The Complete Tommy and Tuppence 5-Book Collection

After a gap of more than twenty-five years By the Pricking of My Thumbs was the next-to-last adventure for the pair. When we meet Tommy and Tuppence in the book’s opening chapter they are a middle-aged couple chatting over breakfast. Perhaps because Christie herself was now in her late seventies, most of the characters in the book are similarly elderly. A letter from Tommy’s aunt spurs them on to visit her in her retirement home and there Tuppence meets the elderly Mrs. Lancaster with whom she has a peculiar and, in retrospect, sinister conversation concerning the deaths of some other residents. When on a subsequent visit they discover that Mrs. Lancaster is no longer a resident, having been removed by mysterious relatives, their suspicions are aroused and Tuppence decides to investigate.

The conversation with Mrs. Lancaster also contains an extraordinary sequence, one that is repeated almost exactly in two other unconnected Christie titles. In Chapter Two of By the Pricking of My Thumbs, Chapter Ten of Sleeping Murder (1976), and Chapter Four of The Pale Horse (1961) we read of an elderly lady with white hair drinking a glass of milk and holding a conversation about a dead child behind the fireplace. The phrase “Is/Was it your poor child” appears in all three examples although it is only in By the Pricking of My Thumbs that the incident has any relevance to the plot; in fact, “Was It Your Poor Child?” is the name of the chapter. In both other cases the scene takes place in a psychiatric institution rather than a retirement home. To make the conversation even more bizarre each case also mentions a particular time of day (different in each case). The puzzle of why this scene should appear in no less than three disconnected Christie titles (a Marple, a Tommy and Tuppence, and a stand-alone) has never been explained. It can only be assumed that this conversation, or something very like it, actually happened, or was told, to Agatha Christie and made such an impression on her that she subsumed into her fiction.

Like many of the books of her later years the plot, and much of the dialogue, of By the Pricking of My Thumbs is repetitious, and despite strong opening and closing scenes the suspicion remains that ruthless editing would have helped. But as the dedication, to “the many readers in this and other countries who ask about Tommy and Tuppence,” reminds us it is good to meet the Beresfords a gap of a quarter-century, but still with “spirit unquenched.”

Postern of Fate was not only the last Tommy and Tuppence book but also the last book that Agatha Christie wrote. By now she was eighty-three years old and in poor health, and it is arguable that her publishers should not have asked for another book. But writing her “Christie for Christmas” was what she had done for more than fifty years and eighty books, so it was inevitable that she would begin writing a new book as soon as the previous one had appeared in the stores. In fact, her Notebooks contain detailed notes for the book that was planned to follow Postern of Fate but, sadly, it was not to be.

Postern of Fate, like many of the latter-day Christies, begins promisingly: Tommy and Tuppence move into a new house where Tuppence, while shelving books, uncovers a coded message hidden in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, a message that suggests a murder had been committed there many years ago. “Mary Jordan did not die naturally … it was one of us.” Such a setup is typical Christie country but this intriguing opening is the most interesting aspect of the book and, despite a subsequent murder and the attempted murder of Tuppence, the bulk of the book is a series of nostalgic conversations. It is, in reality, a journey into the past both for the writer and the reader. Many elements from Christie’s happy childhood in her family home, Ashfield, appear in barely disguised form – the books she read, her rocking horse, the monkey-puzzle tree in the garden, the greenhouse – but the arch-plotter of yesteryear is little in evidence. We finally get to meet the Beresford grandchildren but the chronology of the three generations will not stand close scrutiny. A rapid decline in Agatha Christie’s health meant that in the years that followed Postern of Fate books and stories written many years earlier during her glory days – Poirot’s Early Case (1974), Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case (1975), and Sleeping Murder (1976) – would appear to delight her worldwide audience.

Although the name of Agatha Christie is inextricably linked to the whodunit, The Secret Adversary, in many ways an atypical story, was the first of her books to be adapted for the screen. In 1928 a German silent film of the book was released as Die Abentueur GmbH. It is highly unlikely that Agatha Christie ever saw this film herself (or, in fact, even knew of it) as prints of it have surfaced only in the last twenty years. Despite the fact that the film is German it starred an English actress and an Italian actor, Eve Grey and Carlo Aldini, as the intrepid investigators and is, despite its obvious restrictions, better than you might suppose. For the most part it follows the plot of the novel although as the film progresses the relationship between the two becomes less certain. But as an early example of the international interest in Christie’s work it remains a fascinating piece of cinema history.

After this screen outing the Tommy and Tuppence series languished for many years until British TV adapted the short-story collection Partners in Crime in 1983 and preceded the series with a two-hour version of The Secret Adversary. This lavish and faithful adaptation stars the perfectly cast James Warwick and Francesca Annis in the lead roles and also features George Baker in the role of Mr. Whittington. This actor was later to achieve fame as Ruth Rendell’s inspector Wexford but had earlier appeared as Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn; he also appeared in the Joan Hickson version of At Bertram’s Hotel (1987) and was the first Neville Strange in the original West End production of Towards Zero in 1956. The television movie also stars Honor Blackman as a glamorous and sinister Rita Vandemeyer and Alec McCowan as a sleek Peel Edgerton. The ten-part television series that followed, called Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime, faithfully adapted most of the stories from the collection, although omitting, for the most part, the references to the pastiche element. The only stories not to appear were “The Adventure of the Sinister Stranger,” “Blindman’s Buff,” and “The Man Who Was No. 16.” The series was broadcast on. British TV between October 1983 and January 1984.

While this TV series is quite well known not all Christie readers know that there was also a BBC radio series based on Partners in Crime broadcast between April and July 1953. it starred Richard Attenborough and his real-life wife, Sheila Sim, then also appearing in the West End in Christie’s The Mousetrap. Although no copy of the series is known to exist, the available details would seem to indicate adaptations of all the stories, although with some changes of title.

Overall, in Christie’s output the adventures of Tommy and Tuppence are not as significant as either the Marple or the Poirot series. The Beresford cases do not display the intricate plots, the dazzling sleights of hand, or the sometimes shocking denouements that distinguish Christie’s detective fiction. It is doubtful that any of the five books would still be available today if it weren’t for the career of the famous Belgian of the little grey cells or the elderly inhabitant of St. Mary Mead. But as the pair’s original title, The Young Adventurers, suggests, their exploits are not to be taken too seriously but enjoyed for what they are – light-hearted romps. For, as the dedication of The Secret Adversary puts it, “Those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at secondhand the delights and dangers of adventure.”

Dedication

To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second-hand the delights and dangers of adventure.