Clues to Christie (2 page)

While he waited for his first full-length case to follow
The Mysterious Affair at Styles,
Poirot solved a series of short investigations in
The Sketch
magazine throughout 1923 and much of 1924. In 1926, he appeared in what was to become his most famous (some might say infamous) case,
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
(1926). In many ways a typical detective story of the time—small village, wealthy landowner found dead in his study, a mysterious butler, a house full of suspects, an incompetent police investigation, all explained satisfactorily in the last chapter—this novel transformed the careers of Christie and Poirot beyond recognition. Considered by many to be the most brilliant detective novel ever written and decried by others as a shameless cheat,
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
has divided opinion ever since its first appearance in May 1926. Its stunning last-chapter revelation was a unique and daring masterstroke which shot Christie straight into the upper echelon of crime writing, where she remained for the rest of her life.

For the next fifty years, Poirot solved cases throughout England, in France in
The Murder on the Links
(1923), in Yugoslavia in
Murder on the Orient Express
(1934), in Iraq in
Murder in Mesopotamia
(1936), in Egypt in
Death on the Nile
(1937), and, in the course of
The Labors of Hercules
(1947), in Ireland, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria. The little Belgian is the most famous export of that country and, thanks to a brilliant television portrayal by David Suchet, is now firmly fixed in the public consciousness and affection for all time.

Miss Marple

Jane Marple made an inauspicious debut in the short story “The Tuesday Night Club,” published in December 1927. There, she is described as dressed completely in black and having “faded blue eyes, benignant and kindly” and she is knitting “something white and soft and fleecy.” Despite being overlooked by the armchair detectives gathered together in her house in St. Mary Mead to discuss unsolved mysteries, she is shown to be the most acute and observant of them all. Her unorthodox style of detection is based on her village parallels, small and seemingly insignificant events familiar to her from a lifetime of village living, which she adopts as a basis for comparison when faced with more sinister events.

Although her detective career is less extensive than Poirot, covering twelve novels and twenty short stories, Miss Marple’s status as the most famous female detective in literature is assured. There was a twelve-year gap, from 1930 to 1942, between her first and second book-length investigations,
The Murder at the Vicarage
and
The Body in the Library
. Her greatest case,
A Murder Is Announced
, was Agatha Christie’s fiftieth title and the occasion of a celebratory party at the Savoy Hotel in London in June 1950. Miss Marple travelled to the West Indies for her only foreign case,
A Caribbean Mystery
, in 1964, and to London to solve a murder
At Bertram’s Hotel
(1965).

Unlike Poirot, the last glimpse we have of the elderly sleuth is of her alive and well, sitting on the terrace of Torquay’s Imperial Hotel at the conclusion of
Sleeping Murder
, explaining, for the last time, the intricacies of murder.

Tommy and Tuppence

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are the only Christie characters to age gradually, as they did between their first appearance in 1922, in Christie’s second published novel, to their last adventure in 1973. Beginning as bright young things in the aftermath of World War I, they track down
The Secret Adversary
(1922) before marrying and opening a detective agency in the short story collection
Partners in Crime
(1929), in which they investigate crimes in the manner of famous detectives such as Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown. Their final investigation, “The Man Who Was No. 16,” is, in a nice example of self-parody, solved in the style of that famous Belgian sleuth, Monsieur Hercule Poirot!

By the time of the WWII thriller,
N or M?
(1941), Tommy and Tuppence are the parents of twins (and also adopt a baby at the end of that novel), and as
By the Pricking of My Thumbs
(1968) opens they are a middle-aged couple reminiscing about their adventurous youth and investigating a sinister retirement home. Finally, we meet them as a retired couple moving into a new house with a mysterious past in
Postern of Fate
(1973), the last novel Christie wrote.

Stand-alone titles

Although she achieved her greatest fame as the creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, some of Agatha Christie’s best books are to be found among her stand-alone titles. These included traditional whodunits, domestic and international thrillers, and a few unclassifiable items. Through her life she experimented with the crime novel and, as Ellery Queen once wrote of her, “the only thing you can expect from Agatha Christie is the unexpected.”

Without doubt her most famous title, and the bestselling crime novel of all time, is
And Then There Were None
(1939). Part detective story and part thriller, this novel first appeared in print in the
Saturday Evening Post
beginning at the end of May 1939. It received rapturous reviews on both sides of the Atlantic when it was published in book form at the end of that year. The much-copied plot concerns the fate of ten characters invited to an island off the coast of southern England, where, over the course of a weekend, they are all systematically killed in line with the macabre nursery rhyme that hangs in each of their bedrooms. The Christie twist is that the killer is one of the ten. It has been brought to the screen countless times, the best version being the famous 1945 Rene Clair film.

