Category Archives: Literature

The Agatha Christie Challenge – The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)

Posted on by

STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which we become reacquainted with Christie’s most renowned detective, Hercule Poirot, and witness him solve the murder of Roger Ackroyd, as narrated by Dr Sheppard, in the absence of Poirot’s usual narrator, Captain Hastings. And, despite the enormous difficulty in doing so, I’ve written this blog post so that you can still read it without finding out whodunit!

It’s been a fascinating nostalgia trip to re-read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It makes me feel a little deprived of one of life’s most exciting surprises, as, just before I read this as a lad, a “friend” told me who the murderer was. I still think that was one of the rottenest things to do to anyone. I read it of course, but there was no sense of mystery for me. Many critics and observers cite this book as Christie’s masterpiece. In 2013, the British Crime Writers’ Association voted it the best crime novel ever. Because I’ve always known whodunit, I find it hard to imagine reading it without knowing. Whenever I read it, I always feel that the identity of the murderer is, in fact, pretty obvious. But that’s the baggage I bring with me from my childhood, and I guess I must be mistaken, or else the book wouldn’t be held in the great esteem that it enjoys.

Christie dedicated the book to “To Punkie, who likes an orthodox detective story, murder, inquest, and suspicion falling on every one in turn!” Punkie was the family nickname for Christie’s big sister Margaret, and in fact it was Margaret who originally inspired Agatha to write The Mysterious Affair at Styles. However, it was her brother-in-law, James Watts, to whom she had dedicated The Secret of Chimneys, who actually gave her the inspiration for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Coincidentally, Lord Mountbatten, too, had written to Christie in 1924 suggesting a similar storyline and structure, although she was so overworked at the time that she forgot to reply.

So welcome back, Hercule Poirot, we’ve missed you. We last saw you dealing with all those short story cases in Poirot Investigates, two years previously; for a full length novel we had to go back three years for The Murder on the Links. Christie has now bundled Hastings off with his lady love to make a new life for himself in The Argentine, as it used to be called. We now have an image of Poirot, missing his old pal, having moved from his London digs that they shared, now retired to the village of King’s Abbot, where he devotes his life to growing vegetable marrows. Honestly; is there anything more unlikely? Poirot, who thrives on the psychology of people’s brains, whom we last saw avidly reading the gossip and celebrity magazines, whose life has been a celebration and a triumph of the power of the little grey cells – settling down to a village where he spends the day grubbing about in the earth growing vegetables? Christie has always pointed out how fastidious he is; can you imagine Poirot accumulating garden dirt under his fingernails? No. It’s never going to happen. So either it’s a complete lie – which I’m not sure is right as I believe Poirot’s apparent affection for marrows recurs later in Christie’s oeuvre – or it’s a complete miscalculation of his personality. Whatever, as soon as crime rears its ugly head in King’s Abbot, Poirot doesn’t give another moment’s thought to his prize crop.

Of course there is no such place in the United Kingdom as King’s Abbot; but, with Christie based in the south-west, maybe the name was inspired by a mixture of Newton Abbot and Kingsbridge. There’s no Cranchester either, not that it matters. What’s more important to the story is that Poirot needs a replacement for Hastings, and one turns up just perfectly in the shape of Dr Shepperd, who takes on the mantle of being Poirot’s scribe. He even draws us a couple of plans of room layouts to help our understanding, just like Hastings used to do. Poirot takes him under his wing and into his confidence with surprising alacrity, and for most of the book, Shepperd seems to just follow him around, occasionally revealing how impressed he is with the old man’s powers of deduction, but primarily there in order to feed Poirot with local insights and backgrounds about the characters. Like Hastings, Shepperd isn’t a particularly nice man, I don’t think; he has a rather unpleasant view on suicide: “women, in my experience, if they once reach the determination to commit suicide, usually wish to reveal the state of mind that led to the fatal action. They covet the limelight”. He does though, have a rather cynical sense of humour too: “lots of women buy their clothes in Paris, and have not, on that account, necessarily poisoned their husbands”. He doesn’t hold back at describing the worst aspects of a character he doesn’t like; of Ackroyd’s butler Parker, he says “what a fat, smug, oily face the man had, and surely there was something decidedly shifty in his eye”.

He also doesn’t hesitate to pick Poirot up on his poor use of English – not something many people would dare to do, I suggest. “Is there anything else that I can tell you?” inquired Mr Hammond. “I thank you, no,” said Poirot, rising. “All my excuses for having deranged you.” “Not at all, not at all”. “The word derange,” I remarked, when we were outside again, “is applicable to mental disorder only”. “Ah!” cried Poirot, “never will my English be quite perfect. A curious language. I should then have said disarranged, n’est-ce pas?” “Disturbed is the word you had in mind”. “I thank you, my friend. The word exact, you are zealous for it.” I must say I was personally very pleased with that exchange, because Poirot’s misuse of the word had really annoyed my own sense of language. Interestingly, it’s only Caroline who criticises Shepperd in the book: “take James here – weak as water, if I weren’t about to look after him”. Christie was later to observe that the rather meddlesome Caroline was her favourite character in the book, and that elements of her were like a prototype for Miss Marple, who would be hitting the shelves in a few years’ time.

But where the book becomes delightfully surreal and rewarding, is when Shepperd confesses to Poirot that, just like Hastings, although he wouldn’t have known it, he has been writing up the case every night. It’s when you realise that the book you are reading is actually the account that Shepperd is talking about – even to the detail that he has just finished the twentieth chapter, and you look back and realise that yes, that is the part of the story that Shepperd has written up so far, that you feel like you are almost part of a book within the book. You feel that, by reading thus far, you are probably the first person ever to have read those words – because, in real time, it clearly hasn’t been published yet. This gives a strong sense of involvement and immediacy. From then on you really imagine Shepperd at his late-night desk, catching up on the day’s events and getting them down on paper. In a way, the book takes on the extra dimension of being a creative piece of work that examines its own creative process, which I always find very stimulating. Near the end it really turns itself on its head when Shepperd actually starts to critique himself; really most inventive writing that’s a delight to read. And there’s a certain symmetry to his narrative which leaves you with a sense of balanced satisfaction at the end too.

Certainly the book as a whole is a gripping read. There are several moments of exquisite tension and suspense, plenty of detailed plotting for the amateur sleuth reading it to lose themselves in, bags of clues, likely suspects, unlikely suspects, and even a highly suspicious brand new character brought in with only about sixty pages before the end. Shepperd is a great narrator, the domestic staff who at first appear rather nameless and insignificant, unexpectedly grow in importance as the story develops; and Poirot is on fine form as he quickly eclipses the rather dull and underwritten police officers, expounding what may appear at first to be general theories but which are in fact targeted examinations of particular suspects. As usual, he has to run the gauntlet of the police accusing him of senility: “Then a grin overspread [Raglan’s] weaselly countenance and he tapped his forehead gently. “Bit gone here,” he said. “I’ve thought so for some time. Poor old chap, so that’s why he had to give up and come down here. In the family, very likely. He’s got a nephew who’s quite off his crumpet”. Not the most enlightened times when it comes to mental health, were they?

If you’ve read any of my previous Agatha Christie Challenge blogs, gentle reader, you’ll know I like to convert any financial values mentioned to what they would be worth today, just to give you a greater insight into the comparative size of the sums we’re talking about. There’s only one real instance of it in this book – the sum of £20,000. This is the amount of money that Miss Flora Ackroyd says her Uncle Roger has left her in his will. That sum is worth about £850,000 today – no wonder she feels like all her Christmasses have come at once.

As usual there are a few references and idiomatic use of language that might merit a little further investigation. I fully recognised the first one: in the fifth paragraph of the first chapter, the irrepressibly snooping Caroline is given the motto of the mongoose family: “Go and Find Out”. That is a reference to Rudyard Kipling’s Rikki Tikki Tavi, the perpetually curious and nosey companion of young Teddy. One of the most enjoyable short stories I know – if you’ve never met Rikki Tikki Tavi, you really should read his victorious tale.

After that my confidence with Christie’s references gets weaker. “I don’t know what Mrs Cecil Ackroyd thought of the Ferrars affair when it came on the tapis”. On the what? That’s French for carpet, isn’t it? Well yes it is, but apparently “on the tapis” is an obsolete phrase meaning “under consideration”. Yes, I don’t understand why it should mean that either. Flora and Blunt are looking in the water and think they can see a gold brooch. “Perhaps it’s a crown,” suggested Flora. “Like the one Melisande saw in the water.” “Melisande,” said Blunt reflectively – “she’s in an opera isn’t she?” Yes, she is, by Debussy, but originally she was in the play “Pelléas and Mélisande” by Maurice Maeterlinck, first performed in 1893. All sorts of misfortunes befall Melisande, but none of them really bear any resemblance to what happens in the book – so it’s a bit of a classical garden path moment. In what would now feel quite a trendy observation, Poirot is quick to recognise the tools of the drug addict and remarks that the goose quill found in the summer house must lead to the presence of “snow”. That’s cocaine of course, sometimes (I believe) snow refers to particularly fine powdered cocaine – and cocaine was a very aspirational drug back in the 1920s. “I’ve been every kind of fool,” said Blunt abruptly. “Rum conversation we’ve been having. Like one of those Danish plays”. Well, your guess is as good as mine there. He can’t be thinking Ibsen – he’s Norwegian. Strindberg? – he’s Swedish. All the big Danish names at the time wrote novels or poetry. Weird. I don’t suppose he’s thinking of Hamlet?

