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Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent is a fictional character of two of theAgatha Christie novels,The Secret of Chimneys (1925) andThe Seven Dials Mystery (1929), described as a spirited "it girl".
Bundle was the eldest daughter of Clement Edward Alistair Brent, 9thMarquess of Caterham (simply called "Lord Caterham").[1] She had two sisters, Daisy and Dulcie. She described her late mother as having “got tired of having nothing but girls and died". Her mother "thought someone else could take on the job of providing an heir”.[2] Bundle’s uncle, the 8th Marquess, wasForeign Secretary in the British Government (a circumstance possibly suggested byMarquess Curzon of Kedleston's having held that post from 1919–24).
The Brents' seat was Chimneys, a country house based onAbney Hall,Cheshire.[3] The family’s residual links with the Foreign Office, including the presumption, resented by the 9th Marquess, that the house would continue to be available for purposes of state, as it had been when his late brother was in Government, were an important ingredient of the two Chimneys novels.
Bundle’s age is not explicitly given in either novel, but inThe Secret of Chimneys, Bundle describes an incident that took place seven years before and says: "One of the footmen told me when I was twelve years old", which makes her 19 years old.[4] That would be consistent with ages given or hazarded for characters whom readers would assume were, broadly speaking, her contemporaries.[citation needed] As a child she was "long-legged" and "impish",[5] growing into a “tall, dark” adult with an “attractive boyish face”.[6] She was resourceful, headstrong, vivacious and charming, with sharp, penetrative grey eyes that could be disconcerting to others.[7]
Bundle was very much a young woman of her times, with many of the characteristics of a "flapper".[citation needed] Drawing on terminology made popular by"It" (1927 film),[citation needed] Bill Eversleigh, one of the characters ofThe Seven Dials Mystery who had a crush on her, remarked to a colleague, "Don't you know Bundle? Where have you been vegetating? She's simply it".[8] When Bundle's father, with whom she clearly had a strong bond, observed that "you modern young people seem to have such unpleasant ideas about love-making", she attributed this to her having readThe Sheik ("Desert love. Throw her about, etc."[9]), the novel byEdith Maude Hull (1919) on whichRudolph Valentino's celebratedfilm of 1921 was based.
Bundle owned aHispano-Suiza car, though the model is not identified.[10] On her own admission, she tended to drive too fast and some, including Lord Caterham, were “terrified” of her driving.[11] On one occasion, she thought that she had run a man down, whereas in fact he had already been shot dead.[12] Although her attitude to politics and politicians was somewhat ambiguous, she claimed to be asocialist and indeed was described by her father as "a red hot socialist if she’s anything at all".[13]
Bundle was attractive to men. Towards the end ofThe Seven Dials Mystery, she received two proposals of marriage, the first from George Lomax, a pompouscabinet minister, only five years younger than her father, who was known behind his back as "codders" (alluding to his eyes) and was described incongruously as "His Majesty's permanent[sic] Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs". Lomax's unctuous self-assessment of his suitability as a husband, and of the role he saw for Bundle, had much in common with Mr Collins' unsuccessful wooing ofElizabeth Bennet inJane Austen'sPride and Prejudice (1813).[citation needed] Lomax was duly rejected and Bundle opted instead for Bill Eversleigh (bornc. 1900[14]), one of Lomax's junior officials, described four years earlier as "very likeable" with a "pleasantly ugly face".[15] Eversleigh plainly loved Bundle for herself,[16] and he was acceptable to Lord Caterham because he was ascratch golfer. InThe Seven Dials Mystery, Bundle told Superintendent Battle ofScotland Yard, who appeared in both of the Chimneys novels, that he was a "wonderful man" and that she was sorry he was already married.[17]
The Secret of Chimneys andThe Seven Dials Mystery were published (and explicitly set) four years apart. The intervening period was momentous for Agatha Christie herself.The Secret of Chimneys, which concerned the future of the fictional "Herzoslovakian" royal family and their jewels, described by literary criticRobert Barnard as the best of her earlier novels,[18] marked the end of her association with the publisherBodley Head. In 1926 she went missing for eleven days, ending up in an hotel inHarrogate, some two hundred miles from her home inBerkshire,[19] and in 1928 she was divorced from her first husband.
