Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Agatha Christie Blogathon: The Secret of Blandings…er, Chimneys

by 4 Comments

The Secret of Chimneys (1925) and The Seven Dials Mystery (1929) are not your typical Agatha Christie novels. Published early in her career, they’re probably best described as light-hearted spy thrillers—indeed they can almost be read as good-natured spoofs of the genre. Though both feature a murder or murders, their plots revolve much more around international intrigue and rely a good deal on fortuitous coincidences, and their chief joy is the witty banter between the characters.

Chimneys, one of the “stately homes of England,” is fairly hopping with mysterious guests, secretive detectives, foreign Counts with unpronounceable names, sinister servants, secret passages, pompous politicians, Bright Young Things who relish every bit of the excitement, and naturally a stately butler who manages to remain unfazed by it all. In the midst of the maelstrom is the owner of Chimneys, the hapless Lord Caterham, a vague and mild-mannered peer who devoutly wishes that all of these top-secret diplomatic conferences and deaths by foul play didn’t have to occur in his home. His daughter Lady Eileen Brent (known for some unfathomable reason as Bundle) is far more ready to get in on the action—a supporting character in The Secret of Chimneys, she’s promoted to heroine in The Seven Dials Mystery.

The first book finds footloose adventurer Anthony Cade agreeing to deliver the manuscript of a defunct diplomat’s memoirs to a London publisher—a job that takes on a much more lively aspect when it becomes clear that several different parties are out to get hold of the manuscript by hook or crook. Anthony winds up at Chimneys, where an important conference on the future of the (fictional) revolution-prone Balkan country of Herzoslovakia is disrupted by a murder. Nobody at Chimneys is quite what they seem, and everyone seems out to nab the manuscript or a famous missing jewel or both; and the process of straightening it all out is highly entertaining.

In The Seven Dials Mystery, the seemingly accidental death of a guest at Chimneys (“I don’t like anyone who comes and dies in my house on purpose to annoy me,” Lord Caterham complains) leads Bundle Brent into the investigation of what seems to be a secret society known as the Seven Dials, who are out to steal a valuable invention formula. A mostly new cast of characters are joined by a few old friends from the first book, including the pompous Cabinet Minister George Lomax and his young assistant, the not overly bright but eminently likeable Bill Eversleigh. The character of Superintendent Battle, who appears in both books, would later feature in three more Christie novels, including one of the best Poirot books, Cards on the Table.

I read both of these books for the first time years ago, and have always had a soft spot for them despite their being much lighter fare than Christie’s top whodunits. But just recently, something else began to dawn on me about the Chimneys books.

I have a feeling that the establishment of Chimneys may be a nod to Blandings Castle.

If you know P.G. Wodehouse, you probably know Blandings Castle—that stately pile where guests are also hardly ever what they claim to be, and quite often spend the book vying with each other in attempts to pinch something, whether it be a diamond necklace or an Egyptian scarab—always with Lord Emsworth’s secretary, the Efficient Rupert Baxter, highly suspicious and hot on their trail. Where prowlers run rampant in the halls at midnight, and the lord of the manor usually has absolutely no idea what is going on.  The more I look at it, the more I can’t help believing that Christie’s Chimneys is a cheeky hat-tip to Blandings. First you have the proprietor: the similarity between mild, vague Lord Caterham and the even vaguer Lord Emsworth, both of whom frequently have trouble following a conversation, cannot be denied. Take this conversation from Wodehouse’s Leave it to Psmith (1923):

“He threw a flower-pot at me,” said Baxter, and vanished moodily.

Lord Emsworth stared at the open window, then turned to Eve for enlightenment.

“Why did Baxter throw a flower-pot at McTodd?” he said. “And,” he went on, ventilating an even deeper question, “where the deuce did he get a flower-pot? There are no flower-pots in the library.”

Eve, on her side, was also seeking information.

“Did you say his name was McTodd, Lord Emsworth?”

“No, no. Baxter. That was Baxter, my secretary.”

“No, I mean the one who met me at the station.”

“Baxter did not meet you at the station. The man who met you at the station,” said Lord Emsworth, speaking slowly, for women are so apt to get things muddled, “was McTodd. He’s staying here…And,” said Lord Emsworth with not a little heat, “I strongly object to Baxter throwing flower-pots at him. I won’t have Baxter throwing flower-pots at my guests,” he said firmly; for Lord Emsworth, though occasionally a little vague, was keenly alive to the ancient traditions of his family regarding hospitality.

And, in one of the best scenes from The Seven Dials Mystery, a conversation with Lord Caterham:

“I haven’t been to London,” said Bundle. “I ran over a man.”

“What?”

