Spider's Web (play)
Encyclopedia
Spider's Web is a 1954 play
by crime writer Agatha Christie
.
production aside from Peter Pan
. In 1953, Lockwood asked her agent, Herbert de Leon, to speak with Peter Saunders, who was the main producer of Christie's work on the stage after the successes of The Hollow
and The Mousetrap
, and see if Christie would be interested in writing a play for her.
Saunders arranged a meeting between Christie and Lockwood at the Mirabelle restaurant. During the conversation, Lockwood requested that she didn't play a sinister or wicked part again (for which she was well known) but a role in a "comedy thriller". She also requested a part for Wilfrid Hyde-White
who she wanted to act with and who was also on the books of de Leon. In the event, although the part was written, Hyde-White declined the role and Felix Aylmer
was cast instead.
Christie wrote the play during the period of the final rehearsals for Witness for the Prosecution
which opened to rave reviews in London on 28 October 1953. Lockwood's character was given the name of Clarissa, the name of Christie's beloved mother who had died back in 1926. Unasked, Christie also wrote a role which would be suitable for Lockwood's fourteen year old daughter, Julia, although Margaret Barton played the part in the finished production.
Although the play is an original piece, within it Christie utilised three plot devices from earlier works she had written:
The play opened at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham
on 27 September 1954, followed by a short national tour and then had its West End opening on 13 December 1954 at the Savoy Theatre
, where it ran for 774 performances. With The Mousetrap and Witness for the Prosecution still running, Christie was at the peak of her West End career.
On 7 March 1955, Queen Elizabeth II
, Prince Philip
and Princess Margaret
were among the audience for a performance of the play
. The time: the present.
(An evening in March)
Clarissa Hailsham-Brown is the second wife of a Foreign Office
diplomat
, Henry, and stepmother to his teenage daughter, Pippa. They are currently living at Copplestone Court, a large house they are renting at a very cheap price in Kent. There are three guests staying with them: Sir Rowland Delahaye, a local Justice of the Peace
in his fifties, Hugo Birch, an irascible man in his sixties and a young man called Jeremy Warrender. Sir Rowland and Hugo are taking part in a contest devised by Clarissa to test three different types of Port
whilst Jeremy is trying to prove the timing achieved by a previous guest to the house in running to the lodge gates and back three times. Both contests however are spoofs designed by the fun-loving Clarissa to occupy her guests' time as their golf
match has been rained off. The two older men move off to sample more of the Port and Pippa arrives homes from school, hungry as always.
Clarissa takes her off for something to eat and, momentarily alone, Jeremy starts to investigate a desk in the room, quickly looking through the drawers until he is interrupted by the arrival of Miss Mildred Peake, a big hearty country woman who lives in a cottage on the estate and acts as gardener. Having delivered her message for Clarissa she leaves and Pippa reappears eating a bun and carrying a book she has bought which she mysteriously describes as a "recipe book" although it strangely speaks of candles. Asked by Jeremy if she likes living at Copplestone Court, Pippa enthuses over the house and shows Jeremy a hidden door at the back of the room which leads to a small recess. This in turn has another hidden door at the back which leads to the library.
Preparations are being made for the three guests to eat at the nearby golf club as it is the night off for the Elgins, Clarissa's married butler and cook. Sir Rowland congratulates Clarissa on her relationship with and handling of Pippa who had a bad time with her real mother, Miranda and her drug-supplying lover, Oliver Costello. A phone call to the house is strangely cut off when Clarissa tells the caller that she is not Mrs. Brown but Mrs. Hailsham-Brown. Clarissa tells Sir Rowland that the house used to belong to a Mr. Sellon, a now-deceased antique dealer in Maidstone and the furnishings are his. His former trade means that enquiries are received about some of his furniture, including one for the desk that, unbeknown to her, Jeremy had been searching through earlier. Walking in on the conversation, Pippa tells the two that she has found out that the desk has a secret drawer and she shows it to them together with its contents: an envelope with three autographed papers inside with the signatures of Queen Victoria, John Ruskin
and Robert Browning
on them.
