The Count's Memoirs

The Memoirs of the Count (original title The Secret of Chimneys ) is the fifth crime novel by Agatha Christie . It first appeared in the UK in June 1925 with The Bodley Head and a little later that year in the US with Dodd, Mead and Company .

This book introduces Superintendent Battle and Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent (also: “Wuschel” in German editions), who later appear together again in the 1929 novel The Last Joker .

action

Seven years before the time of the novel, a revolution is taking place in the fictional Balkan state of Herzoslovakia . King Nicholas IV and his wife, Queen Varaga, are allegedly killed. The queen was one of the reasons for the uprising because she is a former ballet dancer with the Folies Bergère and was once called Angèle Mory. This woman was originally hired by a Herzoslovak revolutionary organization, the Brotherhood of the Red Hand, to set a trap for the king when he visited Paris. But she thwarted these plans, seduced Nikolaus and married him. The people did not come to terms with a ruler from this milieu, there was an uprising and the republic that still exists today was proclaimed.

Meanwhile, large parts of the people want the monarchy back and offer the free throne to the exiled Prince Michael Obolovitch, a distant relative of the murdered king. The British government supports the accession to the throne in exchange for oil concessions in Herzoslovakia. The head of the syndicate that is supposed to finance the trade is Herman Isaacstein, who wants to meet Prince Michael in the English country house Chimneys (in German: "the chimneys"). The owner of Chimneys is the ninth Marquis (actually Marquess) of Caterham, who was "forced" by George Lomax, the Secretary of State, to make his house available for this meeting. One difficulty arises from the fact that Count Stylptitch, Deputy Prime Minister of Herzoslovakia, who had lived in Paris since the Revolution, died in exile two months ago. His memoirs, believed to contain some indiscretions about the Herzoslovakian monarchy, were smuggled into Bulawayo . They are owned by gold prospector Jimmy McGrath, who saved the Count's life four years ago when he was attacked in Paris. As part of his will, the count had instructed the trustworthy Mr. McGrath to deliver the memoirs in person to his London publisher's office before October 13th, for a princely wage of £ 1,000.

McGrath's arrival in London is expected by George Lomax the next day. What he does not know: Since McGrath's gold search in Africa seems to be successful, he is not willing to leave Africa. So he hires his old friend Anthony Cade, an adventurer similar to himself, to deliver the papers on his behalf for a quarter of the thousand pounds. McGrath is also in possession of letters from Virginia Revel, unknown to him, to her apparent lover, a Captain O'Neill. These, as the prospector suspected, had been used to blackmail Mrs. Revel. McGrath therefore - quite an English gentleman - wishes that the letters of their author be returned. Cade promises to do both jobs.

Arrived in London, Anthony Cade stays at the Blitz Hotel under Jimmy McGrath's name. One tries immediately to get to the manuscript. The waiter Giuseppe Manuelli penetrates Cade's room during the night. But Cade wakes up and the two men fight; Manuelli escapes and mistakenly does not take the count's memoirs with him, but rather the letters from Virginia Revel. The next day she receives a visit from Manuelli, who wants to blackmail her. She gives him forty pounds, but also tells him that she doesn't know where the letters came from and that she didn't write them. She also tells her cousin Lomax about this, who invited her to Chimneys - as the widow of a British diplomat who worked temporarily in Herzoslovakia.

Cade accomplishes his task by delivering the manuscript to Mr. Holmes at the publisher and receiving his check. He also receives, as McGrath, an invitation from the government to attend the Chimneys meeting. He decides to travel under his own name and to stay in the village inn. Before that, he goes to Revel, who, returning from a tennis game, found Manuelli's body in her apartment. There is a note next to the body: “Chimneys, 11:45 am; Thursday". Cade learns of her invitation to Chimneys and concludes that the murder of Manuelli should deter Revel from this trip. He takes care of the disposal of the body and follows Revel to Chimneys.

A murder occurs in Chimneys: the victim is Count Stanislaus - in reality none other than Prince Michael Obolovitch. George Lomax insists that Scotland Yard's Chief Inspector Battle be called in to take over the investigation; a political scandal should be avoided as far as possible.

