The Secret of Chimneys is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by The Bodley Head in June 1925[1] and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year.
[2] At the request of George Lomax, Lord Caterham reluctantly agrees to host a weekend party at his home, Chimneys.
George's cousin Virginia Revel is invited, as is Hiram Fish, a collector of first edition books, along with the principals in a political scheme to restore the monarchy in Herzoslovakia – while assuring that newly discovered oil there will be handled by a British syndicate.
The first, a Count supporting the Royalist faction, tries to buy the manuscript, offering to outbid the publisher, to suppress any embarrassing information it might contain; Cade politely but firmly refuses.
Cade removes the body, dumping it along a road in the country and hiding the gun up a tree, to avoid a scandal and allow Virginia to proceed to Chimneys.
After seeing that the dead prince is the same man as "Mr Holmes", Cade pursues his own ideas in finding the murderer, while Battle leads the main investigation.
The Koh-i-Noor diamond had been stolen from the Tower of London and replaced by a paste copy some years earlier, by a French jewel thief named King Victor.
He finds the meeting of King Victor's gang; Hiram Fish, really a Pinkerton detective on the thief's trail for his crimes in America; and the real M Lemoine tied up as a hostage.
She wrote the coded letters to Captain O'Neill, an alias of King Victor, and signed them with the name of Virginia Revel, who had been living in Herzoslovakia with her husband, a British diplomat.
Cade introduces the real M Lemoine to the group, while Hiram Fish snares King Victor, who has been posing as the French detective and in America as Nicholas.
Inhabitants of "Chimneys" and guests at the house party Friends in South Africa British Government Herzoslovakians Police and criminal investigators Others The Times Literary Supplement reviewed the novel in its issue of 9 July 1925 and, after setting up the story, stated favourably that "there is ... a thick fog of mystery, cross-purposes and romance, which leads up to a most unexpected and highly satisfactory ending".
[4] The reviewer for The Observer wrote on 28 June 1925: "Mrs Christie plunges lightheartedly into a real welter of murders, innocently-implicated lookers-on, Balkan politics (of the lighter Ruritanian kind), impersonators, secret societies, ciphers, experts, secret hiding-places, detectives (real and pretended), and emerges triumphantly at the end, before her readers are too hopelessly befogged.
"[5] The review in The Scotsman of 16 July 1925 began, "Despite Herzoslovakian politics and a background of oil and finance, this new novel by Agatha Christie gets a grip of the reader when it comes down to the business of disposing of a corpse, innocently come by but not to be repudiated without danger of grave scandal" and went on to say, "It is an exciting story with a bewildering array of potential murderers and a curious collection of detectives, amateur and professional, and with a crook of international importance and (alleged) consummate ability."
It concerns the throne and crown jewels of Herzoslovakia, and combines such Hope-ful [sic] elements with bright young things and some effective caricatures."
Her attitude to democracy is so unsympathetic, at least as expressed by a character of whom Mrs Christie evidently approves, that it reveals an unexpectedly authoritarian aspect of the author's nature".
"[9] Curran considered the novel an "enjoyable but preposterous romp ... littered with loose ends, unlikely motivations and unconvincing characters" and regarded Christie's The Man in the Brown Suit and The Seven Dials Mystery "if not more credible, at least far less incredible" than Chimneys.
Christie later used the "Chimneys" mansion, along with the characters of Bill Eversleigh, Bundle, George Lomax, Tredwell, and Lord Caterham from this book, in the 1929 novel The Seven Dials Mystery.
The characters in the story refer to events that occurred about 7 years earlier, that is, at the end of the Great War when the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires were broken up.
At the same time, many royal persons were in England, including the Queen of Herzoslovakia, and Count Stylptitch; all the Balkan states were interested parties in discussions taking place.
[11] Her future books in the UK were all published by William Collins & Sons (with the sole exception of The Hound of Death) once a new and more favourable contract had been signed with them by her newly appointed agent, Edmund Cork of Hughes Massey.
This novel was much admired by her future mother-in-law, Mrs Marguerite Mallowan, who penned a note in a leather-bound copy she commissioned of this book together with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Hollow.
Christie became very close to her nephew after his birth when she was thirteen and joined her mother in looking after him at his home, Abney Hall, when her sister and brother-in-law went on skiing holidays to St Moritz and at Christmas.
However, the substitution of Miss Marple as the main detective is only the first of many changes made to the story, which amalgamates and renames several characters, turns the political connection (transferred from the fictitious Herzoslovakia to Austria) into one of several red herrings, and comprehensively changes both the murderer's identity and motive.
Dervla Kirwan, in her late thirties, played Bundle, who, though still the daughter of Lord Caterham, was cast as the sister of 23-year-old Lady Virginia Revel (Charlotte Salt), an unrelated character in the original story.
The Radio Times observed that this production was "classic Agatha Christie, even though it's only distantly related to her original ... purists will be utterly flummoxed – and the plot has more holes in it than the murder victim".