Sir Rowland and the other two men leave for the golf club and soon after Clarissa receives another and very unwanted visitor: Oliver Costello, who tells her that Miranda wants Pippa living back with her and Costello, thus breaching the verbal agreement Henry reached with his ex-wife. Clarissa guesses that Miranda and Costello's real motive is to obtain money from Henry and she accuses him of blackmail, a word overheard by Elgin just as he enters the room to tell Clarissa that he and his wife are off out. When he has gone, Clarissa, in turn, threatens to expose Costello and Miranda's drug activities. Pippa comes into the room, appalled to see Costello there as she is terrified of the man. Clarissa throws him out of the house with the help of Miss Peake and Clarissa calms the hysterical Pippa down and sends her for her bath.
Henry comes home briefly. He tells his wife that he has been entrusted with holding a secret pre-conference meeting at his home with a foreign diplomat who is arriving that night and he leaves to meet them. The room is empty for a moment and Costello re-enters through the French windows. Like Jeremy before, he starts to go through the contents of the desk with the secret drawer. Behind him, the door of the hidden recess opens and an unseen hand clubs him down. He falls to the ground behind a sofa. After Clarissa shows her husband off, she re-enters the room and soon finds the body of Costello. Almost instantly Pippa comes through the hidden recess and starts babbling hysterically that she is responsible. Clarissa tries to calm her down while wondering what she will do...
Pippa has been put to bed with a sleeping draught. Clarissa has set up a card table for bridge
when her three guests arrive back, summoned by a phone call from her. She asks them to move the body to Costello's car which she knows is parked some distance from the house to a local wood. Their alibi will be the bridge game for which she has set up the cards with false scores to indicate the progress of some time having elapsed. She tells them that her motive is Henry's diplomatic visit. The three somewhat incredulous men fall in uneasily with her plan but only after Sir Rowland has been told by Clarissa of Pippa's supposed involvement. Wearing gloves supplied by Clarissa, they manage to move the body back into the recess prior to moving him on later but are stopped in further preparations when the police unexpectedly arrive. Inspector Lord is there following a mysterious phone call to the station telling them that a murder has been committed at the house.
In the initial questioning, it comes to light that the previous owner of the house, Sellon, was found dead in his shop, supposedly from a fall down the stairs, but it might have been more nefarious than that. There were suspicions of involvement in drugs and Sellon also left a note to the effect that he had come across something worth fourteen thousand pounds but no one has yet found out what the item was.
In the meantime, the police have located Costello's car in the grounds with documents showing his identity inside it. Clarissa has to admit to his visit and Miss Peake is summoned to the main house to testify that she showed him off the grounds earlier in the evening. Unfortunately, not knowing of the subterfuge of Clarissa and the three men, she also tells of the hidden recess. Clarissa is forced to open it and Costello's body is exposed…
Miss Peake, suffering hysterics, has been helped upstairs. Clarissa has been fed a glass of brandy and has now recovered and, after closing the recess door to hide the unpleasant sight of the body, the police question all the people separately. Elgin and his wife have returned early from their night off as she was ill and he testifies to hearing Clarissa talking to Costello of blackmail. During the questioning of Jeremy, the Inspector finds the gloves used to move Costello that were hurriedly hidden in the drawing room by the three men when the police arrived. He also finds one of the playing card
s from the pack dropped accidentally by Pippa earlier (In Act I when playing patience
) and whose absence was not noticed by Clarissa when setting up the false bridge game.
When questioning Sir Rowland, Lord finds differences between the stories of the people involved. Sir Rowland, concerned that the Inspector strongly suspects Clarissa of the crime, tells her to tell the police the truth. Desperate to shield Pippa, most of the story she tells is truthful except for the confession of her stepdaughter. Under some duress from Lord, she if forced to change her tale again and this time confesses to the crime herself, albeit stating that she killed Costello thinking he was a burglar. Questioned over Elgin's remembrance of the use of the word "blackmail", she states that this was a discussion over the cheap rental they are being charged for the house – four guineas a week. Sir Rowland comes back into the room, despite being told to keep out, desperate to find out how Clarissa is doing and is appalled to hear of her own confession. Taking Clarissa through her story more carefully, the recess door is opened and the Inspector receives a shock – the body has gone!
Everyone is thoroughly confused by the two mysteries – who moved the body and who rang the police? While the police are searching the house and grounds, Miss Peake comes downstairs and tells Clarissa and her three guests that she is responsible for the body being moved in order that a charge couldn't be made against her as the primary evidence is missing. She wasn't in the hysterical state that she made out and, hearing how things were developing, the strong woman removed the body from the recess from the library side and hid it under the bolster
of the bed she was "recovering" on. Pippa also comes downstairs, still drowsy over her sleeping pill and talking about seeing policemen in her room in her dreams. She also thinks that her sighting of Oliver was a dream and links this to the wax doll she produces – her "recipe" book was an ancient book on witchcraft
and this explains why she confessed to killing Costello: she thought her "spells
" had done the deed.
