Contents
Copyright
Preface
1 Appearance and Disappearance
2 The Vintage Years
3 War and Peace
4 ‘The Mousetrap’ and After
5 Towards the Last Cases
Plate Section
Bibliography
Notes
Illustration Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
‘Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?’ was the title of an article by the American critic and novelist Edmund Wilson,1 who had no taste for crime fiction. It was a silly question, for millions cared.
W. H. Auden began an essay, ‘The Guilty Vicarage’,2 with the words ‘For me, as for many others, the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol’, and went on to confess that ‘if I have any work to do, I must be careful not to get hold of a detective story for, once I begin one, I cannot work or sleep till I have finished it.’
The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie is a book for the likes of W. H. Auden, rather than for the likes of Edmund Wilson. It examines not only the crime novels but also everything else that Agatha Christie published, including the non-fiction, the stories for children, the poetry, the plays (both those written by her and those adapted from her novels by other hands), the films based on her works, and the six novels she produced under the pseudonym of Mary Westmacott.
My qualifications for writing this book are slender: (i) I began reading Agatha Christie surreptitiously during a Latin lesson at school in 1943, and I have stopped, temporarily, only because I have read everything she wrote and, blessed with a highly selective memory, have actually read several of the murder mysteries more than once over the years; (ii) I played Dr Carelli in Agatha Christie’s Black Coffee during a summer season of repertory in Tunbridge Wells in 1955 (‘Nearer the Latin temperament was Charles Osborne as the slick Dr Carelli,’ said the local newspaper critic, after savaging the leading lady); (iii) I once met Dame Agatha at a party given by her publishers to celebrate the publication of Passenger to Frankfurt in 1970. Suddenly and uncharacteristically nervous at finding myself momentarily alone with the eighty-year-old author whom I had admired for so many years, I found myself offering her an engagement to take part in an Arts Council Writers’ Tour, and address audiences in the provinces. ‘Oh, I’m afraid I couldn’t do that,’ Dame Agatha replied immediately. ‘I wouldn’t be any good at it, and in any case, you see, the reason I began to write more than sixty years ago was in order to avoid having to talk to people.’
Let me assure potential readers of this book that they may proceed in perfect safety. Nowhere in these pages do I reveal the identity of any of Agatha Christie’s murderers.
Unless otherwise indicated, dates given after the titles of books are those of first publication. In the majority of cases only a few weeks separate American and British publication dates. Where a title was not published in both countries, this is made clear.
My thanks for help of various kinds are due to the following individuals and institutions: Jonathan Barker, Jacques Barzun, Agatha Christie Ltd, Allan Davis, Sebastian Faulks, Joseph Hansen, Jennifer Insull, Mathew Prichard, Sir Peter Saunders, Brian Stone, Julian Symons, Kenneth Thomson, John Wells, Philip Ziegler; Arts Council Poetry Library, Brighton Area Library, British Library, British Theatre Institute Library, William Collins Sons & Co., Crime Writers’ Association, Daily Telegraph, Library of Congress, London Library. I am especially grateful to my editor, Elizabeth Blair.
C.O.
1 Appearance and Disappearance
The Mysterious Affair at Styles POIROT (1920)
It was while she was married to Archie Christie that Agatha Christie, neé Miller, wrote and published her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. That marriage lasted for less than fourteen years, ending in divorce at about the time of publication of her ninth book, The Mystery of the Blue Train, but her career as a writer of crime fiction continued for a further half-century and a further eighty-five titles (excluding the plays). Having become known to a vast reading public as Agatha Christie, the author continued to use that name for professional purposes throughout the rest of her life, although privately she became Mrs Max Mallowan soon after her divorce from Christie.
Agatha Miller was born in the elegant, sedate seaside resort of Torquay, Devonshire, on the south coast of England, on 15 September 1890, at Ashfield, the home of her parents, Frederick and Clarissa Miller. Frederick Alvah Miller was a well-to-do young American who lived as much in England, where he had relatives, as in America, on an income derived from the family business. After he married Clarissa Margaret Beochmer (his stepmother’s niece) he and his wife planned to live in America. However, they first spent some time in Torquay, at the height of the winter season, and Mr Miller, who loved the sea, became enchanted with the town, its attractive bay and the dramatic south Devon coast. The Millers’ first child, Marjorie (Madge) was born in Torquay, shortly after which the family left for America, where they expected to make their permanent home. It was while they were staying with Frederick Miller’s grandparents in New England that their second child, Louis (Monty), was born.
The Millers returned to England for a visit, but Mr Miller was almost immediately recalled to New York by business concerns, and therefore suggested to his wife that she should take the children and rent a furnished house in Torquay until his return. What Clara Miller did, instead, was to buy a house in Torquay from a Quaker family called Brown. Extremely placid by temperament, Mr Miller, though surprised, did not remonstrate. The house could, after all, be sold again in a year’s time. The Millers and their two children moved into the house, Ashfield, and Mr Miller found life in Torquay so agreeable that in due course he decided that they may as well settle there. Ashfield, a large and comfortable villa with green lawns, a garden of about two acres, and great beech trees, made a splendid home for Mrs Miller and the children even though it was not in the most fashionable part of Torquay but in Barton Road, in the older, upper-middleclass district of Tor Mohun.
When a third child was born to the Millers, a good eight years after the second, she was christened Agatha May Clarissa. The second and third were family names, but ‘Agatha’ appears to have been suggested by a friend of Mrs Miller on the way to the christening. A chubby redhead, Agatha turned out to be a quiet, imaginative child who played a great deal on her own or with her elderly nannie, ‘Nursy’, since her brother and sister were away at school for much of the time and were, in any case, so much older than she. Agatha did not go to school but taught herself to read, and learned something of elementary mathematics from her father. Her formal education did not begin until, at the age of sixteen, she was sent to a finishing school in Paris. Her father had died when she was eleven, and the family income had dwindled. Mrs Miller considered selling Ashfield