the end of her life, Agatha Christie gives an account of the genesis of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, her first published novel written some fifty years earlier. It had its origins in a challenge from her sister Madge: ‘I bet you can’t write a good detective story.’ At the time Agatha was working in the dispensary of the local hospital and had a professional knowledge of poisons. This, coupled with the fact that Belgian refugees fleeing the First World War were arriving in her home town of Torquay on the south coast of England, provided Agatha with both her murder method and her detective’s background.
This was not her first literary effort, nor was she the first member of her family with literary aspirations. Both her mother Clara and sister Madge wrote, and Agatha had already written a ‘long dreary novel’ (her own words in a 1955 radio broadcast) and some short stories and sketches. Though the stimulus to write a detective story probably was the bet with her sister, there was obviously an innate talent within Agatha to plot and write such a successful book.
Although she began writing The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1916 (the novel is set in 1917), and eventually completed it at the encouragement of her mother during a two-week seclusion in the Moorland Hotel, it was not published for another four years. Its publication was to demand consistent determination on its author’s part as more than one publisher declined the manuscript. Finally in 1919 John Lane, co-founder of The Bodley Head Ltd, asked to meet her in London with a view to publication. But even then, the struggle was far from over.
The contract that John Lane offered her for the mistakenly named The Mysterious Affair ‘of’ Styles, dated 1 January 1920, 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 a six-book contract. She was to get a royalty of 10 per cent only after 2,000 copies were sold in the UK, and she was obliged to produce five more titles in a clause that was to lead to much correspondence over the following years.
The readers’ reports on the Styles manuscript were promising, despite some misgivings. One gets right to the commercial considerations: ‘Despite its manifest shortcomings, Lane could very likely sell the novel … There is a certain freshness about it.’ A second report is more enthusiastic: ‘It is altogether rather well told and well written.’ And another speculates on her potential future, ‘if she goes on writing detective stories and she evidently has quite a talent for them.’
The readers were much taken with the character of Hercule Poirot—‘the exuberant personality of M. Poirot who is a very welcome variation on the “detective” of romance’; ‘a jolly little man in the person of has-been famous Belgian detective’. Although Poirot might have taken issue with the use of the description ‘has-been’, it was clear that his presence was a factor in the manuscript’s acceptance. In a report dated 7 October 1919, one very perceptive reader remarked, ‘but the account of the trial of John Cavendish makes me suspect the hand of a woman’. Because her name on the manuscript appears as A.M. Christie, another reader also refers to ‘Mr Christie’.
Despite these favourable readers’ reports, there were further delays, and after a serialization in The Weekly Times—the first time a ‘first’ novel had been chosen—beginning in February 1920, Christie wrote to Mr Willett at The Bodley Head in October wondering if her book was ‘ever coming out?’ pointing out that she had almost finished her second one. Soon thereafter she received the projected cover design, which she approved, and almost five years after she began it, Agatha Christie’s first book went on sale in the UK on 21 January 1921.
The reviews on publication were even more enthusiastic than the pre-publication reports. The Times called it ‘a brilliant story’ and the Sunday Times found it ‘very well contrived’. The Daily News considered it ‘a skilful tale and a talented first book’, while the Evening News thought it ‘a wonderful triumph’ and described Christie as ‘a distinguished addition to the list of writers in this genre’. ‘Well written, well proportioned and full of surprises’ was the verdict of The British Weekly.
As we have seen, one of the early readers’ reports mentioned the John Cavendish trial. In the original manuscript, Poirot gives his explanation of the crime from the witness box during the trial. In An Autobiography Christie describes John Lane’s verdict on her manuscript, including his opinion that this courtroom scene was not convincing and his request that she amend it. She agreed to a rewrite, and although the explanation of the crime itself remains the same, instead of giving it in the course of the judicial process, Poirot unveils the murderer in the drawing room in the kind of scene that was to be replicated in many later books.
Although the typescript of the original courtroom chapter is long gone, the significance of Agatha Christie’s handwritten notebooks to researchers had long been disregarded, almost certainly on account of the general illegibility of her handwriting. The 73 notebooks cover her entire literary life, beginning with her French homework from her time in Paris as a young woman to the last years of her life when she was planning a novel to follow Postern of Fate in 1973. They include notes for most of her novels, many of her short stories, and some of her stage plays. Also scattered throughout the 7,000 pages are ideas for stories she never wrote, some poetry, travel diaries, and rough notes for some of her Mary Westmacott novels. Of a more personal nature were jottings of ideas for Christmas presents, her reading lists, possible plants for the garden, doodles for crosswords, and household lists. The physical notebooks are unimpressive—small and large, with and without covers, cheap and expensive—and filled with, in many cases, indecipherable handwriting in pen, pencil and biro. But as an insight into the creative process of the bestselling writer of the last century, they are a priceless literary heritage.*
Incredibly—for it was written, in all probability, in 1916—the deleted scene, as well as two brief and somewhat enigmatic notes about the novel, have survived in the pages of Notebook 37. The chapter and notes for The Mysterious Affair at Styles were written in pencil, with much crossing out and many insertions. This is difficult enough to read, but an added complication lies in the fact that Christie often replaced the deleted words with alternatives, squeezed in, sometimes at an angle, above the original. And although the explanation of the crime is, in essence, the same as the published version, the published text was of limited help in deciphering them. The wording is often different and some names have changed. Having spent the best part of two years transcribing the notebooks, I can say that of all the entries this exercise was the most challenging, but the fact that it is Agatha Christie’s and Hercule Poirot’s first case made the extra effort worthwhile.
This new edition of The Mysterious Affair at Styles is the first to restore Agatha Christie’s original unpublished courtroom ending to her book, so that you, the reader, can judge whether or not John Lane was right in insisting on a rewrite. The deleted version of Chapter 12, ‘The Last Link’, is printed at the back of the book, and can be read as an alternative to the published Chapter 12. Because the original chapter has been reconstructed from the unedited draft in Notebook 37, I have added conventional punctuation, made some minor edits for the sake of consistency, and omitted a few illegible words to ensure it is fully readable. (A more detailed presentation of the chapter, complete with annotations and footnotes, can be found in my book Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making.)
Although Poirot’s dramatic evidence and explanation is essentially the same in both the courtroom and the drawing room versions of the chapter, the unlikelihood of a detective being allowed to give court evidence in the manner of a witness is self-evident. Had John Lane but known it, in demanding the alteration to the denouement of the novel he unwittingly paved the way for a half century of drawing room elucidations stage-managed by Poirot. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Peril at End House, Three Act Tragedy, Death in the Clouds, The ABC Murders, Dumb Witness, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, Five Little Pigs and