This adds another mystery – who did kill Costello? Pippa is helped to lie on the sofa and Clarissa is suddenly struck by something Hugo said earlier when he stated that Sellon's antique shop was called "Sellon and Brown". She remembers the phone call asking for Mrs. Brown and a comment made by Costello to Miss Peake before she showed him from the house to the effect that he came "to see Mrs. Brown" and she realises that Miss Peake is in fact Mrs. Brown, Sellon's former partner. Clarissa was given the rent of the house cheaply to install another Mrs Brown to lure other fortune hunters who are after Sellon's unknown amazing discovery. She laughs off the apparent danger she put Clarissa in stating that she kept a very close eye on things, such as her being on the scene when Costello was threatening her earlier in the evening.
Sir Rowland wonders if there is anything written on the autographed papers in invisible ink
and they test them, revealing the names of six distributors of drugs, including Costello. Going to tell the police their findings, the sleeping Pippa is left alone and, after a moment, Jeremy re-enters and is about to smother the girl's face with a cushion when Clarissa comes back. She soon realises that he is the killer. He was away from the other two men for a time after they had gone to the club to eat and a remark Pippa made about seeing his golf club ("A golf stick like Jeremy had", in the context of the weapon used to kill Costello) ties in. He also rang the police to try and incriminate Clarissa. Jeremy confesses; his motive was the envelope that the autographed papers were kept in – on it is an extremely rare error stamp
worth the fourteen thousand pounds. He is about to kill Clarissa when the police enter the room, having heard the exchange, and arrest him. They take him away. The others go to bed and Henry returns but without his diplomatic guests who have failed to turn up. Like the police inspector, he fails to believe a word his wife tells him of the evening's events...
was not overly ethusiastic in its review of 15 December 1954 when it said, "Miss Agatha Christie tries this time to combine a story of murder with a comedy of character. As Edgar Wallace
showed more than once, this thing can be done. There is no reason why the special tension of the one should not support the special tension of the other. In this instance, however, the support is at best intermittent. There is a risk that those that are chiefly concerned to find out who murdered the odious blackmailer will hardly regard the solution as one of the author's happiest. There is a like risk that the rest of the audience will be bored with a comedy which has to accommodate itself to the requirements of a long police interrogation. The common ground on which both sections may stand is dangerously small." The reviewer admitted that, "the thriller gives all the characters a turn and yet contrives at the end to produce a twist. It is a twist which surprises rather than satisfies the logical mind." but they concluded, "the play as a whole is the least exciting and not the most amusing of the three Agatha Christie's now running in London."
The Nottingham preview was the production reviewed in The Guardian
on 28 September 1954, rather than the later West End opening. The critic was not over-enthusiastic, calling it, "Confusing" and stating, "The piece hardly calls for moralising, though there will always be people who find it hard to laugh at jokes about the disposal of corpses. Yet it is as comedy, rather than mystery, that it must stand or fall. Miss Lockwood, though born to be sincere, has the job here of hauling rather substantial red herrings all over the stage to try and give us the impression that she is a sly minx who has either done the deed herself or else is shielding her neurotic little stepdaughter. Tonight's audience evidently fell deeply for the wiles of Miss Lockwood. Artful finger on chin, or fluttering hand emphasising some particularly disingenuous point, she earns every word of the police inspector's tribute when he says: 'You haven't made things easy for us with your tall stories.'"
Cast of London production:
in 1957 as French's Acting Edition No. 834.
Like Black Coffee (1998) and The Unexpected Guest (1999), the script of the play was turned into a novel of the same name by Charles Osborne
. It was published in the UK by HarperCollins
in 2000.
In 1960, the play was turned into a film with the slightly extended title of The Spider's Web
. Glynis Johns
played the part of Clarissa with none of the actors from the stage production making the cross-over to the film. The screenplay, adapted from Christie's text, was by Eldon Howard and direction was by Godfrey Grayson.
In 1982, the BBC
produced the work as a one hour, forty-five minute television play which starred Penelope Keith
in the role of Clarissa. Cedric Messina
was the producer with Basil Coleman directing. This version was broadcast on 26 December.
