The Great
Detectives
Agatha Christie's
Tommy & Tuppence
by Katrina Andrews
"Two young adventurers for hire.   Willing to do anything, go anywhere.   Pay must be good.   No unreasonable offer refused. "
The Secret Adversary (1922) Chapter 1: "The Young Adventurers Ltd."

LET'S take a moment to set the scene. It is a couple of years after the armistice that ended The Great War. A pair of old childhood friends who haven't seen each other in years meet by chance outside the Dover Street Tube Exit. The girl, Miss Prudence Cowley (known to her friends as Tuppence), daughter of an archdeacon, "wore a small bright green toque over her black bobbed hair, and her extremely short and rather shabby skirt revealed" a pair of uncommonly dainty ankles. Her appearance presented a valiant attempt at smartness." The young man, Lieutenant Thomas Beresford, had a face that "was pleasantly ugly — nondescript, yet unmistakably the face of a gentleman and a sportsman. His brown suit was well cut, but perilously near the end of its tether." They are both in need of money and desperately looking for work. Later that day while having tea at Lyons on Piccadilly they decide, at the instigation of Tuppence who is the more adventurous of the two, to take out an advertisement in the paper. She writes it up herself with a little help from the less enthusiastic Tommy. The ad never makes it to the paper, but their conversation is overheard by someone, and thus begin the adventures of The Young Adventurers Ltd.
Tuppence's young adventurers ad in Chapter 1 of The Secret Adversary (where we are first introduced to Tommy and Tuppence) sets the tone for the rest of the Tommy and Tuppence adventures, as does Christie's dedication at the beginning of the book: "To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure." In all there were only five Tommy and Tuppence books. They were written between 1922 and 1974 beginning with The Secret Adversary (1922) which was followed by Partners in Crime (1929), N or M? (1941), By the Pricking of my Thumbs (1968), and Postern of Fate (1973). The same spirit of adventure and youthful exuberance characterizes all of the books even though by the last two the "young adventurers" are not so young anymore.
Beginning with The Secret Adversary (1922), Christie takes us through various stages of Tommy and Tuppence's life together. By the end of the first book, after having matched wits with a criminal mastermind with Bolshevist sympathies who was scheming to cause unrest in Britain and possibly another war, Tommy and Tuppence resolve to marry one another. They don't appear again until 1929's Partners in Crime where we find them happily settled into married life, with Albert the elevator boy—whose help they enlisted in The Secret Adversary—now serving them as a butler of sorts. Tuppence, however, is yearning for a little excitement. As if in answer to her prayers, in walks Mr. Carter, Chief of British Intelligence (the man who gave them their start in The Secret Adversary), offering them another crack at the life of adventure and intrigue. They are to take over the International Detective Agency with Tommy posing as a detective named Mr. Theodore Blunt—a front for the purpose of discovering the identity of Russian agents in Britain.
With Albert as their office boy, "Blunts Brilliant Detectives" sets up shop at The International Detective Agency in Bloomsbury where, among other necessary furnishings, they've equipped diem-selves with a library of detective books by the leading masters of the art. Partners in Crime is a special treat for serious mystery buffs because throughout the book we find Tommy and Tuppence trying out the methods, and at times even the mannerisms, of various literary detectives—some obscure, some not so obscure. Together they try out the methods of everyone from Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes ('"Now, mon ami, use your little grey cells—what does this convey to you?' He pointed to the bottom shelf of the cupboard. On it lay a somewhat futuristic dressing gown, a Turkish slipper, and a violin. 'Obvious my dear Watson,' said Tuppence.") to the Old Man in the Corner and Dr. Reginald Fortune. As with all of the Tommy and Tuppence adventures, but most especially with Partners in Crime, it is the delight the characters get out of their adventures that so delights the reader. It is as if we are being allowed to peek in on people who are having such a good time at what they are doing that we can't help but enjoy ourselves too.
In the last chapter of Partners in Crime, "The Man Who Was No. 16," they discuss the fact that this case is to be their last. After they've solved it, and after Tuppence has had a narrow escape, she tells Tommy "I've got something better to do ... Something ever so much more exciting. Something I've never done before" and with that informs him that they are on their way to becoming parents.
Presumably child rearing satisfies Tuppences appetite for adventure because we don't find Tommy and Tuppence complaining of boredom again until 1941 with the publication of N or M?. The second World War is raging on. Their children, the twins Derek and Deborah, are grown up and out working for the war effort. And Tommy and Tuppence are out of the action. The book opens with them deploring the fact that the powers that be seem to have no room in this war for the aging young adventurers (both now in their forties). Just as Tuppence begins to wonder if "Despised, unwanted Mr. and Mrs. Beresford" ever did anything important, Mr. Grant (unofficially connected to Mr. Carter—their friend and now former chief of British Intelligence) walks in and recruits Tommy to weed out a dangerous Nazi spy residing at a boarding house in a seaside resort. The irrepressible Tuppence, surprising her husband, joins him on the investigation despite the fact that she has not been invited. However, with children—even grown children— come responsibilities and worries that even the exciting and fun Tommy and Tuppence can't get away from and several times we find Tuppence, despite her own perilous situation, worrying about her son who is in the Air Force. The mystery itself is excellent in this book, but as always with the Tommy and Tuppence adventures, readers enjoy it as much, if not more, for the protagonists as for the plot. By the end of the book the pair have identified the Nazi agent and adopted an orphaned toddler into the family.
