The opening of The A. B. C. Murders (note the reference to a single ‘Murder’), illustrating the use of crossing-out as an indication of work completed.
In Third Girl (1966) Norma Restarick comes to Poirot and tells him that she might have committed a murder. In Chapter 2, Mrs Ariadne Oliver, that well-known detective novelist, imagines some situations that could account for this possibility:
Mrs Oliver began to brighten as she set her ever prolific imagination to work. ‘She could have run over someone in her car and not stopped. She could have been assaulted by a man on a cliff and struggled with him and managed to push him over. She could have given someone else the wrong medicine by mistake. She could have gone to one of those purple pill parties and had a fight with someone. She could have come to and found she’d stabbed someone. She…might have been a nurse in the operating theatre and administered the wrong anaesthetic…’
In Chapter 8 of Dead Man’s Folly (1956) Mrs Oliver again lets her imagination roam when considering possible motives for the murder of schoolgirl Marlene Tucker:
‘She could have been murdered by someone who just likes murdering girls…Or she might have known some secrets about somebody’s love affairs, or she may have seen someone bury a body at night or she may have seen somebody who was concealing his identity—or she may have known some secret about where some treasure was buried during the war. Or the man in the launch may have thrown somebody into the river and she saw it from the window of the boathouse—or she may have even got hold of some very important message in secret code and not known what it was herself…’ It was clear that she could have gone on in this vein for some time although it seemed to the Inspector that she had already envisaged every possibility, likely or unlikely.
These extracts from stories, written almost 40 years apart, illustrate, via her characters, Christie’s greatest strength— her ability to weave seemingly endless variations around one idea. There can be little doubt that this is Agatha Christie herself speaking; Mrs Oliver is, after all, a very successful detective novelist. And as we can now see from the Notebooks, this is exactly what Christie did. Throughout her career her ideas were consistently drawn from the world with which her readers were familiar—teeth, dogs, stamps (as below), mirrors, telephones, medicines—and upon these foundations she built her ingenious constructions. She explored universal themes in some of her later books (guilt and innocence in Ordeal by Innocence, evil in The Pale Horse, international unrest in Cat among the Pigeons and Passenger to Frankfurt), but they were still firmly rooted in the everyday.
Although it is not possible to be absolutely sure, there is no reason to suppose that listings of ideas and their variations were written at different times; I have no doubt that she rattled off variations and possibilities as fast as she could write, which probably accounts for the handwriting. In many cases it is possible to show that the list is written with the same pen and in the same style of handwriting. The outline of One, Two, Buckle my Shoe (see also Chapter 4) provides a good example of this. She is considering possible motives to set the plot in motion.
Man marries secretly one of the twins
Or
Man was really already married [this was the option adopted]
Or
Barrister’s ‘sister’ who lives with him (really wife)
Or
Double murder—that is to say—A poisons B—B stabs A—but really owing to plan by C
Or
Blackmailing wife finds out—then she is found dead
Or
He really likes wife—goes off to start life again with her
Or
Dentists killed—1 London—1 County
A few pages later in the same Notebook, also in connection with One, Two, Buckle my Shoe, she tries further variations on the same theme, this time introducing ‘Sub Ideas’.
Pos. A. 1st wife still alive—
A. (a) knows all—co-operating with him (b) does not know—that he is secret service
Pos. B 1st wife dead—someone recognises him—‘I was a great friend of your wife, you know—’
In either case—crime is undertaken to suppress fact of 1st marriage and elaborate preparations undertaken
C. Single handed
D. Co-operation of wife as secretary
Sub Idea C
The ‘friends’ Miss B and Miss R—one goes to dentist
Or
Does wife go to a certain dentist?
Miss B makes app[ointment]—with dentist—Miss R keeps it Miss R’s teeth labelled under Miss B’s name
Also from Notebook 35, but this time in connection with Five Little Pigs, we find a few very basic questions and possibilities under consideration:
Murder Made Easy
Dotted throughout the Notebooks are dozens of phrases that show Agatha Christie the resourceful creator, Agatha Christie the critical professional, Agatha Christie the sly humorist at work. In many cases she ‘thought’ directly on to the page and there are many instances where she addresses herself in this way.
Sometimes it is idle speculation as she toys with various ideas before settling on just one:
‘How about this’…as she works out the timetable of ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’
‘A good idea would be’…this, tantalisingly, is on an otherwise blank page
‘or—a little better’…firming up the motive in Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
‘How about girl gets job’…from early notes for A Caribbean Mystery
‘Who? Why? When? How? Where? Which?’…the essence of a detective story from One, Two, Buckle my Shoe
‘Which way do we turn?’…in the middle of Third Girl
‘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