Читать книгу Agatha Christie’s Complete Secret Notebooks - Агата Кристи, Agatha Christie, Detection Club The - Страница 21

Like a conjuror, he whipped from a drawer in the desk two shabby exercise books.

The Clocks, Chapter 28

SOLUTIONS REVEALED

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd • Sad Cypress

Although mentioned by both of her biographers, Janet Morgan and Laura Thompson, Agatha Christie’s Notebooks remain a closely protected, and largely unknown, treasure. After the death of her mother, Rosalind Hicks ensured their safety in Greenway House and, with the exception of Torquay Museum, they have never been publicly displayed. But Christie does briefly mention them in An Autobiography:

Of course, all the practical details are still to be worked out, and the people have to creep slowly into my consciousness, but I jot down my splendid idea in an exercise book. So far so good – but what I invariably do is lose the exercise book. I usually have about half a dozen on hand, and I used to make notes in them of ideas that had struck me, or about some poison or drug, or a clever little bit of swindling that I had read about in the paper. Of course, if I had kept all these things neatly sorted and filed and labelled, it would save me a lot of trouble. However, it is a pleasure sometimes, when looking vaguely through a pile of old note-books to find something scribbled down, as: Possible plot – do it yourself – girl and not really sister – August – with a kind of sketch of a plot. What it’s all about I can’t remember now; but it often stimulates me, if not to write that identical plot, at least to write something else.

A closer examination of some of these remarks will give a clearer idea of what she meant. Using Christie’s own words as a guide, we can begin to see the part these Notebooks played in her creative process.