And now it’s time for my usual at-a-glance summary, for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd:

Publication Details: 1926. My copy is a Fontana paperback, published in July 1979, twentieth impression, priced 25p. The cover painting is by Tom Adams, and, on the whole, I think it’s fairly lousy.

How many pages until the first death: 34; unless you count the death of Mrs Ferrars, which gets reported in the very first line of the book. However, it’s not really the death of Mrs Ferrars that we’re investigating, although it is relevant to the murder of Roger Ackroyd. And of course, because of the title, the reader spends the first 34 pages fully aware that Ackroyd is going to croak at some point.

Funny lines out of context:
I don’t know whether Christie had turned a corner with the seriousness of this book – generally speaking there are far fewer little moments of humour here than in most of her other stories. As a result there’s not many funny lines to be enjoyed. The only one that stood out for me was when Charles Kent was infuriated by Poirot and called him a “little foreign cock duck”. What a bitch.

Memorable characters:
I’m not sure that many of the characters are that well delineated to make them memorable as such. Caroline Shepperd is amusingly nosey, but her brother doesn’t give too much of his personality away in his narrative. Parker the butler is creepy in a slightly eerie way.

Christie the Poison expert:
Although Roger Ackroyd is killed by an antique silver dagger (this is a very posh murder), poisons do still play an active role. Mrs Ferrars was suspected of poisoning her husband, and she herself commits suicide by taking an overdose of veronal. Veronal, of itself, was not a poison – in fact it was the first commercially available barbiturate, sold as a sleeping aid from 1903 until the 1950s. Taking about four times the recommended dose though was enough to kill you.

It is Ackroyd’s housekeeper Miss Russell who corners Shepperd on the subject of poisons. “[She] asked me if it was true that there were certain poisons so rare as to baffle detection. “Ah!” I said, “You’ve been reading detective stories… The essence of a detective story…is to have a rare poison – if possible something from South America, that nobody has ever heard of – something that one obscure tribe of savages use to poison their arrows with. Death is instantaneous and Western science is powerless to detect it. Is that the kind of thing you mean?” “Yes. Is there really such a thing?” I shook my head regretfully. “I’m afraid there isn’t. There’s curare, of course.” I told her a good deal about curare but she seemed to have lost interest once more. She asked me if I had any in my poison cupboard, and when I replied in the negative I fancy I fell in her estimation.”

Class/social issues of the time:

There’s a nice dig at vegetarianism, which had really hit public awareness about ten to fifteen years earlier. Shepperd (or, I suppose, Christie) gives us an amusing description of the time when he invites Poirot to join his sister Caroline and him for lunch but Cook has only prepared two chops. In order to avoid a scene, Caroline pretends to be vegetarian. “She descanted ecstatically on the delights of nut cutlets (which I am quite sure she has never tasted) and ate a Welsh rarebit with gusto and frequent cutting remarks as to the dangers of ‘flesh’ foods”. Later we discover that Poirot wasn’t fooled for one moment.

There’s the usual anti-foreigner invective every so often from Christie, not only with Kent’s rather absurd little insult I mentioned earlier, but also from Mrs Ackroyd, in her annoyance at what she sees as Poirot’s interference. “Why should this little upstart of a foreigner make a fuss? A most ridiculous-looking creature he is too – just like a comic Frenchman in a revue.” I think if I were Poirot I’d be much more insulted than he tends to be.

Classic denouement: Yes and no. Poirot sets up the big meeting with all the suspects present but leaves it with a cliffhanger, so that all the suspects (bar the murderer) leave the room before the truth is revealed. As a result, there’s no big shock in front of a room full of people, as it were, although the final surprise is still extremely exciting and suspenseful.

Happy ending? Not especially. Justice isn’t entirely seen to be done. The murderer escapes trial, although he does not get off scot-free. A number of people will feel very unhappy in the weeks, months and years after the book ends. Additionally, a theft of money appears not to be followed up and the thief doesn’t seem to carry the can at all. It’s all a rather dark story from that perspective.

Did the story ring true? Yes! For me everything fits very believably into place, and although it’s a bold and ambitious crime, Christie fairly presents us with all the clues. In addition, this book seems to rely on chance coincidence much less than some of her others.

Overall satisfaction rating: 10/10. Who am I to disagree with the British Crime Writers’ Association?

Thanks for reading my blog of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and if you’ve read it too, I’d love to know what you think. Please just add a comment – but don’t tell us whodunit! Next up in the Agatha Christie Challenge we move forward to 1927, and another Hercule Poirot mystery, The Big Four. I can’t remember a thing about it, so I’m looking forward to rediscovering it. I’ll blog my thoughts about it in a few weeks’ time. In the meantime, please read it too then we can compare notes! Happy sleuthing!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

The Agatha Christie Challenge – The Secret of Chimneys (1925)

Posted on by

STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which we meet chancer and adventurer Anthony Cade, who helps Scotland Yard solve the mysteries of identifying both jewel thief “King Victor” and a royal assassin. It’s a thoroughly jolly jaunt, and Anthony Cade certainly experiences almost everything one can experience within the space of 218 pages. Naturally you can safely read this article and I won’t give anything away regarding whodunit. Promise!

Once again Christie travelled further afield for her next adventure. Picking up from where The Man in the Brown Suit left off, and using her recently acquired familiarity with southern Africa, we first meet Mr Cade and his pal Jimmy McGrath on the streets of Bulawayo, which in itself constitutes Coincidence Number One of several. But unlike that earlier book, which starts in England and ends in Africa, this one works the other way round, and it’s not long before Cade, impersonating McGrath, is staying at the Blitz (yes, not the Ritz) Hotel and snooping around the great and the good of British Governmental society. Christie continues to tease us by denying us (again) the return of Hercule Poirot. Instead, Cade himself dons the mantle of amateur sleuth and works alongside Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard. Battle would reappear in four more books over the next twenty years; Mr Cade, for reasons that are self-evident when you reach the end of this book, doesn’t. A shame, perhaps, because Cade is a much more entertaining character in comparison with stolid old Battle.

Christie dedicated the book to “my nephew, in memory of an inscription at Compton Castle and a day at the zoo”. The nephew in question was James Watts, who would become Conservative MP for Manchester Moss Side in the 1959 election – only to die two years later at the age of 57. My guess is that the zoo was Paignton Zoo, which had only opened in 1923. But most commentators don’t believe that Compton Castle is the basis for Chimneys – that honour goes to Abney Hall in Cheadle, owned by Christie’s brother in law, James, the father of the aforementioned nephew. Certainly grand country mansions like Abney Hall feature throughout Christie’s career, from Styles, through Chimneys to The Mousetrap’s Monkswell Manor. Chimneys of course, is the Caterham family seat, and the previous Lord Caterham was at one point Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Today the Foreign Secretary lives at Chevening House in Kent – but that tradition only began in the 1960s. So we can’t associate Chevening with Chimneys, alliterative though it would have been.

Everyone knows about the Koh-i-noor diamond. It’s currently set in the Queen Mother’s crown, on display at the Tower of London. It came into the possession of the Royal Family after the British conquest of the Punjab in 1849. Unsurprisingly, the governments of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran have all laid claim to ownership of the jewel – but the Queen’s not budging on this one. In Chimneys, Jimmy recollects that Count Stylptitch announced that “he knew where the Koh-i-noor was”, implying that it was not, actually, at the Tower of London (in those days it was set in Queen Mary’s crown) – and indeed, it is revealed that King Victor has stolen the Koh-i-… “”Hush Battle!” George glanced suspiciously round him. “I beg of you, mention no names. Much better not. If you must speak of it, call it the K.”” So Christie is nicely playing with reality here by pretending that the K has been stolen – when we presume it hadn’t.

The book also features a nice mix of real locations and pretend ones. As mentioned earlier, Chimneys is probably based on Abney Hall, but does not exist itself per se. The local police are based at Market Basing, which doesn’t exist but in your mind’s eye you cross Market Harborough with Basingstoke, and you get a well-to-do market town. As an aside, The Market Basing Mystery is a short story featuring Hercule Poirot and Inspector Japp (but not Battle) that was first published in The Sketch in May 1925, subsequently part of the collection The Under Dog and other Stories that was published in 1929. Virginia Revel’s home address is listed as 487 Pont Street, London; in real life Pont Street exists, a fashionable street not far from Harrod’s – but the numbers don’t go up that high. Anthony Cade discovers that Mlle Brun’s reference came from the Chateau de Breteuil, and so goes to meet Mme de Breteuil to confirm it. Fascinatingly, the Chateau exists, and the family of the Marquis de Breteuil still live there today. It was where the Entente Cordiale first had its origins, and back in 1912, the Prince of Wales – later to be Duke of Windsor – stayed there for four months to learn French. So there’s a huge slice of reality in this (admittedly minor) aspect to the book. No wonder Anthony found nothing wrong with Mlle Brun’s reference. When Cade goes on the run to Langly Road Dover, the mysterious address on the mysterious piece of torn paper, I don’t know how he finds the house because the road itself doesn’t exist.