Years before the historical murder mystery became popular, Christie published
Death Comes as the End
(1945), a domestic murder mystery set in Egypt in 2000 B.C. This fascinating novel of mass murder in a family consumed with greed and jealousy, living on the banks of the Nile, was written at the suggestion of an archaeologist friend of her husband Max Mallowan. In 1949, she published
Crooked House
, very much a typical Christie—large family living in a rambling house with a poisoner at work—until the last chapter, which propounded such a shocking solution that her publishers asked her to change it; she refused and it remains one the Christie classics. Two of her strongest and most unexpected titles appeared in the last chapter of her writing life:
The Pale Horse
(1961) concerns a murder-to-order venture with suggestions of black magic, while
Endless Night
(1967), with its stunning surprise in the last chapter, is often considered her last great novel.

Thrillers, both international—
The Man in the Brown Suit
(1924),
They Came to Baghdad
(1951),
Destination Unknown
(1954),
Passenger to Frankfurt
(1970)—and domestic—
The Secret of Chimneys
(1925)
, The Seven Dials Mystery
(1929),
The Boomerang Clue
(1934)—appeared periodically throughout her writing life and Christie considered these a holiday from the clues-and-alibis plotting of her detective fiction. With an emphasis on physical rather than cerebral activity, these thrillers all show the Christie magic at work. Stolen jewels, missing state papers, unidentified spies, and criminal masterminds jostle for attention in plots involving organized anarchy and international terrorism. Almost all of these titles feature young women—Lady Eileen (Bundle) Brent, Lady Frances (Frankie) Derwent, Anne Beddingfeld, Victoria Jones—who are in the mold of Tuppence Beresford: brave, resourceful, enterprising, and incurably inquisitive.

Dotted throughout her classic period Christie also wrote, with enviable ease, non-Poirot and non-Marple whodunits.
The Sittaford Mystery
(1931) begins with a séance accurately foretelling a murder;
Murder Is Easy
(1939) is regular Christie territory—a country village with a suspiciously high number of unexplained deaths;
Sparkling Cyanide
(1945) features subtle characterization with the personal reminiscences of the suspects involved in a poisoning drama at a fashionable nightclub. One of her most intriguing titles is
Towards Zero
(1944), where we are introduced to a collection of characters months before the approaching zero hour of the inevitable murder.
Ordeal by Innocence
(1958) is both a deeply felt exploration of the consequences of a possible miscarriage of justice and a clever whodunit.

Christie also wrote a number of short stories that achieved fame in their own right, including “Witness for the Prosecution.” First published in 1925 under the title “Traitor Hands,” almost thirty years later it became not just Christie’s best stage play, but also one of the best courtroom dramas ever. “Philomel Cottage,” also a short story from the 1920s, became the stage play and film
Love from a Stranger
. And, of course, before its incarnation as a play,
The Mousetrap
had been a short story, “Three Blind Mice.”

Christie the Dramatist

Agatha Christie is still the only crime novelist to achieve equal fame as a crime dramatist. The first stage play based on her writing was
Alibi
, an adaptation, but not by the author herself, of
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
, which opened in London in 1928. That year she also adapted her 1925 novel,
The Secret of Chimneys
, as a three-act play but failed to have it staged. She then wrote an original script,
Black Coffee
(1930), in which Poirot is summoned to find a missing document vital to the country’s security, but finds himself investigating a murder at the home of Sir Claud Amory. A further adaptation of
Peril at End House
followed in 1940, but Christie was disappointed with adaptations of her stories by other hands. So she adapted her own novel
And Then There Were None
in 1943 and it had a successful run of almost a year in London’s West End, despite the destruction of its theatrical home during the height of the Blitz, and a transfer to another.

Spurred on by this success, she adapted
Appointment with Death
and
Murder on the Nile
in 1945 and 1946. Miss Marple made her stage debut in 1949 in
Murder at the Vicarage.
The 1950s was Christie’s golden age of theater. Beginning with
The Hollow
(1951)
,
and followed by
Witness for the Prosecution
(1953),
Spider’s Web
(1954)
, Towards Zero
(1956)
, Verdict
(1958)
,
and
The Unexpected Guest
(1958)
,
this impressive roster of dramas contributed to her unique theatrical success. To this day, she is the only female playwright to have had three plays running simultaneously in the West End.

In 1952, the most famous stage play in the world,
The Mousetrap
, began its inexorable advance to the status of national institution. Originally written as a radio play to celebrate the eightieth birthday of Queen Mary, it was subsequently adapted as a novella and, finally, as the stage play that is now older than most of the UK population. This theatrical landmark celebrates its sixtieth birthday in 2012.

In 1962, another experiment,
Rule of Three,
debuted on the London stage. Although not well received by the critics, it remains fascinating to fans as each of the three one-act plays, totally different in style and plot, display aspects of Christie not hitherto seen on the stage.
The Rats
is a claustrophobic will-they-get-away-with-it? play;
Afternoon at the Seaside
is a very funny sketch involving missing jewelry with a surprise revelation in the last moments; and
The Patient
is an ingenious whodunit with an artfully concealed central clue. As late as 1972, Christie’s love of the theater is evident in
Fiddlers Five
, or, as it later became,
Fiddlers Three
. Although it did not receive a West End production and, compared to her earlier theatrical hits, is, despite its many clever ideas, disappointing, it is clear that her love of playwriting remained with Christie until the end of her life.