Agatha Christie's True Crime Inspirations (12 page)

I do not mind death as long it is reasonably peaceful and satisfying death.

Lord Mountbatten (BBC interview, 1979)

In 1974, Agatha Christie made her final public appearance at the London premiere of
Murder on the Orient Express
, attended by Queen Elizabeth, one of many members of the royal family said to be avid readers of Christie. The author was escorted to the glittering cinematic event by Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900-1979). The revered royal figure, who was the great-grandson of Queen Victoria and the great uncle of the present heir to the throne, the Prince of Wales, had acted as an emissary on behalf of his son-in-law, film producer Lord John Brabourne (1924-2005), and gently persuaded the reluctant author to give her consent to the project. It was well known that Agatha Christie had little faith in the film industry’s ability to do her stories justice and she had previously only enjoyed Billy Wilder’s adaptation of
Witness for the Prosecution
(1957). The decision to give the go-ahead to Lord Brabourne and his co-producer Richard Goodwin heralded a whole new era of lavish Agatha Christie films brought to the screen. The first in the series, starring Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, was nominated for six Oscars, and in a star-studded cast Ingrid Bergman received the award for Best Supporting Actress.

Following the death of Poirot’s creator in 1976, Peter Ustinov took over the role of the detective for a further three films:
Death on the Nile
(1978),
Evil Under the Sun
(1981) and
Appointment with Death
(1987). During this period, violent deaths were suffered by Mountbatten and members of the Brabourne family who were victims of a despicable act of terrorism committed in Ireland by the Provisional IRA.

In August 1979, the Mountbatten-Brabourne family took their annual one-month holiday at a castle in the fishing village of Mullaghmore, Donegal. On Monday 27 August, the party boarded the
Shadow V
for a relaxing cruise along the coast, unaware that Provo Thomas McMahon had sneaked aboard the boat and planted a remote-controlled bomb. The terrorist then stationed himself on a cliff overlooking the harbour and waited for his chance to detonate the charge and cause carnage. Shortly before noon the craft set off to inspect lobster pots that Lord Mountbatten had placed earlier. Suddenly, a terrific explosion blew the boat into smithereens and all seven occupants were hurled into the sea. Local boatmen rushed to the spot and fished out Lord Mountbatten, whose legs had been almost torn off by the blast, and he died within minutes. Doctors worked throughout the night in a vain attempt to save the life of Lord Brabourne’s mother, Dowager Lady Brabourne, while her grandson Nicholas and an Ulster boat boy Paul Maxwell also died, having been found floating face down in the bloodstained water. The only survivors to recover from their serious injuries were Lord Brabourne, his wife Patricia, and their son, Nicholas’s identical twin brother, Timothy.

The IRA triumphantly issued a sickening statement claiming credit for the outrage: ‘The IRA claim responsibility for the execution of Lord Mountbatten. This operation is one of the discriminate ways we can bring to the attention of the English people the continuing occupation of our country’. Three hours after the murder, Thomas McMahon was arrested at a roadblock. Evidence of nitro-glycerine and flakes of paint from
Shadow V
were found on the killer’s clothing, and he was convicted of the assassination and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in 1998 as part of the Ulster agreement that restored peace to the province.

In his entry for
Who’s Who
, Lord Mounbatten conceded, ‘I am the most conceited man I know’. Another proud boast of his concerned his involvement in coming up with the key element for the ending used in Agatha Christie’s masterpiece,
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
(1926), an idea that had also been mooted by her brother-in-law James Watts. In response to Lord Mountbatten’s advice, Agatha replied that ‘the idea was most ingenious’ and, in response to his request many years later, she sent a copy of the book with a handwritten inscription: ‘To Lord Mountbatten in grateful remembrance of a letter he wrote to me forty-five years ago which contained the suggestion which I subsequently used in a book called
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
’. Her solution to the mystery is the most controversial of the brilliant surprise endings for which she became famous and it instantly elevated her to the front rank of writers. Although the book was Agatha Christie’s first big seller, some readers and reviewers felt aggrieved that her choice of the narrator as the murderer had broken the unwritten rules of crime fiction. These ‘rules’ were addressed two years later when the Detection Club was formed by writers to maintain high standards about the use of evidence. Agatha Christie became a member of the association whose authority came too late to prevent the clever and perfectly acceptable deception, for whom the author generously acknowledged the role of her co-conspirator Lord Mountbatten: ‘Thank you for presenting me with a first-class idea – no one else ever has’.

I didn’t think I would end my life playing endless Poirots… it’s a character performance because he seems to get his kicks in life by lip reading at a range of two hundred yards.

Sir Peter Ustinov (
Time
, 1999)

Once dubbed ‘the son of Orson Welles’ – another
enfant terrible
blessed with genius who enjoyed huge success but never realised his true potential – Sir Peter Ustinov (1921-2004) had an early ambition to become a great writer and the young author was compared favourably with Chekhov, Noel Coward, J.B. Priestley and George Bernard Shaw. However, due to the splendid opportunities that continually presented themselves to utilise his great diversity of talents, he never produced the literary masterpiece expected of him. The consolations were considerable in an extraordinary, multi-faceted career in the world of popular entertainment as a novelist, playwright, scriptwriter, producer, director and superb actor. He garnered two Oscars for supporting roles in the films
Spartacus
(1960) and
Topkapi
(1964), although his greatest acting fame was earned for his portrayal of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.

