Agatha Christie_A Biography Read online

  Janet Morgan

  April 2017

  1A letter by Ted Hughes about Sylvia Plath, published in the TLS of 24 April 1992, reprinted 6 January 2017, describes similar anguish and his frustration at the failure of, in this case, an academic even to imagine the consequences of self-indulgent theorising.

  2First exhibited at the Rurhlandsmuseum, Essen. Agatha Christie und der Orient. Kriminalistik und Archäologie, Scherz Verlag, (Bern), 1999; Agatha Christie and Archaeology, The British Museum Company Ltd, (London), 2001.

  Preface

  Agatha Christie valued her privacy. She rarely gave interviews and never put herself on display: ‘Why,’ she asked, ‘should writers talk about what they write?’ Her reputation, she believed, should stand or fall by her work, and that wish was respected by her family, friends and advisers. They were ready to assist serious analysts of her writing but kept at a distance those who sought to discuss her life. There have been, nonetheless, many biographies of Agatha Christie, in many languages. Some have been no more than fantasies. Others have relied on material from published sources – newspaper reports, reviews, books published by people who knew her or worked with her (though the better acquainted they were, the more circumspectly they wrote) – and have drawn on her own books, plays and poems, especially her recollections of Syria in Come, Tell Me How You Live and her Autobiography, and on her second husband’s reflections in Mallowan’s Memoirs.

  In 1980 it was felt that the time had come for a full and thorough account of Agatha Christie’s life, and her daughter, Mrs Anthony Hicks, invited me to write it. Her view was that there was no point in embarking on this venture unless all her mother’s papers were opened to me, with complete freedom to use them as I thought best. This book is based, therefore, on the letters Agatha wrote and received, on her manuscripts and plotting books, photograph albums and scrapbooks, diaries and address books, receipts and accounts, saved from well before her grandparents’ time to the present day. My chapter headings, all quotations, are taken from these sources.

  Biographers, however, do not look only at papers. Agatha’s houses and gardens, furniture and possessions have been equally revealing; her family have given me generous access to all these, particularly to Greenway, her house in Devon. Here, with the books she read as a child still in the library, her china in the cupboards and the trees she planted in the garden, I have written most of this book. Mr and Mrs Hicks have been welcoming and hospitable; their greatest kindness has been to read every word of this biography, several times, to point out factual errors, chase references, and talk about Agatha Christie, without once insisting on a view of her character or work that might differ from my own. No biographer could ask for more and I would like to thank them here.

  At Greenway, too, I first met many of Agatha’s family and friends. There, and later at their own houses, they told me more about her. I am particularly grateful to her grandson, Mathew Prichard, his wife, Angela, and their children; to Mr and Mrs Archibald Christie, the son and daughter-in-law of Agatha’s first husband, Archie, and his wife Nancy; and to Mrs Cecil Mallowan, Mr and Mrs John Mallowan and Mr and Mrs Peter Mallowan, the family of Agatha’s second husband, Max. I would also like to thank Lady Mallowan, who, as Miss Barbara Parker, first knew Agatha and Max on their archaeological expeditions to Iraq and who later married Max. She has not only described them both to me but has also explained a great deal about their work at Nimrud. Agatha’s family have all spoken freely and thought carefully about my many questions; they have made letters, papers and possessions available without hesitation and smoothed my path towards other witnesses.