“Only I didn’t really. He was shot.”

“How could he have been?”

“I don’t know how he could have been, but he was.”

“But why did you shoot him?”

“I didn’t shoot him.”

“You shouldn’t shoot people,” said Lord Caterham in a tone of mild remonstrance. “You shouldn’t really. I daresay some of them richly deserve it—but all the same it will lead to trouble.”

“I tell you I didn’t shoot him.”

“Well, who did?”

“Nobody knows,” said Bundle.

“Nonsense,” said Lord Caterham. “A man can’t be shot and run over without anyone having done it.”

“He wasn’t run over,” said Bundle.

“I thought you said he was.”

“I said I thought I had.”

“A tyre burst, I suppose,” said Lord Caterham. “That does sound like a shot. It says so in detective stories.”

Both establishments, of course, have their stately and unflappable butler. Even more telling, both have a despotic Scottish head gardener who strikes terror into the hearts of employers—at Blandings a McAllister, at Chimneys a McDonald. Blandings is located near the town of Market Blandings, and Chimneys near Market Basing (a town name Christie would re-use in many books).

But the crowning touch is that in The Seven Dials Mystery, Christie gives Sir Oswald Coote, temporary tenant of Chimneys, a secretary called Rupert Bateman—a serious-minded young man who can provide eminently practical advice in any situation. If Rupert Bateman isn’t based off Rupert Baxter, I’ll eat my hat. He’s even referred to outright as “the efficient Mr. Rupert Bateman,” in Chapter 20. And the scene in Chapter 27, with Bateman dogging the steps of Jimmy Thesiger during a midnight country-house prowl and insisting on verifying his story of why he’s creeping about in the middle of the night, is Efficient Baxter to the very life.

I think it’s worth noting that decades later, Christie would dedicate her 1969 novel Hallowe’en Party “To P. G. Wodehouse—whose books and stories have brightened my life for many years. Also, to show my pleasure in his having been kind enough to tell me he enjoyed my books.”

This post is an entry for the Agatha Christie Blogathon, hosted by Christina Wehner and Little Bits of Classics. Don’t forget to check out all the other posts in the blogathon!

Near Relations: Historical Mystery and Classic Mystery

by 2 Comments

Mystery today is one of the most adaptable genres, or at least one on which a wide variety of variations are made. Booksellers split the main genre into half a dozen subcategories: hard-boiled, cozy, historical, British, police procedurals, and more. Authors have discovered over the years that the classic mystery plot can be given a fresh twist by trying it out in different scenarios and styles, sometimes with splendid results. I’ve read and enjoyed some of these attempts, but the lure of the classics is always strong. I’m always ready to go back to certain settings—say, an English country house in the 1930s, with a mixed bag of suspects and an enigmatic private sleuth to sift them out. One book along these lines may be better than another, but the formula never gets old.

 In my own writing, historical mystery is my sub-genre of choice. It’s a pretty extensive sub-genre in itself—you can have a historical mystery set anywhere from ancient Rome to Regency England or the trenches of World War I. But in spite of this, and in spite of the fact that it’s one of many sub-genres, I personally feel it shares the closest kinship with the “classic” mystery, the style that many of us know best. Think about it for a minute. Mystery fiction as we know it began with authors such as Wilkie Collins, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and their contemporaries in the 19th century, and was refined into an art by G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and a multitude of others during mystery’s Golden Age in the early 20th century. A genre often permanently retains some of the characteristics of the era in which it was born or became most popular—certain plot devices, character types or literary styles that particularly resonated with the people of those times linger on through decades of later authors’ efforts. The detective novel was born in the Victorian era and came of age during the Roaring Twenties, the glamorous ’30s and the World Wars. I think to some degree, the culture of those times is woven into the fabric of the genre, and filters through our consciousness when we hear the word “mystery.”

That’s true, at least, for those of us who cut our mystery teeth on Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Modern-day mysteries just don’t hold the same appeal for me. There’s a certain flair and romance to the old standbys of the footprint and fingerprint, the cigar ash, the handkerchief with a whiff of perfume, the railroad timetable, the half-burned scrap of paper and the revolver in the desk drawer. Cell phones and digital technology just aren’t in it. And there’s the plot angle, too. Before the widespread use of forensic evidence, mystery plots focused in on suspects’ motivations, personalities and relationships—the human interaction element—of necessity. This is an element I’ve always found fascinating. Agatha Christie experimented with more dramatic examples of this back in the Golden Age itself, with situations that deliberately stripped away possible physical evidence and relied almost entirely on the testimony of witnesses (Cards on the Table and Five Little Pigs, for example). She even made an early foray into what we would now call historical mystery, setting Death Comes as the End in ancient Egypt.

