I tried to settle down to do some writing, since I felt that that was the only thing I could do that might bring in a little money. I still had no idea of writing as a profession. The stories published in The Sketch had encouraged me: that had been real money coming directly to me. Those stories, however, had been bought, paid for, and the money spent by now. I settled down and started to write another book.
Belcher had urged me, when we dined with him at his house, the Mill House at Dorney, before our trip, to write a detective story about it. ‘The Mystery of the Mill House,’ he said. ‘Jolly good title–don’t you think?’
I said yes, I thought Mystery in the Mill House or Murder in the Mill House would be very good, and I would consider the matter. When we had started on our tour he often referred to the subject.
‘But mind you,’ he said, ‘if you write The Mystery of the Mill House I’ve got to be in it.’
‘I don’t think I could put you in it,’ I said. ‘I can’t do anything with real people. I have to imagine them.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Belcher. ‘I don’t mind if it isn’t particularly like me, but I’ve always wanted to be in a detective story.’ At intervals he would ask: ‘Have you begun that book of yours yet? Am I in it?’ At one moment, when we were feeling exasperated, I said: ‘Yes. You’re the victim.’
‘What? Do you mean I’m the chap that gets murdered?’
‘Yes,’ I said, with some pleasure.
‘I don’t want to be the victim,’ said Belcher. ‘In fact I won’t be the victim–I insist on being the murderer.’
‘Why do you want to be the murderer?’
‘Because the murderer is always the most interesting character in the book. So you’ve got to make me the murderer, Agatha–do you understand?’
‘I understand that you want to be the murderer,’ I said, choosing my words carefully. In the end, in a moment of weakness, I promised that he should be the murderer. I had sketched out the plot of this book when I was in South Africa. It was to be again, I decided, more in the nature of a thriller than a detective story, comprising a good deal of the South African scene. There was some kind of revolutionary crisis on while we were there, and I noted down a few useful facts. I pictured my heroine as a gay, adventurous, young woman, an orphan, who started out to seek adventure. Tentatively writing a chapter or two, I found it terribly difficult to make the picture based on Belcher come alive. I could not write about him objectively and make him anything but a complete dummy. Then suddenly an idea came to me. The book should be written in the first person, alternately by the heroine, Ann, and the villain, Belcher.
‘I don’t believe he will like being the villain,’ I said to Archie dubiously.
‘Give him a title,’ suggested Archie. ‘I think he’d like that.’ So he was christened Sir Eustace Pedler, and I found that if I made Sir Eustace Pedler write his own script the character began to come alive. He wasn’t Belcher, of course, but he used several of Belcher’s phrases, and told some of Belcher’s stories. He too was a master of the art of bluff, and behind the bluff could easily be sensed an unscrupulous and interesting character. Soon I had forgotten Belcher and had Sir Eustace Pedler himself wielding the pen. It is, I think, the only time I have tried to put a real person whom I knew well into a book, and I don’t think it succeeded. Belcher didn’t come to life, but someone called Sir Eustace Pedler did. I suddenly found that the book was becoming rather fun to write. I only hoped The Bodley Head would approve of it. My chief handicap in the writing of this book was Cuckoo. Cuckoo, of course, in the habit of nurses in those days, did no kind of housework, cooking, or cleaning. She was a child’s nurse; she cleaned her own nursery and did the little dear’s washing, but that was all. I did not expect anything else, and I arranged my day quite well. Archie only came home in the evening, and Rosalind and Cuckoo’s lunch was simple and easy to deal with. That left me time in the mornings and afternoons to put in two or three hours work. Cuckoo and Rosalind were then en route to the park or to some shopping programme outdoors. However, there were, of course, wet days when they had to remain in the flat, and although the point was made that ‘Mummy is working’ Cuckoo was not so easily diverted. She would stand outside the door of the room where I was writing, and keep up a kind of soliloquy, ostensibly addressed to Rosalind.