The body was found in the council chamber. There are footprints in the grass under the open window of the room. The police's suspicions are immediately directed at the stranger who stayed at the village inn the night before - Anthony Cade. But he goes to Chimneys of his own accord, where he tells his story - leaving out some details regarding Virginia Revel. He is believed. The shock follows, however, when he is shown the prince's body - it is the alleged Mr. Holmes to whom he had left the memoir.

Another visitor to Chimneys is Mr. Hiram P. Fish, who is studying Lord Caterham's collection of first editions there and who is very interested in what is going on in the house because of his other hobby - criminology .

Two investigations are now taking place in the house: the official one and that of Cade. The police are interested in who will benefit from Prince Michael's death and discover that the next contender for the Herzoslovak throne is Prince Nicholas, a young man who has been traveling around the world for years. Cade, on the other hand, is interested in the occupant of the one room in which the light was switched on and off shortly after the murder. Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent - Lord Caterham's eldest daughter - tells him that it may have been the room of Mademoiselle Brun, the French governess of her two younger sisters. She's only been in the house two months after a job in a castle in Dinard . Cade finds another relationship with France when he meets a bearded stranger with a French accent near the boathouse.

Everything is made more complicated by the news that King Victor, the jeweler thief, has been released from prison in France and may be in the area. The connection is that Angèle Mory, before becoming the wife of Nicholas IV, was an accomplice of King Victor: it is believed that she was involved in Victor's most spectacular raid - the theft of the Koh-i-Noor diamond the tower .

Cade meets Mademoiselle Brun, but his suspicions are not confirmed when he sees that she is already an older woman. He travels to Dinard anyway to check their credentials. After he's gone, Chimneys has a night break-in, with Ravel and Bill Eversleigh, one of Lomax's staff, chasing after a shadow that haunts the council chamber. The two manage to overpower him - but it is Mr. Fish who has also sniffed around; the real burglar escapes.

Cade comes back from France - Mademoiselle Brun is above suspicion - and hears about the break-in. Expecting another attempt, he and the others lie in wait for the night: They can only get hold of the bearded Frenchman who, as Battle explains to them, is Monsieur Lemoine from the Sûreté , who is guarding the house had noticed in the council chamber.

Lemoine is on the hunt for the Koh-i-Noor and King Viktor with Scotland Yard. From him they learn that Angèle Mory had sent encrypted letters to King Victor - using the aliases Captain O'Neill and Virginia Revel (which Mory knew through her husband in the British embassy) and which were then incorrectly used as extortion letters. The letters were stolen, found their way to Africa and eventually to Jimmy McGrath. Cade is not amazed when the letters are suddenly on his dressing table in Chimneys. Battle says they were returned because King Victor was unable to decode them. He now hopes that the authorities can do this and lead him to the diamond. It is decided to take a bite of the bait and employ Professor Wynwood, a decoding expert , who decodes: "Richmond seven straight, eight left, three right". Based on these directions, Bundle leads the seeker into a secret passage behind a painting by Holbein - but this route is unsuccessful.

Everyone gathers and Cade explains that "Richmond" in the code refers to an old book in the library about the life of the Earl of Richmond . But this explanation is only a trap for the murderer - Mademoiselle Brun, in reality Queen Varaga, believed dead. She is killed in the library by Boris Anchoukoff, Prince Michael's loyal servant, when she tries to steal the diamond. It now becomes clear that the real Mademoiselle Brun was kidnapped by Dinard on her journey, and that the murder of Manuelli was supposed to keep Virginia Revel from traveling to Chimneys - only she could have identified the former queen. There was a second person she recognized: Prince Michael. When he surprised her in the council chamber, she shot him. And Monsieur Lemoine also turns out to be wrong, the real one is being held in a house in Dover whose address falls out of the fake Lemoine's pocket - none other than King Victor. He tries to escape, but is stopped by Mr. Fish, who is actually an American Pinkerton detective.

