‘inventor’ of the detective story when he published ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ in 1841. ‘The Purloined Letter’, another famous case for his detective Auguste Dupin, turns on the idea of hiding in plain sight and Christie’s reference is in connection with a fortune hidden not in but on an envelope, as stamps. She used this plot device in the short story ‘Strange Jest’ and in Spider’s Web. The concept of hiding in plain sight is also used in ‘The Nemean Lion’.
Stamps – fortune left in them – on old letters in desk – ‘Purloined Letter’ mentioned – they look in obvious envelope – really stamps on it
Sayers’ creation Lord Peter Wimsey made his debut in 1923 in Whose Body? and is mentioned in Notebook 41, as a model for Ronnie West in Lord Edgware Dies. It is also possible that the naming of Dr Peter Lord in Sad Cypress is homage to Christie’s great contemporary.
Ronnie West (debonair Peter Wimseyish)
Agatha Christie in the Notebooks
Christie several times references herself and her work in the Notebooks. For some reason she twice – in Notebooks 72 and 39 – lists some of her books, although the lists are not exhaustive nor is it obvious what the titles have in common; and she often refers to earlier titles as a quick reminder.
Hotels – Body in Library, Evil under the Sun
Trains Aeroplanes – Blue Train, Orient Express, Death in Clouds, Nile
Private Life (country) Towards Zero, Hollow, Xmas, 3 Act Tragedy, Sad Cypress
(village) Vicarage, Moving Finger Travel – Appointment with Death
This list appears just after notes for Mrs McGinty’s Dead. The fact that Taken at the Flood does not appear in the list may mean that it was compiled in late 1946, after The Hollow, or early 1947, before Taken at the Flood was completed. From the headings it would seem that she was considering backgrounds previously used.
Murder on Nile
Death in Clouds
Murder in Mesopotamia
Orient Express
Appointment with Death
Tragedy in 3 Acts
Dead Man’s Mirror
And the above, squeezed into the corner of a page during the plotting of Evil under the Sun, is even more enigmatic. Apart from the fact that they are all Poirot stories, it is difficult to see what they have in common.
The next musing appears in the notes for Towards Zero. Wisely, she decided against it as another mysterious death at the hotel in the space of three years could look, in Oscar Wilde’s famous phrase, like carelessness:
The following odd, and inaccurate, reference – Poirot was not involved in the case – to an earlier killer appears in the notes for Elephants Can Remember.
This was among the last notes to appear, written just before the publication of Postern of Fate:
First one – The White Horse Party (rather similar to Jane Marple’s Tuesday Night Club)
Chapter 25 of 4.50 from Paddington includes a brief, cryptic reference to A Murder is Announced, but without mentioning the title …
… while this reference appears during the plotting of Third Girl:
Finally, the idea of reintroducing Sergeant Fletcher from A Murder is Announced was briefly considered during the plotting of A Pocket Full of Rye:
‘It was while I was working in the dispensary that I first conceived the idea of writing a detective story.’
An Autobiography
SOLUTIONS REVEALED
After the Funeral • Appointment With Death • Death in the Clouds • The Man in the Brown Suit • The Mysterious Affair at Styles • The Mystery of the Blue Train • ‘The Red Signal’ • The Secret of Chimneys
The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published in the USA at the end of 1920 and in the UK on 21 January 1921. It is a classic country-house whodunit, a setting and form destined to become synonymous with the name of Agatha Christie. Ironically, over the following decade she wrote only one more ‘English’ domestic whodunit, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926). The other two whodunits of this decade are set abroad: The Murder on the Links (1923) is set in Deauville, France and The Mystery of the
