Curtain Up (70 page)

                    
Don't let it make the critics sad,

                    
Because they cannot give away,

                    
The murderer! If they
can
they
may
!
⁶⁵

What isn't clear from the script is that this poem was intended to be heard on a recording of the playwright's own voice; ‘We agreed to Agatha making this record' says Hubert Gregg, yet again at the helm as director. ‘She seemed convinced it would work and we wanted her to get it out of her system.'
⁶⁶

An alternative to the poem, in which a voice simply asks the audience who they think did it, and the critics are spared, is inked in to the script. And following this is a page that reads,

A suggestion

If plays run satisfactorily, at some unadvertised date, the ending of the Patient will be different. Inspector Cray will have a few extra lines and the screen will be drawn aside, so that the audience sees who is hiding behind it! This could be done at odd intervals.

Correspondence shows that Christie received a ‘good copy' of
Rule of Three
, which was typed up from the draft that had contained this note, on 24 August 1961,
⁶⁷
so we know that what follows is pure coincidence. A week later, a fan from South Africa called James Chapman wrote to her, ‘I have been an admirer of your writing for many years, and for some time now I have been meaning to write to you with a “crazy” idea for a play, which only you would be able to make use of at its best. Possibly you get hundreds of suggestions, but here it is to do with what you like! The idea would be for you to write one of your excellent “who done its” with say possibly five suspects . . . now, here is the difference to other plays – you make five different endings, in each of which one of the five suspects is the guilty party.'
⁶⁸
He goes on at some length to explain how it would work, concluding: ‘A critic friend I once discussed the idea with thought it had flaws – but knowing your love of fooling your audiences, you may think it has possibilities. With all good wishes for your continued success.'
Chapman received a standard response from Hughes Massie and there is nothing to indicate that Christie herself even saw his letter, but his concept is particularly intriguing in the context of Christie's ideas for the ending of
The Patient
.

There has been some confusion over the timeframe of the original production of
Rule of Three
, because neither Saunders nor Gregg make it clear in their accounts that an entire year elapsed between its original short tour and its West End opening. In respect of casting, Gregg says simply, ‘There was some reshuffling before we reached London,' but the genesis of the production was far more troublesome and time-consuming than either of them imply.

Cork wrote to Christie in August 1961 enclosing the ‘good copy' of the script, but explaining that ‘when it was “acted” it took precisely 81 minutes, which is rather too little to give the customers for their money. If you could see your way to adding 17 pages – say 7, 5 and 5 respectively, this would be perfect. I think you will agree when you see Peter that he is now going ahead with this project with terrific enthusiasm. With this he will probably overcome all difficulties.' The plays had actually been ‘acted' by Gregg to Saunders over dinner at Saunders' house in Bishop's Avenue, and it is clear from the first draft that they would have been too short for an evening's entertainment. Christie dutifully added further material, in the case of
The Rats
by creating a scene with an additional character, the inquisitive Jennifer, so that a three-hander became a four-hander. Jennifer has come to feed the budgie belonging to the flat's owners, and is surprised to find Sandra there, but less so when Sandra's lover David also turns up. Jennifer puts two and two together and leaves the two of them together. David and Jennifer are then joined briefly by Alec.

Christie had previously kept the Lord Chamberlain's office happy by complying with the accepted codification of homosexual characters, including Christopher Wren (who wears an ‘artistic' tie) in
The Mousetrap
and the ‘pansy' Basil in
A Daughter's a Daughter
. But now, four years after the Wolfenden Report had recommended that ‘homosexual behaviour between
consenting adults in private be no longer a criminal offence', she attempted something more direct. Alec Hanbury is described as ‘a young man of twenty-eight or nine, the pansy type, very elegant, amusing, inclined to be spiteful . . . dressed in the height of fashion, even wearing gloves'. When David remarks to Sandra that Alec clearly does not like her she responds, ‘I don't think he likes any women very much.' Alec, of course, is a nasty piece of work, but then so are all the characters in ‘The Rats'; a heterosexual woman in the piece also proves to be a murderer. Christie's point is that crimes of passion are not a heterosexual preserve.

