Agatha Christie: A Life in Theatre. Julius Green
In 1907, the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act had ended decades of controversy by allowing widowers to marry the sister of their deceased spouse. This form of marital union had been made illegal in 1835, and remained a topic of lively debate, both inside and outside Parliament, throughout the Victorian period. The controversy centred around the effects of sexual desire on the purity of the English family, not to mention the ability of government to legislate on issues of morality, control individual behaviour and regulate the family. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the relationship between sisters was used to make the domestic sphere part of the public, political world. The sisterly bond was used by politicians as the catalyst for discussions about marriage, the sanctity of family life and even threats to the authority of the Church of England. The issue even merits a mention in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe (1882); when Strephon is sent by the Queen of the Fairies to stir up Parliament, one of his tasks is to ‘prick that annual blister, Marriage with deceased wife’s sister’. In the end, the change in law was to an extent an acknowledgement of the status quo. It was common in the nineteenth century for single women to move in with a sister’s family and assist with the raising of the children; and it was a small logical step, at least in nineteenth-century terms, for that role to be formalised in the event of the married sister’s death.53
The Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act, however, permitted only what was referred to in its somewhat convoluted title. It was not until the 1960 Marriage (Enabling) Act that a man could marry his former wife’s sister whether that wife was ‘living or not’. So, when Christie started writing her autobiography in 1950, she might well still have regarded the relationship between John and Nell as ‘incestuous’ (although there are wider theological issues here that we need not concern ourselves with). Readers who have been paying close attention to the intricate legislative subplot of this chapter will note that, prior to 1923, the ‘incestuous’ nature of John’s relationship with Nell may well have assisted Nan in obtaining a divorce from him. Meanwhile, John and Nell discuss fleeing the country, perhaps not only in order to escape the scandal but possibly also so that they can marry, once his divorce comes through, without the requirement for Nan to be ‘deceased’.
Christie underlines this theme in the play when John declares to Nell, ‘I love you – and you love me – Oh! Why did I marry Nan? Nan – when you were there, growing up day by day, from childhood to womanhood … You! My Nell!’ He goes on to refer to her as his ‘little sister’, asserting ‘I look upon you as my sister’ and ‘Haven’t I always been a brother to you?’ Further emphasis is given to the relationship between John and his sister-in-law by a change in title in the second draft from The Lie to The Sister-In-Law.54 I prefer the original. All of this, I am sure, was done in ignorance of the darker side of life in the Phillpotts household.
The fact that ‘The scene represents a typical suburban drawing room’ and not some distant, imagined country house, only serves to add to our discomfort, and gives the astonishing subject matter of this relentlessly unfolding drama even more impact. This could happen to any of us, Christie seems to be saying. John sums up the frustrations of the daily grind that have led both his wife and himself to seek illicit adventure elsewhere: ‘Oh! I know! I was keen on my work – that dull, plodding work, the same day after day! It seems incredible now to think of it! I meant to wear the collar steadily year after year. I never dreamed of any other life. The 8.16 train up to town every morning, the 5.10 back, the annual holiday to the sea side – I thought all that was life! How narrow and paltry it all seems now! Why did I do it? Because everyone does. There’s a reason for you!’
But, however enticing the forbidden fruit, as Nell reminds us, ‘It’s the dull brown earth that endures, not the gay flowers that grow there.’ Feminist writers would no doubt consider the play’s resolution as somehow involving ‘an underlying collusion with patriarchy’, but I believe there is a far more complex appraisal of human emotions going on here than there is in Clemence Dane’s A Bill of Divorcement.
The circumstances of Christie’s own 1928 divorce were, as it happens, every bit as dramatic as something on the West End stage. Following their return from the Grand Tour at the end of 1922, and reunited with Rosalind (who had been left in the care of her grandmother and aunt), Agatha and Archie settled in Sunningdale in Berkshire, eventually moving into a house they bought together, which they named Styles. Agatha bought a two-seater Morris Cowley coupé and took on a secretary, Charlotte Fisher (‘Carlo’), who made a substantial contribution to her employer’s wellbeing in the following years, and whose arrival, amongst other things, coincided with a vast improvement in the typing of Agatha’s draft playscripts.
Agatha’s six-book deal with The Bodley Head ended with The Secret of Chimneys in 1925, and her new agent, Edmund Cork of Hughes Massie, negotiated much-improved terms for her with her new publisher, Collins. The following year Collins published The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which proved to be her biggest success to date. Archie, meanwhile, resumed work in the City. Perhaps the excitement of their round-the-world adventure underlined the relative dullness of the return to normality, or perhaps their wartime separation and lengthy travels in the company of others meant that they had never really got to know each other properly, but in any event Archie the City commuter was no longer Archie the dashing young airman and adventurer. In 1926, following the death of her beloved mother, Agatha spent time at Ashfield in Torquay, where she found the process of clearing out her mother’s belongings enormously stressful. This was exacerbated when Archie arrived and announced that he was in love with Nancy Neele, a younger woman with whom he shared an interest in golf, and wanted Agatha to divorce him. Agatha’s autobiography describes this distressing period of her life with moving sincerity and economy. Clearly to the frustration of many, she offers no detail at all about what happened next. I will keep it brief.
We will never know what exactly motivated Agatha’s sudden decision to abandon her cherished car, take a train to Harrogate and there book into a hotel, in a name similar to that of her husband’s mistress, between 4 and 14 December 1926. Whether it was the result of some sort of stress-induced anxiety attack, or the botched playing-out of a scenario intended to win back her husband, or – as seems most likely – a combination of the two, the only winners at the time were the press, who succeeded in boosting their circulations by drumming up one of the first celebrity media frenzies; an outcome which appears to have surprised and distressed the very private Agatha in equal measure. One of the many who has subsequently perpetuated this intrusive reportage by claiming to ‘provide the answers to the mystery’ is Jared Cade who, in his book Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days (1998), bases his claims on information received from Judith Gardner, the daughter of Agatha’s close friend Nan Kon. Cade incorrectly describes Nan as Agatha’s ‘sister-in-law’, when she was not in fact a relation, but simply Agatha’s sister’s husband’s sister. Cade informs us that Nan told her daughter, amongst other things, that Agatha stayed with her on 3 December, the one night on which her whereabouts is unaccounted for. Biographer Laura Thompson painstakingly employs antique train timetables to disprove this theory and goes on to berate Cade for describing scenes that ‘he cannot possibly know about’, having herself given a detailed and lengthy fictionalised account of events. Surely the biggest flaw in Cade’s theory is that we are asked to assume that the ‘sister-in-law’, Nan, if she did indeed claim that Agatha stayed with her on the night in question, was actually telling the truth.
Following a recuperative sojourn in the Canary Islands with Rosalind and Carlo, Agatha attended a court hearing in April 1928, at which, in order to avoid embarrassment to Nancy Neele, falsified evidence of Archie’s adultery with an unknown party was offered. Agatha was granted the divorce that Archie wanted in October of that year. Unlike in Ten Years, the fact that the couple had a young child proved insufficient to keep them together; Agatha was granted custody of Rosalind. And Archie was never to speak John’s line from The Lie, ‘We’ll both start again – together … Someday – who knows? – happiness may come …’ Archie stuck to his own script, and life on this occasion failed to imitate art.
Christie’s early, unpublished playwriting, much of it very accomplished, takes an often witty and always idiosyncratic look at many of the burning social issues of the day, particularly as they affected women. As