In the footsteps of Agatha
Earlier in September I went to Torquay in Devon for the Agatha Christie Festival, where my friend Victoria Dowd was speaking. It’s a brave speaker who offers to talk there, as Agatha’s grandson, Matthew Pritchard, is often in the audience and happy to participate in the Q&A. He can shed a remarkable insight into Agatha’s life, but woe betide the speaker who hasn’t got their facts straight!
Victoria, who writes the Smart Women’s Guide to Murder series, certainly had her facts straight. She’s written entertainingly on Agatha in her blog and her knowledge of all the books, plays, films and TV series is encyclopaedic. She took part in a balloon debate on which of the Poirot screen adaptations was the best. Death on the Nile won it by a whisker, but there was general agreement that David Suchet is the best Poirot by miles.
I enjoyed a presentation on all the international Poirot films and TV over the years by Teresa Peschel, from Bulgarian expressionism to French contemporary reimaginings. To my surprise, my favourite Poirot turned out to be the Russian one. He’s exactly how I imagined him, but he does unfortunately require subtitles. Another fascinating talk was about Agatha in Iraq, where she attended many archaeological digs and met her second husband, Max Mallowan.
Andrew Eames followed in her footsteps as well as he could, although back in the 1920s you could get from London to Baghdad in two trains, changing only at Constantinople. Nowadays, my son has to change twice just to get to school in South London. When Eames did the journey in 2002, it was just before the first Gulf War and in the end his group had to turn back from their desert ziggurat because it was being bombed by the Americans. He was the only person on the tour bus who was honest about why he was on the trip. Goodness knows what the others were up to, but the skulduggery was worthy of one of Agatha’s novels.
A highlight of the festival was a large model railway featuring places from Christie’s novels, which had been made for a TV show and rebuilt in Torre Abbey in Torquay, where the festival is held. One of my characters has a prized model railway in the new book, so I was thrilled to be able to ask lots of questions for research. The most fun though, of course, was watching one of the trains come through a tunnel with its lights on. We all clustered round like children to watch it go.
Afterwards, I had a look at a train of my own. I didn’t have to travel very far - just a couple of miles up the coast to Paignton, where the steam train leaves for Dartmouth several times a day, along one of the most beautiful stretches of English coastline. Having done it a few years ago, I highly recommend it if you’re ever in Devon. However, this time, I was in a hurry - so I just had time to watch the steam locomotive arrive and the carriages disgorge their passengers.
My editor asked for a train-based book from me years ago, in the tradition of crime novels set on railways, not least, of course, The Orient Express. In book 5, at last, I’m obliging him. It’s set in 1961, and originally I wasn’t sure whether the locomotive pulling the royal train would have been steam or diesel. It turns out that ‘61 was one of those pivotal years when technology was changing in all sorts of areas (men were going into space for the first time at one end, and glass-making furnaces in Venice were finishing their conversion from charcoal to methane at the other), and the royal locomotive could have been either. Guess which one I picked. What would you have chosen?
Agatha Christie in Torquay
