Crime Writers and Other Animals (10 page)

That Agatha Christie's reading was wide-ranging cannot now be denied, but, even so, the source of one of Hercule Poirot's favourite ploys – almost, it could be said, his trademark, the gathering together of the suspects at the climax of one of his investigations – is surprising. It was only after extensive reading through the writings of many authors that I came across the work which undoubtedly gave the author this particular inspiration. Here, from a late volume of
The Scots Musical Museum
, is the poem which clinches my argument. Though published anonymously, it is undoubtedly the work of Robert Burns:
⁶

I have now supplied sufficient evidence of Agatha Christie's erudition and remarkable range of source-material to silence the most sceptical critic of my thesis. And I think I should definitely be awarded my doctorate as soon as possible.

OSBERT MINT,
April 1967

NOTES
:

1
Cf. especially Britt-Montes'
The Oresteia: Did Clytemnestra REALLY Do It
? (Scand. Dagblat, Vol vii, pp. 152–157, 1932) and Bent Istrom's
The Death of Aeschylus: Who Dropped the Tortoise? (Christiana Review
, March 1947, pp. 474–523).

2
It has long been a matter of regret amongst
Beowulf
scholars that this particular Digression is not resolved and that the identity of the true murderer is never revealed. Tom St Brien's solution (
Grendel's Mother Did It
, Gunterrheinischer Festschrift, 1924), though initially persuasive, cannot ultimately be regarded as other than conjectural.

3
Academic opinion has long been divided over the precise meaning of this line, which is seriously obscured in the original manuscript of the play. Professor Ernst Tombi of Geneva University has argued persuasively that the line should read, ‘
When my little goose calls
', though has unfortunately offered no convincing reason as to why. Enthusiasts of Agatha Christie will be in no doubt that the line should be printed as above.

4
There seems to be no justification for Bo Mitstern's reading of ‘
spots
' in this context.

5
Scholars who wish to pursue this topic further are recommended to read the seminal works of Sir T. Bemton,
Christopher Marlowe's Mean Streets
and
The Metaphysicals: Who-Donne-It
?

6
Ms N. Briotte's questioning of this attribution on the premise that ‘the poem does not contain enough hatred of women to be authentic Burns' can be confidently dismissed as feminist claptrap.

APPENDIX I – THE NAME ‘POIROT'

The much-bruited suggestion that Agatha Christie selected the name Poirot randomly is patently ridiculous. Apart from its assonantic association with the heavily symbolic ‘parrot' (discussed more fully above in reference to Skelton's
Speke Parrot
), the name also reverberates with nuances from the French language. The ‘poire' or, in English, ‘pear' is an obvious subliminal reference to the distinctive shape of the detective's bald head. That shape is again shadowed in the French word ‘poirée', which means ‘white beet' and conforms with the frequently mentioned pallor of the detective's complexion.

Though ‘poireau', the French word closest in sound to the name Christie chose, with its double meanings of ‘leek' and ‘wart', appears to have no obvious connection with the detective, the word ‘poirier', meaning a ‘pear-tree' offers a much more fruitful area for investigation. Its sound provided the first syllable of Poirot's name, ‘
poir
', and for the second one need look no further than the French word ‘perd
reau
', meaning ‘a young partridge'. The unusual juxtaposition of these two words can only be a subconscious association in the author's mind with the well-known carol,
The Twelve Days
of Christmas
, whose repetitive chorus ends, ‘And a partridge in a pear-tree.'

The truth of this conjecture would seem to be confirmed by Agatha Christie's choice of titles for the 1938 volume
Hercule Poirot's Christmas
and the 1960 collection
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and a Selection of Entrées
.

APPENDIX II – THE NAME ‘HASTINGS'

The name of Poirot's occasional assistant is no less carefully chosen than that of Agatha Christie's main protagonist. His nomenclature has a very respectable literary history. Shakespeare hinted at the essence of the character in
Richard III
, Act Three Scene One, when the young Prince of Wales, with a knowledge beyond his years, cries:

‘Fie! what a slug is Hastings.'

Goldsmith, at the end of
She Stoops to Conquer
has Hastings say:

‘Come, madam, you are now driven to the very last scene of all your contrivances.'

– surely a parallel prefiguring (together with the Burns poem) of all those occasions when Christie's Hastings would be delegated to assemble the suspects for Poirot's latest denouement.

And Hastings' habit of pipe-smoking was clearly taken from Thomas Hood, who in a poem of 1839 wrote:

‘'Twas August – Hastings every day was filling.'

SIMON BRETT WRITES
:

Though, as I mentioned, I was unable to make contact with Mr Mint, a letter accompanying his essay did make clear the unfortunate fact that its standard – or perhaps the startling originality of its thinking – did not meet with the examiners' approval. Osbert Mint was not awarded his doctorate. When last heard of – in the early seventies – he had returned to the United States and was apparently working in a fast food restaurant.

