When I began my research, I knew that housekeepers of large estates had to be organized and efficient because they manage not only the staff of kitchen servants and maids, but also the expenses related to the household and vendor relationships (including negotiations). That is part of what makes her an excellent sleuth as well as a manager liked and respected, as well as feared, by her staff. Thus, Phyllida’s position is secure due not only to her connection to her employer, but also because she is quite simply exceptional at what she does. This is a point of contention for him, for as the butler and the highest-ranking servant, he feels as if he should know everything about every member of the staff.īut the housekeeper ranks just below the butler in the servant hierarchy, and my fictional creation Phyllida is a long-time friend of Agatha Christie’s, having befriended her during their work at a hospital during the war (Agatha Christie’s work at a hospital dispensary is not only well-documented, but also a source for her expertise on poisons). The reasons she’s taken on the position of housekeeper are not divulged in the book, and are clearly secret from the other members of the staff, including Mr. While she didn’t “come up” (meaning, grew up or worked her way up) in service-which is something rather unusual for someone who takes on the coveted role of housekeeper-Phyllida has skills and strengths that make her not only an excellent household manager, but also a clever sleuth. It also gave me the opportunity to really think about each of the staff members who will appear in the books as the series goes on-hopefully making them as human and interesting as the staff of Downton Abbey.įor Phyllida, my protagonist and sleuth, I made specific decisions about her character. The memoirs were instrumental in my understanding of the day-to-day challenges of being a servant in a large home during the decades between the World Wars. When I started researching for Mallowan Hall, I dove in to a lot of different memoirs written by housemaids and cooks during the Edwardian period. Additionally, since so many so-called Golden Age mysteries-set in the 1920s and 1930s, and even earlier-rely on the upper class for both main characters as well as suspects, I felt as if I were approaching the story from an unusual perspective. Having the protagonist of the mystery series being a housekeeper-that is, being from the downstairs world-made it both a challenge for me, and a refreshing change to write from the perspective of someone who was actually holding down a job unrelated to crime investigation while doing some amateur sleuthing. When the authorities seem far too bumbling and slow to solve the crime-and, just as importantly, chase away the journalists and photographers camped out on the premises-Phyllida takes on the task of exercising her own “little gray cells” to unmask the killer. The housekeeper at Mallowan Hall, Phyllida Bright, discovers a dead body in the library during a house party hosted by Agatha Christie and her husband Max Mallowan. My new book, Murder at Mallowan Hall, is a mystery set in the (fictional) home of Agatha Christie.
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