  Apart from the odd name-dropper (and there are only a couple), people who knew Agatha have hitherto refrained from discussing her with strangers. Old friends kept their stories to themselves, professional colleagues and advisers confined their published remarks to diverting anecdotes about her books and plays, and, by and large, those who worked for her, however briefly or casually, maintained a silence as deep as that of any doctor, priest or lawyer. They knew her as a person, not as a phenomenon; they saw how she shrank from publicity and sympathised. Only the password ‘authorised biographer’ unlocked those doors. Reassured, Agatha’s friends and acquaintances gave me their time, their recollections and their correspondence. Others, who did not know Agatha Christie but were interested in her work and character, guided me to new sources and gave me expert advice. My portrait of Agatha Christie is composed of these memories and reflections and I would like to thank the following people for their part in making it: Mrs Edward Allen; Jeffrey Andrews; Mr and Mrs Tom Ayling; Larry Bachmann; Dr and Mrs Richard Barnett; Mrs J. Barrett; William W. Baxter; the Hon. Mrs Guy Beauchamp; Guilford Bell; Sir Isaiah Berlin; Mrs Connie Bessie; Miss Kathleen Bird; Mrs Anthony Boosey; the late Sir James Bowker; Lady Bowker; Miss Christianna Brand; Richard Buckmaster; Nigel Calder; Miss Elizabeth Callow; Lady Campbell-Orde; Lady Camoys; Sir Simon and Lady Cassels; Mrs Rose Coles; Lady Collins; Edmund Cork; Miss Jill Cork; Miss Pat Cork; Denis Corkery; Miss Ann Disney; Jonathan Dodd; Edward Dodd; Sergeant Durrant of the Surrey Constabulary; Eiddon Edwards; Michael Evelyn; Anthony Fleming; Mr and Mrs Peter Fleming; Richard Fletcher; Mr and Mrs G. Gardner; Sir Julian Gascoigne; Mrs Raleigh Gilbert; Hugh Goodson; Mrs D. Gould; Mr and Mrs Basil Gray; Miss Deborah Greenep; Mr and Mrs Donald Griggs; Caroline Grocholski; Mrs John Gueritz; Professor and Mrs Oliver Gurney; Mr and Mrs C. Hackforth-Jones; Dr Donald Harden; Sir Peter and Lady Hayman; Sir William and Lady Hayter; the late Sir John Hedges; Lady Hedges; Mrs Diana Helbaek; the late Mrs Arthur Hicks; Brigadier and Mrs William Hine-Haycock; Mrs Daphne Honeybone; Mrs Irene Hunter; Mr and Mrs Peter Hulin; Sir Geoffrey Jackson; Mrs Frank James; Dennis Joss; Mr Rodney Kannreuther and the late Mrs Kannreuther; Mr and Mrs Austen Kark; Mr and Mrs Arthur Kellas; James Kelly; Denis Kelynack; Mr and Mrs Richard Kindersley; Sir Laurence and Lady Kirwan; Frank Lavin; Richard Ledbetter; Mr and Mrs Maurice Lush; the late Mrs Ernest Mackintosh; Harvey McGregor Q.C.; Mr and Mrs Richard Mallock; Mrs M. Marcus; Commander Marten and the Hon Mrs George Marten; Mr and Mrs A.R. Maxwell-Hyslop; the Hon Mrs John Mildmay-White; Dr and Mrs Philip Mitchelmore; Charles Monteith; John Murphy; Professor and Mrs David Oates; Miss Jennifer Oates; Miss Dorothy Olding; James Paterson; S. Phelps Platt Jr; Sir John Pope-Hennessy; Professor and Mrs Nicholas Postgate; Briton Potts; Mr and Mrs J.B. Priestley; Dr and Mrs Julian Reade; Sir John and Lady Richmond; Mrs Betty Rivoli; Miss Patricia Robertson; Sergeant Geoffrey Rose of the Thames Valley Police; Mrs Adelaide Ross; Raymond Ross; Lady le Rougetel; Sir Steven Runciman; Mrs Herta Ryder; Sir Peter Saunders; Mrs Reginald Schofield; Professor and Mrs Seton Lloyd; Mr and Mrs Guy Severn; Madame de Soissons; Mr and Mrs J.C. Springford; Dr Anthony Storr; Julian Symons; Miss Geraldine Talbot; Mrs M. Thompson; Miss Barbara Toy; Lord and Lady Trevelyan; Dr Alan Tyson; John Vaughan; Algernon Whitburn; the late Mr Albert Whiteley; Stephen Whitwell; Mr and Mrs Michael Wildy; Professor Donald Wiseman; Mr and Mrs John Wollen; Nigel Wollen; Sir Denis and Lady Wright; and Rolando Bertotti, the head waiter at Boodle’s. There are others, too, whom I would like to thank but their names are obscured by a blot where a raindrop has fallen on my pages. I will thank them properly when we next meet and in the meantime they have my apologies.

  I am especially grateful to those who have allowed me to quote from letters to or from Agatha Christie and from family papers. Mrs Anthony Hicks, Mr and Mrs Mathew Prichard, John Mallowan and Peter Mallowan have been immensely helpful and I am also indebted to Edmund Cork and his family. I would also like to thank: Anthony Fleming, for permitting me to quote from the letters of his mother, Miss Dorothy L. Sayers; Mrs Frankfort, for an extract from a letter from her father, Professor Stephen Glanville; Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, whose reports to Collins are quoted here; Lady Kirwan, for quotations from letters from Agatha and Max; Mrs Anne McMurphy, formerly Miss Marple, whose letter from Agatha revealed the origins of that heroine’s name; James Paterson, for extracts from his correspondence about the Churston window; Miss Dorot
hy Olding, whose exchanges with Edmund Cork I have plundered; Sir Peter Saunders, for quotations from letters and telegrams about plays; Professor Harry Smith, for allowing me to quote from a letter from his father, Professor Sidney Smith; and Miss Barbara Toy, whose correspondence I have cited in writing about Murder at the Vicarage.

