Imaginary dialogue between Max Mallowan and Agatha Christie
by Charactorium · Agatha Christie (1890 — 1976) · Literature · 6 min read
It is in the library of Greenway House, overlooking the misty River Dart in the autumn of 1975, that Max Mallowan finds his wife, a tray of cooling tea between them. They have shared their lives for forty-five years, since that marriage of 1930 which took her, the already famous novelist, to his mud-brick excavation sites in the East. That day, the archaeologist sets aside his Nimrud ivories to question the woman he knows better than anyone — knowing that even after so many years, there remain drawers she has never opened before him.
—Agatha, before I knew you, in 1926, you disappeared for eleven days. You who never told me anything about it — what happened?
You are the only one I could tell, and yet I cannot any more than I can tell others, my dear Max. That year, my mother had just died and my first marriage was falling apart; I was a broken woman, not a puzzle to be solved. They searched for me with a thousand police and fifteen thousand volunteers, as if I had committed a crime, when I had only fled my own life. When they found me in that hotel in Yorkshire, under another name, I truly believe I no longer knew who I was. The rest I locked away somewhere and threw away the key. Some disappearances have no solution, you see — and that is perhaps the only mystery I have never been able to solve.
Some disappearances have no solution — that is the only mystery I have never been able to solve.
—You were a pharmacy dispenser during the Great War. Is that really where you learned to kill your characters?
Absolutely, and it is the finest gift that awful war gave me. At the Torquay hospital dispensary, I weighed, I measured, I learned by heart the properties of each substance — arsenic, strychnine, digitalis. A pharmacist will tell you that a remedy and a poison differ only by quantity; I made that phrase my method. When I wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles, I poisoned my victim with a rigor that no doctor could fault. In the sixty-six novels that followed, poison remains my favourite weapon: discreet, patient, feminine, as some fools would say. I still keep my old toxicology manuals — you who have seen them on my shelf know I never joke about accuracy.
A remedy and a poison differ only by quantity; I made that phrase my method.
—In 1926, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd caused a scandal with its ending. Some cried foul — did that hurt you?
Hurt me? No, delighted me, my friend. The whole question of the detective novel comes down to this: the reader must feel fooled, then realize that all the clues were under his eyes from the first page. With Roger Ackroyd, I simply turned against the reader the trust he ordinarily gives the narrator. I was accused of cheating; I reply that I never lied — I only let the reader lie to himself. That is my whole art. I sow what the English call red herrings, those smoked herrings dragged to mislead the dogs, and the real pleasure lies in hiding the truth in plain sight. A good ending should not surprise by what it reveals, but by how obvious it was all along.
I never lied — I only let the reader lie to himself.
—I have seen you write without a plan, sometimes in the bath, sometimes at the table. How do you keep all those threads without ever getting lost?
You know me, Max: I have never had a desk or a method I could show. My best murder ideas come to me in my hot bath, in the morning, while eating apples — it is ridiculous and that is how it is. I carry a plot in my head for months, I turn it over and over like you turn a potsherd to guess the whole vase. Then I sit down at the typewriter and go forward without quite knowing where I am going, letting myself be surprised as much as my future reader. The secret is not in the plan but in the cunning: I decide the culprit very early, then spend the rest of the book diverting attention from him. Writing a detective novel is the art of making people look the other way.
Writing a detective novel is the art of making people look the other way.
—Since our marriage in 1930, you have followed me on my digs. Do you remember our first seasons in the desert — what did they bring you?
Those seasons were among the happiest of my life, and you know that better than anyone. When I married you, people pitied me for going to live in a tent instead of holding a salon in London — what nonsense. At Nimrud, at Arpachiyah, at Ur, I discovered a world where time is measured in centuries, not print runs. I photographed your finds, I cleaned the ivories with cream from my beauty jar, and in the evening I wrote my novels in our mud-brick house by lamplight. People often ask me how a woman can live with a younger man, occupied with the past; I reply that an archaeologist is the best husband of all — the older his wife gets, the more interested he is in her. No other profession would have given me that.
An archaeologist is the best husband of all: the older his wife gets, the more interested he is in her.
—On our digs, you wielded the trowel as much as I did. Murder in Mesopotamia was born there — did the setting nourish the crime?
Entirely, my dear. I only had to look around me: a small community of Westerners isolated in the desert, camped around a tell, gathered each evening at the same table, with its jealousies, secrets and grudges simmering under the sun. It is a perfect closed circle — far better than an English manor, because no one can escape. I took our expeditions, our workers, the smell of mint tea and the dust of bricks, and I simply slipped a corpse into it. A trowel, a brush, a field notebook: those are my true novelist's instruments as much as yours as an archaeologist. I believe that crime, like archaeology, consists of patiently scraping the surface to unearth what people have taken such pains to bury.
Crime, like archaeology, consists of unearthing what people have taken such pains to bury.
—I have heard you more than once grumble about Poirot. You who created him, why does that little Belgian annoy you so much?
Because he is insufferable, that is why! I invented him too old, too perfect, too full of his precious little grey cells — and I found myself married to him for fifty years, which is a very long time. As early as The ABC Murders I found him tiresome, a fussy egotist with his moustaches and his mania for order. I wrote to my publisher Collins without mincing words: I do not love Poirot, he exhausts me. The tragedy, you see, is that the public adores him, and a novelist does not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs on a whim. So I gritted my teeth and put up with him, novel after novel, as one puts up with a rich, tiresome old uncle one dares not cross. Miss Marple, now, I love her — but that is another story.
I found myself married to Poirot for fifty years, which is a very long time.
—You kept Curtain in a safe since the war, and now it has been published this year. Why let him die at last?
Because the time had come, and because I will not be here much longer to watch over him, do not protest. I wrote Curtain during the Blitz, fearing I might die under a German bomb; I wanted Poirot to have his ending, written by my hand, and not botched by someone after me. I locked it in a bank vault for over thirty years. This year, by publishing it, I have finally been able to draw the curtain — curtain is indeed the right word. Do you know that the New York Times devoted its front page to him, a full obituary, as if for a statesman? A fictional character making the headlines at his death: I think even Poirot, that vain creature, would have been satisfied — and I, I admit, a little moved.
I wanted Poirot to have his ending written by my hand, and not botched by someone after me.
—Your very first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, you wrote on a bet, during the other war. Did you expect anything from it?
Nothing at all, and that is precisely why it succeeded. My sister Madge had challenged me to write a good detective novel, convinced I was incapable of it; I am stubborn, you know. I took advantage of my shifts at the dispensary, between two medication dosages, to build an unassailable poisoning. I created that little Belgian refugee because Torquay had many of them at the time, and I gave him a purely cerebral method. Six publishers rejected it before Bodley Head accepted it, two years later, making me sign a scandalous contract. I saw it only as amusement; I had no idea I was opening a door I would never again be able to close. Vocations often arise from a bet taken too seriously.
Vocations often arise from a bet taken too seriously.
—Here, at Greenway, you seem finally at peace. Does this house mean as much to you as I believe?
Even more, my Max. I bought Greenway in 1938 and I have never owned anything dearer to my heart — these terraced gardens descending to the Dart, this silence, this English light that forgives everything. It is here that I rest from the noise of the world, from Poirot, from journalists, from the public woman I am forced to be. After a life spent inventing deaths, I have found in this house a way of living that owes nothing to anyone. You see me play the piano in the evening, read by the fire, forget that I am the 'Queen of Crime.' People think I am fascinated by death; in truth, I have never loved anything but life, and especially the life one leads together, without needing to speak of it.
People think I am fascinated by death; in truth, I have never loved anything but life.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Agatha Christie's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.