A visit to Torquay

by Marcia Talley

I’ve just returned from Dartmouth, Devon, where I’d gone to research my next mystery.  The parallels to my hometown of Annapolis are many – Dartmouth is home to the Britiannia Royal Naval College and the River Dart is alive with sailboats.  For me, it was love at first sight.  No trip to Dartmouth would be complete, however, without a pilgrimage to Greenway, the holiday home of Agatha Christie, just opened to the public this spring.  The National Trust, who maintains the property now, encourages visitors to arrive by “green” transport, so I rode the ferryboat up the river to Greenway.  Unfortunately, the remains of hurricane Bill were lashing Devon at the time, tearing at my raincoat and turning my umbrella inside out, so I had only the briefest glimpse of Agatha’s garden – where Amyas Crale drank that fatal glass of beer in Five Little Pigs -- and never made it down to the Victorian boathouse where poor Marlene Tucker was strangled in Dead Man’s Folly. 

The house is Georgian, the color of clotted cream, set on several hundred acres of lawns and gardens that sweep down to the river, the “perfect house” where Christie spent every summer from the time she bought it in 1938 until her death in 1976.  Due to the generosity of Christie’s grandson, Matthew, it’s just the way the family left it – hats, canes and umbrellas stacked on a table in the hallway, Agatha’s favorite serving dishes laid out on the dining room sideboard, a book resting on a table in the library, bookmarked by reading glasses.  You’ll find no docents dressed as Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot here, either, no velvet ropes.  Visitors can wander the house freely, as if they were Agatha’s guests and she’d stepped out, just for a moment.  Above all, it is a home.

During the restoration, the house began revealing fascinating secrets about its owner.  Christie was an accomplished pianist, but a crate of music under the piano showed that she composed music, too.  Then there was the discovery of 73 notebooks, including two unpublished Poirot stories, chock full of sketches for scenes that never made it into the novels.  One Poirot novel actually began life as an adventure for Miss Marple, the notebooks tell us.  And how about those 30 audio tapes, tucked away with an ancient tape recorder in an upstairs cupboard?  “Agatha sounds distinctly upper class, rather like The Queen, only more expressive,” says John Curran who recently published selections from the notebooks.  Eeek!  Time to get rid of that videotape of a speech where I’m talking so fast even I can’t understand it.

I was thinking about this as I wandered around Agatha’s house, poking my nose into her closet, and even her loo.  Fifty, sixty years from now, when my grandchildren donate my home to Historic Annapolis, do I want visitors to know that my first novel, Sing It To Her Bones, started out as a soap opera, a sprawling Southern, learning-how-to-deal-with-it novel?  Nuh-uh.  Ditch that crappy manuscript now, and make Ann Gelillo – who claims she still has a copy somewhere – an offer she can’t refuse.

Agatha has botanical prints on the walls of her bathroom.  I’ve got an Audubon bird print.  Check.  I’ve also got a stack of New Yorkers, a Chico’s catalog and a Carl Hiassen novel.  Okay, they can stay, but the jar of bleaching cream that I use on my upper lip has gotta go.

Agatha’s closet contains leather trunks, summer frocks, ball gowns, hats and furs.  Mine has old canvas duffles, a pair of bell-bottoms, an ankle-length leather skirt and a mu-mu in a festive Hawaiian print.  On the top shelf there’s some half-finished crewel embroidery that I started during the 1968 Olympic games.

I need help here.   I need The Stagers, those people on the House and Garden network who prepare a home for sale, making it look as attractive as possible.  Out with those Readers’ Digest condensed editions of Moby Dick and Sister Carrie!  Pitch that dog-eared copy of War and Peace that makes it abundantly clear that I’ve read Peace a couple of dozen times more than War.  Mystery Writing for Dummies, The Joy of Sex, Twenty Characters in Search of a Plot?  Buh-bye.  Replace the complete run of tattered James Bond paperbacks with leather-bound editions of Dickens and Shakespeare, and find me some Proust, vite, en Francais, bien sur.

There.  I feel better already.

Agatha Christie’s Greenway is so comfortable, so homey, that you’ll feel like you could move right in.  And you can.  An upstairs, self-catering apartment can accommodate you and nine friends for around two thousand pounds per week.  Dinner in Agatha’s dining room, served by a butler, can also be arranged.

Anyone care to join me for tea?

Marcia Talley is the Agatha and Anthony award winning author of Without a Grave and seven previous mysteries.  A new short story, “Can You Hear Me Now?” appears in Two of the Deadliest: New Tales of Lust Greed and Murder by Outstanding Women of Mystery, edited by Elizabeth George.  HarperCollins is featuring Marcia’s story full text online.

Comments

[Charlaine Harris]

Wouldn't that be a dream vacation? I could draw up a list of my nine favorite women and we could have the house party to end all house parties! Unless someone died in the dining room . . .

Thanks so much for telling us about this wonderful place, Marcia.

[Marcia]

Is it signicant, do you think, that the apartment accomodates just Ten Little Indians, or as we know it in the US, And Then There Were None???

[Donna Andrews]

I think it's time for a Femmes road trip to Torquay!

And you have triggered one of my worst anxieties: that some peculiar publication will want to do a photo shoot at my house. I had that happen once. Virginia Living was doing an article. They sent a photographer. He called, and said he wanted to do the shot in my office.

I cleaned for the entire three days between his call and his arrival. I even hid stuff in the basement. The office looked better than it ever had before (or since).

The photographer arrived, looked around office, and said: "Hmmm. Maybe we should try another, less cluttered room."

Sigh.

[Marcia]

At least he arrived!! ;) I once slip covered a sofa for a no show from a magazine.

[Mary]

Wow, what a dream. If I ever make it back to the UK, this will be a must-see. I think I'll go fix a cuppa.

[Jemi Fraser]

I'm jealous! Sounds like a dream trip - well without the hurricane part. Agatha Christie turned me from a reader into a READER! when I was a kid. I'll start saving those pennies for my trip :)

[krisneri]

What a fabulous excursion, Marcia. It's great that they made the choice to let visitors roam the house at will. Thanks for sharing this.

A photographer from our local paper made an appointment to come to my house to take a picture of me at my computer. I spent hours cleaning my study -- there are things I still can't find. When she came, she decided the shot at the desk was too ordinary. Instead, she turned out the lights and put me in a spotlight reading one of my own books. Great exposure for one of my covers and quite dramatic, but I cleaned for nothing.

[Kristina L.]

Agatha Christie's house - cool!

[Dana Cameron]

What a wonderful trip, Marcia! And yes, I vote a Femmes and Friends roadtrip to the house.

As for cleaning and "staging" your house, I'm of two minds. Part of me is inclined your same way (lose the manga, fluff up the signed first editions), but the archaeologist part screams "Leave it! We want to see how people really lived!"