Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making - Includes Two Unpublished Poirot Stories. John Curran
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‘A prominent person—such as a minister—(Aneurin Bevan type?)—on holiday? Difficulties as I don’t know about Ministers’…rueful while looking for a new idea in the mid-1940s
When she has decided on a plot she often muses about the intricacies and possibilities of a variation:
‘Does Jeremy have to be there then’…pondering on character movements for Spider’s Web
‘Contents of letter given? Or Not’…in the course of Cat among the Pigeons
‘How does she bring it about…What drug’…while planning A Caribbean Mystery
‘Yes—better if dentist is dead’…a decision reached during One, Two, Buckle my Shoe
‘Why? Why??? Why?????’…frustration during One, Two, Buckle my Shoe
‘He could be murderer—if there is a murder’…a possibility for Fiddlers Three
Like a true professional she is self-critical:
‘unlike twin idea—woman servant one of them—NO!!’…a decision during The Labours of Hercules
‘NB All v. unlikely’…as she approaches the end of Mrs McGinty’s Dead
‘All right—a little elaboration—more mistresses?’…not very happy with Cat among the Pigeons
She includes reminders to herself:
‘Look up datura poisoning…and re-read Cretan Bull’…as she writes A Caribbean Mystery
‘Find story about child and other child plays with him’…probably her short story ‘The Lamp’
‘Possible variant—(read a private eye book first before typing)’…a reminder during The Clocks
‘A good idea—needs working on’…for Nemesis
Things to line up’…during Dead Man’s Folly
And there are the odd flashes of humour:
‘Van D. pops off’…during A Caribbean Mystery
‘Pennyfather is conked’…a rather uncharitable description from At Bertram’s Hotel
‘Elephantine Suggestions’…from, obviously, Elephants Can Remember
‘Suspicion of (clever!) reader to be directed toward Nurse’…a typically astute observation from Curtain when the nurse is completely innocent (note the use of the exclamation mark after ‘clever’!)
From Notebook 35 and One, Two, Buckle my Shoe—the essence of detective fiction distilled into six words.
Did mother murder—
A. Husband
B. Lover
C. Rich uncle or guardian
D. Another woman (jealousy)
Who were the other people
During the planning of Mrs McGinty’s Dead (see also Chapter 7), the four murders in the past, around which the plot is built, provided Christie with an almost infinite number of possibilities and she worked her way methodically through most of them. More than almost any other novel, this scenario seemed to challenge her mental fertility as she considered every character living in Broadhinny, the scene of the novel, as a possible participant in the earlier murders. In this extract from Notebook 43 she tries various scenarios with the possible killer underlined (her underlining) in each case. As we know, it was idea 1B that she eventually settled on.
Which?
1 A. False—elderly Cranes—with daughter (girl—Evelyn)B. Real—Robin—son with mother son [Upward]
2 A. False Invalid mother (or not invalid) and sonB. Real—dull wife of snob A.P. (Carter) Dau[ghter]
3 A. False artistic woman with sonB. Real middle-aged wife—dull couple—or flashy Carters (daughter invalid)
4 A. False widow—soon to marry rich man
5 [A] False man with dogs—stepson—different name[B] Real—invalid mother and daughter—dau[ghter] does it [Wetherby]
And, later in the same Notebook, she considers which of her characters could fit the profiles of one of the earlier crimes, the Kane murder case:
Could be
Robin’s mother (E. Kane)
Robin (EK’s son)
Mrs Crane (EK)
Their daughter (EK’s dau)
Mrs Carter (EK’s dau)
Young William Crane (EK’s son)
Mrs Wildfell (EK’s dau)
In Notebook 39 Christie rattles off six (despite the heading!) plot ideas, covering within these brief sketches kidnapping, forgery, robbery, fraud, murder and extortion:
4 snappy ideas for short Stories
Kidnapping? [The Adventure of] Johnnie Waverley again—Platinum blonde—kidnaps herself?
Invisible Will? Will written on quite different document
Museum robbery—celebrated professor takes things and examines them?—or member of public does
Stamps—Fortune hidden in them—gets dealer to buy them for him
An occurrence at a public place—Savoy? Dance?
Debutantes tea? Mothers killed off in rapid succession?
The Missing Pekingese
The ‘snappy’ suggests that these were jotted down while she waited for the kettle to boil—as, indeed, they probably were. The accurate dating of this extract is debatable. The reference ‘missing Pekingese’ is to ‘The Nemean Lion’, collected in The Labours of Hercules but first published in 1939. This, taken in conjunction with the reference to the ‘Debutantes tea’, probably indicates a late 1930s date when Christie’s daughter, Rosalind, would have been a debutante. Only two of the ideas appear in print (‘Invisible Will’ in ‘Motive Vs Opportunity’ in The Thirteen Problems and ‘Stamps’ in ‘Strange Jest’ and Spiders Web), although not quite as they appear here.
In Notebook 47 Christie is in full flight planning a new short story, possibly a commission as she specifies the number of words. The following is СКАЧАТЬ