But it wasn't to be as simple as that. On 30 October 1961, Saunders wrote to the Lord Chamberlain's office to request approval for two amendments in the script for
The Rats
. The first was to change a line of Sandra's from ‘You swine, you swine!' to ‘You bastard! You filthy, rotten bastard!'; the censor has written ‘OK' in blue ink next to this, and the word ‘YES' is then written in red ink. The second was to change David's line describing Alec's love for Sandra's first husband from ‘one of those unnatural, hysterical devotions I should guess' to ‘Alex [sic] – obviously a homo – it was that kind of devotion I should guess.' Next to this, the censor has written in blue ink ‘Why? I see no reason for underlining this character', and the word ‘NO' is written in red ink.
⁶⁹

On 2 November, the Lord Chamberlain's office wrote to Saunders stating, ‘The following dialogue is allowed: “You bastard! You filthy, rotten bastard.” The following dialogue is not allowed: “Alex – obviously a homo – it was that kind of devotion I should guess.”'
⁷⁰
Under this, on the copy of the letter now held in the Lord Chamberlain's Plays archive, someone has handwritten (as if scribbled in rehearsals and sent straight back) ‘Alex – obviously a queer' (to which the censor writes ‘NO') and ‘Alex – obviously a bit feminine' (next to which the censor has written ‘YES'). In a letter to Saunders dated 4 November, Assistant Comptroller E. Penn then states, ‘I am desired by the Lord Chamberlain to inform you that the lines “Alex – obviously a bit feminine – it was that kind of devotion,
I should guess,” submitted by you on 3 November, have been passed for inclusion in the licensed manuscript of the above play.'
⁷¹
After all that, the published version we now know has replaced this hard-won line with ‘You've only got to take one look at Alec to see what kind of devotion that was.'

The proposed use of the word ‘homo' in this context is deliberately pejorative, and is intended to tell us as much about the prejudices of David, who speaks the line, as it does about Alec himself. The replacement line does not really serve this purpose, which is doubtless why it was itself eventually replaced. Six years later, the Sexual Offences Act would finally decriminalise homosexual acts carried out in private between men; whatever
The Mousetrap
's Miss Casewell or
Go Back for Murder
's Angela Warren were getting up to in private had never been the concern of the law. The following year, the Lord Chamberlain's role in censoring plays ended. And the year after that, man landed on the moon.

The production opened to mixed reviews in Aberdeen on 6 November 1961 and toured to Glasgow, Oxford, Newcastle and Blackpool. The programme from Oxford presents us with the delightful prospect of the evening being punctuated by performances from the theatre's ‘resident orchestra'.
⁷²
Agatha and Max were visiting Kashmir and Iran throughout this period; Max, who had recently been made a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, was involved with the Institute of Persian Studies in Tehran. Christie remained in communication by telegram while she was travelling, and a series of detailed letters sent by Saunders and Cork to her care of the British Embassy in Iran (‘Persia' according to Saunders) awaited her arrival there. It is notable that, whereas in 1931 Agatha had hurried back from Nineveh in the hope of seeing the premiere of
Chimneys
at the little Embassy Theatre in Swiss Cottage, she was now prioritising her travels with Max, and seemed happy enough to leave Saunders and his team to their own devices. Following the failures of her brave theatrical experiments with
Verdict
and
Go Back for Murder
, the short-lived re-emergence of
A Daughter's a Daughter
, the faked collaboration on
Towards
Zero
and the success of the relatively formulaic
The Unexpected Guest
, it is hardly surprising that, at the age of seventy-one, Agatha appears to have lost some of her appetite for the processes of theatrical production.