There was a large and, to the minds of many observers, unconventional house party assembled for Christmas at Stebbings. The Dowager Duchess of Haslemere had never had any inhibitions about mixing her guests, though the composition of the assembly would have been unthinkable had her husband, the Duke, still been alive
.

Apart from her two children, Hubert – who had inherited the title – and his sister Lady Cynthia, none of the Dowager Duchess's guests was quite the goods. There was Adolphus Weinburg, the well-to-do Hebrew financier, whose—

‘I'm sorry. We can't have this.'

Tilson Gutteridge did not lift the nicotine-yellowed finger that was following the lines of faded typescript, but raised his eyes to the young woman beside him. She was undeniably pretty, but in a way that didn't appeal. The dark red hair was too geometrically cut, the blue eyes behind the dark-rimmed round glasses were too pale and humourless to accord with his, perhaps old-fashioned, taste.

‘What's the problem?' he asked ingenuously.

‘This is anti-semitic,' said Juanita Rainbird. ‘We can't say

“Hebrew financier”.'

‘Why not? It just means that he's Jewish.'

‘We can't say that nowadays. It's discriminatory.'

‘But look, that's what Eunice Brock wrote. It was the kind of thing they all wrote in the thirties. You'll find the same in Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, the lot of them.'

‘We still can't say it. Not in something we're publishing for the first time in the nineteen-nineties.' Her accent became more American as her assertiveness grew.

‘But all Eunice Brock's other books have been reprinted as she wrote them.'

‘Some of the titles have been changed. Like
The Company of Ishmaels
became
The Company of Fraudsters
.'

‘That amendment can hardly have been considered very flattering to the Jews, can it?'

‘It has made for an acceptable title,' Juanita Rainbird replied evenly. ‘And think how many changes Agatha Christie's
Ten Little Niggers
has been through. First it became
Ten Little Indians
—'

‘Then
Ten Little Native Americans
. . .?' Tilson Gutteridge suggested mischievously.

The editor was unamused. ‘No. Now it's known as
Then There Were None
. . . And I'm sure if its manuscript arrived today on the desk of any editor in the country, it would be re-edited for publication.'

‘Hm. Shall we press on?'

His finger hadn't moved from the line of text. As his eyes reverted to the typescript, Juanita Rainbird looked at her visitor without enthusiasm. Tilson Gutteridge was a man in his sixties, wearing the shapeless tweeds and knitted tie of another generation. A whiff of cherrywood tobacco, whisky and something else less wholesome hung around him. It was only with difficulty that Juanita had convinced him there were no exceptions to Krieper & Thoday's no-smoking policy and persuaded him to put the noisome pipe back into his bulging pocket.

There was something over-the-top, almost operatic, about the man's appearance. The pebble glasses seemed too thick, the eyebrows too bushy, the ill-fitting false teeth too yellowed. Tilson Gutteridge looked a parodic archetype of a literary figure who had never succeeded and was now long past any possible sell-by date.

Still, Juanita knew she had to humour him. He was yet to reveal how he'd come by the manuscript, but it was undoubtedly a valuable commodity. Krieper & Thoday were still doing very well from the sales stimulated by the continuing Wenceslas Potter television series. The discovery of a new Eunice Brock would be just the sort of publishing coup to endear Juanita Rainbird to her new Australian managing director, Keith Chappick.

The publicity department could get a lot of mileage out of a long-lost manuscript. Regardless of the quality of the book, after some judicious editing it would sell well on curiosity value alone.

And with a bit of luck there wouldn't be any royalties to pay. Eunice Brock had died in 1939. For the fifty years after her death, the royalties on the Wenceslas Potter books had gone to her niece, Dierdre Townley, who had conveniently passed on in 1990, leaving no heirs. Dierdre hadn't made much out of her inheritance. Though the books had remained more or less in print, the real revival of interest in Eunice Brock had started in 1992 with the first Wenceslas Potter television series. That was when the estate had started to be worth something, and by then of course all the profits went direct to Krieper & Thoday.

Increasingly Juanita Rainbird wondered where Tilson Gutteridge had found the manuscript they were perusing, and whether or not he had any rights in it. If he could prove ownership, he'd have to be paid something for the typescript. If he could prove he also owned the copyright, he and his heirs would receive royalties for fifty years after the book's publication.

Juanita knew she must move cautiously, suppress her instinctive curiosity and play the scene at her guest's pace. The information she needed would come in time.

‘Could I offer you something to drink . . .?' she suggested, to thaw the developing atmosphere between them. ‘Coffee . . . or something from the fridge . . .?'

Tilson Gutteridge's eye gleamed. ‘Something from the fridge, please.'

She reached to the side of her desk and swung the door open to reveal the fridge's packed interior. ‘Orange juice or Perrier?'