‘Now, little dear, we mustn’t make a noise, must we, because Mummy is working. We mustn’t disturb Mummy when she’s working, must we? Though I should like to ask her if I should send that dress of yours to the laundry. I do think, you know, that it’s not one I can manage very well myself. Well, we must remember to ask her at teatime, mustn’t we, little dear? I mean we mustn’t go in now and ask her, must we? Oh no, she wouldn’t like that, would she? Then I want to ask about the pram too, You know it lost a nut again yesterday. Well, perhaps, little dear, we could make one little tap at the door. Now what do you think, little dear?’ Usually Rosalind would make a brief response which had no connection with what was being discussed, confirming me in my belief that she never listened to Cuckoo.
‘Blue Teddy is going to have his dinner now,’ she would declare. Rosalind had been given dolls, a dolls’ house, and various other toys, but she only really cared for animals. She had a silk creature called Blue Teddy, and another called Red Teddy, and these were joined later by a much larger rather sickly mauve teddy bear called Edward Bear. Of these three Rosalind loved with a complete and utter passion Blue Teddy. He was a limp animal, made of blue stockinette silk, with black eyes set flat into his flat face. He accompanied her everywhere, and I had to tell stories about him every night. The stories concerned both Blue Teddy and Red Teddy. Every night they had a fresh adventure. Blue Teddy was good and Red Teddy was very, very naughty. Red Teddy did some splendidly naughty things, such as putting glue on the school-teacher’s chair so that when she sat down she could not get up again. One day he put a frog in the school-teacher’s pocket, and she screamed and had hysterics. These tales met with great approval, and frequently I had to repeat them. Blue Teddy was of a nauseating and priggish virtue. He was top of his class in school and never did a naughty deed of any kind. Every day, when the boys left for school, Red Teddy promised his mother that he would be good today. On their return their mother would ask, ‘Have you been a good boy, Blue Teddy?’
‘Yes, Mummy, very good.’
‘That’s my dear boy. Have you been good, Red Teddy?’
‘No, Mummy, I have been very naughty.’ On one occasion Red Teddy had gone fighting with some bad boys and come home with an enormous black eye. A piece of fresh steak was put on it and he was sent to bed. Later Red Teddy blotted his copybook still further by eating the piece of steak that had been placed on his eye. Nobody could have been more delightful to tell stories to than Rosalind. She chuckled, laughed, and appreciated every minor point.
‘Yes, little dear’–Cuckoo, showing no signs of helping Rosalind to give Blue Teddy his dinner, continued to quack–‘Perhaps before we go we might just ask Mummy, if it doesn’t disturb her, because you know I would like to know about the pram.’ At this point, maddened, I would rise from my chair, all ideas of Ann in deadly peril in the forests of Rhodesia going out of my mind, and jerk open the door.
What is it, Nurse? What do you want?’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Ma’am. I am very sorry indeed. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
‘Well, you have disturbed me. What is it?’
‘Oh, but I didn’t knock on the door or anything.’
‘You’ve been talking outside,’ I said, ‘and I can hear every word you say. What is the matter with the pram?’
‘Well, I do think, Ma’am, that we really ought to have a new pram. You know I’m quite ashamed going to the park and seeing all the nice prams that the other little girls have. Oh yes indeed, I do feel that Miss Rosalind ought to have as good as anyone.’ Nurse and I had a permanent battle about Rosalind’s pram. We had originally bought it second-hand. It was a good, strong pram, perfectly co
mfortable; but it was not what could be called smart. There is a fashion in prams, I learned, and every year or two the makers give them a different ‘line’, a different cut of the jib, as it were–very much, of course, like motor cars nowadays. Jessie Swannell had not complained, but Jessie Swannell had come from Nigeria, and it is possible that they did not keep up so much with the Joneses in prams out there. I was to realise now that Cuckoo was a member of that sorority of nurses who met in Kensington Gardens with their infant charges, where they would sit down and compare notes as to the merits of their situations and the beauty and cleverness of their particular child. The baby had to be well dressed, in the proper fashion for babies at that moment, or Nurse would be shamed. That was all right. Rosalind’s clothes passed muster. The overalls and dresses I had made her in Canada were the dernier cri in children’s wear. The cocks and hens and pots of flowers on their black background filled everybody with admiration and envy. But where smart prams were concerned, poor Cuckoo’s pram was regrettably below the proper standard, and she never missed telling me when somebody had come along with a brand new vehicle. ‘Any nurse would be proud of a pram like that!’ However, I was hard-hearted. We were very badly off, and I was not going to get a fancy pram at large expense just to indulge Cuckoo’s vanity.
