Oliver speaks we are listening to Agatha Christie.
In Chapter 2 of Dead Man’s Folly Mrs Oliver shrugs off her ingenuity:
‘It’s never difficult to think of things,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘The trouble is that you think of too many, and then it all becomes too complicated, so you have to relinquish some of them and that is rather agony.’
And again, later in Chapter 17 she says:
‘I mean, what can you say about how you write your books? What I mean is, first you’ve got to think of something, and then when you’ve thought of it you’ve got to force yourself to sit down and write it. That’s all.’
It was as simple as that and, for half a century, exactly what her creator did.
The process of production was, as we have seen, random and haphazard. And yet, this seeming randomness was transformed into an annual bestseller; and, for many years, into more than one bestseller. For more than half a century she delivered the latest ‘Christie for Christmas’ to her agent; for a quarter century she presented London’s West End with one theatrical success after another; she kept magazines busy editing her latest offering. And all of them – novels, short stories and plays – flow with the fluid precision of the Changing of the Guard.
So although it is true that she had no particular method, no tried and true system that she brought with her down the long years of her career, we know this appearance of indiscriminate jotting and plotting is just that – an appearance. And eventually we come to the realisation that, in fact, this very randomness is her method; this is how she worked, how she created, how she wrote. She thrived mentally on chaos, it stimulated her more than neat order; rigidity stifled her creative process. And it explains how the Notebooks read from both ends, how they leap from one title to another on the same page, how different Notebooks repeat and develop the same ideas and why her handwriting can be impossible to read.
Notebook 15 and the plotting of Cat Among the Pigeons illustrate some of these points. She talks to herself on the page:
How should all this be approached? – in sequence?
Or followed up backwards by Hercule Poirot – from disappearance … at school – a possibly trivial incident but which is connected with murder? – but murder of whom – and why?
She wonders and speculates and lists possibilities:
Who is killed?
Girl?
Games mistress?
Maid?
Foreign Mid East?? who would know girl by sign?
Or a girl who?
Mrs. U sees someone out of window – could be New Mistress?
Domestic Staff?
Pupil?
Parent?
The Murder –
Could be A girl (resembles Julia/resembles Clare?
A Parent – sports Day
A Mistress
Someone shot or stalked at school Sports?
Princess Maynasita there –
or – an actress as pupil
or – an actress as games mistress
She reminds herself of work still to be done:
Tidy up – End of chapter
Chapter III – A good deal to be done –
Chapter IV – A good deal to be worked over – (possibly end chapter with ‘Adam the Gardener’ – listing mistresses – (or next chapter)
Chapter V – Letters fuller
Notes on revision – a bit about Miss B
Prologue – Type extra bits
Chapter V – Some new letters
And for some light relief she breaks off to solve a word puzzle. In this well-known conundrum the test is to use all of the letters of the alphabet in one sentence. (Her answer omits the letter Z.)
A D G J L M P S V Y Z
THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS over gladly
Remembered Deaths
In Cards on the Table Mrs Oliver is asked if she has ever used the same plot twice.
‘The Lotus Murder,’ murmured Poirot, ‘The Clue of the Candle Wax.’
Mrs Oliver turned on him, her eyes beaming appreciation.
‘That’s clever of you – really very clever of you. Because, of course, those two are exactly the same plot – but nobody else has seen it. One is stolen papers at an informal weekend-party of the Cabinet, and the other’s a murder in Borneo in a rubber planter’s bungalow.’
‘But the essential point on which the story turns is the same,’ said Poirot. ‘One of your neatest tricks.’
So it is with Christie. She reused plot devices throughout her career; and she recycled short stories into novellas and novels, often speculating in the Notebooks about the expansion or adaptation of an earlier title. The Notebooks demonstrate how, even if she discarded an idea for now, she left everything there to be looked at again at a later stage. And when she did that, as she wrote in An Autobiography, ‘What it’s all about I can’t remember now; but it often stimulates me.’
Two pages of random word puzzles, probably the rough work for a crossword.
The first example below dates from the mid-1950s and relates to the short stories ‘Third Floor Flat’ and ‘The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest’; it is surrounded by notes for ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’
Development of stories
3rd Floor Flat – murder committed earlier – return to get post and also footprints etc. accounted for – service lift idea? Wrong floor
Baghdad Chest or a screen?
Idea? A persuades B hide B
Chest or screen as Mrs B – having
