Solving an Agatha Christie Mystery with Celeste Connally

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I was lucky enough to read my pal Celeste Connally's ACT LIKE A LADY, THINK LIKE A LORD in manuscript last year, and I've been so excited for this book's debut. I knew it was going to be a smash and, indeed, the accolades have been glowing! Kirkus calls this Regency mystery "Effervescent...A delightful period adventure with pitch-perfect banter."  Publisher's Weekly says "Delightful...Petra is marvelously drawn―an easy-to-love, instantly memorable heroine―and Connally equips her with a brisk, page-turning adventure. This is catnip for historical suspense fans," and I couldn't agree more. Mystery fans will be enchanted with Petra and her adventures, but today Celeste has a different mystery to share with us.

Solving a Mystery in Agatha Christie’s Greenway House

By CelesteConnally

So, what was an author like me to do in October of 2022 when I happened to be in England for a research trip and I discovered my publisher termed my then-upcoming Regency-era mystery, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord, as “Agatha Christie meets Bridgerton?” Well, I felt that it was only right that I should visit Greenway, Agatha Christie’s famed holiday home in Devon, England.

 

Okay, so I’d already planned to visit Greenway with my fellow author friend, Hannah Dennison—who lives in a lovely village in Devon full time—but this delightful tagline made me feel as if it wasn’t just a fun excursion, but also legitimate extra research. Because what mystery author (or mystery reader, for that matter, for I will always be both) wouldn’t feel inspired by being in the beloved getaway of the grand master of the British mystery?

And inspiring Greenway is. A beautiful, white, three-story Georgian house set on a hill above the banks of the River Dart, it is immediately obvious why it was so loved by Mrs. Mallowan—as Agatha Christie was known in her private life, having married Max Mallowan in 1930 after meeting him on an architectural dig. Greenway is large, but truly cozy, and it retains the air of a house that was beloved by the famous writer and her family.

In fact, I almost felt as if I might be greeted by Dame Agatha at every corner I turned as I went through the house and listened to the knowledgeable tour guides. That she might show off her lovely collection of pocket watches and postage-stamp boxes, her framed needlework scenes of fox hunts and horseraces (a particular favorite of mine), or take me into her invitingly open kitchen for tea.

For in my mind, Agatha Christie would just as easily sit in the kitchen and have tea as in the light-filled drawing room where she was known to read her manuscripts out to her family to see if they could figure out “whodunit” before she revealed the killer. I may be wrong on that, but that’s what I’m going to imagine.

And another place she loved on her property was the Boathouse. It’s situated on the gorgeous, curving River Dart, where sailboats float by and the banks on both sides are amassed with trees. It was in this boathouse where a part of Christie’s Dead Man’s Folly takes place, and visitors there can sit in the very chair Agatha Christie liked to relax in when she entertained friends by the water. As you can see in the photo, I absolutely took the chance to sit in her chair, holding a copy of Dead Man’s Folly in tribute!

 

But, of course, one of my favorite rooms in Greenway was the library. Boasting some five thousand books, which include subjects like gardening, poetry, travel, and a book I noted titled Famous Stories of Code and Cipher, it was a delight to see what Agatha Christie herself liked to read. Yet on the wall, where it meets the ceiling, is where I saw a bit of Texas that has been in Greenway since World War II. And that is where I helped solve a little mystery…even if it might only have been for one tour guide and my fellow admirers that day of Christie and Greenway House.

While Greenway was used early on in the war to house children evacuated from London, from 1944 to 1945 it was also requisitioned by the U.S. Coast Guard. During that time, Lieutenant Marshall Lee, who was also an artist, painted a frieze on the uppermost part of the wall depicting the journey of his Coast Guard flotilla. On a painted ribbon that undulates beneath depictions of the flotilla’s journey, you can read the towns and ports where Lee and his fellow Coast Guardsmen spent time, including Houston and Galveston, Texas; Norfolk, Virginia; Bermuda; Morocco; Algeria; Tunisia; Sicily and Salerno, Italy; Gibraltar; and Falmouth in Cornwall, England, and Dartmouth in Devon, England.

 

But at the very beginning of the ribbon of port names was the word Orange, and our lovely tour guide—who had been giving tours for many a year—told us she’d never known the significance. That is when I held up my hand and explained that Orange is a small town in Texas, right on the border with Louisiana.