What marks this book apart from Mrs Christie’s previous offerings is its constant sheer light-heartedness. It’s a very flippant book; the tone is light comedy throughout. Even Christie herself admits it’s money for old rope: “Detective stories are mostly bunkum,” said Battle unemotionally. “But they amuse people.” Tongue in cheek, Christie couldn’t be bothered to provide a description of Chimneys house herself: “Descriptions of that historic place can be found in any guidebook. It is also No 3 in Historic Homes of England, price 21s. On Thursday, coaches come over from Middlingham and view those portions of it which are open to the public. In view of all these facilities, to describe Chimneys would be superfluous.” Butlers bring tea and cakes amongst the corpses of the murder victims. Characters like Bundle, with lines like: “mother got tired of having nothing but girls and died” might make you think of PG Wodehouse. Plot escapades where a character sneezes and almost alerts the bad guys to the presence of the good guys at the Council Chamber at Chimneys bring to mind something out of one of Mr Ben Travers’ Aldwych farces. Conversations such as “I say Virginia, I do love you so awfully – “ “Not this morning, Bill. I’m not strong enough. Anyway, I’ve always told you the best people don’t propose before lunch” could easily be dropped into Noel Coward’s Private Lives or something similar. Caterham is portrayed as an old buffoon, Cade as a dashing hero, Lemoine as an over-excitable Frenchman, the King’s valet Boris as a hammy actor and Baron Lolopretjzyl insists on ending each sentence with a verb in the best Germanic tradition so that he comes across as Yoda’s long lost cousin; laughing at foreigners it is. Cade’s pet name for him of Baron Lollipop is pure Wodehouse/Travers.

It’s also incredibly patronising. The whole story centres on the little known and purely fictional Balkan state of Herzoslovakia. The name is clearly a portmanteau of two other eastern European countries, and it’s designed to represent some kind of Ruritanian backwater, out of which clever English people can take the Mickey. We’ve already seen how characters like the Baron and Boris are figures of fun. Herzoslovakians are described by Lomax as “most uncivilized people – a race of brigands”. Cade gives us a very dismissive description of the country: “Principal rivers, unknown. Principal mountains, also unknown, but fairly numerous. Capital, Ekarest. Population, chiefly brigands. Hobby, assassinating kings and having revolutions”. Cade and McGrath are also merciless with their use of the word “dago”. I guess in 1925 it didn’t have the same racist overtone it does today, but following their conversations with the word littered in almost every sentence makes for extremely uncomfortable reading: “just pulled the dago out of the river”; “any name’s good enough for a dago”; “dagos will be dagos”.

The character of Herman Isaacstein provides opportunities for some playful yet distinctly anti-Semitic name-calling, with Caterham referring to him Ikey Hermanstein, and even Bundle calling him “Fat Iky”. Part of Caterham’s comic persona is his distrust of foreigners and unwillingness to mix: “I don’t get on with Canadians, never did – especially those that have lived much in Africa!” Constable Johnson is disappointed that the murder victim at Chimneys wasn’t a decent Englishman. ““I’m sorry it were a foreigner” said Johnson, with some regret. It made the murder seem less real. Foreigners, Johnson felt, were liable to be shot” – an interesting take on blame the victim. And this patronising and insulting tone isn’t just reserved for “foreigners”. Women too, are seen as very much second-class citizens in the eyes of Lomax: “it has occurred to me… that a woman might be very useful here. Told enough and not too much, you understand. A woman could handle the whole thing delicately and with tact – put the position before him, as it were, without getting his back up. Not that I approve of women in politics – St Stephen’s is ruined, absolutely ruined, nowadays. But woman in her own sphere can do wonders. Look at Henry’s wife and what she did for him. Marcia was magnificent, unique a perfect political hostess.”

Another verbal trick that works well in this book, and happily doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable, is the 1920s small talk, and in particular its gift for fine understatement. When Battle informs Cade that the gentleman who was murdered was a royal personage, Cade simply replies: “that must be deuced awkward”. The understatement really emphasises the sense of the ridiculous. Here, Virginia is trying to find someone to ask advice as she sits at home with a murdered man. ““Oh damn!” cried Virginia, jamming down the receiver. It was horrible to be shut up with a dead body and to have no one to speak to.” Even Battle succumbs to this style, as he explains why the equerry, Captain Andrassy, did not come to Chimneys with the Prince: ”it’s perfectly simple. He stayed in town to make arrangements with a certain lady, on behalf of Prince Michael, for next weekend. The Baron rather frowned on such things, thinking them injudicious at the present stage of affairs, so His Highness had to go about them in a hole-and-corner manner. He was, if I may say so, inclined to be a rather – er – dissipated young man.”

When you have stories like this that are almost a century old, I think it’s interesting to convert any financial values mentioned to what they would be worth today – it gives you a better understanding of the size of rewards, or blackmails and so on. There are only a couple of instances of this in the book, but the £1000 that Jimmy would receive for the safe delivery of Count Stylptitch’s memoirs is worth about £42,500 today – that’s a pretty good reward. When Virginia allows herself to be blackmailed just to see what it feels like, she pays over £40 – and that’s the equivalent today of £1,700. That’s a pretty hefty petty cash tin she’s got.

Christie often uses words, phrases and references that were obviously fully understandable back in the day but have not kept pace with time. When Anthony remembers the first occasion he met Jimmy, he describes rescuing him from cannibals, saying it was a “very nice little shindy”. Shindy? Well, replace it with the more modern “shindig” and you have your meaning. Lomax’s observation that “St Stephen’s is ruined” mentioned a little earlier I believe must refer to St. Stephen’s Chapel in the Palace of Westminster. In a harkback to the Kilmorden Castle of The Man in the Brown Suit, Anthony’s arrival back in England is confused by Bill when he checks the itinerary of the Carnfrae Castle instead of the Granarth Castle. All these liners are fictitious, but the Union Castle line, which ran them, was certainly real, and only ceased trading in 1977.

Virginia asks her maid to pack her “new Cailleux evening dress”. I think this is a made-up fashion designer. There was a model by the name of Barbara Cailleux but she was active in the 1950s and so it can’t refer to her. However, if you know more, please let me know! Cade in conversation with Battle, reflecting on the open middle window, says “either he was killed by someone in the house and that someone unlatched the window after I had gone to make it look like an outside job – incidentally with me as Little Willie…” Julius in The Secret Adversary uses the same name for his gun. Not quite sure of the reference here, but Little Willie was the name given to the first tank prototype constructed in 1915. However, if you think Cade is referring to anything else, again please let me know! I was amused at Cade’s use of the phrase all will be gas and gaiters, primarily because it reminded me of that great 1960s comedy series, but it did make me wonder where the phrase came from. It’s the invention of Charles Dickens, in Nicholas Nickleby. A nameless old gentleman who is courting Miss La Creevy uses it to suggest that everything will be wonderful.

Bundle’s two young sisters who are looked after by Mlle Brun are named Dulcie and Daisy, “like the song, you know. I dare say they’d have called the next one Dorothy May”. This refers to a song written by A L Harris, entitled “Three Green Bonnets”, published in 1901 and made famous by none other than Dame Nellie Melba. “”You modern young people seem to have such unpleasant ideas about love-making,” said Lord Caterham plaintively. “It comes from reading The Sheik,” said Bundle. “Desert love. Throw her about, etc. “ “What is The Sheik?” asked Lord Caterham simply. “Is it a poem?” Bundle looked at him with commiserating pity.” The Sheik, of course, was the archetypal desert romance novel written by Edith Maude Hull and published in 1919. It was the source for the famous film starring Rudolph Valentino. Bundle, as a modern woman, is happy to get behind the wheel of the Panhard – and clearly is a reckless driver. I confess I hadn’t heard of Panhards before. Rene Panhard was a pioneer of the motor car industry in France, his first vehicle being sold in 1890. They look rather nice, as you can see in this photograph.

Can anyone help me with the phrase: “I retire worsted”? Cade says it to Lemoine when he’s baffled. And Bundle says to Virginia, “I hate that man with his prim little black beard and his eyeglasses…. I hope Anthony does snoo him. I’d love to see him dancing with rage.” Snoo doesn’t appear in my OED and possible definitions of it on Urban Dictionary all seem unlikely. Any ideas? And to explain the reference to King Victor’s Bertillon measurements, I refer you to my blog about The Murder on the Links.

There are a couple of significant passages in the book where characters are visiting the Rose Garden. The reader doesn’t realise the significance until much later in the book. I wondered, when reading this passage, whether the types of rose mentioned exist in real life: Madame Abel Chatenay, Frau Carl Drusky, La France, and Richmond. Well yes they do! Madame Abel Chatenay is a pink, climbing hybrid tea rose introduced in 1917. Frau Carl Drusky is less easy to trace but it does get a mention in an old newspaper article about a “Penrith Garden” from 1915 (that’s Penrith, New South Wales.) La France was introduced way back in 1867. The Richmond rose, though, I cannot trace – unless any keen rose growers out there know different!

And once again Christie shames me for my lack of Bible knowledge. Virginia says of the time that Prince Michael wanted to marry her – although she was already married – that “he had a sort of David and Uriah scheme all made out”. Not David Copperfield and Uriah Heep, but Uriah the Hittite, married to Bathsheba, whom King David fancied something rotten and impregnated, so he murdered him. Chapter 11 of the Second Book of Samuel has all the details.

And now I give you my usual at-a-glance summary, for The Secret of Chimneys:

Publication Details: 1925. My copy is a Pan paperback, published in 1956, priced 2/-. I rather like its colourful and melodramatic cover!

How many pages until the first death: 56; and then the second death comes ten pages later. Although both are relevant to the story, much more is made of the second death than the first!