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
by crime writer Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
.
Background
Spider's Web was written at the request of its star, Margaret Lockwood, whose main body of work was in films and who had never appeared in a West EndWest End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
production aside from Peter Pan
Peter Pan
Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
. In 1953, Lockwood asked her agent, Herbert de Leon, to speak with Peter Saunders, who was the main producer of Christie's work on the stage after the successes of The Hollow
The Hollow (play)
The Hollow is a 1951 play by crime writer Agatha Christie. It is based on the 1946 book of the same name.-Background:In her Autobiography, Christie claimed that the success of And Then There Were None set her on the path of being a playwright as well as a writer of books and that only she would...
and The Mousetrap
The Mousetrap
The Mousetrap is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. The Mousetrap opened in the West End of London in 1952, and has been running continuously since then. It has the longest initial run of any play in history, with over 24,500 performances so far. It is the longest running show of the modern...
, and see if Christie would be interested in writing a play for her.
Saunders arranged a meeting between Christie and Lockwood at the Mirabelle restaurant. During the conversation, Lockwood requested that she didn't play a sinister or wicked part again (for which she was well known) but a role in a "comedy thriller". She also requested a part for Wilfrid Hyde-White
Wilfrid Hyde-White
Wilfrid Hyde-White was an English character actor.-Early life and career:Wilfrid Hyde White was born at the rectory in Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire, the son of William Edward White, canon of Gloucester Cathedral, and his wife, Ethel Adelaide Drought...
who she wanted to act with and who was also on the books of de Leon. In the event, although the part was written, Hyde-White declined the role and Felix Aylmer
Felix Aylmer
Sir Felix Edward Aylmer Jones, OBE was an English stage actor who also appeared in the cinema and on television.-Early life and career:...
was cast instead.
Christie wrote the play during the period of the final rehearsals for Witness for the Prosecution
Witness for the Prosecution (play)
Witness for the Prosecution is a play adapted by Agatha Christie based upon her short story titled "The Witness for the Prosecution". The play opened in London on October 28, 1953 at the Winter Garden Theatre...
which opened to rave reviews in London on 28 October 1953. Lockwood's character was given the name of Clarissa, the name of Christie's beloved mother who had died back in 1926. Unasked, Christie also wrote a role which would be suitable for Lockwood's fourteen year old daughter, Julia, although Margaret Barton played the part in the finished production.
Although the play is an original piece, within it Christie utilised three plot devices from earlier works she had written:
- In the play, Clarissa is offered the rental of the house she is in for only four guineasGuinea (British coin)The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...
a month, whereas other inquirers are told the sum was eighteen guineas. This is to make sure that someone with the surname of Brown becomes resident in order to lure thieves to the house to steal something they think the real Mrs Brown possesses. This repeats the plot of the 1923 short story The Adventure of the Cheap Flat (published in book form in Poirot InvestigatesPoirot InvestigatesPoirot Investigates is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by The Bodley Head in March 1924. In the eleven stories, famed eccentric detective Hercule Poirot solves a variety of mysteries involving greed, jealousy and revenge. The American version of...
in 1924) where a couple called Robinson are cheaply let a flat in order that they act as decoys for two spies who are in fear of their lives and who were living under the alias of Mr and Mrs Robinson.
- The item the thieves are after is revealed to be a rare stamp which is on an envelope containing other pieces of paper which are thought, throughout the play, to be the real attraction of attempts at theft. This plot device was first used in the 1941 story The Case of the Buried Treasure, printed in book form in the US as Strange Jest in the 1950 collection Three Blind Mice and Other StoriesThree Blind Mice and Other StoriesThree Blind Mice and Other Stories is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1950...
and in the UK in the 1979 collection Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other StoriesMiss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other StoriesMiss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by Collins Crime Club in October 1979 retailing at £4.50...
. In the short story, a deceased man has left his great-niece and nephew a supposedly hidden fortune which Miss MarpleMiss MarpleJane Marple, usually referred to as Miss Marple, is a fictional character appearing in twelve of Agatha Christie's crime novels and in twenty short stories. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster who lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur detective. She is one of the most famous...
deduces is in the form of a rare stamp on one of his otherwise innocuous-looking letters.
- In the 1941 novel Evil Under the SunEvil Under the SunEvil Under the Sun is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in June 1941 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in October of the same year...