InThe Seven Dials Mystery, Bundle turned to amateursleuthing after the death of two Foreign Office officials, both house guests of the Coote family, who had been renting Chimneys. She was drawn, with a male companion, to a secret society in theSeven Dials district of London, in effect competing with Superintendent Battle to get to the bottom of a sinister intrigue. According to her biographer, Christie played around with names and characters when drafting the story, although she always intended it to be a vehicle for the energetic young woman she had introduced inThe Secret of Chimneys.[20]
There were subtle differences between the Bundle of 1925 and that of 1929. Despite such consistent traits as her fast driving, she was seen as more mature in the second novel. For example, Lomax, who, inThe Secret of Chimneys had dismissed her as "charming, simply charming, but quite a child",[13] reminded her father, inThe Seven Dials Mystery, that "she is no longer a child. She is a very charming and talented woman";[21] and, of course, by then, Lomax wished to marry her. Bundle's role was, in any case, more central inSeven Dials; despite Battle's crucial contribution, she was clearly the heroine and intended to be so.
Several commentators[weasel words] have drawn parallels between the Chimneys novels, with their light hearted banter and amusing characters, and those of the humoristP. G. Wodehouse,[22] of whom Agatha Christie was a great admirer. Christie herself describedThe Seven Dials Mystery as "the light-hearted thriller type".[23] Lord Caterham was in the mould of eccentric Wodehousian peers, such as theEarl of Emsworth, who was also the ninth of his line; Bill Eversleigh has been described as "an amiable if vacuous young man who has staggered in from a Wodehouse novel";[24] while Bundle herself could easily have been one of Wodehouse's feisty young women, the archetype of which,Bobbie Wickham,[25] first appeared inMr Mulliner Speaking in 1929. There was even an aunt, Marcia, Dowager Marchioness of Caterham, who, having thought Bundle lived largely for pleasure, nevertheless recognised (as did George Lomax) her potential as a political hostess.[26] In this context,Aunt Agatha's aspirations forBertie Wooster in the Wodehouse books have a certain resonance, while Lord Caterham's ready acceptance of Eversleigh's golfing credentials matched Lord Emsworth's preference for young people who showed interest in hispigs.
A dramatisation ofThe Seven Dials Mystery was broadcast byLondon Weekend Television in 1980, withCheryl Campbell (born 1949) in the role of Bundle Brent. This production was, with LWT'sWhy Didn't They Ask Evans? andPartners in Crime, in the vanguard of a resurgence of classic crime fiction on British television in the 1980s.[27]
At Christmas 2010 ITV broadcast an adaptation ofThe Secret of Chimneys, set in 1955 (but harking back to a ball in 1932), which, unlike the novel, imported Christie's perennialMiss Marple (Julia McKenzie) and made a number of other changes.Dervla Kirwan, in her late thirties, played Bundle, who, though still the daughter of Lord Caterham, was cast as the sister of 23-year-old Lady Virginia Revel (Charlotte Salt), an unrelated character in the original story. Of the two, Lady Virginia appeared to have more in common with the Bundle of the novels. TheRadio Times observed that this production was "classic Agatha Christie, even though it's only distantly related to her original ... purists will be utterly flummoxed - and the plot has more holes in it than the murder victim".[28]
An audiobook ofThe Seven Dials Mystery, read byEmilia Fox, was released in 2005, while Christie's stage play,Chimneys, which she wrote in 1931, eventually received its premiere atPitlochry, Scotland in 2006. In the latter production, Bundle was played by Michele Gallagher.[29]
Mia McKenna-Bruce will play Bundle inChris Chibnall'sadaptation ofThe Seven Dials Mystery forNetflix.[30]