  I also wish to thank the directors of Agatha Christie Ltd, and the board of Booker McConnell Ltd, for allowing me to use their records; the BBC Written Archives Centre, and Mrs J. Kavanagh, Neil Somerville and Jeff Walden, for permission to quote from their records; the British Red Cross, and the archivist, Miss Margaret Wade, for details of Agatha Christie’s service in the First World War; the directors of William Collins Ltd, for opening their files and allowing me to quote from them; Harrods Press Office, for their efforts to trace a letter Agatha Christie sent them in 1926; the Harrogate Advertiser and Herald, whose archive gave an illuminating picture of the town and its visitors in the ‘twenties; the Home Office Library and the Departmental Records Officer, for their invaluable help in my search through the accounts of Agatha’s disappearance; Hughes Massie Ltd, for permission to examine the records of Agatha’s dealings with her agent; the Imperial War Museum for giving me access to the tape-recording Agatha made for their oral archive; the Trustees of the Allen Lane Foundation, and Dr Michael Rhodes, the archivist, for allowing me to cite extracts from Agatha’s correspondence with The Bodley Head; the Trustees of the Mountbatten Foundation, for enabling me to quote from Earl Mountbatten’s correspondence with Agatha about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; the trustees of the Harold Ober estate, who made the correspondence of Agatha’s American agent available to me, the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Firestone Library at Princeton University, which houses it, and Miss Jane Snedeker, who guided me to it; the Surrey Record Office, and Dr Robinson, for their help in disentangling the events of 1926; and the University of Manchester Library, and Miss J. Sen, for supplying details of the careers of the doctors who attended Agatha in 1926.

  There are others who, out of enthusiasm, curiosity or both, contributed to this book by producing new ideas and surprising references. I particularly wish to thank: Dr Marilyn Butler; Professor John Carey; Christopher Campbell; Stephen Hearst; Leofranc Holford-Strevens; Miss Frances Irwin; Edward Jospé; Mrs Cécil Jospé; Gordon Lee; Douglas Matthews; Mrs Alexandra Nicol; Miss Olivia Stewart; and Miss Anne Willis. I am equally grateful to those who interpreted, typed, arranged and copied my manuscript as I moved from one house, hotel, office and country to the next: Mrs Rigby Allen; Mrs Berry; Miss Michelle Cooper; Vincent Jones; Mrs Daisy Sasso; Mrs Jean Smith; and, as choreographers, Mrs Sheila George and Ray Walters. I would also like to thank Mr Bobby Burns and the Hon. Mrs Burns for their patience and hospitality while I cut and shuffled the text in their house in Jamaica.

  The encouragement and guidance of my publishers have been indispensable and I am grateful to Bob Gottlieb of Alfred A. Knopf, Philip Ziegler of William Collins, Elizabeth Burke, Elizabeth Bowes Lyon and Elizabeth Walter.

  This book is not only for people who like detective stories but also for those who are interested in a writer’s development and experience, in Agatha Christie’s character and the instinct which made her work a success. Like the lives of many writers, hers changed pace as she reached middle age. There was less incident, more consolidation. She was, moreover, quiet and reflective by temperament, and increasing age and fame made her more so. Though her energy remained immense, she gave most of it to her work. This book looks at the way in which she distilled her experience in her novels, plays and detective stories. Only in one case, however, does it reveal the solution to a plot and then only where Agatha Christie has done so in her own memoirs.

  Agatha Christie lived to a great age and she was prolific. I have not given a chronological list of her work at the end of this book, for it is already long and readers who would like such a bibliography may find it in one of the interesting critical accounts of Agatha’s writing. The Agatha Christie Chronology by Nancy Blue Wynne (New York: Ace Books, 1976) is particularly useful; less accurate but more daring is Charles Osborne’s The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie (Collins, 1982). Robert Barnard has published an excellent study in A Talent to Deceive (Collins, 1980); Gordon C. Ramsey’s Agatha Christie: Mistress of Mystery (Collins, 1972) is thoughtful and was examined before publication by Agatha Christie herself. Sir Peter Saunders’s autobiography, The Mousetrap Man (Collins 1972), gives a producer’s perspective on her work for the theatre, while Tom Adams and Julian Symons have compiled a volume that is stimulating to look at as well as to read, by writing about the jacket designs for some of her paperbacks, in Tom Adams’s Agatha Christie Cover Story (Paper Tiger, 1982). Those who need assistance in keeping track of the characters in Agatha Christie’s work will find, as I have done, that Randall Toy’s The Agatha Christie Who’s Who (Muller, 1980) is painstaking and invaluable. Citations from the reviews of books and plays may be found in many books about Agatha Christie, notably Dennis Sanders and Len Lovallo’s Agatha Christie Companion (Delacorte Press, NY 1984), which is devoted to this theme. I have preferred, however, not to draw greatly on such material, for, apart from their remarkable geographical spread, reviews of Agatha Christie’s work are interesting mainly for their predictability.