, an adolescent girl experiments with witchcraftWitchcraftWitchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
, shortly before the victim is murdered, and then believes herself to be responsible for the murder
The play opened at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham
Theatre Royal, Nottingham
The Theatre Royal, Nottingham in Nottingham, England, is part of the city's Royal Centre, which also incorporates the Nottingham Royal Concert Hall. The theatre is in the heart of Nottingham City Centre and is owned by Nottingham City Council...
on 27 September 1954, followed by a short national tour and then had its West End opening on 13 December 1954 at the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
, where it ran for 774 performances. With The Mousetrap and Witness for the Prosecution still running, Christie was at the peak of her West End career.
On 7 March 1955, Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
, Prince Philip
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is the husband of Elizabeth II. He is the United Kingdom's longest-serving consort and the oldest serving spouse of a reigning British monarch....
and Princess Margaret
Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon
Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon was the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II and the younger daughter of King George VI....
were among the audience for a performance of the play
Act I
The action of the play passes in the drawing room of Copplestone Court, the Hailsham-Brown's home in KentKent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
. The time: the present.
(An evening in March)
Clarissa Hailsham-Brown is the second wife of a Foreign Office
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, commonly called the Foreign Office or the FCO is a British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom overseas, created in 1968 by merging the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office.The head of the FCO is the...
diplomat
Diplomacy
Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states...
, Henry, and stepmother to his teenage daughter, Pippa. They are currently living at Copplestone Court, a large house they are renting at a very cheap price in Kent. There are three guests staying with them: Sir Rowland Delahaye, a local Justice of the Peace
Justice of the Peace
A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...
in his fifties, Hugo Birch, an irascible man in his sixties and a young man called Jeremy Warrender. Sir Rowland and Hugo are taking part in a contest devised by Clarissa to test three different types of Port
Port wine
Port wine is a Portuguese fortified wine produced exclusively in the Douro Valley in the northern provinces of Portugal. It is typically a sweet, red wine, often served as a dessert wine, and comes in dry, semi-dry, and white varieties...
whilst Jeremy is trying to prove the timing achieved by a previous guest to the house in running to the lodge gates and back three times. Both contests however are spoofs designed by the fun-loving Clarissa to occupy her guests' time as their golf
Golf
Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
match has been rained off. The two older men move off to sample more of the Port and Pippa arrives homes from school, hungry as always.
Clarissa takes her off for something to eat and, momentarily alone, Jeremy starts to investigate a desk in the room, quickly looking through the drawers until he is interrupted by the arrival of Miss Mildred Peake, a big hearty country woman who lives in a cottage on the estate and acts as gardener. Having delivered her message for Clarissa she leaves and Pippa reappears eating a bun and carrying a book she has bought which she mysteriously describes as a "recipe book" although it strangely speaks of candles. Asked by Jeremy if she likes living at Copplestone Court, Pippa enthuses over the house and shows Jeremy a hidden door at the back of the room which leads to a small recess. This in turn has another hidden door at the back which leads to the library.
Preparations are being made for the three guests to eat at the nearby golf club as it is the night off for the Elgins, Clarissa's married butler and cook. Sir Rowland congratulates Clarissa on her relationship with and handling of Pippa who had a bad time with her real mother, Miranda and her drug-supplying lover, Oliver Costello. A phone call to the house is strangely cut off when Clarissa tells the caller that she is not Mrs. Brown but Mrs. Hailsham-Brown. Clarissa tells Sir Rowland that the house used to belong to a Mr. Sellon, a now-deceased antique dealer in Maidstone and the furnishings are his. His former trade means that enquiries are received about some of his furniture, including one for the desk that, unbeknown to her, Jeremy had been searching through earlier. Walking in on the conversation, Pippa tells the two that she has found out that the desk has a secret drawer and she shows it to them together with its contents: an envelope with three autographed papers inside with the signatures of Queen Victoria, John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
and Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
on them.
Sir Rowland and the other two men leave for the golf club and soon after Clarissa receives another and very unwanted visitor: Oliver Costello, who tells her that Miranda wants Pippa living back with her and Costello, thus breaching the verbal agreement Henry reached with his ex-wife. Clarissa guesses that Miranda and Costello's real motive is to obtain money from Henry and she accuses him of blackmail, a word overheard by Elgin just as he enters the room to tell Clarissa that he and his wife are off out. When he has gone, Clarissa, in turn, threatens to expose Costello and Miranda's drug activities. Pippa comes into the room, appalled to see Costello there as she is terrified of the man. Clarissa throws him out of the house with the help of Miss Peake and Clarissa calms the hysterical Pippa down and sends her for her bath.
