Mystery of the missing tapes

Wednesday, 19th November 2008

Selina Mills on how some newly discovered tapes give us a glimpse into the life of Agatha Christie

She also rejects the idea — despite many of her fans wishing it so — that Poirot and Miss Marple could ever meet because Poirot was such an egoist and would not like to have an ‘elderly spinster’ giving him advice. Poirot, of course, would not fit into the cosy world of Miss Marple: ‘They are both stars, and stars in their own right. I shall not let them meet unless I feel a very sudden and unexpected urge to do so.’

Whatever your view on Christie novels (and this can range from serious snubbing to sheer adulation) her novels show, as do her own insights, that she observed people with great clarity. She understood archetypes and used them as part of the function of her plots. What her readers so enjoy is that they recognise either themselves or others in these characters. We know these archetypes — the jealous wife, the greedy husband. And while the plots are straightforward, they often wrestle with basic moral and philosophical issues: when do you really know something? Would you kill for love? Character solves the plot in a Christie novel.

The tapes also reveal, and this is too often forgotten, that Agatha Christie loved travelling and escaping the public glare, particularly when she was at the height of her fame in the Sixties and Seventies. For a few months a year, she could just be Mrs (later, Lady) Mallowan, who quietly considered humanity at ground level while digging alongside her husband, Max. She loves everyday objects, digging and the struggles of cooking in the desert, which she also details in Come, Tell Me How You Live the non-fiction travelogue about her journeys in Iraq and Syria. As she talks to the tapes, she gives an intimate and private sense of herself. She is full of mannerisms — she clears her throat in the middle of sentences. And she is immensely considered and ordered in her thinking. She would never reveal herself in this way publicly, knowing how the press would speculate.