Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [1]
It is what the Press brings to you every day, served up in your morning paper under the general heading of News. Collect it from the front page. What is going on in the world today? What is everyone saying, thinking, doing? Hold up a mirror to 1970 in England.
Look at that front page every day for a month, make notes, consider and classify.
Every day there is a killing.
A girl strangled.
Elderly woman attacked and robbed of her meagre savings.
Young men or boys–attacking or attacked.
Buildings and telephone kiosks smashed and gutted.
Drug smuggling.
Robbery and assault.
Children missing and children’s murdered bodies found not far from their homes.
Can this be England? Is England really like this? One feels–no–not yet, but it could be.
Fear is awakening–fear of what may be. Not so much because of actual happenings but because of the possible causes behind them. Some known, some unknown, but felt. And not only in our own country. There are smaller paragraphs on other pages–giving news from Europe–from Asia–from the Americas–Worldwide News.
Hi-jacking of planes.
Kidnapping.
Violence.
Riots.
Hate.
Anarchy–all growing stronger.
All seeming to lead to worship of destruction, pleasure in cruelty.
What does it all mean? An Elizabethan phrase echoes from the past, speaking of Life:
…it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
And yet one knows–of one’s own knowledge–how much goodness there is in this world of ours–the kindnesses done, the goodness of heart, the acts of compassion, the kindness of neighbour to neighbour, the helpful actions of girls and boys.
Then why this fantastic atmosphere of daily news–of things that happen–that are actual facts?
To write a story in this year of Our Lord 1970–you must come to terms with your background. If the background is fantastic, then the story must accept its background. It, too, must be a fantasy–an extravaganza. The setting must include the fantastic facts of daily life.
Can one envisage a fantastic cause? A secret Campaign for Power? Can a maniacal desire for destruction create a new world? Can one go a step further and suggest deliverance by fantastic and impossible-sounding means?
Nothing is impossible, science has taught us that.
This story is in essence a fantasy. It pretends to be nothing more.
But most of the things that happen in it are happening, or giving promise of happening in the world of today.
It is not an impossible story–it is only a fantastic one.
Book 1
Interrupted Journey
Chapter 1
Passenger To Frankfurt
I
‘Fasten your seat-belts, please.’ The diverse passengers in the plane were slow to obey. There was a general feeling that they couldn’t possibly be arriving at Geneva yet. The drowsy groaned and yawned. The more than drowsy had to be gently roused by an authoritative stewardess.
‘Your seat-belts, please.’
The dry voice came authoritatively over the Tannoy. It explained in German, in French, and in English that a short period of rough weather would shortly be experienced. Sir Stafford Nye opened his mouth to its full extent, yawned and pulled himself upright in his seat. He had been dreaming very happily of fishing an English river.
He was a man of forty-five, of medium height, with a smooth, olive, clean-shaven face. In dress he rather liked to affect the bizarre. A man of excellent family, he felt fully at ease indulging any such sartorial whims. If it made the more conventionally dressed of his colleagues wince occasionally, that was merely a source of malicious pleasure to him. There was something about him of the eighteenth-century buck. He liked to be noticed.
His particular kind of affectation when travelling was a kind of bandit’s cloak which he had once purchased in Corsica. It was of a very dark purply-blue, had a scarlet lining and had a kind of burnous hanging down behind which he could draw up over his head when he wished to, so as to obviate draughts.
Sir Stafford Nye had been a disappointment in diplomatic circles. Marked out in early youth by his gifts for