Anthony has a few final surprises ready: The memoirs he wrote “Mr. Holmes' were wrong. He had hidden the real ones, which actually did not contain any incriminating anecdotes. He now gives it to McGrath, who had followed him on the next ship from Africa so that he can earn the thousand pounds. The "Richmond" trace did not refer to a painting or a book, but to a rose bed - and that is where the diamond is found. Anthony Cade is the missing Prince Nicholas and he marries Virginia Revel.

people

The residents of "Chimneys"

• Lord Caterham
• Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent, his eldest daughter
• Daisy and Dulcie Brent, his younger daughters
• Tredwell the butler
• Mademoiselle Brun, educator / governess of Daisy and Dulcie

From the British government

• George Lomax (disrespectfully called "Stockfisch"), Secretary of State
• Bill Eversleigh, Lomax employee

The Herzoslovakians

• Prince Michael Obolovitch of Herzoslovakia alias Mr. Holmes from Balderson and Hodgkins alias Count Stanislaus
• Captain Andrassy, ​​his adjutant
• Boris Anchoukoff, his servant
• Baron Lolopretjzyl, the London representative of the Loyalist Party of Herzoslovakia
• Prince Nikolaus Obolovitch of Herzoslovakia aka the adventurer Anthony Cade aka Jimmy McGrath
• An agent from the Red Hand Brotherhood

Investigators

• Inspector Badgworth
• Dr. Cartwright
• Constable Johnson
• Superintendent (in the older German translation Oberinspektor) Battle of Scotland Yard
• Monsieur Lemoine of the Sûreté
• Professor Wynwood

Other

• Virginia Revel, cousin of George Lomax, society beauty and widow of Timothy Revel, a British diplomat who was for a time his country's representative in Herzoslovakia
• Herman Isaacstein, representative of an oil syndicate
• Jimmy McGrath, Canadian prospector
• Giuseppe Manuelli, Italian waiter and agent of the Red Hand Brotherhood
• Hiram P. Fish, an American Pinkerton detective
• King Viktor, international jewel thief alias Monsieur Lemoine von der Sûreté alias Captain O'Neill alias Prince Nikolaus Obolovitch of Heartoslovakia alias Monsieur Chelles
• Angèle Mory, former dancer, later Queen Varaga of Herzoslovakia alias Mademoiselle Brun, French governess of Lord Caterham's younger daughters

Reviews

The Times Literary Supplement reviews the novel in its July 9, 1925 edition, and after the introduction to the story positively states, "This is a thick fog of mystery, connections and romance that leads to a surprising and satisfying ending".

The novel was not discussed in The New York Times Book Review .

Relationships with other works

The Blitz Hotel is a reference to the Ritz Hotel in London. Christie uses the same place and name in two short stories, Blindman's Buff from 1924 (not yet translated) and The Man Who Was No. 16 (The Man Who Was Number 16), which later became part of the Partners in Crime collection ( Pandora's Box ). It appears for the first time in the first Tuppence and Tommy novel A Dangerous Adversary - here still under the real name "The Ritz". The name "The Blitz" was later to become macabre for a London hotel, as the word in Anglo-Saxon usage is synonymous with the German air raid on London in 1940 . The hotel name, however, was retained in later English editions of the novel (read in the English Wikipedia).

The fictitious country Herzoslowakien returns to the short story The Birds Stymphalean back (The Stymphaliden), the first in the April issue of beach magazines appeared, and in 1947 in the collection The Labor of Hercules ( The Labors of Hercules was taken).

Film, television and theater adaptations

1931 stage preparation

The Secret of Chimneys (The Count's Memoirs) was reworked for the theater by Agatha Christie in 1931, but the planned performance did not materialize for a variety of reasons. The manuscript was considered lost until a copy was discovered in Canada in 2001. A second copy was discovered shortly afterwards in the British Library - with a handwritten note from Christie that Sir Laurence Olivier was to play the male lead. The world premiere took place on October 26, 2003 in the "Mystery Theater" in Calgary , Canada , which specializes in crime plays , the director of which had found the first copy by chance.

Film adaptations

The novel was filmed in 2009 for the English television series Agatha Christie's Marple on ITV . Julia McKenzie plays Miss Marple , but she does not appear in the novel.