Our tour guide was happy to finally know this, and through the power of the internet, I later discovered that Orange, Texas—which is located along the Sabine River that flows down to the Gulf of Mexico—served as a shipbuilding base where naval destroyers were built for the war effort. And thus, that was where Lieutenant Lee’s flotilla truly began their journey. The journey that took them, and all the Coast Guardsmen on each boat, all the way from a small town in Texas, through the horrors of WWII, to Devon, England, and Agatha Christie’s beautiful house.

 

I have no doubt that Dame Agatha discovered this about Orange, Texas, when Greenway once more became the Mallowan’s treasured family holiday home after the war. She certainly liked the frieze enough to allow it to stay on her library walls and delight guests to this day! But I also enjoy imagining that she would have approved that I, a mystery writer from Texas (who writes about England), helped solve a little mystery—even if it was only for one otherwise extremely knowledgeable tour guide—while I was visiting and being inspired by the house she routinely called “the loveliest in the world.”

DEBS: This is so fascinating! Greenway has been on my bucket list for ages (so jealous!) and I've read about it, but I did not know about the frieze! I love the Texas connection--who'd have thought it? I love that Dame Agatha loved it.

Celeste Connally is an Agatha Award nominee, and a former freelance writer and editor. A lifelong devotee of historical novels and adaptations fueled by her passion for history—plus weekly doses of PBS Masterpiece—Celeste loves reading and writing about women from the past who didn’t always do as they were told. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook at @celesteconnallyauthor and at celesteconnally.com.

Bridgerton meets Agatha Christie in Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord,a dazzling first entry in a captivating new Regency-era mystery series with a feminist spin from Celeste Connally.

London, 1815. Lady Petra Forsyth, daughter of the Earl of Holbrook, has made a shocking proclamation. After losing her beloved fiancé in an accident three years earlier, she announces in front of London’s loosest lips that she will never marry. A woman of independent means―and rather independent ways―Petra sees no reason to cede her wealth and freedom to any man now that the love of her life is gone. Instead, she plans to continue enjoying the best of society without any expectations.

But when ballroom gossip suggests that a longtime friend has died of a fit due to her “melancholia” while in the care of a questionable physician, Petra vows to use her status to dig deeper―uncovering a private asylum where men pay to have their wives and daughters locked away, or worse. Just as Petra has reason to believe her friend is alive, a shocking murder proves more danger is afoot than she thought. And the more determined Lady Petra becomes in uncovering the truth, the more her own headstrong actions and desire for independence are used against her, putting her own freedom―and possibly her life―in jeopardy.

DEBS: Who has visited Greenway--or has it on their wish list? I do love that drawing room. I could spend many an hour just imagining myself having a cuppa or a glass of sherry!

Writers' Spaces

The winner of Priscilla Paton's WHEN THE HOUSE BURNS is Sandra Benson. Sandra, contact juliaspencerfleming@gmail.com for more info! 

 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'll have much more to say (and photos to share!) about my fabulous trip to Key West and spending time with Lucy and Hallie later in the week, but today I want to share some thoughts on visiting Ernest Hemingway's Key West studio for the second time. The Hemingway House is fascinating for its history and memorabilia, and of course the famous cats, but it's the separate studio in the back that I connected with so deeply that I couldn't wait to see it again. 

Years ago I visited Jane Austen's home in Chawton, Hampshire, and I marveled at the small parlor where she wrote, seldom alone, surrounded by the busy comings and goings of the household. If there was some magic in that room, I felt it doubly in Hemingway's studio. Here I am, taking a selfie in the mirror in the room's entrance, maybe hoping a little of that fairy dust would rub off on me. I imagined papers piled beside the typewriter, books piled on the floor, the keyboard clacking with work in progress. 

On leaving, I was compelled to order a copy of Hemingway's Letters, Vol. 2 of 6, the Paris years. It was waiting for me when I got home, and I immediately came across this quote. Hemingway, writing to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in 1925, says, "It certainly is funny how your head…can go most of the time like a frozen cabbage and then it can give you hell when it starts going. Have been so pleased to find it still functions." He was writing The Sun Also Rises, the novel that propelled him to fame. There's something comforting about knowing that such a renowned writer had the same struggle with stopping and starting, and that something amazing came from it. 

