Читать книгу Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making - Includes Two Unpublished Poirot Stories - John Curran - Страница 26

Dotted irregularly throughout the Notebooks are brief jottings dashed down and often not developed any further at the time. This is what Christie means by ‘a sketch of a plot’; these jottings were all she needed to stimulate her considerable imagination. The ideas below are reproduced exactly as they appear on the page of the Notebooks, and some of them occur in more than one Notebook (examples of similar jottings are given later in this book). All of them were to appear, to a greater or lesser degree, in her titles. The first two are major plot devices and the remaining two are minor plot features:

Poirot asks to go down to country—finds a house and various fantastic details [see The Hollow in Chapter 12]

Saves her life several times [see Endless Night in Chapter 12]

Dangerous drugs stolen from car [see Exhibit F: ‘The House of Dreams’]

Inquire enquire—both in same letter [see A Murder is Announced in Chapter 5]