Funny lines out of context:
“McGrath poured out his own drink, tossed it off with a practised hand and mixed a second one.”
“It was the waiter, Giuseppe. In his right hand gleamed a long thing knife. He hurled himself straight upon Anthony, who was by now fully conscious of his own danger. He was unarmed and Giuseppe was evidently thoroughly at home with his own weapon.”
“You’re a man in a thousand, Battle. Either you have taken an extraordinary fancy to me or else you’re extraordinarily deep”.

Memorable characters:
Plenty. This is where the book scores well. Anthony Cade is a wise cracking chap, matey with his mates, charming with the girls; risk-taking, heroic, noble and thoroughly aspirational. And there’s a surprise up his sleeve kept for the end of the book which makes him even more extraordinary. Virginia Revel is also a very spirited, daring character and the two spark off each other very well. I also liked the ploddingly decent Bill, and Boris the bodyguard/servant is as camp as a row of tents. Bundle is full of 1920s spirit, and Lord Caterham an amusingly lean and slippered pantaloon.

Christie the Poison expert:
Still on vacation. This book is all to do with gunshots.

Class/social issues of the time:

The main background to the book is the political stability of the fictitious Herzoslovakia. On the one hand you have the threatening behaviour of members of the Comrades of the Red Hand and on the other you have the British government supporting the reinstatement of the monarchy under Prince Michael Obolovitch. With all the monarchists seen as thoroughly decent, if occasionally eccentric, and all the republicans as lunatic criminal obsessives, it’s not hard to see where Christie’s sympathy lie.

Christie also reveals her belief in that old adage that people may be socialists in their youth, but once they grow up a bit, they see sense. That’s how she characterises Cade: “it was rather pleasant to be back in London again. Everything was changed of course. There had been a little restaurant there – just past Blackfriars Bridge – where he had dined fairly often, in company with other earnest lads. He had been a Socialist then, and worn a flowing red tie. Young – very young.” Bundle is emphatically a socialist – at least according to her father.

Foreigners/Race Relations – A massive amount of anti-foreigner material as I outlined earlier, that can actually make you feel extremely uncomfortable reading it, even though you know that in the day it wasn’t considered anywhere like as offensive as it comes across today. No race or country seems to go without criticism. Towards the end there is a brief conversation between two characters that feels very uncomfortable today: “Merciful God in heaven! He has married a black woman in Africa!” “Come, come, it’s not so bad as all that…she’s white enough – white all through, bless her.”

Classic denouement: Yes – you see Cade going about hither and thither, inviting people to join him at Chimneys later that evening and you know that it’s going to result in a classic showdown. What appears to be one crime is cunningly broken down into two parts, which adds to the excitement and protraction of revealing all the relevant secrets. I couldn’t remember the story nor whodunit when I first started to read; but about sixty pages before the end there was a scene that prompted me to make a guess as to the identity of King Victor – and I was right. However, there’s a wonderful build-up in the denouement where, right before the end, you have a sudden doubt and think that just maybe it could be someone else. Then you find out you were right all along. It’s a beautifully written scene.

Happy ending? Yes – if more than a trifle far-fetched. One couple get married just before the end of the book, and although that’s all jolly good for them, other people are left behind probably feeling slightly heartbroken.

Did the story ring true? It is far-fetched, and generally preposterous, but, on reflection I reckon it could all just about happen.

Overall satisfaction rating: 8/10. It is a very exciting read, and with some great characterisation, and full of twisty turns in the plot. I would have scored it higher had it not been for the fact that a) I did guess the identity of King Victor and b) the anti-foreigner remarks that litter the book really make you squirm at times.

Thanks for reading my blog of The Secret of Chimneys and if you’ve read it too, I’d love to know what you think. Please just add a comment – but don’t tell us whodunit! Next up in the Agatha Christie Challenge it’s 1926, and it’s a biggie – for many, her masterpiece – The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I’m looking forward to reacquainting myself with Hercule Poirot – I’ve missed the old chap over the last couple of books! I’ll blog my thoughts about it in a few weeks’ time. In the meantime, please read it too then we can compare notes! Happy sleuthing!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

The Agatha Christie Challenge – The Man in the Brown Suit (1924)

Posted on by

STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which we meet Anne Beddingfeld, orphaned (if you can be orphaned at her age) and inquisitive adventuress, who witnesses the death of a man at Hyde Park Corner tube station and subsequently gets caught up in a realm of intrigue which takes her from London to Marlow to South Africa, on the hunt for the mystery man named “the Colonel”. Unsurprisingly, she does discover his identity; but rest assured gentle reader, I won’t give the game (or the name) away.

Christie dedicated the book to her husband Archie’s old teacher, E A Belcher: “To E.A.B. In memory of a journey, some Lion stories and a request that I should some day write the Mystery of the Mill House“. He did indeed have a property called Mill House – in Dorney, although in the book Christie transports it to Marlow. She based the character of Sir Eustace Pedler on Belcher, and in her autobiography recalled how she found it very difficult to flesh him out in print until she hit on the brainwave of having Pedler narrate part of the book himself. Hence the book is three quarters narrated by Anne, and one-quarter by Pedler. The two different narrative voices add to the vitality and rhythm of the book, which is a very entertaining read, even though it is at times ridiculously far-fetched.

One of the criticisms of the book at the time of publication is that it was not a detective whodunit in the tradition of her earlier works, but more of a general thriller. Some were disappointed to find that Hercule Poirot does not make an appearance. You wouldn’t have guessed, reading this in 1924, that the one character in it who would feature in later Christie books would be Colonel Race; for although he plays an important part in the book, he doesn’t strike me as having much of a personality that would make him worthy of future inclusion. Christie obviously thought differently, as Sir Eustace points out when describing Race: “He’s good looking in his way, but dull as ditch water. One of these strong silent men that lady novelists, and young girls always rave over”. I think it’s a shame that Anne doesn’t reappear in later books – although she’s a bit bossy and a little patronising, using the knowledge she gleaned from her late father of Palaeolithic times to bully and intimidate, she’s nevertheless a jolly girl, with lots of spirit and daring, never flinching in the face of disaster. Still, I guess she ends up happy and contented – even if in a rather unconventional lifestyle for the time – and Christie felt it was best to leave her where she settled.

Although you get the sense that Anne hasn’t had a very exciting life before the book starts, she’s clearly a thoughtful and perceptive person who makes insightful comments on life. “”My wife will be delighted to welcome you” insists Mr Flemming, her solicitor and wannabe guardian, when he offers her the chance to live with them for a while. “I wonder if husbands know as much about their wives as they think they do. If I had a husband, I should hate him to bring home orphans without consulting me first.”” Mrs Flemming is sweetness and light when they meet, but then she overhears their conversation. “A few minutes later another phrase floated up to me in an even more acid voice: “I agree with you! She is certainly very good looking.” It really is a hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good looking and women will not be nice to you if you are.” Anne and Mrs Flemming rub along as best they can under the circumstances, until it is time for Anne to leave: “she was a good, kind woman. I could not have continued to live in the same house as her, but I did recognize her intrinsic worth”. She’s cheeky with Lord Nasby, she’s resourceful enough to save Harry Rayburn’s life with her nursing skills, and she’s even able to release herself from capture by cutting through the gag that binds her; but despite all that, when it comes to the crunch she’s more traditional than you might expect, in matters of the heart and stereotypical gender roles. In conversation with Colonel Race: “”So you don’t consider women as `weak things`?” I considered. “No, I don’t think I do – though they are, I suppose. That is, they are nowadays. But Papa always said that in the beginning men and women roamed the world together, equal in strength […] that is why women worship physical strength in men: it’s what they once had and have lost.”[…] “And you really think that’s true? That women worship strength, I mean?” “I think it’s quite true – if one’s honest. You think you admire moral qualities, but when you fall in love, you revert to the primitive, where the physical is all that counts.” Perhaps it’s no surprise when Anne backs down to Rayburn’s insistence that she leaves for Beira: “This is man’s work. Leave it to me.” The intertwining narrative from Sir Eustace makes an excellent contrast because he is disreputable, and, in common parlance, something of a perve; and it feels wrong that Anne should nevertheless quite like him, but she does. Women, eh? Just can’t understand them. They always like the bad boys.

Several times through the book Anne refers to The Perils of Pamela; presumably this is either a film or a book that has so far satisfied her need for adventure. Back in 1922 when this book is set, there was no such thing on the screen as The Perils of Pamela. There was, however, The Perils of Pauline, a series of melodramatic short films where our heroine got into tight scrapes before being rescued by a handsome man. If this is Anne’s staple entertainment, it’s really no surprise then that her views on the status of women put the sisterhood back by a number of years. Talking of 1922, it’s quite unusual for the author to pin down the actual date of a novel so precisely. In Christie’s book, The Kilmorden Castle set sail on 17th January 1922 bound for Cape Town. In reality, there is no such place as Kilmorden, let alone a castle standing there. Pedler joins the ship so that he can personally deliver secret papers to General Smuts, who was the South African Prime Minister from 1919 to 1924. It was indeed a time of social unrest in the country, with many instances of miners striking, so maybe Pedler’s rather savage desciptions of the industrial discontent (even seen from a right-wing British perspective) were not that far from the truth. The Christies had travelled round the world throughout 1922, including some time spent in South Africa, so no doubt she was keen to put to good use whatever observations she had made of the political and social situation there.