Important English and German language editions

• 1925 UK first edition John Lane (The Bodley Head), June 1925
• 1925 first edition USA Dodd Mead and Company (New York)
• 1927 German first edition under the title: The Minister's Memoirs: Detective novel. Translation from English by Elise von Kraatz .: Dresden: Moewig & Höffner
• 1960 New German title: The Count's Memoirs: Scherz Publisher: Bern; Stuttgart; Vienna
• 1994 New edition in translation by Margret Haas: Scherz Verlag: Bern; Stuttgart; Vienna

Others

This book is the last Agatha Christie published under a six book deal with Bodley Head. She signed this contract in 1919, at the very beginning of her career, without the assistance of an agent. It quickly turned out that she had been cheated. Her other books were all published in the UK by William Collins & Sons (with the sole exception of The Hound of Death , a 1933 collection of short stories not previously translated into German ) on the basis of a new and more lucrative contract. She was assisted in the signing by her new agent, Edmund Cork from Hughes Massey. Cork became a lifelong friend and was Christie's literary agent for over 50 years .

This novel was so admired by her future mother-in-law, Marguerite Mallowan, that she wrote the following in a leather-bound copy of this book with an alibi and the owl house : “In a bookstore in Paris in 1932 I bought The Secret of Chimneys , today almost unimaginable I just heard from Agatha Christie. Although I'm not a detective story reader, I was so captivated by your book that I couldn't put it down until I got to the end. She soon married my son, whom she had met in Mesopotamia while he was working there under Leonard Woolley . I later read Alibi , which I believe made their reputation universal. Ultimately came The Owl House , which I love as the revelation of her artistic, simple and sincere temperament. That's why I had these three books bound together. May you testify to my admiration for your art and especially my gratitude for your kindness over the years I've known you. ”This example was auctioned off in September 2006 for the benefit of the preservation of Christie's summer home in Devon , Greenway Estate .

dedication

Christie's dedication in this book is
"To my nephew. In memory of an inscription at Compton Castle and a day at the zoo".

The nephew is James (Jack) Watts (1903–1961), the son of her sister Madge and her husband James Watts. Christie had been very close with her nephew since he was born when she was thirteen. She supported her mother in looking after the child in Abney Hall when their parents were on a skiing holiday in St. Moritz , and also at Christmas . Memories that she enthusiastically reports in the foreword to her collection of short stories, A Diplomatic Incident . Relationships with Compton Castle and the zoo are not that clear. It is possible that Chimeys was based on Compton Castle, but Abney Hall is also an often assumed possibility. In the book, Christie does not give a description of chimneys, she simply states that "a description of this historical place is in every guidebook".

Audio book

• 2003 The Count's Memoirs 5 CDs: unabridged reading. Speaker: Pure disbelief. Director: Hans Eckardt. Translation by Margret Haas. Marburg / Lahn: Publishing house and studio for audio book productions

Web links

• The Secret of Chimneys on the official Agatha Christie website

Individual evidence

1. ^ Announcement in The Publishers' Circular and Booksellers Record June 3, 1925. Volume 122, No 3076, Page 733.
2. ↑ American Tribute to Agatha Christie
3. ↑ Private page on Christie's books, with information on the German translation "Wuschel" for "Bundle"
4. ^ The Times Literary Supplement July 9, 1925 (Page 466)
5. ↑ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20030907/ai_n12584132/
6. ^ German first edition in the catalog of the German National Library
7. ^ New edition in the catalog of the German National Library
8. ↑ Christie, Agatha. To Autobiography . (Pages 317-8). Collins, 1977. ISBN 0-00-216012-9
9. ↑ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1528531/Christie-novels-go-on-sale-to-maintain-her-former-home.html
10. ↑ Morgan, Janet. Agatha Christie, A Biography . (Page 36) Collins, 1984 ISBN 0-00-216330-6
11. ↑ Christie, Agatha. The Secret of Chimneys . (Page 95) The Bodley Head, 1926. No ISBN
12. ^ Audiobook (licensed) in the catalog of the German National Library