It wasn't until 1968 that Christie treated her fans to another Tommy and Tuppence adventure with By the Pricking of My Thumbs, in which we find Tuppence in her sixties and Tommy in his seventies. With their children married and themselves comfortably settled into their life together, and Albert (now older himself) still in their service, "Mr. and Mrs. Beresford from their own point of view were just past the prime of life. They liked themselves and liked each other and day succeeded day in a quiet but enjoyable fashion." This time it's not at the request of any government agency that they are put on the scent but because of a question— "Was it your child?"—put to Tuppence by an elderly resident at the rest home where Tommy's Aunt Ada is staying. This question, followed by the disappearance of the old lady, piques Tuppence's curiosity and she, not heeding her husband's advice to stay away from it all, goes off to the countryside to investigate on her own while Tommy is attending to other duties.
By the Pricking of My Thumbs is slightly different from the previous three Tommy and Tuppence books in that the mood is more reflective and the atmosphere, especially in the scenes where Tuppence is working alone, has an almost frighteningly dreamlike quality to it. More than once Tuppence longs for her faithful companion: "Naturally she had known she would miss Tommy, but she had no idea how much she was going to miss him. During the long course of their married life they had hardly ever been separated for any length of time." As in their other adventures, when separated from her more sedate partner Tuppence lands herself in more than one dangerous situation. At one point she disappears and Tommy, like most elderly parents with grown children, has to endure a lecture from his daughter Deborah: "'I wish to goodness you could look after Mother better,' said Deborah severely . . . she's quite old. She ought to sit at home and take care of herself" Their investigation uncovers a series of disturbing murders that took place years before, making By the Pricking of My Thumbs the darkest of the Tommy and Tuppence adventures. It also has a particularly frightening ending, but as always the chemistry between the characters makes it an enjoyable read.
In 1973 Tommy and Tuppence made their last appearance with Postern of Fate, the last book Christie wrote before her death in 1976. They have retired to the resort town of Hollowquay where they've bought an old house. Along with the house they've acquired some of the possessions left behind by its many previous tenants, including a library of books to add to their own large collection. It's while reading one of these old books that Tuppence (seventy years old and still as impetuous as ever) comes across the message "Mary Jordan did not die naturally," and begins asking questions about the house's previous tenants. As usual she drags Tommy into her investigation and together they uncover the facts behind a mystery that took place around the time of the First World War. They also discover that there are still people around who are willing to kill to ensure that the facts behind the death of Mary Jordan remain buried. One of the interesting things about Postern of Fate are the references to the author's own childhood. Indeed, it seems as though Tommy and Tuppence have moved into Christies childhood home. Anyone who has read Agatha Christie's autobiography (published posthumously in 1977) will recognize that the monkey puzzle, the greenhouse with the strange name of KK or Kai Kai, the old broken-up rocking horse called Mathilde and the toy horse and cart called Truelove, and the little girl who used to play with Truelove are right out of Christie's memories of Ashfield, her much loved childhood home in Torquay. Christie eventually saw Ashfield torn down despite her attempts to save it and it seems that, in her last book, she allowed herself a little personal indulgence— revisiting what she used to call "dear Ashfield" once more, if only to envision her characters living there.
Throughout her later Tommy and Tuppence books, Christie remains true to her characters, and age doesn't seem to be much of an issue for either of them. Although the flippant dialogue of the earlier books takes on a different kind of flippancy in the later books— one that is more plausible for a couple who've been married for over fifty years—they always simply remain Tommy and Tuppence, the same adventurous, cheerful, happily married couple that they had been in all the earlier books. It may be that those childhood memories are not the only part of herself Christie put into her Tommy and Tuppence stories. Perhaps it was her own spirit of adventure and appreciation for life that she breathed into Tommy and Tuppence. Her own life was far from ordinary and her vivid descriptions in her autobiography of events from her own life show that Christie herself had, well into her old age, the same kind of youthful exuberance that we also see in Tommy and Tuppence.
As characters Tommy and Tuppence never grow stale. There is a freshness and vitality to them that the passage of time and old age cannot diminish. As a matter of fact, it is quite easy to forget that they are elderly in the later books until references are made to their age. One can first become acquainted with them in Postern of Fate, for example, and fall in love with them just as easily as if the acquaintance had first been made in Partners in Crime. The time span between the first and last book is fifty-two years. In the first book we are told "Their united ages would certainly not have totaled forty-five," and by the time they are investigating the murder of Mary Jordan in Postern of Fate they are grandparents whose individual ages are around seventy something. Nevertheless, young adventurers they always remained.