It also explains why the book at times loses focus and reminds you more of a travelogue than a thriller, the writer almost showing off about all the places they have visited. Cape Town, Johannesburg, Muizenberg, De Aar, Kimberley, Bulawayo, The Matoppos (now Matobo National Park, where Anne and Race visit Cecil Rhodes’ grave), The Karoo (the desert), The Victoria Falls, and an island on the Zambezi all feature distinctively. In Cape Town, Anne is followed round Adderley Street (one of the most notable streets in the city) and orders two coffee ice-cream sodas at Cartwright’s. The attention to detail regarding location in this book is somewhere between fascinating and overwhelming.

As is often the case with Christie, the plot is based on an event that took place a long time in the past. In this instance, it’s the theft of some De Beer diamonds and the framing of two innocent prospectors into the bargain. These diamonds were apparently worth £100,000 when the theft took place, just before the war, according to the dancer Madame Nadina in the Prologue. That’s over £8m in today’s money. Not a bad haul; no wonder people died as a result. The other interesting sum of money that’s quoted in the book is the £87 that it costs Anne to travel 1st class on the Kilmorden Castle from Southampton to Cape Town. That’s about £3500 today. She got a bargain.

Although The Man in the Brown Suit predates Murder on the Orient Express by ten years, there were a couple of scenes that forcefully reminded me of that latter – and much better known – book. When Anne stays awake until 1am awaiting something to happen in her cabin – and it does – she is interrupted by a knock at the door by an inquiring night stewardess, whom Anne fobs off with an innocent denial. She looks down the corridor and can only see the “retreating form of the stewardess”. For some reason this strongly reminded me of the “story of a small dark man with a womanish voice dressed in Wagon Lit uniform” and a woman in a red kimono: “who was she? No one on the train admits to having a scarlet kimono. She too has vanished. Was she the one and the same with the spurious Wagon Lit attendant?” (both quotes from Murder on the Orient Express). Suspicions about the Rev Chichester also made me think of people playing parts in Murder on the OE. “If Mr Chichester had indeed spent the last two years in the interior of Africa, how was it that he was not more sun-burnt? His skin was as pink and white as a baby’s. Surely there was something fishy there? Yet his manner and voice were so absolutely it. Too much so perhaps. Was he – or was he not – just a little like a stage clergyman?” Of course, Christie would return to the idea of someone impersonating a clergyman in At Bertram’s Hotel.

As usual Mrs Christie gives us some unusual references, words and phrases for us 21st century types to decipher. First of all there are all Anne’s technical terms that she learned from her father, and that she uses to bamboozle opponents: “Frankly, I hate Palaeolithic Man, be he Aurignacian, Mousterian, Chellian, or anything else”. Aurignacian pertains (perhaps unsurprisingly) to Aurignac, in France, home of a Palaeolithic culture somewhere around 40,000 years ago. Mousterian relates to a period of Neanderthal Man earlier than the Aurignacian era, typified by the use of flints worked on one side only. It’s named after Le Moustier, the rock shelter area of the Dordogne. My OED states that both words were first used in the early 20th century – so Mrs Christie was spot on the ball with her up to date knowledge and terminology. Chellian, on the other hand, is a 19th century term that has fallen into disuse, but was the name given by the French Anthropologist G. de Mortillet to the first epoch of the Quaternary period when the earliest human remains were discovered, the word being derived from the French town Chelles. Anne is also into head shapes: Brachycephalic (short-headed), Dolichocephalic (long-headed) and Platycephalic (flat-headed); there may be a few more cephalics that I missed out.

Anne doesn’t enjoy her first few days at sea. From the safety and security of her deckchair, she observes: “brisk couples exercising, curveting children, laughing young people”. What kind of children? To curvet – apparently – is to make a leaping or a frisking motion like a horse. When Anne retreats to her cabin she notices a dreadful smell: “Dead rat? No, worse than that….Asafoetida! I had worked in a hospital dispensary during the war for a short time and had become acquainted with various nauseous drugs.” Asafoetida is an acrid gum resin with a strong smell like that of garlic, obtained from certain Asian plants of the umbelliferous genus Ferula, and used in condiments. So now you know.

Sir Eustace moans about having to play Brother Bill and Bolster Bar on board ship. Have you ever heard of these? I hadn’t. And after a bit of a search online and in my OED, I still can’t find anything that seems appropriate. If you’ve got any ideas, please let me know! Talk that his cabin might be haunted reminds him of The Upper Berth. This was a short ghost story published by Francis Marion Crawford in 1886 about a room on a train where passengers who have stayed overnight have died horrible deaths. And when he’s holding court telling his hunting adventures (seems in such bad taste today), he relates: “this friend of mine…was trekking across country, and being anxious to arrive at his destination before the heat of the day he ordered his boys to inspan whilst it was still dark.” Ordered them to do what? Apparently it’s a word of Afrikaans descent, meaning to yoke (oxen, horses, etc) in a team to a vehicle, or to harness a wagon. He also uses the phrase on the bust to mean “get drunk” – although I can’t see this usage anywhere else. I wonder if it’s an early example of on the p*ss?

Anne refers to bêche-de-mer (useful if you visit the South Sea Islands). She says she doesn’t know what it is, and nor did I, so I looked it up and it’s an edible sea cucumber. I think I preferred not knowing. ““It would hardly be respectable,” said Suzanne, dimpling.” Dimpling? Does that mean making a dimple appear on your face? Apparently it does, but I’ve never come across it as a verb. Another odd word formation is: “I was to be arrested on some charge or other – pocket-picking, perhaps.” I’d never come across “pocket-picking” before. “Pickpocketing” would be a much more common phrase. I wondered if “pickpocket” was a recent word, but no, it’s been in use for 400 years. Weird one! Among the souvenirs that Anne and Suzanne consider buying are mealie bowls (South African term for maize) and fur karosses. A kaross is a cloak or sleeveless jacket like a blanket made of hairy animal skins, worn by the indigenous peoples of southern Africa (OED). Eardsley’s son is described as “quite a parti”. A what? Again from the OED: A person, especially a man, considered in terms of eligibility for marriage on grounds of wealth, social status, etc – originally a late 18th century term taken from French.

And once again Christie shows my heathenry by offering a Bible quotation I don’t recognise. In conversation with Race, Anne says: “they win in the only way that counts. Like what the Bible says about losing your life and finding it.” A little research unearths two possible references. Matthew 10:39 – “He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” But I think more likely: Luke 17:33 – “Whoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.”

So it’s time for my usual at-a-glance summary, for The Man in the Brown Suit:

Publication Details: 1924. My copy is a Pan paperback, published in 1973. The cover illustration is the usual photo representing some of the clues or events of the book, but, interestingly, the artist got one of the details wrong. It shows the piece of paper dropped at the scene of the crime at Hyde Park Corner tube station. But it reads Kilmorden Castle 1. 7 22 and not Kilmorden Castle 17.1 22 as in the book. Sack the illustrator!

How many pages until the first death: 16; and then the second death is reported two pages later. A double whammy, one might say.

Funny lines out of context:
“In other words, the chimpanzee is a degenerate.”
“These earnest, hard-working young men with weak stomachs are always liable to bilious attacks.”
“Every now and then he galvanized himself to further efforts by ejaculating something that sounded like Platt Skeet”.

Memorable characters:
The two narrators are very lively characters, well drawn and full of quirkiness – especially Sir Eustace, with his frequent observations on the loveliness of ladies and the irritations of his colleagues.

Christie the Poison expert:
On vacation for this novel. Will no doubt be back soon.

Class/social issues of the time:

Foreigners – It wouldn’t be a Christie if she didn’t get some suspicions over foreigners in the text somewhere. Perhaps it’s no surprise that The Daily Budget is something akin to the Daily Mail of today: “In an upper room of the Mill House the body of a beautiful young woman was discovered yesterday, strangled. She is thought to be a foreigner…” Interesting that it’s not a foreigner that’s suspected of perpetrating the crime, but is the victim; it’s one of those examples of where there is a slight suspicion of “blame the victim”. Anne later goes on to interrogate the housekeeper at the Mill House. She saw the man suspected of being the murderer. “A nice-looking young fellow he was and no mistake. A kind of soldierly look about him – ah, well, I dare say he’d been wounded in the war, and sometimes they go a bit queer aftwards; my sister’s boy did. Perhaps she’d used him bad – they’re a bad lot, those foreigners.”

Also unsurprising that Pedler and his secretary Pagett have the same belief. “On the face of it, a Member of Parliament will be none the less efficient because a stray young woman comes and gets herself murdered in an empty house that belongs to him – but there is no accounting for the view the respectable British public takes of a matter. “She’s a foreigner too, and that makes it worse,” continued Pagett gloomily. Again I believe he is right. If it is disreputable to have a woman murdered in your house, it becomes more disreputable if the woman is a foreigner.”

Race – I’m still trying to make my mind up whether Christie is a latent racist or not. There are some very iffy comments that I’ve already read in the next book (see below), but I think on the whole the references to race in this book are simply the norm for the time. She uses the term “kafir” a great deal; she describes some of the souvenir tat as “absurd little black warriors” which feels a bit patronising to me; and there’s a rather awkward scene when Anne regains consciousness after an attempt on her life: “Someone put a cup to my lips and I drank. A black face grinned into mine – a devil’s face, I thought it, and screamed out.”