At the root of it, I suppose, I write historical mystery because I’m a historical-fiction person any way you slice it. Writing in a modern setting has never really worked for me (and I’ve got a couple of failed story drafts to attest to that). When I had an idea for a mystery series, it was only natural that it should be a historical one. Perhaps it’s because of this relationship between history and mystery that I’ve always felt myself on familiar ground while writing the Mrs. Meade Mysteries. My own characters, their home town and their plots may be different, but I still feel I’m following in the footsteps of the mystery authors I’ve read and loved—or at least cutting a new path through a familiar forest.

This post originally appeared under a slightly different title as a guest post at Scribbles and Inkstains in April 2014.

The Stagecoach Scenario

by 7 Comments


A number of years ago, I came up with a definition of my own for a plot device that I recognized as one of the most frequently-used and filled with possibilities. I call it the Stagecoach Scenario.

I borrowed the name from the classic 1939 movie Stagecoach, which demonstrates the idea in its most basic form. The setup is this: a group of people, usually (but not always) diverse in personality, background, profession and, depending on the setting of the story, social class—people who ordinarily would have little or no contact with one another—brought together in close quarters while traveling. Usually they are strangers to one another, sometimes there are unexpected (possibly unpleasant) reunions with past acquaintances involved. On the journey, some outside force poses a danger and/or strands them midway on their route, forcing them into closer communication with each other through a common struggle for survival. As a result, tensions and various relationships among the individuals come into play. The story’s conflict derives from both the question of whether they will escape the threatened disaster and what will happen among them in the meantime.

All these elements are easily identifiable in Stagecoach: the close quarters are the stagecoach itself, the passengers the varied group of characters, the journey across the desert, the hostile Indians are the danger from outside. But once you’ve recognized the basic plot structure, you can see it framing dozens of different stories. A modern equivalent is the airplane disaster film, from The High and the Mighty onward. You have basically the same setup: the diverse group of passengers, the outside force of engine trouble or weather literally threatening the safety of the plane. With a few variations, you could have the same situation on a ship—or a train—or even a bus.

Introducing a crime and a criminal into the pool of characters adds another layer of complexity. Who is hiding something? Is one of the group not what they seem to be? Do they pose a hazard to their companions? The Stagecoach Scenario even serves as the frame for classic whodunits. Agatha Christie used it multiple times with stunning results. Murder On the Orient Express is a stellar example of the travel plot, with the snowbound train serving as the close quarters. In true Christie fashion she uses the basic setup, a crowd of diverse characters thrown together, as an integral part of her mystery plot. The limited amount of people present in a travel setting is helpful for a mystery writer, as John Curran notes in Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks; it provides a limited pool of suspects to concentrate on, and the usually remote location also gives the detective a free hand (as in Appointment With Death, for instance). It’s the outside force, the stranding snow, that gives Poirot the freedom to make his investigation in Murder On the Orient Express. Christie successfully used almost every single method of transportation mentioned above, including the ship (Death On the Nile) and the airplane (Death In the Clouds), but Murder On the Orient Express remains the finest example of ‘stranded murder.’

But the Stagecoach Scenario can be stationary too. Take the hostage story, for instance (The Petrified Forest is a textbook case). In war stories or in Westerns, a siege produces the same effect: trapped characters, outside threat and internal conflict. The Old West is a particularly propitious setting, considering that it’s filled with potential outside dangers and a great diversity of character types that can be brought together. An excellent example of this in book form is Last Stand At Papago Wells by Louis L’Amour. In this story the group of characters—men and women, Army and civilian, innocent and guilty, fugitives and pursuers—are trapped in a desert stronghold, surrounded by hostile Apaches and with a diminishing supply of water, with the tensions and suspicion among themselves proving an enemy as dangerous as the Indians.

It doesn’t stop there. I’ve noticed that some war movies share a similar structure—again you have the dissimilar group (the soldiers, recruited from all walks of life) the exotic locale (overseas) the outside danger (hazards of war), the characters forced into close association and dependence on each other. And then there’s the classic English country-house mystery, another device for gathering a cross-section of characters together and watching the sparks fly.

The defining feature of this scenario, in whatever setting, is that it’s character-driven. Outside forces may apply the pressure, but the interest lies in how the characters react to it and how they interact with each other while under that pressure. And this is where the author steps in, to craft their own unique characters and build their own story off the basic foundation. That’s why I love this scenario—the possibilities are endless. Once aboard the stagecoach, anything can happen.

So what are your favorite examples of the Stagecoach Scenario in books and film? How many additional variations can you think of?

Adapted from an old piece on a now-defunct prior blog.