Agatha Christie's True Crime Inspirations (8 page)

The torpedoing of the Lusitania was a premeditated crime… This could only be done by vampires in human form.

Western Morning News

Agatha Christie introduced courting ‘partners in crime’ Tommy Beresford and Tuppence Crowley in
The Secret Adversary
(1922). The novel is not a murder mystery but a thriller, cleverly mixing fact with fiction. Set after the end of the First World War, the childhood friends meet up and, seeking excitement and gainful employment, they form a business called ‘Young Adventurers’. After placing a newspaper advertisement offering to do anything and go anywhere, they are recruited by the Secret Service and become embroiled in the murky world of espionage, seeking the whereabouts of a young woman, Jane Finn, who, as she queued for a lifeboat, was handed highly sensitive wartime documents by an intelligence agent about to go down on a ship attacked by a U-boat, including a treaty that could still embarrass the government in peacetime. Tommy and Tuppence begin their investigation by tracking down surviving passengers to learn what they can of Jane Finn’s fate in what was a true-life international incident, the sinking of the SS
Lusitania
.

In May 1915, the Cunard liner
Lusitania
set sail on her last voyage, with 1,257 passengers and 702 crew aboard. Travelling from New York to Liverpool, she was sunk by a U-boat eight miles off the coast of Ireland with the loss of 1,198 lives. Too late, a lookout on the bow sounded the alarm through a megaphone, ‘Torpedoes coming on the starboard side!’ The torpedo struck the
Lusitania
under the bridge and triggered a second explosion of a deadly cargo onboard the ship. A shocked survivor recalled, ‘It sounded like a million-ton hammer hitting a steam boiler a hundred feet high’.

The barbarism of an attack on an unarmed and unescorted passenger ship without warning brought widespread condemnation, summed up by the following comment in the press: ‘Fifteen hundred non-combatants murdered in cold-blood… has produced a feeling of horror and abhorrence which cannot, and should not, be confined to impotent fury’. However, it was not generally known at the time that apart from passengers, the liner was also carrying munitions, arguably making it a legitimate military target. Only a week earlier, the German embassy had warned US citizens of the dangers of travelling on a published list of vessels that included the
Lusitania
. When news of the loss broke in England, rioters took to the streets and attacked shops with German-sounding names in cities across the country, including London, Manchester and Liverpool. Mobs then targeted other minority groups, including Jewish and Chinese communities, forcing the government to send in troops to restore order and the introduction of a policy to intern ‘enemy aliens’ for the duration of the war.

Although outraged, there was no comparable violent reaction in the USA, despite the fact that 128 US citizens had drowned in the atrocity. A year later Woodrow Wilson was elected President on a peace platform, naïvely asserting that ‘there is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right’. Continuing to pursue a policy of neutrality in spite of continued provocation, he delivered his famous ‘Peace without Victory’ speech in January 1917. However, at the end of that same month, Germany dropped any pretence that that it would show any restraint towards ‘neutral shipping’ – officially making any merchant vessel a target for U-boats – when a message from the German Foreign Minister, Dr Arthur Zimmerman, was intercepted. It revealed plans to recommence unrestricted submarine warfare and proposed an alliance between Germany and Mexico if America entered the war, with a promise that the disputed ownership of the lands of Texas and Arizona would be resolved by handing them back to Mexico. When this news was leaked by British intelligence, isolationist feelings dissolved and had the desired effect for the cause of the Allies. Fury ensued in the US following the sinking of three cargo vessels in March 1917, forcing Wilson to abandon his neutral stance. American forces were soon on their way to Europe after the President reluctantly approached Congress to endorse a declaration of war on Germany. He won their full support with an eloquent address, accepting that, ‘The world must be made safe for democracy’.

Fakir Carmichael is modelled on soldier, scholar and Arabist T.E. Lawrence.

The Agatha Christie Collection No. 42,
They Came to Baghdad

Agatha Christie’s light-hearted thriller
They Came to Baghdad
(1951) features a multilingual member of British intelligence, Henry ‘Fakir’ Carmichael, a character based on the real-life persona of the enigmatic T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935). The real-life hero turned down a recommendation for the Victoria Cross and the offer of a knighthood for his role as guerrilla leader of the Arab Revolt against Germany’s allies, the Turks, during the First World War. The ‘Uncrowned King of the Desert’ was a brilliant scholar, philosopher, archaeologist, linguist, author, diplomat and statesman who shunned fame and fortune to become an aircraft mechanic in what was a forlorn attempt to escape the charismatic image he had engendered as the world-renowned ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.

One of Lawrence’s ancestors was the cousin of Sir Walter Raleigh, a connection of which he was extremely proud. Therefore, it was fitting that in February 1929 Lawrence journeyed to the county of Raleigh’s birth to be stationed at RAF Mountbatten, Plymouth. In an effort to escape undue attention he had assumed the alias ‘Shaw’, in honour of one of his great friends, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, who introduced him to the vivacious Lady Nancy Astor. She was one of the most glamorous figures of the interwar period and had the distinction of being the first female to enter Parliament after women had been given their long overdue right to vote in 1918. She succeeded her husband, Waldorf, as member for Plymouth Sutton when he moved to the Lords, and continued to serve the city until she retired from politics in 1945.

Lawrence was asexual and a cynical woman-hater, but became an ardent admirer of American-born Nancy and her incredible zest for life. She was the only female allowed to ride pillion on his motorbike. The pair would often shoot off on his powerful 1,000cc Brough Superior for a high-speed ride around the city and boasted of reaching speeds of 90mph along Plymouth Embankment. In October 1930, Lawrence wrote to tell Nancy how he had overtaken a Bentley sports car ‘which only did 88’ on Salisbury Plain: ‘I wished I had had a peeress or two on my flapper bracket’.

