington. The second example, concerning ‘The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding’, is from early 1960 and the last one, concerning ‘The Shadow on the Glass’, probably from 1950:

      Development of stories

      3rd Floor Flat—murder committed earlier—return to get post and also footprints etc. accounted for—service lift idea? Wrong floor

      Baghdad Chest or a screen?

      Idea? A persuades B hide B

      Chest or screen as Mrs B—having affair with C—C gives party—B and A drop in—B hides A—kills him—and goes out again

      Extended version of Xmas Pudding—Points in it of importance A Ruby (belonging to Indian Prince—or a ruler just married?) in pudding

      A book or a play from The Shadow on the Pane idea? (Mr Q)

       The ABC of Murder

      One system of creation that Christie used during her most prolific period was the listing of a series of scenes, sketching what she wanted each to include and allocating to each individual scene a number or a letter; this neat idea, in the days before computers with a ‘cut and paste’ facility, may have been inspired by her play-writing experience. She would subsequently reorder those letters to suit the purposes of the plot. In keeping with her creative and chaotic process, this plan was not always followed and even when she began with it, she would sometimes abandon it later for a more linear approach (see Crooked House below). And sometimes the pattern in the finished book would not exactly follow the sequence she had originally mapped out, perhaps due to subsequent editing.

      The following, from Notebook 32, is a perfect example of this method in practice. It is part of the plotting of Towards Zero (see also Chapter 10).

      E. Thomas and Audrey what’s wrong? She can’t tell him. He stresses I know, my dear—I know—But you must begin to live again. Something about ‘died’ a death—(meaning Adrian—somebody like N[evile] ought to be dead) F. Mary and Audrey—suggestion of thwarted female—‘Servants even are nervous’ G. Coat buttons incident H. Moonlight beauty of Audrey

      The following are examples of Christie’s reworked ideas, many of which are discussed elsewhere in this book. Some elaborations are obvious:

      ‘The Case of the Caretaker’/Endless Night

      ‘The Mystery of the Plymouth Express’/The Mystery of the Blue Train

      ‘The Market Basing Mystery’/‘Murder in the Mews’

      ‘The Submarine Plans’/‘The Incredible Theft’

      ‘The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest’/‘The Mystery of the Spanish Chest’

      ‘Christmas Adventure’/‘The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding’

      ‘The СКАЧАТЬ