Classic denouement: It’s almost as though there are two denouements. The first occurs about two thirds of the way in, with the full explanation of Rayburn’s identity and his part in the story. The second, concerning the identity of “the Colonel”, slowly and excitingly becomes clear over a good twenty pages or more. And whilst it doesn’t have the classic Poirot-type set up of a room full of suspects and a man pointing “j’accuse!” it works in a much subtler and satisfying way. I had forgotten the identity of “the Colonel” and it came as quite a nail-biting surprise.

Happy ending? Of course. Anne and her man live happily ever after albeit in a rather unconventional manner and location. As for the master criminal, that person appears to get off scot-free. That might annoy the reader’s sense of justice, although Anne herself is not unhappy with the outcome.

Did the story ring true? Frankly, no! Of all the Christies I have re-read and written about so far, this is most definitely the most far-fetched. The plot leaps from coincidence to coincidence, and occasionally you have to break off and laugh at how monstrously Christie handles the reader’s credulousness.

Overall satisfaction rating: 8/10. On the minus side you have the ridiculous coincidences that render the plot so unlikely as to make it laughable, its tendency to stray into travelogue and an awful lot of Barbara Cartland-like romantic nonsense towards the end that comes close to being nauseating. However, Christie gets away with it by having some extremely good characters, rather witty conversations and creating an old-fashioned “rattling good read”.

Thanks for reading my blog of The Man in the Brown Suit and if you’ve read it too, I’d love to know what you think. Please just add a comment – but don’t tell us whodunit! Next up in the Agatha Christie Challenge it’s 1925, and time for The Secret of Chimneys. It sounds a little like an Enid Blyton adventure, but there I think the similarity ends. Still using her South African experiences, the story will also introduce us to Superintendent Battle – and that jolly girl that goes by the name of Bundle. I’ll blog my thoughts about it in a few weeks’ time. In the meantime, please read it too then we can compare notes! Happy sleuthing!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

The Agatha Christie Challenge – Poirot Investigates (1924)

Posted on by

STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which Poirot and Hastings set about solving eleven cases, from Egypt to Brighton, through the medium of the short story. As the first of her books not to be in full novel format, it has a very different feel from those previously published. In one respect, it’s punchier, as Poirot has to waste no time getting to the crux of the matter; in another respect it’s also less rewarding as there is no time for character or plot development. The stories had all been originally published between March and October 1923 in The Sketch magazine, at the invitation of the editor, Bruce Ingram, who had become a Poirot fan with The Mysterious Affair at Styles. So when Poirot Investigates hit the bookshops in March 1924, it brought these stories to a wider audience, although I expect some of her readers might have been disappointed not to be getting a brand new novel. Even though they’re just bite-sized stories, they still contain many of Christie’s usual themes and idiosyncrasies. I’m going to take them one by one and look at each one separately – and don’t worry, I won’t reveal the intricacies of whodunit!

The Adventure of “The Western Star”

The first story in the book, although the third to be published in The Sketch; a tale of apparent jewellery theft that, of course, isn’t quite as straightforward as it seems. The “Western Star” – the jewel in question – is insured for a sum of £50,000. That’s a helluva lot of jewel – at today’s prices, over £2million. We get to see Poirot and Hastings in their domestic bliss, and confirming their roles within their professional relationship. Hastings is definitely the Watson character, although he aspires to be the Holmes, as can be seen with his opening challenge to Poirot to explain the mystery of why a fashionable young lady is being stalked and pointed at by all and sundry. Poirot knows the reason immediately, and then has to explain it to Hastings, who confesses that his lack of perception is feeble. Another little insight into their relationship comes with the discovery of their guilty secret – that they buy and read Society Gossip magazine. It makes sense – Poirot was becoming quite a celebrity, and he would definitely want to know who’s dating who and who’s cheating who. Poirot gets irked when Hastings replaces a book from the great man’s bookcase in the wrong place – definitely showing signs of OCD. And of course, when Poirot finally solves the case of the Western Star, and Hastings is up a gum tree without a paddle, Poirot cannot help but tease Hastings for his detective uselessness; at which Hastings goes off in a sulky huff, having been made a laughing stock. As I said, domestic bliss.

The story does reveal some psychological insights about how women tick; even though there is some suspicion that her valuable jewel will be stolen, Miss Marvell is still determined to wear it when she visits Yardly Chase – because her husband used to have a dalliance with Lady Yardly, (a friend of Mary Cavendish at Styles – some nice inter-connection there between Christie’s books) and there’s no way the actress is going there without showing off her prize possession. And Poirot solves the case by observing that “never does a woman destroy a letter” – and I reckon that’s pretty damn true.

I always enjoy considering Christie’s use of language. Semantic change is a fascinating thing – and Hastings’ first words in the book are a perfect example: ““That’s queer”, I ejaculated suddenly”. Christie was always enormously fond of the “e” word, and it can give rise to innocent humour today. Elsewhere in this story you can find: “…he stiffened visibly. With an ejaculation, he handed it to his wife”.

The other common Christie theme that’s very much in force in this story is mistrust of foreigners, combined with what might be considered today some racist language. It’s hard to discuss this without at least quoting the words that Christie uses, so I hope you’ll forgive me for some of the language in the rest of this paragraph. All the way through the story there is a mysterious presence of a Chinese man; referred to as a Chinaman, and even, at times, as a Chink. It is this man who appears to be the thief, thus equating antisocial behaviour with the racial slur. To enforce the stereotype, he wears a traditional Chinese robe; Lady Yardly describes him thus: “I realised by the pig-tail and the embroidered robe that he was a Chinaman”. Possibly most offensive of all is this quote by Rolf: “I’ve been getting threatening letters from a Chinaman, and the worst of it is I look rather like a Chink myself – it’s something about the eyes”.

And what of the story itself? It’s quite ingenious, and entertainingly written, and I certainly didn’t guess the whodunit element. But overall, not particularly memorable.

The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor

Once again we have a crime that features an insurance figure of £50,000 – this time life insurance on one Mr Maltravers, who, a few weeks after insuring himself for that sum, was found shot by a rook rifle – a single-shot rifle that went out of favour after World War II. Obviously in the 1920s, shooting rooks was a decent hobby for a decent guy. The insurance company calls on Poirot to investigate and determine whether it could be suicide – because that would invalidate the claim.

Once again Poirot has the opportunity to tease Hastings about his predilection for the ladies. “”Your judgments of character are always profound, my friend…that is to say, when there is no question of a beautiful woman!” I looked at him coldly.” And there’s a typical Poirot tantaliser when he reflects on a witness’s statement and observes “a slight discrepancy… You noticed it? You did not?” and then he refuses to tell us what the discrepancy is.

There’s a little observation that gives us an idea of how to judge wealth back in those days. Poirot asks Dr Bernard if he considered the deceased to be a rich man; his response: “Was he not? He kept two cars you know”. I’m not sure owning a couple of Clios would categorise you as rich today.

It’s quite a strange tale in many respects, going off on a couple of slightly weird tangents. There’s a scene where Poirot interrogates Captain Black (watch out Captain Scarlet) that takes the form of a word association game. Now I don’t know a lot about psychoanalysis, but it seems to me that from this he makes some pretty conclusive deductions out of relative thin air. Naturally, being Poirot, he’s right. Later on, the story turns all ghostly and demonic, with eerie taps at the window and the bloody vision of the late Mr Maltravers dripping all over the place. Still, it prompts a successful confession, and of course, as always, nothing is quite as it seems. More Grand Guignol than little grey cells. Decidedly far-fetched.

The Adventure of the Cheap Flat

Human nature doesn’t change, and it’s interesting to see that the hot topic of conversation at a swanky dinner party in 1923 is the same as it is today – house prices. Hastings’ friend Parker has made a nice little business out of buying property and then selling it for a profit a short while later. So everyone is astonished to hear of the Robinsons’ find – a drop-dead gorgeous flat at Montagu Mansions, just off Knightsbridge, for just £80 a year – that’s under £3400 at today’s value, which probably wouldn’t be enough for a week’s rent nowadays. There’s got to be a reason why it’s so cheap and that no one else has offered on it – but what? That’s the problem Poirot challenges himself to solve.

There really is a Montagu Mansions in London – but it’s in Marylebone, not Knightsbridge, Christie rarely happy to pin down a real location so precisely in her fiction. She’s much happier to target Hastings for his fancyings for beautiful women – incidentally, Cinderella from The Murder on the Links doesn’t seem to feature in Hastings’ life at the moment so he’s either gone off her, Christie’s forgotten about her, or these stories were published out of synch. When describing Mrs Robinson to Poirot: ”well, she’s tall and fair; her hair’s really a beautiful shade of auburn – “ “Always you have had a penchant for auburn hair!”

We’ve seen before how Hastings gets narked when anyone criticises British traditions and influences, but he lets Poirot get away with this particular observation of a British Sunday afternoon: “No one will observe us. The Sunday concert, the Sunday “afternoon out”, and finally the Sunday nap after the Sunday dinner of England – le rosbif – all these will distract attention from the doings of Hercule Poirot.”

For someone as personally finickity as Poirot, I thought it was a little unlikely that he could turn his hand so readily to a spot of DIY carpentry on the door and locks to the coal-lift without as much as a brushing down of his jacket or a manicure – but I guess that’s the difference between fiction and a documentary.

