Perhaps the next best thing to an Agatha Christie mystery is one that has only come to life years after the Queen of Crime's death.
Her play Chimneys is at least 72 years old, which until the Vertigo Mystery Theatre performed it to a sold-out house Thursday night in Calgary, had never been staged. But to pull off this theatrical coup, Vertigo's artistic director had to do some detective work of his own. The way John Paul Fischbach tells it, the play -- and the story behind it -- is classic Christie.
While rifling through a stack of unsolicited scripts, Fischbach stumbled upon a photocopy of Chimneys two years ago. It was a find that sent him to London sniffing for clues about the play's history.
"I've tracked it down to six missing days in November," he said in true bloodhound form that would make Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot proud.
Three years ago, Vertigo (formerly Pleiades Theatre) learned it needed to vacate its home at the Calgary Science Centre. The company, which was founded in 1968 and prides itself as Canada's only professional mystery theatre, managed to raise almost $7-million in funding. At the same time, Fischbach set out to find the perfect play to open Vertigo in its new location at the base of the Calgary Tower.
The natural choice was something from Christie's canon, he said, hoping to snare an unfinished or unpublished play or a new adaptation. But after contacting Agatha Christie Ltd. in London, which oversees Christie's estate and is controlled by the author's only grandchild, Mathew Prichard, nothing fit the bill.
Then serendipity took centre-stage as Fischbach ploughed through a pile of plays that had been collecting dust in his office since 1995. Buried among them was Chimneys: A Play in Three Acts by Agatha Christie , peppered with handwritten notes that may or may not be by the writer herself.
"I picked it up and read through it and thought this is great, you could stage this tomorrow," Fischbach recalled.
Chimneys is a stately home in England, where in 1925, several plotlines to converge at murder leaving the characters and the audience wondering whodunit.
Heir-apparent Prince Michael of the fictitious Herzoslovakia visits Chimneys to try to cut a deal with England to make sure his country's resources do not wind up with Americans. Also visiting Chimneys is society figure Virginia Revel, who is faced with blackmail over something she may or may not have done some years earlier. Chimneys also plays host to French jewel thief King Victor, who has just been released from prison and arrives to retrieve the stolen crown jewels of Herzoslovakia, unaware that police are on a stake out.
In 1925, Christie published The Secret of Chimneys, a novel that mirrors the international conspiracy plotlines of the play. Still, it's not clear when the play was written, but Fischbach managed to find some of the pieces in its puzzling history in a bid to establish authentication, copyright and the licencing needed for Vertigo to mount the play.
He discovered that on April 30, 1931, London-area repertoire company Embassy Theatre paid Christie, who had more than a dozen novels, short stories and plays on her resume, £1,000 to perform Chimneys within six months. But by Nov. 19, 1931, Chimneys had not been staged. However, it had been submitted to Lord Chamberlain's Office, which from the days of Shakespeare until the late 1960s, had the right to censor plays before performance. The holdings from that office had been transferred to the British Library, where Fischbach managed to locate a box with another copy of Chimneys. This version was rife with handwritten notes including line changes and a cast list -- among the notations was that a youthful Laurence Olivier would have starred as the dashing Anthony Cade.
"The handwritten notes in the manuscript I have and in the Lord Chamberlain's manuscript suggest that it was absolutely in rehearsal," Fischbach said.
On Nov. 24, 1931, the Embassy Theatre placed an ad in its program that Chimneys would open Dec. 1, 1931, but on that date, a work called Mary Broome opened instead. The Embassy folded in February 1932 and with it, any hint of Chimneys seemed to vanish.
Christie went on to pen dozens more novels, short stories and plays at a rapid clip and in the course of it become one of the most beloved writers of all time. She died in 1976 at the age of 85.
Stephanie McNamara, who plays Virginia Revel in Chimneys, has performed in a Canadian version of The Mousetrap -- a Christie play that has been running in London since 1952. Then, like now, said she feels she is a part of theatre history.
"People are amazed that this play has been discovered and then how come Calgary is doing this play," she laughs, "When you think of all things British you don't think Calgary."
Hal Kerbes, who plays the pompous British politician George Lomax in the production, has been reading Christie since he was a child and has since amassed her entire collection. To be part of Chimneys gives him chills.
"She's been gone for over a quarter of a century you don't expect to have new work," he said. "It's not quite like finding a new Shakespeare, but it's got to interest people -- especially Christie fans."
So how exactly did a theatre troop in Calgary acquire such a gem?
"I have no bloody idea. I get sent a lot of scripts," Fischbach said. "Whether they were sent to me or handed to me, I'm embarrassed to say I have no idea."
Even the people at Agatha Christie Ltd. were stymied at the find.
Mathew Prichard travelled to Calgary to take in opening night.
"I am a little nervous," he said in an interview. "I am only nervous because this is the culmination of many months work of a number of people and I hope it goes well for them."
What would his grandmother think of the production and the saga behind it?
"I think she'd be extremely enthusiastic, but maybe just a shade nervous," he said. "She wrote the play, it was never performed and then suddenly somebody's going to perform it so she would wonder how it was going to go. She was very nervous before all her plays."
Vertigo has the worldwide rights to Chimneys during its run until Nov. 9.
After weeks of telling and retelling the tale to reporters from around the world, Fischbach still marvels at the experience.
"To open Canada's only professional mystery theatre with a play surrounded by mystery," he said, "My God, if I could have invented such a thing."