The rest of her novels of the 1920s consist of thrillers, both domestic – The Secret Adversary (1922), The Secret of Chimneys (1925) and The Seven Dials Mystery (1929) – and international – The Man in the Brown Suit (1924). While none of these titles are first-rate Christie, they all exhibit some elements that would appear in later titles. The Secret Adversary, the first Tommy and Tuppence adventure, unmasks the least likely suspect while The Man in the Brown Suit is an early experiment with the famous Roger Ackroyd conjuring trick. The Seven Dials Mystery subverts reader expectation of the ‘secret society’ plot device and The Secret of Chimneys, a light-hearted mixture of missing jewels, international intrigue, incriminating letters, blackmail and murder in a high society setting, shows early experimentation with impersonation and false identity.
Throughout the 1920s Christie’s short story output was impressive. She published three such collections in the decade. The contents of Poirot Investigates (1924) first appeared in The Sketch, in a commissioned series of short stories, starting in March 1923 with ‘The Affair at the Victory Ball’. By the end of that year two dozen stories had appeared and 50 years later the remainder of these stories had their first UK book appearance in Poirot’s Early Cases. In 1953 Christie dedicated A Pocket Full of Rye to the editor of The Sketch, ‘Bruce Ingram, who liked and published my first short stories.’ In 1927, at a low point in Christie’s life, after the death of her mother and her own disappearance, The Big Four was published. This episodic Poirot novel, consisting of a series of connected short stories all of which had appeared in The Sketch during 1924, can also be considered a low point in the career of Hercule Poirot as he battles with a gang of international criminals intent on world domination. The last collection of the decade is the hugely entertaining Partners in Crime (1929). These Tommy and Tuppence adventures, most of which had appeared in The Sketch also during 1924, were pastiches of many of the crime writers of the time – ‘The Man in the Mist’ (G.K. Chesterton), ‘The Case of the Missing Lady’ (Conan Doyle), ‘The Crackler’ (Edgar Wallace) – and, while light-hearted in tone, contain many clever ideas.
Apart from her crime and detective stories, tales of the supernatural, romance and fantasy all appeared under her name in many of the multitude of magazines that filled the bookstalls. Many of the stories later published in the collections The Mysterious Mr Quin, The Hound of Death and The Listerdale Mystery were written and first published in the 1920s. And, of course, it was during the 1920s that Miss Marple made her first appearance, in the short story ‘The Tuesday Night Club’, published in The Royal Magazine in December 1927. With the exception of the final entry, ‘Death by Drowning’, the stories that appear in The Thirteen Problems were all written in the 1920s and appeared in two batches, the first six between December 1927 and May 1928, and the second between December 1929 and May 1930. In 1924 her first poetry collection The Road of Dreams was published. And it seems likely that her own stage adaptation of The Secret of Chimneys was begun in the late 1920s, as was the unpublished and unperformed script of the macabre short story ‘The Last Séance’.
The other important career decision taken in 1923 was to employ the services of a literary agent, Edmund Cork. The first task undertaken by Cork was to extricate Christie from a very one-sided contract with The Bodley Head Ltd and negotiate a more favourable arrangement with Collins, the publisher with which she was destined to remain for the rest of her life; as, indeed, she did with Edmund Cork.
Three of the best short stories Christie ever wrote were published during this decade. In January 1925 ‘Traitor Hands’, later to achieve immortality as the play, and subsequent film, Witness for the Prosecution, appeared in Flynn’s Weekly. The much-anthologised ‘Accident’ was published in the Daily Express in 1929; this was later adapted by other hands into the one-act play Tea for Three. And ‘Philomel Cottage’, which spawned five screen versions as Love from a Stranger, appeared in The Grand in November 1924.
Finally, the first stage and screen version of her work appeared during the 1920s. Alibi, adapted for the stage by Michael Morton from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, opened in May 1928 while the same year saw the opening of films of The Secret Adversary – as Die Abenteuer G.m.b.h. – and The Passing of Mr Quinn, based loosely on the short story ‘The Coming of Mr Quin’.
This hugely prolific decade shows Christie gaining an international reputation while experimenting with form and structure within, and outside, the detective genre. Although her first novel was very definitely a detective story, her output for the following nine years returned only three times to the form in which she was eventually to gain immortality.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
21 January 1921
Arthur Hastings goes to Styles Court, the home of his friend John Cavendish, to recuperate during the First World War. He senses tension in the household and this is confirmed when his hostess, John’s stepmother, is poisoned. Luckily, a Belgian refugee staying nearby is an old friend, a retired policeman called Hercule Poirot.
In her Autobiography Agatha Christie gives a detailed account of the genesis of The Mysterious Affair at Styles. By now, the main facts are well known: the immortal challenge – ‘I bet you can’t write a good detective story’ – from her sister Madge, the Belgian refugees from the First World War in Torquay who inspired Poirot’s nationality, Christie’s knowledge of poisons from her work in the local dispensary, her intermittent work on the book and its eventual completion, at the encouragement of her mother, during a two-week seclusion in the Moorland Hotel. This was not her first literary effort, nor was she the first member of her family with literary aspirations. Both her mother and sister Madge wrote, and Madge actually had a play, The Claimant, produced in the West End before Agatha did. Agatha had already written a ‘long dreary novel’ (her own words in a 1955 radio broadcast) and some short stories and sketches. While the story of the bet is realistic, it is clear that this alone would not be stimulus enough to plot, sketch and write a successful book. There was obviously an innate gift and a facility with the written word.
Although she began writing the novel in 1916 (The Mysterious Affair at Styles is actually set in 1917), it was not published for another four years. And its publication was to demand consistent determination on its author’s part as more than one publisher declined the manuscript. Eventually, in 1919, John Lane, co-founder of The Bodley Head Ltd, asked to meet her with a view to publication. But, even then, the struggle was far from over.
The contract, dated 1 January 1920, that John Lane offered her took advantage of Agatha Christie’s publishing naivety. She explains in her Autobiography that she was ‘in no frame of mind to study agreements or even think about them’. Her delight at the prospect of publication, combined with the conviction that she was not going to pursue a writing career, persuaded her to sign. Remarkably, the actual contract is for The Mysterious Affair of (rather than ‘at’) Styles. She was to get 10 per cent only after 2,000 copies were sold in the UK and she was contracted to produce five more titles. This clause was to lead to much correspondence over the following years.
Later,