Agatha Christie lost murder-mysteries unearthed by theatre producer Julius Green

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Her murder-mystery books have sold two billion copies worldwide
And she is also the most successful female playwright of all time
Now British theatre producer Julius Green has unearthed ten new plays
Include 1945 stage adaptation of her 1944 novel, titled Towards Zero

Published: 18:30 EST, 23 August 2015 | Updated: 18:43 EST, 23 August 2015

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Talented: Agatha Christie aged just eight

Her murder-mystery books have sold two billion copies worldwide and her theatrical masterpieces have made her the most successful female playwright of all time.

Now, on the 125th anniversary of Agatha Christie’s birth, ten new plays by her have been unearthed by a British theatre producer.

Julius Green turned literary detective and tracked down five full-length and five one-act dramas that were previously-unknown or forgotten.

Unsurprisingly, from the queen of the detective novel, several are murder-mysteries. They include a 1945 stage adaptation of her 1944 popular novel, titled Towards Zero - not to be confused with an existing 1956 adaptation.

This is ‘an entirely different play’, Green said.

‘It’s got a lot of different characters. It’s set in the open air which is unusual for her plays. The characterisation is much stronger, much truer to the spirit of the original book.’

He has also unearthed previously-unpublished letters, one of which includes her views of leading actors of the day like Ralph Richardson, whose face she described as ‘queer’.

The material had lain until now in various archives, including those of Christie’s family and her theatrical producers, to which Green was given unprecedented access.

The news will excite fans of a writer who created the world-famous detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and whose whodunit, The Mousetrap, is the world’ s longest-running play – now into its 63rd year after more than 25,000 performances.

Hilary Strong, chief executive of Agatha Christie Limited, which manages her literary rights, described Green’s discoveries as ‘hugely exciting’.

They will be included in his forthcoming book, titled Curtain Up: Agatha Christie - A Life in Theatre, to be published by HarperCollins on September 10.

Exploring her plays ‘from page to stage’, it shows that Christie regarded writing books as her day job but ‘found true creative fulfilment” in the theatre. Bizarrely, Green said, previous biographers ‘almost entirely ignore’ her plays.

His research brings the total number of Christie plays to 30, excluding ‘second-rate’ adaptations by other writers. In 1961, she said in an interview: ‘Several books of mine were dramatised by other people and they all dissatisfied me intensely.’

The news of ten new plays being unearthed will excite fans of a writer who created the world-famous detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple

Green found her previously-unknown version of Towards Zero in the archives of America’s oldest theatrical production company, the Shubert Organisation: ‘They brought up a box from the basement, and had no idea what it was.’

Unpublished material includes a letter sent in 1945 by producer Lee Shubert to Christie. It reveals that he commissioned Towards Zero and “tried out” the play for just one week before asking her to rework it: ‘We found the climax came too suddenly and the final situation was not plausible to the audience.’

Christie never reworked it and ‘it completely disappeared from history’, Green said.

He described the three-act drama – which features a murder after a man flaunts his new wife in front of his previous one - as ‘a neat plot with a surprise outcome’.

Agatha Christie pictured in the 1920s

Other unpublished full-length plays include a 175-page epic, titled Someone at the Window, among plays known only from their title, without any indication of content until now, Green said. Believed to date from 1934, it is ‘brimming with witty banter and social commentary about inter-war Britain’, he added.

Its characters include an artist likened by Christie to ‘a friendly dog that hopes it is welcome’ who discusses time’s potential healing qualities: ‘You can thrust a thing down out of sight – but it’s there still – growing in the dark.’

There is also a grande dame, who enjoys candid comments on relationships: ‘My experience of life has taught me that you can trust nothing and no one. Always expect the worst and you’ll be surprised how often you’re right.’

Quite why it was never staged is unclear, Green said: ‘She doesn’t mention it in her autobiography and there’s no reference to it anywhere.’

Her autobiography does, however, make cryptic reference to “a gloomy play”. Green has now identified that play as The Lie, which had lain forgotten until now among thousands of documents in the Christie archive.

The three-act domestic drama was written during the breakdown of her marriage to her cheating first husband, Archie Christie. Its themes include infidelity, and there are resonances of her own crumbling relationship among her lines.

One character observes: ‘His bad qualities were all beneath the surface. I promised to marry him. My people did their best to stop it, they knew him better than I did, but I was young and headstrong, I wouldn’t listen! I went my own way, and shut my eyes to the truth.’