In all, Ustinov made six appearances as the fictional sleuth, with acclaimed performances in three star-studded films,
Death on the Nile
(1978),
Evil Under the Sun
(1981) and
Appointment with Death
(1987), plus three full-length television dramas,
Thirteen at Dinner
(1985),
Dead Man’s Folly
(1986) and
Murder in Three Acts
(1986). During this memorable phase of his career, the actor also found time to make award-winning television documentaries. While on one such assignment, he was present at an assassination that shook the world.

While producing a television series,
Peter Ustinov’s People
, in 1984, the presenter journeyed to Delhi to conduct an interview with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. On the morning of 31 October, he was waiting in the garden to greet the premier as she walked the short distance from her official residence when the leader was attacked and died in a hail of bullets. The horrified Ustinov and his film crew heard the shooting as one of the victim’s most trusted security guards, Beant Singh, drew a revolver and fired three shots at point blank range into the body of Mrs Gandhi. As she slumped to the ground another guard, Satwant Singh, pulled an automatic weapon from his shoulder and pumped its entire contents of thirty bullets into the prostrate leader. At least seven bullets penetrated the abdomen, three her chest, and one her heart. The two murderers then calmly dropped their weapons and surrendered, but were shot dead as they were taken into custody after allegedly attempting to escape. Only the day before, Indira Gandhi had evidently experienced a premonition of her tragic fate. Members of her party were startled at emotional remarks she made whilst addressing a mammoth public gathering: ‘I am not interested in a long life. I am not afraid of these things. I don’t mind if my life goes in the service of this nation. If I die today, every drop of my blood will invigorate the nation’.

In Ustinov’s second Christie film,
Evil Under the Sun
, it is revealed that actress Arlena Stuart was acquitted of poisoning her first husband with arsenic. To develop this aspect of the plot, Agatha Christie drew on the celebrated case of American Florence Maybrick. She was charged with murder when it was discovered that she had recently purchased a large quantity of arsenic-treated flypapers and written a compromising letter to her lover saying that her husband ‘is sick unto death’.

Cotton merchant James Maybrick married seventeen-year-old Southern belle Florence Chandler in 1881. After living in the USA for three years, the Maybricks returned to England and took up residence at Battlecrease House in Liverpool. The couple had two children before matrimonial difficulties surfaced. It came as a surprise to Florence to discover that her spouse was still seeing and maintaining a long-term lover, who had also borne him children. The cheated woman promptly gained revenge by finding comfort in the arms of her husband’s friend and business associate Alfred Brierley. In March 1889, the hypocritical Maybrick exploded with fury when he found out about his wife’s affair and during a heated exchange gave her a black eye, then drew up a new will excluding her as a beneficiary, before a sudden illness brought about his death on 11 May.

Although the evidence against Florence Maybrick seemed damning, especially the flypapers which she claimed were boiled to make an arsenical cosmetic preparation, the defence contended that the deceased had been in the habit of self-administering arsenic as an aphrodisiac, which accounted for the traces of poison found in his system. This was confirmed by a postmortem that found arsenic in the liver, kidney and intestines, though none in the heart or blood, which would have indicated that the dead man consumed a lethal dose of poison. However, the court was totally unsympathetic with a woman who admitted adultery and she was sentenced to death. Upon appeal the Home Secretary and the Lord Chancellor concluded ‘that the evidence clearly establishes that Mrs Maybrick administered poison to her husband with intent to murder; but that there is ground for reasonable doubt whether the arsenic so administered was in fact the cause of death’. Acting on their recommendation, Queen Victoria reluctantly exercised the royal prerogative for the death penalty to be commuted to life imprisonment, commenting through her secretary ‘the only regret she feels is that so wicked a woman should escape by a mere legal quibble’.

‘Petronella will be there’ is an affectionate glance at Vanessa Redgrave… the most prominent member of the Socialist Workers Party at demos.

Christie biographer Martin Fido on a quote from
Passenger to Frankfurt

Agatha Christie’s personal account of her life was published a year after her death in
An Autobiography
(1977). Despite writing frankly about the breakdown of her first marriage, she chose not to discuss the mystery of her subsequent eleven-day disappearance in December 1926. The decision not to mention this aspect of her past only increased speculation and led to a stream of published investigations and theories to rival the myths surrounding Jack the Ripper and the Loch Ness Monster.

The first book to emerge about the case of the missing author was ‘an imaginary solution to an authentic mystery’ by Kathleen Tynan in
Agatha: A Mystery Novel
(1978). Several months before the work was published, it was announced that it was to be adapted into a film produced by David Puttnam. The news brought an indignant response from Agatha’s daughter, Rosalind, who wrote a letter to
The Times
complaining that the family had not been consulted about the forthcoming ‘fairytale’:

It is, however, the idea of the positive identification of my parents – both in the proposed title of the film Agatha, and also presumably in the names of characters in an admitted work of fiction – that I find particularly objectionable and morally beneath contempt.

Kathleen Tynan dedicated the book to her husband, controversial theatre critic Kenneth Tynan. The couple had themselves been involved in a divorce scandal when Kathleen abandoned her marriage to set up home with Tynan, then became his second wife when she was six months pregnant. In 1967, the couple were married before a New York Justice of the Peace. During the ceremony, star guest Marlene Dietrich, who ten years earlier had played the role of Christine Vole in the acclaimed film production of the Agatha Christie play
Witness for the Prosecution
, attempted to discreetly back across the office in order to close the doors that had been left ajar, causing the judge to briefly interrupt the marriage vows by issuing a warning: ‘And do you, Kenneth, take Kathleen for your lawful wedded – I wouldn’t stand with your ass to an open door in this office lady – wife to have and to hold?’