Читать книгу Agatha Christie’s Complete Secret Notebooks - Агата Кристи, Agatha Christie, Detection Club The - Страница 73

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.

Analysis of books so far

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.

Ackroyd

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:

Shall hotel be the same as Evil Under the Sun – N[eville] has to go across in trolley because high water

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.

Calls on Poirot – asks about Josephine (Crooked House)

This was among the last notes to appear, written just before the publication of Postern of Fate:

Nov. 2nd 1973 Book of Stories The White Horse Stories

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 …

Somebody greedy – bit about Letty Blacklock

… while this reference appears during the plotting of Third Girl:

Poirot worried – old friend (as in McGinty) comes to tea

Finally, the idea of reintroducing Sergeant Fletcher from A Murder is Announced was briefly considered during the plotting of A Pocket Full of Rye:

Chapter II – Crossways – Inspector Harwell – or Murder is Announced young man