Beside her husband, Agatha Christie contemplates the banks of the Nile and the nonchalant parade of feluccas and dahabiehs.
The couple goes up in steam, in the winter of 1933, the bluish vein which irrigates Egypt.
The trip takes them from Cairo to Aswan, via Luxor, and fertilely feeds the imagination of the British writer.
This bold moor cultivated for millennia between the sand and the sun, does it not form the perfect setting for a crime of passion?
The idea caught on and culminated in
Death on the Nile in 1937
,
one of Britain's most acclaimed crime novels.
One of the most intimate, too.
Because his pages not only condense his taste for the Orient, but also bear the trace of a mad love.
A flame showered by a scandal, just a few years before the writing of the book.
Read alsoOur review of
Death on the Nile
: a long quiet river
Agatha Christie was 17 when she first set foot on Egyptian soil.
Sickly, the young woman spent three months in Cairo to recover her health, in the winter of 1907-1908.
The curious writer she will become is still a long way off: the teenager moans at the slightest proposal for a cruise or a visit to the remains of ancient Egypt.
She has, it is true, a lot to do at the Gezirah Palace Hotel: contingents of idle suitors and muslin dresses turn the head of the debutante from a good family.
When she took up her pen, the memory of Cairo balls and youthful passions would help fill her novels.
It was not until twenty years later that it would take to the route of the Middle Eastern dependencies of the British Empire.
Called by new horizons, she
Lightning strike on ancient ruins
"In 1928, two years after her separation from her first husband, Agatha Christie took a ticket to take
the Orient-Express
, she embarked alone, visited Istanbul, Damascus and then arrived in Baghdad, where she fell in love with archaeological excavations”
, tells
Le Figaro
Béatrix de L’Aulnoit, author of the biography
The thousand lives of Agatha Christie
(Talandier).
Organized by the British Museum, the construction site of the ancient city of Ur, jewel of ancient Mesopotamia, fascinates the one who is already a recognized writer, in particular by
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
(1926).
The Sumerian ruins will not be the last strides by Agatha Christie.
From Assyrian Nineveh (Iraq) to the Akkadian remains of Tell Brak (Syria), the literary mother of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot assiduously follows the scholarly operations of her second husband, Max Mallowan.
An archeologist.
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Met around the ruins of Ur, the couple married in 1930. Propelled photographer of the archaeological missions where she invites herself, the queen of detective novels then takes full advantage of these long months spent outside the United Kingdom.
Virginia Woolfe dreamed of a room of her own to write?
Agatha Christie had the rugged solitudes of excavation sites for her.
She was not reluctant to sleep, when necessary, under austere tents, right on the site.
A change of scenery which the successful writer loved.
“She also wrote in London, but the trips offered her an incomparable haven of peace, far from society!”
observes Béatrix de L'Aulnoit.
Max Mallowan (1904-1978) and Agatha Christie (1890-1976), in 1946. MEPL/Bridgeman Images
Agatha Christie draws several stories from her sudden love for the far reaches of Europe and the Fertile Crescent.
Murder on the Orient-Express
,
Appointment with Death
,
Appointment in Baghdad
,
Murder in Mesopotamia
, etc. The series, in which
Death on the Nile
is part , satisfies the Anglo- Saxon.
The attraction exercised by Egypt during the interwar period was greatly aided by the media coverage of major discoveries, such as that of the tomb of Tutankhamun.
The meeting with the archaeologist Howard Carter, who had excavated the tomb of the young pharaoh from 1922, even inspired the writer to write an Egyptian-style play,
Akhenaten
.
“The Middle East nourished his imagination
,” emphasizes Béatrix de L'Aulnoit.
Through her stories, Agatha Christie was able to popularize the region in the eyes of her countrymen, similar to what
Rudyard Kipling
had done for British India
.
She will be, for the whole world, the writer of the Middle East.
Read alsoRudyard Kipling accused of racism and censored in an English university
An outlet novel
Yet Agatha Christie pours something other than her late penchant for Orientalism into writing
Death on the Nile
.
In its story, a wealthy and beautiful heiress, Linnet Ridgeway, falls in love with socialite Simon Doyle.
A scandal, because he is the fiancé of his friend, Jacqueline de Bellefort.
A noisy break ensues and forms one of the scandalous premises of the plot and then of the investigation led by Hercule Poirot.
“In my time we had principles (...), I find that abominable!”,
stings one of the passengers of the disastrous cruise, Mrs. Allerton.
To which his son replies:
“Deep down I may be of your opinion, anyway I have never yet appropriated the wife, or the fiancée, of anyone.
Agatha Christie in 1924 MEPL/Bridgeman Images
It is no coincidence that Agatha Christie places such harsh words in the mouths of her characters
.
"She masterfully mixes part of her personal life with her intrigues"
, recalls Béatrix de L'Aulnoit.
The initial situation of
Death on the Nile
thus presents a biting similarity to the writer's own life.
An allusion to the great sentimental drama of the life of Agatha Christie.
“In 1926, Archibald Christie, her first husband, announced to her his desire to divorce her for Nancy Neele, a very close friend of the couple.
It is, for her, a supreme betrayal”
, specifies Béatrix de L'Aulnoit.
The young woman is 26 years old.
Agatha, ten years older.
The blow is devastating.
Read also
Death on the Nile
: Hercule Poirot in all sauces
At that time, divorce was still scandalous, especially in the upscale circles of British society.
But even more than social opprobrium, Agatha Christie suffers from the intimate shock of this rupture.
The affair of the disappearance of the writer, in December 1926, fits precisely into the context of this disunity.
The mystery of this volatilization held the British press spellbound for ten days.
She hides neither more nor less a suicide attempt, supports Béatrix de L'Aulnoit:
“She had completely fallen under the spell of Archibald.
However, in
Unfinished Portrait
, her semi-autobiographical novel published in 1934 under the name of Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie speaks of her suffering, of her desire to end her life.
is also part of this literary convalescence.
This is his great novel about jealousy.
Between the lines of the police investigation thus arises the outlet reminiscence of the divorce of Agatha Christie.
"She was raised in the cult of marriage and in the horror of divorce, in addition to having remained a great romantic and a great lover"
, summarizes Béatrix de L'Aulnoit.
For his story of Nilotic murder, the sovereign pen of the police investigation will therefore have dipped into two intimate bottles, between the East and betrayal, between a first husband and the second.
A case that would certainly not have left the great and sensitive detective Hercule Poirot unmoved.