and a short story.’22 Notes for The Last Séance (titled ‘The Mother’) appear in Notebook 34, along with those for the novel The Man in the Brown Suit (1924). ‘Passed Tenerife last night’ she observes at one point.23
At the time of Agatha’s stay in Paris as a teenager, the original Parisian Théâtre du Grand-Guignol was under the direction of Max Maurey, and at its height as a ‘horror theatre’ venue, with André de Lorde its celebrated and prolific principal writer. An ever-changing programme of evening entertainments consisting of a collection of graphically bloodthirsty and macabre one-act plays, occasionally interspersed with comedies by way of light relief, were the talk of the town. It was widely advertised that audience members frequently passed out from fear, but the public proved themselves more than happy to rise to the challenge, and flocked to the small theatre in the Quartier Pigalle. It seems unlikely that those responsible for the education of a group of teenage girls would have allowed their charges to sample the delights of the Grand Guignol, but in 1908 the French company made headlines when it toured to London, including in its repertoire a play called L’Angoisse (The Medium).
In the early 1920s the Little Theatre on the Strand hosted London’s own Grand Guignol season, with a poster so horrifying that it was banned from the London Underground. A total of forty-three plays were produced in its rolling repertoire and the Lord Chamberlain’s office added to the publicity by refusing a licence to several more. Rarely out of the newspapers, the regular casts included such stalwarts of the English stage as Sybil Thorndike and her husband Lewis Casson, and a repertoire of work that included translations of some of the original French pieces (including The Medium) along with pieces by several English writers of the day. Noël Coward even contributed a short play, although he opted for a comic interlude rather than a horror piece. The Better Half, which was another play highlighting the inadequacies of the divorce laws, culminates in this heartfelt plea from its heroine:
ALICE: I tried to make him strike me, so that I could divorce him for cruelty – but No. He wouldn’t! He did just twist my arm a teeny bit but not enough even to bruise it … As somebody so very truly remarked the other day, the existing Divorce laws put a premium on perjury and adultery! Therefore I am going to find a lover and live in flaming sin – possibly at Claridges.24
As regards the horror element of the programme, the following review from The Times sums up the sort of evening that audiences could enjoy:
The other new feature of the evening is probably familiar to most visitors to the Paris Grand Guignol, and it has already been seen in both French and English in this country. It is The Medium, the gruesome little play about a sculptor who is filled with strange imaginings on moving into a new studio. His model is a medium and goes off into a trance … during which she reveals the grizzly secrets which the studio holds … Those who like two series of shudder in one evening will probably appreciate The Medium, particularly as it gives Miss Sybil Thorndike another opportunity for a hair-raising performance … but we confess that for us The Hand Of Death is quite enough for one evening.25
There is no record of Agatha having attended a Grand Guignol performance at the Little Theatre, but she was living in London at the time and would have read the numerous press articles and reviews that the season generated. The genre’s preoccupations would certainly have resonated with her interest in the occult and with some of her own literary experimentations, including a few published stories and a number of unpublished ones such as ‘The Green Gate’, ‘The Woman and the Kenite’, ‘Stronger than Death’, ‘Witch Hazel’ and ‘The War Bride’.26
The Last Séance itself is a short, atmospheric and effective shocker in the true Grand Guignol tradition. Written for two male and two female actors, and set of course in Paris, it concerns a medium, Simone Letellier, who is persuaded to communicate with the spirit of a dead child. The outcome is marvellously gory, as a curtain is pulled back to reveal that ‘Simone is lying on the marble floor in a pool of blood which is dripping down the steps.’27 This would be a gripping coup de théâtre, but it does not make for a satisfactory short story. The dialogue, which in the story simply appears to have had speech marks put around it, works well when spoken but not when read, and the highly theatrical denouement, when briefly described on the page, goes for nothing. We don’t know whether the play was submitted for performance, but in these early days Agatha found it a lot easier to get her work published than produced, so this is likely to have accounted for the change of format.28
Agatha also continued to write one-act plays on themes that seem likely to have been suggested by the writings of George Bernard Shaw, but which latterly sound as if they may also have been informed by her own experiences as a wife and mother. Ten Years concerns a couple who have lived together as man and wife on the basis that they will review their relationship after a ten-year trial period. Elliot, the husband, is an author who has begun to enjoy some success, here talking to his lawyer, Rogers:
ROGERS: I fancy your – early views – were rather unpopular.
ELLIOT: Oh! They gained me a sort of notoriety. But unorthodoxy is for the young, Rogers – the young who imagine they’re going to remake the world on their own improved pattern. As we go on in life we find that the old pattern is not so bad after all! …
… I admit that my one aim then was to free the world from many of its existing conventions which I considered hampering and degrading. You may have heard that I met my – that I met Desiree when she was studying art in Paris. She too held unorthodox views. We both agreed in condemning the convention of marriage, which seemed to us then an ignoble bondage. Instead we favoured what is known as the ten years marriage system.29
When the time comes, however, Desiree decides that, despite having been entirely faithful for ten years, she wants to leave Elliot and set up home with another male friend.
DESIREE: I’ve been a good wife and mother – but – I’m still young. Young enough to feel the divine fire, and long for it. I’m only thirty-three, remember. And something cries out in me – for more life! I want romance – passion – fire – the things we had once and can never have again. I want to feel the first exquisite thrill of mingled fear and joy. I want the beginning of love – not its end. I don’t want peace and security, and calm affection. I want to live – to live my life – not yours.
This comes as a shock to Elliot, who believes that the ten-year experiment has been a success. He and Desiree argue over custody of their child and, in a sentimental ending, resolve to stay together for the child’s sake.
Marmalade Moon is another four-hander one-act play, this time a comedy reminiscent of Noël Coward. As usual with most of these early, unpublished works, the typescript is undated, the author’s name is not given, and the researcher has to turn detective, scouring the script for contemporary references, or comparing stylistic traits or even paper quality, typefaces and layouts with other works the dates of which are known. In this case, it seems likely that the play predates Coward’s Private Lives by several years, although the scenario is not dissimilar to his 1930 comedy about a divorced couple reuniting during their honeymoons with their new spouses.
There are two versions of the script in the Christie archive, Marmalade Moon being a slightly amended version of the earlier New Moon. The location is a continental hotel, the second draft rationalising the first’s two settings into a more user-friendly single one. Here we meet two couples, one celebrating their honeymoon and the other the first anniversary of their divorce. In this extract, the divorced man offers some words of wisdom to the female honeymooner:
BRANDON: As a matter of fact, I’m here to commemorate my wife’s divorce.
SYLVIA: Who from?
BRANDON:
