Agatha Christie: A very Elusive Woman 8 - The End (Pages 327 - end)

 RATING: VERY GOOD

Agatha wrote her autobiography for years to be published posthumously. She wrote this allegedly from 2 April 1950 - 11 October 1965. It was published in November 1977.

Madge, her sister, died of a heart condition in 1950. In 1958 her son Jack Watts sold Abney Hall  to Cheadle and Gatley Urban District Council, which adapted it and opened it as Cheadle Town Hall in 1959.

Nan Watts, who was a dear friend to Agatha, also died in 1958. And Nancy Neele also died, and Agatha wrote a condolence letter to Archie.

Her play Verdict flopped. It is an original play, not based on a story or novel; and though there is a murder in the story, it is a melodrama more than a typical 'whodunnit' mystery as the murder takes place on stage.

The cinema also brought Christie lights and shadows. In the 1940s the best adaptacion of her books was And Then There Were None. 

She signed a contract with MGM. In 1960, Agatha Christie sold the adaptation rights to several of her novels to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). This deal sparked a fascinating, highly successful film series starring Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple. The first film was titled 'Murder She Said'. It was based on the 1957 novel 4.50 from Paddington.

Agatha was dismayed when MGM launched Murder Ahoy, a film which was starred by Miss Marple but not based on any of her books. 

In 1962 Archie died before he could meet his grandchild. 

In the 60s she wrote several books:

Third Girl was first published in the UK  in November 1966. It features  Hercule Poirot and the recurring character Ariadne Oliver. The novel is notable for being the first in many years in which Poirot is present from beginning to end. 

Endless Night was  first published in the UK on 30 October 1967.  It was one of her favourites of her own works and received some of the warmest critical notices of her career upon publication.

Passenger to Frankfurt: An Extravaganza is a spy novel, first published in the United Kingdom in September 1970. It was published to mark Christie's eightieth birthday and, by counting up both UK and US short-story collections to reach the desired total, was also advertised as her eightieth book. It is the last of her spy novels.

She also had a play in this decade, Fiddler's Five. Fiddlers Five is the original title of Agatha Christie's final stage play. Written in 1971 and later revised into the play Fiddlers Three, it stands out from her classic whodunnits as a black comedy. The story follows desperate individuals who try to hide the corpse of a dead tycoon to secure an inheritance.

When Agatha turned 80, she was given a big party. Agatha Christie celebrated her 80th birthday on October 10, 1970. The milestone was marked with a private, star-studded party hosted by her publishers, Collins, at St. James's Place in London. The event also celebrated the publication of her 80th book, Passenger to Frankfurt.

Winterbrook House was her and Max's home at this time. 

In 1973 she published Postern of Fate. The book features her detectives Tommy and Tuppence Beresford and is the detectives' last appearance. It is the last novel Christie wrote, but not the last to be published as it was followed by two unpublished novels written in the 1940s.

Her health was decaying. She broke her hip and had a heart attack.

Lord Mountbatten approached about the dramatization of Murder on the Orient Express, and even though the bad experiences in the past made her wary, she agreed, and the film became the most watched British film. The film has an all-star cast, and features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney), who is asked by a railway director (Martin Balsam) to investigate the murder of an American business tycoon (Richard Widmark) aboard the Orient Express train. The various suspects are portrayed by Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Vanessa Redgrave, Michael York, Rachel Roberts, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Perkins, Denis Quilley, Colin Blakely, and Wendy Hiller. The screenplay is by Paul Dehn.

In 1974 Poirot's Early Cases was published and in 1975 Curtain. Poirot's Early Cases is a short story collection,  first published in the UK  in September 1974. In this collection, Christie charts some of the cases from Hercule Poirot's early career, before he was internationally renowned as a detective. All the stories had first been published in periodicals between 1923 and 1935.

 

Agatha died on 12 January 1976. She was buried in the nearby churchyard of St Mary's, Cholsey, in a plot she had chosen with her husband 10 years previously. 

Max mmarried Barbara Parker in 1977. He died on 19 August 1978, aged 74, at Greenway House in Devon and was interred alongside his first wife in the churchyard of St Mary's, Cholsey in Oxfordshire.