‘I don’t even think that pram’s safe,’ said Cuckoo, making a last try. ‘There’s always nuts coming off.’
‘That’s going on and off the pavement so much,’ I said. ‘You don’t screw them up before you go out. In any case, I am not going to get a new pram.’ And I went in again and banged the door.
‘Dear, dear,’ said Cuckoo. ‘Mummy doesn’t seem at all pleased, does she? Well, my poor little dear, it doesn’t seem as if we’re going to have a nice new carriage, does it?’
‘Blue Teddy wants his dinner,’ said Rosalind. ‘Come along, Nanny.’
IV
In the end The Mystery of the Mill House got finished somehow or other, in spite of the difficulties of Cuckoo’s obbligato outside the door. Poor Cuckoo! Shortly afterwards she consulted a doctor and moved to a hospital where she had an operation for cancer of the breast. She was a good deal older than she had said she was, and there was no question of her returning to work as a nurse. She went to live, I believe, with a sister.
I had decided that the next nurse should not be selected at Mrs Boucher’s Bureau, or from anyone of that ilk. What I needed was a Mother’s Help, so a Mother’s Help I advertised for.
From the moment which brought Site into our family, our luck seemed to change for the better. I interviewed Site in Devonshire. She was a strapping girl, with a large bust, broad hips, a flushed face and dark hair. She had a deep contralto voice, with a particularly lady-like and refined accent, so much so that you couldn’t help feeling that she was acting a part on the stage. She had been a Mother’s Help to two or three different establishments for some years now, and radiated competence in the way she spoke of the infant world. She seemed good-natured, good-tempered, and full of enthusiasm. She asked a low salary, and seemed quite willing to do anything, go anywhere–as they say in the advertisements. So Site returned with us to London, and became the comfort of my life.
Naturally her name at that time was not Site–it was Miss White–but after a few months of being with us Miss White became in Rosalind’s rapid pronunciation ‘Swite’. For a while we called her Swite; then Rosalind made another contraction, and thereafter she was known as Site. Rosalind was very fond of her, and Site liked Rosalind. She liked all small children, but she kept her dignity and was a strict disciplinarian in her own way. She would not stand for any disobedience or rudeness.
Rosalind missed her role as controller and director of Cuckoo. I suspect now that she transferred these activities to me–taking me in her same beneficent charge, finding things for me that I had lost, pointing out to me that I had forgotten to stamp an envelope, and so on. Certainly, by the time that she was five years old, I was conscious that she was much more efficient than I was. On the other hand she had no imagination. If we were playing a game with each other, in which two figures took part–for instance, a man taking a dog for a walk (I may say that I would be the dog and she would be the man)–there might come a moment when the dog had to be put on a lead.
‘We haven’t got a lead,’ Rosalind would say. ‘We’ll have to change that part.’
‘You can pretend you have a lead,’ I suggested.
‘How can I pretend I have a lead when I’ve nothing in my hand?’
‘Well, take the waist-belt of my dress and pretend that’s a lead.’
‘It’s not a dog lead, it’s the waist-belt of a dress.’ Things had to be real to Rosalind. Unlike me, she never read fairy stories as a child. ‘But they’re not real,’ she would protest. ‘They’re about people who aren’t there–they don’t really happen. Tell me about Red Teddy at the picnic.’
The curious thing is that by the time she was fourteen she adored fairy stories, and would read books of them again and again.