Saunders' report on the Aberdeen premiere, written three days later, reads:

Starting with the worst, I should say right away that I didn't like The Rats at all and I don't think that I ever shall. (Let me interpose here and say that Edmund, I think, likes it the best of the three.) Hubert worked all day on it yesterday, but there are difficulties that I am not sure we can ever get over. When you see Alec in his gloves taking the knife out of the sheath and ‘casually' handing it to the girl, about a quarter of the audience got the implication. When he opened the chest, I think 99 per cent realised what was going on. This means that the play is just a slanging match, with an ending that doesn't ring true. After all, why should the man commit suicide for a murder he may not be charged with, and in any case didn't commit? I spoke to Rosalind, and she had spoken to Cecil Mallowan [Max's brother] who also disliked this play, but thought it was bad acting. Yet he liked the acting in the other two plays which, of course, included the same people.
⁷³

It is apparent from this that the play opened in the version, approved by the Lord Chamberlain's office, that includes Alec's murder of John as part of the action of the piece, and in which David exits to the balcony at the end, inspired by Alec's carefully planted suggestion that jumping from it would be a good way to end it all.

Saunders was much happier with the second play:

Afternoon at the Seaside is quite delightful in every way. It is light, gay and amusing, but still has a twist at the end, and I had nostalgic memories of Spider's Web, and wondered what would have happened had you written it as a full-length play . . . it was certainly the hit of the evening.

Patient . . . the ending was rather strange. We used the prose rather than the poetry ending, and when your voice said ‘Who do
you
think is behind the curtain?' by some sixth sense the audience seemed to realise immediately that it was
your
voice, and there was such a hubbub that your next few words weren't heard. For one moment I thought the idea was going to be a terrific success, but when the audience realised it was your voice telling them that they weren't going to be given the
answer
, there was a wave of disappointment that could be felt. No-one actually threw anything, but I asked the Manager of the theatre to enquire from various patrons he knew, and without exception they all said very uncomplimentary things about not being told who did it.

Saunders goes on to say that they had since been using a different ending where a recorded voice highlighted key clues before a curtain was drawn back to reveal the culprit. This, apparently, was a ‘spectacular success'. Saunders' plan was to make sure Rosalind saw both versions in Oxford: ‘What she doesn't know yet is that she is going to make the final decision. I haven't broken that to her yet. The ending is such a personal thing, that I feel it far better that in your absence she should decide rather than the combination of Edmund, Hubert and myself.' He goes on to note that, in the event that he fails to secure a West End theatre, ‘the whole thing is self-solving' and Agatha will be able to make her own decision about the ending, based on recordings of each of them in performance, along with the audience's reaction.'

Cork sent Christie his own appraisal of
Rule of Three
's opening:

The reception on the first night at Aberdeen was on balance both friendly and favourable. The Rats did not come over quite as well as we had hoped. It is pretty difficult to get over that claustrophobic sense of horror on a wide stage and in such a big theatre, but I think the production can be tightened up (and incidentally Hubert Gregg agrees with me
while Peter does not) and that it will be all right when it comes to town. Afternoon at the Seaside was an absolute riot – I really had no idea it could please an audience so much. The Patient was played on the first night without the solution being given. Your record asking the audience what they thought the answer was came over well, but I fear it rather upset the audience . . . I'm afraid the general feeling was one of frustration, and actually one gaggle in the foyer used the word ‘swindle', which I did not like at all. . . . by and large it looks as though the customers are there for easy entertainment, and are inclined to resent the riddle they cannot answer. I am very sorry to have to report in this way, but there it is.
⁷⁴

He also explained the plan to involve Rosalind in deciding which ending to use, and warned Agatha that ‘Goodnight Mrs Puffin has caught on at the Duchess, so it seems unlikely that Peter will be able to chuck them out before Christmas – you will recall he had to take over the previous owner's contract with these people. Peter is exploring every avenue – not by any means limited to “Shaftesbury” – but I am afraid there is nothing definite to report at the moment.'