“By the way, Hastings, have you a revolver?” “Yes – somewhere, “ I answered, slightly thrilled. “Do you think – “ “That you will need it? It is quite possible. The idea pleases you, I see. Always the spectacular and romantic appeals to you”. I’m not sure about “spectacular and romantic”, but this lackadaisical approach to gun regulation sounds scary. But back in 1923, the fact that Hastings would have had a gun – particularly as he had been active in the First World War – would not have been unusual. The most recent legislation at the time, the 1920 Firearms Act, would not have affected Hastings’ gun ownership in any way. He probably would have been perfectly legal until the post-Dunblane massacre legislation.

We’ve already seen Christie’s capacity to indulge in a little latent racism in The Adventure of the Western Star. Now she turns her attention to talk of “Japs”, which, to be fair, didn’t really become offensive until after the Second World War, but it still stands out when you read it today. The story includes the theft of naval plans from the American government, that showed the position of important Harbour defences – and interestingly, Hastings/Christie assumes that the Japanese might be involved in the crime. And I couldn’t decide whether it was hilarious, or racist, or both, when our brave detectives encounter an Italian, to whom the writer gives these cod-spaghetti lines: “Who was it dat croaked Luigi Valdarno?…. Youse sure o’ dat, eh?” I think she’s playing at gangsters here.

The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge

Poirot is struck down by the flu – which, as it’s very easy to forget, was quite a killer in those days – and so it is left to Hastings to travel up to Derbyshire to attempt to solve the murder of one Mr Harrington Pace, accompanied by Mr Pace’s nephew. Poirot requires Hastings to report back by telegram what he has discovered so that the great detective’s little grey cells can go to work in absentia and tell Hastings what he should do next. Today they would have Facetimed. Inspector Japp is also up in Derbyshire, and isn’t entirely complimentary about Hastings’ attempt to go it alone: “What have you done with the little man, by the way, Captain Hastings?” “He’s ill in bed with influenza.” “Is he now? I’m sorry to hear that. Rather the case of the cart without the horse, your being here without him, isn’t it?”

Not only is Poirot now recognised as a fiendishly brilliant detective, he is also a celebrity, with a paragraph about his sniffles in Society Gossip magazine, which already played a part in the first of these short stories. Hastings appears supportive of his friend’s success but his nose is quite easily put out of joint. After a hard day’s interrogating and sleuthing, he wires back his discoveries, only to be ridiculed for his deductions and photographic endeavours. “His request for a description of the clothes worn by the two women appeared to me to be simply ridiculous, but I complied as well as I, a mere man, was able to.” He’s definitely comparing himself unfavourably with the boss.

A couple of interesting references that need to be checked out:

Of Lady Havering, Hastings observes: “I rather fancy that’s the girl who used to act at the Frivolity”. The Frivolity Theatre – did it exist? I can find references to Frivolity theatres in Berlin and Boston but not in London. I don’t think it was an actual theatre – but it may have been a turn of the century burlesque-style company, a way of legitimising some Edwardian semi-nudity. Naughty Hastings.

“The wicked flourish like a green bay tree”, Hastings tells Poirot, when it appears the guilty party in this crime will not be brought to book. Hastings here is mixing his Psalms. Psalm 92 says: “the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree”; and the opposite is found in Psalm 37: “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree”.

I like Christie’s slight irony in Hastings’ account of his go-it-alone investigations: “I may as well confess at once that they were rather disappointing. In detective novels clues abound, but here I could find nothing that struck me as out of the ordinary…..”

And what is this meant to mean: “Harrington Pace was a small, spare, clean-shaven man, typically American in appearance”. If I think of “typically American” in appearance, I think of Yosemite Sam.

An enjoyable little story, with a rather ghoulish moral conclusion – and it’s fun to watch Poirot playing puppet-master whilst his minion goes off and does his work for him.

The Million Dollar Bond Robbery

A million dollars’ worth of Liberty Bonds goes missing on board the Olympia from London to New York, while under the hapless observation of young Philip Ridgeway, whose fiancée seeks help from old Papa Poirot to prove his innocence. Of course all is not quite as it seems and Poirot is easily able to solve the mystery of how the bonds were traded a mere half hour after the Olympia docked. If you’re interested, a million American dollars in 1923 is worth over £9m today, so that’s quite a haul.

So what were Liberty Bonds? According to Wikipedia, so it must be true, “a Liberty Bond was a war bond that was sold in the United States to support the allied cause in World War I. Subscribing to the bonds became a symbol of patriotic duty in the United States and introduced the idea of financial securities to many citizens for the first time. The Act of Congress which authorized the Liberty Bonds is still used today as the authority under which all U.S. Treasury bonds are issued”. So now you know. What does seem today delightfully antiquated is the way you physically had to pick them up and carry them – it does seem an amazingly old fashioned way of moving money around. But there was no electronic banking in 1923, so I guess they had no choice. Christie goes into lots of detail about the special lock on the portmanteau that was made by Hubbs – I’ve not been able to find out much about the company, or indeed if it was real or a Christie invention.

The London and Scottish Bank certainly existed – right up to 2008 when it went into administration as a result of all that subprime lending. And the Cheshire Cheese, where Poirot and Hastings have lunch with Ridgeway and the fiancée, still exists too, on Fleet Street, almost five hundred years after it was built. But the Laverguier method of combatting seasickness? A reference to which is also found in The Kidnapped Prime Minister? Pure fiction, I think.

Once again we get a nice little exchange between the detectives, showing the nature of their friendship: ““Good Lord, Poirot! Do you know, I’d give a considerable sum of money to see you make a thorough ass of yourself – just for once. You’re so confoundedly conceited!” “Do not enrage yourself, Hastings. In verity, I observe that there are times when you almost detest me! Alas, I suffer the penalties of greatness!” The little man puffed out his chest, and sighed so comically that I was forced to laugh.”

As for the story itself, it’s rather fun, with an exciting and ingenious denouement considering it’s just a short story, and I appreciated its sudden and jokey ending.

The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb

This was Christie’s first foray into writing about Egypt, ancient or modern; a country that would play a significant part in both her fiction and her home life. Her first visit to Egypt was when she was in her early 20s, with her mother, staying at the Gezirah Palace (now, apparently, part of the Marriott) in Cairo. Do we believe those old stories which suggested that there was a curse put on all those explorers who opened up the tombs of the Egyptian kings? This story has no fewer than four deaths before Poirot works out what’s going on. That’s one helluva curse for a short story.

I had presumed that King Men-her-Ra was a fictitious invention of Christie’s, describing him as she does: “one of those shadowy kinds of the Eighth Dynasty”. But he is in fact mentioned in W M Flinders Petrie’s book Scarabs and Cylinders with Names, published in 1917, described as a vassal chief under the overlordship of the Ethiopians. I rather hope she got the name from there.

Visiting Egypt is pure hell for Poirot. ““My boots”, he wailed. “Regard them, Hastings. My boots, of the neat patent leather, usually so smart and shining. See, the sand is inside them, which is painful, and outside them, which outrages the eyesight. Also the heat, it causes my moustaches to become limp – but limp!” “Look at the Sphinx,” I urged. “Even I can feel the mystery and the charm it exhales.” Poirot looked at it discontentedly. “It has not the air happy,” he declared.” Poirot and Hastings check in to the Mena House Hotel, “right in the shadow of the Pyramids”. Having stayed in the very same hotel myself in 2010, I can confirm the view of the Pyramids from one’s balcony is stunning.

Lady Willard refers to Hassan as “my husband’s devoted native servant”. The sentence looks a little outdated today, and has an element of being patronising, but I don’t think there’s anything more than that. Later, we are treated to a little Christie homespun nugget of how the Brits and the Egyptians rub along together: ““I guess,” said Dr Ames, “that where white folk lose their heads, natives aren’t going to be far behind.”” That’s what my Australian brother in law would call colonial imperialism. Christie’s better when she’s expressing Poirot’s philosophy of crime. In this story he proclaims: “I will tell you an interesting psychological fact, Hastings. A murderer has always a strong desire to repeat his successful crime, the performance of it grows upon him.” That’s certainly a philosophy that Christie took to her heart as she developed as a crime novelist.

There’s a nice little hint of poison in this story – when questioning the doctor about what caused the deaths of the deceased, Poirot asks if strychnine could have been involved. The early Christie seems quite obsessed with strychnine. Later, a smell of bitter almonds pervades the air, which can only mean one thing in Christieland – cyanide.

Lastly I was a little surprised by some of Captain Hastings’ observations in this story. I was wondering if he was on the turn, as Julian Clary would put it. “We were to ride there on camels, and the beasts were patiently kneeling, waiting for us to mount, in charge of several picturesque boys…” Then Hastings meets Dr Toswill: “there was something at once grave and steadfast about him that took my fancy.” I expect it was just a passing phase.

Another enjoyable story, packed with deaths, which is always an advantage in a detective yarn, and I certainly didn’t guess whodunit.

The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan

When the Poirot Investigates stories were originally published in The Sketch, sequentially this was the first one to hit the press, on 14th March 1923; however, it was published under the title The Curious Disappearance of the Opalsen Pearls. A jewellery theft from a posh hotel room safe is no problem for Poirot, who solves the case with consummate ease and not a little entrapment.

There’s an enjoyable sense of “smoke and mirrors” surrounding the crime, and as you read it you realise that Christie is pulling the wool over your eyes and there’s nothing you can do to stop her.

As in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Hastings draws us a useful sketch of the crime scene. It adds to Hastings’ air of forensic derring-do, but is only minimally helpful in assisting the reader’s sleuthing.