Henry comes home briefly. He tells his wife that he has been entrusted with holding a secret pre-conference meeting at his home with a foreign diplomat who is arriving that night and he leaves to meet them. The room is empty for a moment and Costello re-enters through the French windows. Like Jeremy before, he starts to go through the contents of the desk with the secret drawer. Behind him, the door of the hidden recess opens and an unseen hand clubs him down. He falls to the ground behind a sofa. After Clarissa shows her husband off, she re-enters the room and soon finds the body of Costello. Almost instantly Pippa comes through the hidden recess and starts babbling hysterically that she is responsible. Clarissa tries to calm her down while wondering what she will do...
Act II, Scene 1
(The same. A quarter of an hour later)Pippa has been put to bed with a sleeping draught. Clarissa has set up a card table for bridge
Contract bridge
Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard deck of 52 playing cards played by four players in two competing partnerships with partners sitting opposite each other around a small table...
when her three guests arrive back, summoned by a phone call from her. She asks them to move the body to Costello's car which she knows is parked some distance from the house to a local wood. Their alibi will be the bridge game for which she has set up the cards with false scores to indicate the progress of some time having elapsed. She tells them that her motive is Henry's diplomatic visit. The three somewhat incredulous men fall in uneasily with her plan but only after Sir Rowland has been told by Clarissa of Pippa's supposed involvement. Wearing gloves supplied by Clarissa, they manage to move the body back into the recess prior to moving him on later but are stopped in further preparations when the police unexpectedly arrive. Inspector Lord is there following a mysterious phone call to the station telling them that a murder has been committed at the house.
In the initial questioning, it comes to light that the previous owner of the house, Sellon, was found dead in his shop, supposedly from a fall down the stairs, but it might have been more nefarious than that. There were suspicions of involvement in drugs and Sellon also left a note to the effect that he had come across something worth fourteen thousand pounds but no one has yet found out what the item was.
In the meantime, the police have located Costello's car in the grounds with documents showing his identity inside it. Clarissa has to admit to his visit and Miss Peake is summoned to the main house to testify that she showed him off the grounds earlier in the evening. Unfortunately, not knowing of the subterfuge of Clarissa and the three men, she also tells of the hidden recess. Clarissa is forced to open it and Costello's body is exposed…
Act II, Scene 2
(The same, ten minutes later)Miss Peake, suffering hysterics, has been helped upstairs. Clarissa has been fed a glass of brandy and has now recovered and, after closing the recess door to hide the unpleasant sight of the body, the police question all the people separately. Elgin and his wife have returned early from their night off as she was ill and he testifies to hearing Clarissa talking to Costello of blackmail. During the questioning of Jeremy, the Inspector finds the gloves used to move Costello that were hurriedly hidden in the drawing room by the three men when the police arrived. He also finds one of the playing card
Playing card
A playing card is a piece of specially prepared heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic, marked with distinguishing motifs and used as one of a set for playing card games...
s from the pack dropped accidentally by Pippa earlier (In Act I when playing patience
Solitaire
Solitaire is any tabletop game which one can play by oneself or with other people. The solitaire card game Klondike is often known as simply Solitaire....
) and whose absence was not noticed by Clarissa when setting up the false bridge game.
When questioning Sir Rowland, Lord finds differences between the stories of the people involved. Sir Rowland, concerned that the Inspector strongly suspects Clarissa of the crime, tells her to tell the police the truth. Desperate to shield Pippa, most of the story she tells is truthful except for the confession of her stepdaughter. Under some duress from Lord, she if forced to change her tale again and this time confesses to the crime herself, albeit stating that she killed Costello thinking he was a burglar. Questioned over Elgin's remembrance of the use of the word "blackmail", she states that this was a discussion over the cheap rental they are being charged for the house – four guineas a week. Sir Rowland comes back into the room, despite being told to keep out, desperate to find out how Clarissa is doing and is appalled to hear of her own confession. Taking Clarissa through her story more carefully, the recess door is opened and the Inspector receives a shock – the body has gone!
Act III
(The same. A few minutes later)Everyone is thoroughly confused by the two mysteries – who moved the body and who rang the police? While the police are searching the house and grounds, Miss Peake comes downstairs and tells Clarissa and her three guests that she is responsible for the body being moved in order that a charge couldn't be made against her as the primary evidence is missing. She wasn't in the hysterical state that she made out and, hearing how things were developing, the strong woman removed the body from the recess from the library side and hid it under the bolster
Bolster
A bolster is a long narrow pillow or cushion filled with cotton, down, or fibre. In western countries, it is usually placed at the head of bed and functions as head or back support...
of the bed she was "recovering" on. Pippa also comes downstairs, still drowsy over her sleeping pill and talking about seeing policemen in her room in her dreams. She also thinks that her sighting of Oliver was a dream and links this to the wax doll she produces – her "recipe" book was an ancient book on witchcraft
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
and this explains why she confessed to killing Costello: she thought her "spells
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
" had done the deed.
This adds another mystery – who did kill Costello? Pippa is helped to lie on the sofa and Clarissa is suddenly struck by something Hugo said earlier when he stated that Sellon's antique shop was called "Sellon and Brown". She remembers the phone call asking for Mrs. Brown and a comment made by Costello to Miss Peake before she showed him from the house to the effect that he came "to see Mrs. Brown" and she realises that Miss Peake is in fact Mrs. Brown, Sellon's former partner. Clarissa was given the rent of the house cheaply to install another Mrs Brown to lure other fortune hunters who are after Sellon's unknown amazing discovery. She laughs off the apparent danger she put Clarissa in stating that she kept a very close eye on things, such as her being on the scene when Costello was threatening her earlier in the evening.
Sir Rowland wonders if there is anything written on the autographed papers in invisible ink
Invisible ink
Invisible ink, also known as security ink, is a substance used for writing, which is invisible either on application or soon thereafter, and which later on can be made visible by some means. Invisible ink is one form of steganography, and it has been used in espionage...
and they test them, revealing the names of six distributors of drugs, including Costello. Going to tell the police their findings, the sleeping Pippa is left alone and, after a moment, Jeremy re-enters and is about to smother the girl's face with a cushion when Clarissa comes back. She soon realises that he is the killer. He was away from the other two men for a time after they had gone to the club to eat and a remark Pippa made about seeing his golf club ("A golf stick like Jeremy had", in the context of the weapon used to kill Costello) ties in. He also rang the police to try and incriminate Clarissa. Jeremy confesses; his motive was the envelope that the autographed papers were kept in – on it is an extremely rare error stamp
Postage stamp error
A postage stamp error is any of several types of failure in the stamp printing process that results in stamps not having the intended appearance. Errors include use of the wrong colors, wrong denominations, missing parts of the design, misplaced or inverted design elements, etc...
worth the fourteen thousand pounds. He is about to kill Clarissa when the police enter the room, having heard the exchange, and arrest him. They take him away. The others go to bed and Henry returns but without his diplomatic guests who have failed to turn up. Like the police inspector, he fails to believe a word his wife tells him of the evening's events...
Reception
The TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
was not overly ethusiastic in its review of 15 December 1954 when it said, "Miss Agatha Christie tries this time to combine a story of murder with a comedy of character. As Edgar Wallace
Edgar Wallace
Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was an English crime writer, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and playwright, who wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and numerous articles in newspapers and journals....
showed more than once, this thing can be done. There is no reason why the special tension of the one should not support the special tension of the other. In this instance, however, the support is at best intermittent. There is a risk that those that are chiefly concerned to find out who murdered the odious blackmailer will hardly regard the solution as one of the author's happiest. There is a like risk that the rest of the audience will be bored with a comedy which has to accommodate itself to the requirements of a long police interrogation. The common ground on which both sections may stand is dangerously small." The reviewer admitted that, "the thriller gives all the characters a turn and yet contrives at the end to produce a twist. It is a twist which surprises rather than satisfies the logical mind." but they concluded, "the play as a whole is the least exciting and not the most amusing of the three Agatha Christie's now running in London."
