This second batch of Unused Ideas feature foreign settings, both inspired by holidays taken by Christie.
THE HELLENIC CRUISE
There are two lengthy sketches in the Notebooks of a murder plot during a Hellenic cruise, possibly inspired by Christie’s own cruise to Greece in the late summer of 1958. Chronologically this makes sense: the first extract below is sandwiched between the pages of notes for Cat among the Pigeons, published in 1959; the second extract, from Notebook 15, appears alongside notes for 1961’s The Pale Horse.
Book with Hellenic cruise setting
A murderer
Possible scene of actual murder Ephesus or could be electrocuted during lecture on deck
People
Lecturers – little man with beard his wife calls him Daddee – a professor
Young schoolmaster type of man – uncouth and rather dirty – superior in manner
Miss Courtland – a Barbara type – two schoolmistresses travelling together – one has had a nervous breakdown
Mrs. Oliver??
The 2 spinsters idea could be combined with this. The ‘friend’ schoolmistress came on deliberately – have planned to kill someone going on cruise – camouflaging it by going with a friend, really sending money to friend anonymously to pay expenses. Alibis helped by the two of them being places – but M[iss Courtland or, possibly, Murderer?] makes friend believe that she occasionally has short lapses of memory – appear to be very devoted.
Motive?
Although a possible plot involving two female friends is a recurring motif in the Notebooks, the sketch here is different; here one friend is the dupe, rather than the partner-in-crime, of the other. The reference to ‘Barbara’ is probably to Barbara Parker, Max Mallowan’s long-time assistant and, after the death of Dame Agatha, his wife for the last year of his life. The idea of convincing someone that they suffer from memory loss had earlier appeared in ‘The Cretan Bull’, the seventh Labour of Hercules, and would reappear a few years later in A Caribbean Mystery when Molly Kendall is drugged into forgetfulness and hallucination. It would seem from the ambiguous phrase ‘appear to be devoted’ that the friend with the nervous breakdown in her background is set to be the dupe of Miss Courtland, the putative murderer. And the reference to electrocution ‘during lecture on deck’, not a very obvious murder method, would suggest that Christie had something definite in mind, although what it was remains a mystery.
The second outline, while retaining essentially the same characters, adds some new scenarios to the first:
Hellenic cruise – murder – where? Ephesus? During lecture in the evening on deck?
By whom committed – and why
A Miss Marple?
Wife decides to kill husband? Or she and her lover? Say she has had lovers – one, a foreigner? an American? Dismisses him abruptly because she knows he will react – actually he is framed by her and another lover whom she pretends she hardly knows? Possibly Cornish Mystery type of story? Academic background – woman like J.P.? or like M.C. Anyway 2 people in it – and a fall guy!
Or a Macbeth type of story – ambitious woman – urges on husband – husband turns out to have a taste for murder. Perhaps murder is done when someone is sleeping on deck – or Murder is Easy idea – monomaniac who believes everyone who opposes him dies – this is really suggested to him by woman who hates him.
One of lecturers little man with beard – his wife calls him Dadee – encounters young schoolmistress – rather dirty – Miss Cortland (a Barbara type! Good Company).
Mrs Oliver ?!!
Two Schoolmistresses travelling together (one has had nervous breakdown). One of them is murderer – she sent money anonymously to ill friend to enable her to come too – impresses on friend that she has ‘black outs’ short lapses if memory so that friend and she have alibis together
If Christie had used either of the inspirations from her own earlier titles – Murder is Easy and ‘The Cornish Mystery’ – we can be sure that she would have rendered them unrecognisable, as she did with Death on the Nile/Endless Night and Dead Man’s Folly/Hallowe’en Party.
Elements from each extract can be found elsewhere in Christie – the stage-managed dismissal has echoes of Death on the Nile and ‘two people and a fall guy’ is similar to ‘Triangle at Rhodes’. And there are some compelling new variations: the husband who ‘turns out to have a taste for murder’ after his initial reluctance and the anonymous gift of money to set up an alibi. The references to ‘J.P.’ and ‘M.C.’ have proved elusive but may simply refer to two of Christie’s fellow passengers on the cruise.
Miss Marple, a few years before her only foreign case, A Caribbean Mystery, makes a brief appearance. Interestingly, Mrs Oliver was intended to appear, whichever scenario was chosen. Ariadne Oliver, Agatha Christie’s alter ego, is a prolific detective novelist with a foreign detective, the Finnish Sven Hjerson, one of whose cases is The Body in the Library. Doubtless she would, like her creator, have been using the trip as a background for her next masterwork. In the event she did feature in The Pale Horse, published shortly afterwards. Both of these outlines could be a revisitation, 20 years later, of Death on the Nile – a group of people with emotional entanglements cut off from the world aboard a ship in a foreign country. The two female friends, here schoolmistresses, appear in each sketch, each time with more background detail.
THE GIRL-IN-THE-BAHAMAS
These examples, all from different Notebooks, show Christie experimenting with an intriguing idea before eventually deciding to send Miss Marple, who is not mentioned here, to essentially the same place, St Honore, and have her solve Major Palgrave’s murder in A Caribbean Mystery:
Girl gets job – sent out to Bahamas – plane brought back. She goes back to flat – another girl there acting as her
West Indies Book
Begins girl secretary – told by Company to go to Barbados (Tobago) on business – meet certain executives there – passage paid etc. Goes off from London Airport – Shannon etc. – then back again following evening – her flat occupied by someone else – she and boy friend decide to investigate
How about girl gets job – a flat is given her – after a month she is sent to Barbados – return of plane she goes to flat – finds dead body or finds she is supposed to have died – young man she telephones him – they discuss it – what is the point? Person to die first – a lawyer – head of solicitor’s firm? New member of a country solicitors? A Q.C.?
The common denominator of the West Indies was the idée fixe of these jottings, probably inspired by her holiday there in the early 1960s.