And to top it off, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS was playing on my flight home.

Dear Reds, have you been inspired by a space where another writer lived or worked? 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes. Yes yes yes. The Mount, in Lenox MA, where Edith Wharton lived and wrote. It is from a completely different time, socially and culturally,and the atmosphere and aura were unchanged when we visited, .and the gardens were  transporting. It’s so–elegant, and contained, and everything was precisely where it was supposed to be, and filled with history and almost-stressful precision and manners.  And she is my absolute idol as a writer. Unmatched! One of the things I hope to adopt for myself is that Wharton apparently wrote in bed, and then dropped her handwritten pages on the floor for the secretary to pick up and transcribe. Wonder if I could somehow make that happen?   

I WISH I had taken a photo of myself in her mirror. Brilliant idea. I will do it this summer.

RHYS BOWEN: The writing space that I crave is Agatha Christie’s Greenway. It is my ultimate fantasy house, an elegant Georgian on the banks of the River Dart in a wonderful setting. Agatha had a desk with that view and also all those grounds to wander in while she talked her way through plot points.  I might choose to write in the boat house if I lived there so I had peace and quiet. But would I work well with some much to look at out of the windows?  And Hank, I too would like a secretary to take my scribbles and type them up. Luckily I dont write by hand as John can’t read my handwriting!

LUCY BURDETTE: Debs, you know how much I love that little Hemingway office and in fact, the entire house and grounds on Whitehead Street in Key West. The office is separate enough from the house that I bet I could get a lot done there. (Well, I’d have to turn off the Internet too…)

Hank, I already do most of my writing in bed, though it’s all in the computer. I wouldn’t dream of dropping pages on the floor. My sweet John would not even notice them and the animals would rip them to shreds. I also visited EW’s home a few years back–it’s gorgeous!

JENN McKINLAY: Oh, such a good question! I have visited the Hemingway house in Key West (back when I was in high school - before I knew I wanted to be a writer). At the time, I viewed it from my 17 year-old “Dude was a total misogynist but at least he loved cats” perspective. Hub and I have deep debates about Hemingway and his regard of women and Hub has worn me down into reconsidering my stance. I don’t believe he was a misogynist so much as a product of his time. Anyway, I also adore Edith Wharton and thanks to Hank am now planning to visit her estate. I’ve never seen it - what an oversight!

As for other authors’ spaces, I have to say on my bucket list to visit are P.E.I. - Lucy Maude Montgomery’s stomping grounds and I want to visit Christie’s Greenway as well. I did the Austen Centre in Bath but would love to visit Chawton. Growing up in CT, the author’s home I remember most clearly is Mark Twain’s house in Hartford via many school field trips. Not sure why I don’t live in such a glorious abode (it has a turret, billiard room, and conservatory!) but here we are. 

HALLIE EPHRON: I haven’t been to many famous authors’ abodes, but the Hemingway House was certainly memorable. Love the cats. And his office. And the surrounding brick walls that keep it separate from the boisterous rest of Key West, making the property feel like its own Secret Garden. And when we visited Prince Edward Island I felt as if I were channeling Lucy Maude Montgomery and catching a glimpse of Anne of Green Gables around every corner. 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I had already started my writing career when we made a weekend trip to Lexington and Concord. Ross was definitely there for the Revolutionary history, but I was dazzled by the wonderfully restored homes of the Transcendentalists, America’s forerunner of the Bloomsbury Group.

The Alcott Family’s homes, The Old Manse, the Thoreau-Alcott House, and Louisa May Alcott’s own Orchard House, feel as if philosophy and art and writing and political activism are seeped into the very walls. (They’re also, for those of us in old New England houses, excellent guides to the sort of wall treatments, paint colors and decor were authentic to that time.) You can also see Emerson’s house and spaces where Hawthorne worked. I left feeling almost dizzy with the concentration of world- and literature- changing talent that had sat inside those houses and strode the tree-lined paths between them.

DEBS: Of all the places mentioned, Greenway is the one I'd most like to visit. I'm envious, Rhys!

READERS, have you visited famous authors' homes? And did any magic linger?