The Nottingham preview was the production reviewed in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
on 28 September 1954, rather than the later West End opening. The critic was not over-enthusiastic, calling it, "Confusing" and stating, "The piece hardly calls for moralising, though there will always be people who find it hard to laugh at jokes about the disposal of corpses. Yet it is as comedy, rather than mystery, that it must stand or fall. Miss Lockwood, though born to be sincere, has the job here of hauling rather substantial red herrings all over the stage to try and give us the impression that she is a sly minx who has either done the deed herself or else is shielding her neurotic little stepdaughter. Tonight's audience evidently fell deeply for the wiles of Miss Lockwood. Artful finger on chin, or fluttering hand emphasising some particularly disingenuous point, she earns every word of the police inspector's tribute when he says: 'You haven't made things easy for us with your tall stories.'"
Credits of London production
Director: Wallace DouglasCast of London production:
- Margaret Lockwood as Clarissa Hailsham-Brown
- Felix AylmerFelix AylmerSir Felix Edward Aylmer Jones, OBE was an English stage actor who also appeared in the cinema and on television.-Early life and career:...
as Sir Rowland Delahaye - Harold Scott as Hugo Birch
- Myles Eason as Jeremy Warrender
- Margaret BartonMargaret BartonMargaret Barton is a British actress. She is best known for her role in the 1945 David Lean film Brief Encounter in which she played Beryl, a girl who works in the station cafe.-Selected filmography:* Brief Encounter...
as Pippa Hailsham-Brown, Clarissa's young stepdaughter - Judith FurseJudith Furse-Career:A member of the noted Furse family, her father was Lieutenant-General Sir William Furse. Her brother, Roger, became a celebrated stage designer and painter who occasionally worked in films....
as Mildred Peake - Sidney Monckton as Elgin, the ButlerButlerA butler is a domestic worker in a large household. In great houses, the household is sometimes divided into departments with the butler in charge of the dining room, wine cellar, and pantry. Some also have charge of the entire parlour floor, and housekeepers caring for the entire house and its...
- Charles Morgan as Oliver Costello
- John WarwickJohn WarwickJohn Warwick was an Australian film and television actor.-Selected filmography:* On Our Selection * In the Wake of the Bounty * The Squatter's Daughter * Riding High...
as Henry Hailsham-Brown, Clarissa's husband - Campbell SingerCampbell SingerCampbell Singer was a British character actor who featured in a number of film and television roles during his long career....
as Inspector Lord - Desmond LlewelynDesmond LlewelynDesmond Wilkinson Llewelyn was a Welsh actor, famous for playing Q in 17 of the James Bond films between 1963 and 1999.-Early life:...
as Constable Jones - Maryam Khan as the Killer
Publication and further adaptations
The play was first published by Samuel FrenchSamuel French
Samuel French was a U.S. entrepreneur who, together with British actor, playwright and theatrical manager Thomas Hailes Lacy, pioneered in the field of theatrical publishing and the licensing of plays....
in 1957 as French's Acting Edition No. 834.
Like Black Coffee (1998) and The Unexpected Guest (1999), the script of the play was turned into a novel of the same name by Charles Osborne
Charles Osborne (music writer)
Charles Thomas Osborne, born 24 November 1927 in Brisbane, Australia, is a journalist, critic, poet and novelist, and a recognised authority on opera. He was assistant editor of The London Magazine from 1958 until 1966, literature director of the Arts Council of Great Britain from 1971 until 1986,...
. It was published in the UK by HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
in 2000.
In 1960, the play was turned into a film with the slightly extended title of The Spider's Web
The Spider's Web (1960 film)
The Spider's Web is a 1960 British mystery film directed by Godfrey Grayson and starring Glynis Johns, John Justin, Cicely Courtneidge and Jack Hulbert...
. Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns is a South African-born Welsh stage and film actress, dancer, pianist and singer . With a career spanning seven decades, Johns is often cited as the "complete actress", who happens to be a trained pianist and singer...
played the part of Clarissa with none of the actors from the stage production making the cross-over to the film. The screenplay, adapted from Christie's text, was by Eldon Howard and direction was by Godfrey Grayson.
In 1982, the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
produced the work as a one hour, forty-five minute television play which starred Penelope Keith
Penelope Keith
Penelope Anne Constance Keith, CBE, DL is an English actress.Having started her television career in the 1950s, Penelope Keith became a household name in the United Kingdom in the 1970s when she played Margo Leadbetter in the sitcom The Good Life...
in the role of Clarissa. Cedric Messina
Cedric Messina
Cedric Messina was a South African born British television producer and director for the BBC of mainly classic drama...
was the producer with Basil Coleman directing. This version was broadcast on 26 December.