Lawrence called his bike Boanerges (meaning ‘Sons of Thunder’, the name which Jesus gave to two of his disciples, James and John), but his love of speed was to cause his tragic death shortly after his discharge from the RAF in March 1935. Taking up residence at Cloud’s Hill, a rented cottage in Dorset, he found it difficult to face an uncertain future and friends became concerned as he had attempted suicide in the past. He wrote to Nancy:

I am so tired that it feels like heaven drawing near: only there are people who whisper that heaven will bore me. When they tell me that I almost wish I were dead for I have done everything in life except rest, and if rest is to prove no refuge, then what is left?

Lady Astor tried to cheer Lawrence with the promise of a forthcoming government post and invited him to her country house in Buckinghamshire: ‘I believe... you will be asked to help reorganise the Defence Forces. If you will come to Cliveden, the last Saturday in May... you will never regret it’.

Britain needed men of Lawrence’s calibre in preparing to counter the growing threat posed by Germany. On the 13 May Lawrence received a letter from the award-winning author of
Tarka the Otter
, Henry Williamson, based in Georgeham, North Devon, proposing a meeting at Cloud’s Hill to discuss the possibility of Lawrence holding talks with Adolf Hitler to try and secure a lasting peace in Europe. Williamson was a member of Oswald Mosely’s British Union of Fascists and fervent admirer of the Fuhrer’s achievements. His collected novels,
The Flax of Dream
, contained the following dedication: ‘I salute the great man across the Rhine whose life symbol is a happy child’.

Lawrence agreed to receive Williamson and rode to the Post Office to send a telegram with the following directions: ‘Lunch Tuesday will find cottage one mile north of Bovington Camp SHAW’.

On his way back home he swerved his motorcycle to avoid two errand boys on bicycles, crashed and flew over the handlebars, receiving severe head injuries. Lawrence was taken to Bovington Military Hospital but never recovered consciousness and died six days later. The ghost of Lawrence wearing flowing, long Arab robes was soon spotted riding a motorbike by Cloud’s Hill. Chillingly, a year before his death, Lawrence had prophesised his demise in a letter to motorbike manufacturer George Brough: ‘It looks as though I might yet break my neck on a Brough Superior’.

Agatha Christie’s fictional hero, Fakir Carmichael, is killed while trying to relay plans to his supervisor about a secret weapon; likewise, following Lawrence’s death, rumours circulated that he had been murdered by foreign agents. Conversely, another story circulated that his death had been faked by the Secret Service to allow him to undertake espionage in the Middle East. Supporters of this theory believe he died in Morocco in 1968. In keeping with similar tales about heroic figures, including Francis Drake, Horatio Nelson and Lord Kitchener, there is also a legend that Lawrence has merely withdrawn into an Arthurian limbo from which he will emerge to save an imperilled nation.

Eden Phillpotts was an odd-looking man, with a face more like a faun’s than an ordinary human being’s.

Agatha Christie (
An Autobiography
, 1977)

In
Peril at End House
(1932), Poirot and Hastings go to the aid of a young woman in danger at an eerie mansion, End House, whilst holidaying at the Majestic Hotel, St Loo. The properties are recognisable as Rock End and the Imperial Hotel in Torquay and Agatha Christie dedicated the mystery novel to one of the town’s most famous former residents, prolific author Eden Phillpotts, in gratitude ‘for his friendship and the encouragement he gave me many years ago’.

Born in India, the son of an Army officer who died while he was an infant, Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960) was raised and educated in Plymouth, then for ten years worked for an insurance company in London before he successfully turned to writing for a living after failing in his ambition to become an actor. For half a century Phillpotts produced an average of four major works a year, covering novels, poems, plays, short stories and even detective stories, using the pseudonym Harrington Hext. However, he is best remembered as the ‘Hardy of Devon’ for a celebrated cycle of eighteen novels based on Dartmoor locations. Most notable was
Widecombe Fair
(1913), which he adapted into a play,
The Farmer’s Wife
, that was later directed for the silent screen by Alfred Hitchcock. From 1899-1929, Phillpotts made his home at Eltham, Torquay, where he became good friends with his neighbours, the Miller family. When Agatha was aged nineteen, she wrote a novel based in Cairo called
Snow in the Desert
and approached Phillpotts for advice. He was sufficiently impressed to arrange a meeting for her with his London literary agent, Hughes Massie, who considered the manuscript for a few months before deciding he would not be able to place it with a publisher.

Phillpotts nurtured another talented writer in his own household, his daughter Adelaide Eden Phillpotts (1896-1993), who grew to admire Agatha Miller while they were attending dance classes together:

Of all the children I recall only a flaxen-haired beauty of twelve called Agatha – later Agatha Christie – wearing a blue silk accordion-pleated dress, who danced better that anyone else and was prettier. She lived near us but we did not see much of her until she grew up. One side of the saloon held a large mirror and I recollect on my sixth birthday standing in front of it and noticing my face for the first time. Then I caught a sight of Agatha’s reflection: she was a thousand times nicer and cleverer than me. But I never envied anyone.

However, at this same young stage of her life Adelaide was harbouring a dark secret, as her innocence was in peril at Eltham. The young girl had become sexually attractive to her own father and it was many years before she could bring herself to reveal the sordid nature of their incestuous relationship: