I’m standing outside Peel Castle on the Isle of Man contemplating the hill opposite. It’s an unseasonably hot September day and I’m overdressed in a woolly jumper and hiking boots. I’m here to locate a particular bench with curlicued arms. This bench drew Agatha Christie’s attention when she visited the Isle of Man.
I spot my target: the platonic ideal of benches, perched majestically on the hill’s brow, offering an interrupted view of the bay. Off I set, camera in hand. As I huff and puff my way up Peel Hill, pursued by territorial sheep, other benches loom into view. Many, many other benches. The hill’s absolutely heaving with them. All are of a modern ilk, clearly not originals. Not a single specimen’s curlicued. What even is a curlicue? Which bench was Christie’s chosen sit? It’s impossible to tell. She took reams of notes during her visit but even Christie scholar John Curran, who’s spent years deciphering her notebooks, can’t make head nor tail of her notoriously illegible handwriting in the Manx section of Notebook 56.
I go with my gut, snapping a photo of the bench that first caught my eye. I tick Peel Hill off my to-do list. Only 13 more places to track down before I fly home in two days’ time. I swing into Davison’s for two scoops of their world-famous ice cream, then it’s off to the lighthouse at Point of Ayre, Bowie blasting from the speakers of my little hire car. I might look like I’m on holidays but I’ll have you know, this is a quest.
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I’m here to follow in Christie’s footsteps. Christie’s long since been a god to me and I’ve been commissioned to work on her short story, Manx Gold. Technically speaking, there was no need to visit the Isle of Man; the pertinent archives are all online. Still, I jumped at the chance to go searching for literary clues in a part of the world I haven’t set foot in since 1985. I suspected in-person sleuthing would bring its own rewards. For the next few days, I’ll be Miss Marple in a Kia Picanto, Hercule Poirot without the moustache.
RM Block
In early 1930 Christie was commissioned to set a treasure hunt on the Isle of Man enticing tourists to visit during the summer. In late April the genius behind the initiative, Alderman Arthur B Crookall, toured Christie around the island in a rented charabanc. Together, they thrashed out the clues and decided where to bury five pieces of “treasure” – snuffboxes exchangeable at Douglas Town Hall for a cash prize of £100 (roughly €3,400 in contemporary terms). Christie subsequently wove her clues into a short story that was serialised in the Daily Dispatch. Three of the five clues were quickly solved by intrepid visitors. The fifth proved too cryptic for the finders. It was removed from its hiding place in Ramsey Park at the end of the summer.
For her involvement, Christie received just £60, a relatively small recompense in comparison with what she was earning for her published work. However, Christie was a recent and enthusiastic convert to the notion of treasure hunting. In 1930 she’d just returned from a dig in southern Iraq, where she fell in love with the archaeologist, Max Mallowan. The couple would be married before the year was out. I imagine Christie accepted the Isle of Man commission because the idea of sending searchers off on a quest appealed to her. Both archaeology and treasure hunts feature heavily in her writings from this point onwards.
I’m a big fan of the quest myself. The writing life’s a solitary one and I’m an awfully sociable being. When given the choice between desk-based research and hitting the road to talk to real people, I’ll always favour the great out there. In recent years I’ve been to Berlin, tracking down much-loved children’s author Judith Kerr’s childhood haunts. I’ve been to the American Midwest on what I like to call a Dylgrimage, paying homage to Bob Dylan by visiting his old high school, the houses in which he grew up and the unassuming sandwich shop that sits on the spot where he played his first gigs. Most recently I’ve driven laps of Lough Neagh, ducking into visitors’ centres, boggy fields and old graveyards, researching Terence O’Neill’s madcap plan to drain the Lough and turn it into the seventh county for my forthcoming novel Few and Far Between.
I’d like to say my research trips are demure, serious excursions, similar in tone and focus to Truman Capote’s sojourn in Kansas, ferreting out the material that would become In Cold Blood. In reality my literary quests have more in common with Tony Hawks’ Round Ireland with a Fridge. They’re well intentioned, hastily planned experiments in just how much the kindness of strangers can actually be relied upon. I tend to go light on the pre-travel prep. I have only the vaguest notion of what it is I’m looking for.
By my usual standards, this Isle of Man jaunt is quite well thought through. I’ve compiled an exhaustive list of places mentioned in Manx Gold. I’ve made prior contact with various local history groups. I’ve bought a new notebook and sketched out a route around the island. I quickly discover my map’s upside down. Still, I remain confident of success, though what success will look like, I couldn’t say. The dictionary defines a quest as “a long and arduous search for something”. I know only too well what trying to pin down an elusive objective feels like. I am a novelist, after all.
My expectations are blown away the instant I set foot on the Isle of Man, which is breathtaking, like the Lake District minus the plague of annoying tourists. Sat in my office in Belfast, there’s no way I could’ve anticipated the stunning view that Christie encountered from the Stone Circle at Meayll. The Foot of Calf rises before me. It feels like I’m standing at the end of the world. It was a hike and a half to get here, through dense gorse and scrubland. I’ve clambered over barbed wire fences and faced down more angry sheep. It took me two hours of false starts and dead ends to find the stones that are – and I’d never say this to a local – a tad unimpressive compared with Ireland’s magnificent standing stones. I can’t imagine how Christie, a middle-aged woman of matronly girth, (self-professed, I should say), managed to access such a remote site in a rickety charabanc. I am struggling and I’ve got Google Maps on my phone.
Later, sitting on the southernmost tip of the island, all by myself with the howling wind, I close my eyes and imagine myself in Christie’s shoes. Fort Island, a squat blob of land, attached to the Castletown peninsula by a one-lane causeway, is my favourite spot on the Isle of Man. Christie adored the coast. She spent much of her life in Devon, setting many stories there. She must’ve been drawn to this rugged landscape, baptised and battered by the sea. No archive could ever get me as close to her experience as this, nor force me to challenge the silly notions I’ve brought with me on my quest. I’ve spent too much time watching Pathé film reels of the island’s turn-of-the-century heyday. Beach belles sunning themselves on the strand. Donkey rides and horse-drawn trams. Victorian style amusement arcades. Combined with my exhaustive knowledge of cosy Christie adaptations, I’ve pictured the Queen of Crime and Alderman Crookall nipping round the island in formal wear, planting clues willy nilly, home in time for cocktail hour.
I’ll now be heading back to my Belfast with the wind roaring in my ears and fresh admiration for Christie, who must surely have encountered the same inhospitable conditions I’m battling with: mud and hills, hard to find spots and omnipresent pissed off sheep. I’m already editing the cosy story I’d planned to tell. This trip has been a timely reminder that Christie wasn’t just the grandmotherly figure pictured on her dust jackets. She was still accompanying Mallowan on taxing archaeological trips abroad right into her sixties.
When on a quest, I’ve found it helpful to tell everyone I encounter, from taxi drivers to baristas and hotel receptionists, exactly why I’m in town. I want people to know I’m not a regular tourist. I’m a writer on a quest. Nine times out of 10, the locals bend over backwards to be helpful, and the Isle of Man’s residents are no exception. In the House of Mannan museum, I’m led into a dusty cupboard to look at photos inaccessible to the public. A woman phones her father claiming, “my dad’s the man you want to talk to”. At least five individuals are fit to tell me Christie visited during mackerel season so she probably ate mackerel at least once. I promise to include this detail in my piece. In Douglas a librarian immediately abandons her workload to go digging through newspaper archives. At the car hire place, a lifetime Christie fan gives me an extra three hours on my rental, in case I need more time to research.
As well as titbits of Christie trivia, I am offered great recommendations for where to eat and drink and catch the sunset. And, in an unanticipated gesture of kindness, a gaggle of retired librarians invite me to join their quiz team for the night. Unbelievably, we win. The quiz includes two Christie questions and one about Northern Irish writer Nick Laird. Thankfully, I get all three right. Pretty much everyone I encounter on my quest goes above and beyond to assist. They’re nice people. They love their island. They’re delighted to see its history celebrated in this way. However, there are always those who won’t play along. In Ramsey Park I stop half a dozen people promenading round the pond. None of them want to help me solve the elusive, yet-to-be-cracked fifth Manx Gold clue. Perhaps Ramsey residents aren’t Christie fans. More likely they don’t understand the joy of abandoning yourself to a quest.
Did I find what I was looking for on the Isle of Man? Yes and no and more besides. Questing is rarely about finding answers. A quest is about the people you meet along the way, the pleasure of immersing yourself in a new place and all the things you’ll learn along the way. I suspect Christie knew exactly what she was doing when she set a treasure hunt on the Isle of Man. This island’s a treasure trove of wonderful people, places and experiences. The perfect spot for a quest.
The Agatha Christie story Manx Gold can be found in the collection While the Light Lasts, with Tony Medawar’s foreword and afterword