Site fitted into our household extremely well. Dignified and competent as she looked, she did not really know much more about cooking than I did. She had been an assistant always. We had to be assistants to each other in our present way of living. Although we each had dishes that we made well–I made cheese souffle, Bearnaise sauce, and old English syllabub, Site made jam tartlets and could pickle herrings–we were neither of us adept at producing what I believe is termed ‘a balanced meal’. To assemble a joint, a vegetable such as carrots, or brussels sprouts, potatoes, and a pudding afterwards, we would suffer from the fact that we did not know exactly how long these various things took to cook. The brussels sprouts would be reduced to a soggy mess, while the carrots were still hard. However, we learnt as we went along.
We divided duties. One morning I took Rosalind in charge and we set off in the serviceable, but not fashionable pram to the park–though by now we used the push-chair more often–while Site prepared the lunch and made the beds. Next morning I would stay at home and do the domestic chores and Site would depart for the park. On the whole I found the first activity more tiring than the second. It was a long way to the park, and when you got there you couldn’t sit still and rest and make your mind a blank. You had either to converse with Rosalind and play with her, or see she was suitably occupied playing with somebody else and that nobody was taking away her boat or knocking her down. During domestic chores I could relax my mind completely. Robert Graves once said to me that washing up was one of the best aids to creative thought. I think he is quite right. There is a monotony about domestic duties–sufficient activity for the physical side, so that it releases your mental side, allowing it to take off into space and make its own thoughts and inventions. That doesn’t apply to cooking, of course. Cooking demands all your creative abilities and complete attention.
Site was a welcome relief after Cuckoo. She and Rosalind occupied themselves quite happily without my hearing a peep out of them. They were either in the nursery or down on the green below, or doing some shopping.
It was a shock to me when about six months after she came to us I discovered Site’s age. I had not asked her. She seemed obviously between twenty-four and twenty-eight, which was about the age I wanted, and it did not occur to me to be more definite. I was startled when I learnt that at the time of coming into my employment she was seventeen, and was now only just eighteen. It seemed incredible; she had such an air of maturity about her. But she had worked as a Mother’s Help since she had been about thirteen. She had a natural liking for her job and full proficiency in it; and her air of experience came from really being experienced, very much in the way that the eldest child of a large family has had great experience in dealing with small brothers and sisters.
Young as Site was, I would never have hesitated to go off for long periods and leave Rosalind in her charge. She was eminently sensible. She would send for the right doctor, take a child to a hospital, find out if anything was worrying her, deal w
ith any emergency. Her mind was always on her job. In good old-fashioned terms, she had a vocation.
I heaved an enormous sigh of relief as I finished The Mystery of the Mill House. It had not been an easy book to write, and I considered it rather patchy when I had finished it. But there it was, finished, and, like Uncle Tom Cobley and all, with old Eustace Pedler and all. The Bodley Head hemmed and hawed a bit. It was not, they pointed out, a proper detective story, as Murder on the Links had been. However, graciously, they accepted it.
It was about then that I noticed a slight change in their attitude. Though I had been ignorant and foolish when I first submitted a book for publication, I had learnt a few things since. I was not as stupid as I must have appeared to many people. I had found out a good deal about writing and publishing. I knew about the Authors’ Society and I had read their periodical. I realised that you had to be extremely careful in making contracts with publishers, and especially with certain publishers. I had learnt of the many ways in which publishers took unfair advantage of authors. Now that I knew these things, I made my plans.
Shortly before bringing out The Mystery of the Mill House, The Bodley Head threw out certain proposals. They suggested that they might scrap the old contract and make another one with me, also for five books. The terms of this would be much more favourable. I thanked them politely, said I would think about it, and then refused, without giving any definite reason. They had not treated a young author fairly, I considered. They had taken advantage of her lack of knowledge and her eagerness to publish a book. I did not propose to quarrel with them on this point–I had been a fool. Anyone is a fool who does not find out a little bit about the proper remuneration for the job. On the other hand, would I, in spite of my acquired wisdom, still have refused the chance to publish The Mysterious Affair at Styles? I thought not. I would still have published with them on the terms they had suggested, but I would not have agreed to so long a contract for so many books. If you have trusted people once and been disappointed, you do not wish to trust them any more. That is only common sense, I was willing to finish my contract, but after that I was certainly going to find a new publisher. Also, I thought, I was going to have a literary agent.