  There is one more group whom, at the end of this preface, I would like to thank: the secret army of those who gave good advice, pursued elusive references and raided libraries and bookshops across the world, so that they could telephone to Devon – and remoter spots – with answers to questions I thought urgent. Though these friends are anonymous here, I will write their names, with gratitude and affection, in their copies of this biography.

  Janet Morgan

  1

  ‘… the Millers – a family’

  Even the beginnings were deceptive. To comfortable middle-class households in Torquay, the airy coastal resort in Devon where Agatha was born, the end of the nineteenth century seemed to be a Victorian afternoon. They did not notice that twilight was stealing over the terraces, the gardens and the pier. Agatha’s own family, the Millers, looked equally prosperous and secure, but their fortunes, too, were imperceptibly growing shakier. And, like most families, the Millers were not as ordinary as they first appeared. In fact, they were decidedly unconventional.

  Agatha was the youngest of three children. Madge, her sister, had a passion for disguise that exasperated her teachers and, eventually, her husband, as much as it entertained her friends and bewildered her visitors. Monty, Agatha’s brother, had a different if related talent – for hitting on wild schemes into which he would draw harmless bystanders, to no one’s profit but everyone’s delight, particularly that of the women. Frederick, Agatha’s father, was a charming, nonchalant American, keen on amateur theatricals, fussy about his health but not, until too late, about his investments; her mother, Clarissa, known always as Clara, was capricious, enchanting, and said to be psychic. She was also prone to spiritual and intellectual recklessness. Agatha adored them all.

  Frederick and Clara had a romantic and complicated history. Clara’s childhood was a mixture of comfort and insecurity that made her an especially possessive mother; this, in turn, fed Agatha’s devotion, which for a time was to become obsessive. To understand Agatha, it is necessary to know her parents and, equally important, the two women who shaped their lives: her grandmother and step-grandmother, Mary Ann and Margaret.

  The family was connected as neatly as characters in a detective story. These links are clearer if they are described like the settings for Agatha’s plots, with the help of a plan:

  Mary Ann and Margaret West and their ten brothers and sisters were orphans and were brought up on a farm in Sussex by childless relations. In 1851 Mary Ann met Captain Frederick Boehmer of the Argyll Highlanders, who pressed her to marry him. Since he was thirty-six and she sixteen, her family demurred but Captain Boehmer argued that, as his regiment was about to be sent abroad, the wedding should take place at once –
and it did. Mary Ann and Frederick had five children in quick succession (one died as a baby) of whom the only daughter, Clara, was born in Belfast in 1854.

  In April 1863 Captain Boehmer, then stationed in Jersey, was thrown from his horse and killed, at the age of forty-eight, leaving Mary Ann, now twenty-seven, with four children to support as best she could. She was an excellent needlewoman and, by embroidering pictures and screens, slippers, pincushions and the like, augmented her husband’s tiny pension. As Frederick had lost what savings he had in some vague speculative venture, Mary Ann had a great struggle to make ends meet. It is little wonder that in an entry in a family ‘Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, etc.’ known as the ‘Confessions’, written eight years after Frederick’s death, she gave her state of mind as ‘Anxious’.

  Meanwhile, Mary Ann’s elder sister, Margaret, had been working in a large hotel in Portsmouth, a post found by an aunt who had for many years been its forceful and greatly respected receptionist. Margaret, already formidable herself, married when she was twenty-six, in April 1863. Her husband, Nathaniel Frary Miller, a widower, had been born in Easthampton, Massachusetts, and had become a successful businessman, a partner in the firm of H.B. Chaflin in New York City. Nathaniel and his first wife, a hospital nurse, had only one child, a son, Frederick Alvah Miller. After his mother’s death, Frederick was brought up mostly by his grandparents in America, but, after his father remarried and settled in England, where his firm had business in Manchester, Frederick visited Nathaniel and Margaret there. Here he met Clara.