I rather liked Christie’s description of Hastings’ average day. He has a pretty wonderful life. “I went out for a stroll, met some old friends, and lunched with them at their hotel. In the afternoon we went out for a spin.” That work he was doing for the MP in The Murder on the Links certainly seems to have taken a back seat. There’s also a nice description of Hastings’ being rather awkwardly British when confronted with Poirot’s continental shows of emotion. “”Embrace me, my friend; all has marched to a marvel!” Luckily, the embrace was merely figurative – not a thing one is always sure of with Poirot.” I’m guessing the “gay throng” he found himself in down in Brighton (where the Grand Metropolitan had its home) was not quite the same as that which he might find today. Currently (and indeed in 1923) there is no Grand Metropolitan Hotel in Brighton – but there is a Grand Metropole. I daresay it was the inspiration.

The Kidnapped Prime Minister

The early Christie was never one to shy away from scandal in the Affairs of State, with espionage and high ranking civil servants and politicians frequently taking an important role. Perhaps none more obviously so than in this short story, where the PM is kidnapped on his way to a wartime peace conference in Versailles. The investigations take place on both sides of the Channel, but when Poirot gets to Boulogne he merely sits in his hotel room and exercises the little grey cells. He could have done that in England and saved a packet.

This story takes us back to the last few weeks of the First World War, and Hastings relates the events as a kind of retrospective. The PM is one David McAdam – in real life it was David Lloyd George, Christie keeping the same first name but changing him from Welsh to (presumably) Scottish. Hastings describes himself as having a recruiting job when he was invalided out of the army, but there’s no mention of that in The Mysterious Affair at Styles – which, admittedly, would have taken place earlier than the kidnapping of the Prime Minister. But I do sense a little inconsistency with Christie’s attempts to fill in the back-stories of her protagonists.

There is something a little odd about the style of writing in this story; it is as though it was written much earlier. Japp is introduced like it was the first time that Christie had involved him in a story. Descriptions of Poirot as a dandy again suggest that we had no prior knowledge of his appearance or traits. There’s also something simplistic about the plot, which relies on the fact that no one would recognise the Prime Minister if he were in hospital, which is pretty unlikely. Christie also refers to the Laverguier method of controlling sea sickness again (see The Million Dollar Bond Robbery), which is a repetition that stands out as being accidental rather than deliberate. There’s even use of that very old fashioned device of giving a proper noun by reference only to its capital letter: “The have found the second car, also the secretary, Daniels, chloroformed, gagged and bound in an abandoned farm near C____.” These all add to a sense of detachment and distancing. There’s no denying Christie’s innate snobbery though, amusingly encapsulated in a conversation between Poirot and Hastings about his current, rather drab, case: “I assist a – how do you call it? – ‘charlady’ to find her husband. A difficult affair, needing the tact. For I have a little idea that when he is found he will not be pleased. What would you? For my part, I sympathise with him. He was a man of discrimination to lose himself.”

As this story is set in wartime, which was only a few years prior to publication, there are a few hints of Christie’s long memory of recrimination against the country’s erstwhile foe. There’s talk of “German agents in England” and mention of “Les Boches”, and Poirot uncovers a German spy as a by-product of solving the case, which is doubly satisfying.

And there’s a nice little out-of-place line to snigger about: “”A near escape,” I ejaculated, with a shiver.” Is this the source of T S Eliot’s “a cold coming we had of it”? No I don’t think so either.

The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim

A neat, intriguing and clever little case which Poirot solves as a £5 bet with Japp – that’s the equivalent of some two hundred quid today, so no laughing matter. A banker – the eponymous Mr Davenheim – goes missing at the same time that he is expecting a visit from a Mr Lowen, only for the police to discover that Davenheim’s safe has been emptied of all its wealthy contents whilst Lowen was in the room. An open and shut case? Of course not.

Like The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge, the challenge for Poirot is to solve this case sight unseen. Japp allows himself to be lulled into a false sense of security by Poirot’s apparently flawed reasoning: “The detective shook his head sadly at me, and murmuring, “Poor old fellow! War’s been too much for him!” gently withdrew from the room.” Poirot of course is razor sharp, belittling Hastings’ ability properly to pick apart a case, and cashing in on Japp’s misfortune with faux regret as he looks forward to a grand dinner paid for by the fiver to celebrate.

There were elements of this story that brought to mind that old TV favourite, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin – a man goes missing, they find his clothes, and so on. With the benefit of hindsight, the story has probably gained significance in regard to society’s view of bankers – plus ça change… It’s very tightly written and with a lot of humour as well as intricate plotting. A petty criminal is referred to as a “human derelict”, a description that pulls no punches when it comes to assessing moral turpitude. Japp also describes Mrs Davenheim as “a pleasant, rather unintelligent woman. Quite a nonentity, I think.” Pity, she spoke so highly of him.

The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman

Poirot and Hastings are entertaining their neighbour, Dr Hawker (who, like Parker in The Adventure of the Cheap Flat, never reappears in any other stories), when the doctor’s housekeeper arrives with the news that one of his patients, Count Foscatini, has been on the phone, crying out for help. When the three of them arrive at Foscatini’s flat, the Italian Nobleman is dead, with his skull smashed in by a marble ornament, and all around are the remnants of a dinner party for three. A classic whodunit set up, instantly intriguing, a most enjoyable read; and of course, Poirot sees through the artifice to uncover the truth.

There’s a nice brief conversation between Poirot, Hastings and the lift attendant at Regent’s Court, where Foscatini lived: “”Is the count alone in the flat?” “No sir, he’s got two gentlemen dining with him.” “What are they like?” I asked eagerly [….] “I didn’t see them myself, sir, but I understand that they were foreign gentlemen.”” Foreign gentlemen, in Christie-speak, is laden with overtones of suspicion and mistrust.

Parts of this story reminded me of the episode of The Vicar of Dibley when Geraldine overcommits and ends up eating several Christmas lunches. Read it, and you’ll get my meaning. This is another cracking little nugget of a tale, with huge power in its brevity; thirteen pages in all, and halfway down the twelfth page I still hadn’t worked out whodunit or how.

The Case of the Missing Will

And we finally come to the last of these short stories; not a crime as such but a puzzle. Sadly, for me this is the least interesting of the whole collection as far as the little grey cells are concerned. Uncle Andrew had fixed views about how women should behave – and reading improving books and making their way in the world were not among them. So he basically disinherited his niece Violet unless she could find his missing will within one month of his death. She calls in Poirot to do the thinking for her, which Poirot sees as showing enormous wisdom; and of course, he does find another will that reverts Uncle’s possessions back to her.

It is interesting in other ways though. Christie takes the whole “women are for breeding and cooking” thing and criticises it implicitly and explicitly throughout the story, by making the heroine, Violet, a rather attractive and spirited girl, and having her disconcert Hastings because of his natural disaffection for “modern women”. It also shows a very different light towards charity from that which we see today. Mrs Baker, Uncle Andrew’s housekeeper, opines: “Us don’t want to see Miss Violet done out of what’s hers,” declared the woman. “Cruel hard ‘twould be for hospitals to get it all”. But then today I guess the hospitals need it more than they did in those days. That Devonian drawl of the Bakers is a bit over the top though. Made me think of Edgar in King Lear: “Chill pick your teeth, zir.”

Hastings thinks Mr Baker is lying when Poirot asks him to confirm it was Uncle Andrew’s writing on the envelope attached to the desk key. This isn’t properly resolved in the denouement, and I feel the plotting on this story is not as perfect as it should be.

So there we are at the end of this rather exhaustive look back at what originally looked like an easy book to write about! Thanks for sticking with me, if you did. Fortunately the next book in the Agatha Christie challenge goes back to the novel format, The Man in the Brown Suit. If you’d like to read it too, I’ll blog about it in a few weeks’ time. In the meanwhile, happy sleuthing and keep on Christie-ing!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

The Agatha Christie Challenge – The Murder on the Links (1923)

Posted on by

STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which Hercule Poirot receives a desperate plea for help from M. Paul Renauld in France, but by the time he and Hastings rush to his aid, he has been murdered. Poirot works with the local magistrate to discover precisely what happened whilst engaging in duels of wit with the local officer of the Sûreté. Oh, and Hastings finds love. If you haven’t read the book yet, don’t worry, I won’t spill the beans on whodunit!

I’m not sure how old I was when I first read this book but I’m pretty sure that I didn’t know that the links in question was a golf course. I expect I was trying to work out how someone could commit a murder whilst balancing precariously on a pair of cufflinks – I’ve never been quite as intelligent as I ought to be. In fairness, it’s not a very good title. OK, the murder does take place adjacent to a golf course, but it doesn’t play that major a part in the story. Mind you, the Turkish title translates as “Our Lesson is Murder” – and there aren’t any lessons in it.

It’s easy to forget that back in 1923 Christie was still a fledgling writer, and although she had enjoyed great success with her first two books, she still had the need to capture the imagination of editors and readers alike in the hope that they would continue publishing, and buying, her work. You can see this in the rather self-conscious way in which she begins this book: “I believe that a well-known anecdote exists to the effect that a young writer, determined to make the commencement of his story forcible and original enough to catch and rivet the attention of the most blasé of editors, penned the following sentence: “Hell!” said the Duchess.” Strangely enough, this tale of mine opens in much the same fashion. Only the lady who gave utterance to the exclamation was not a duchess.” And so it goes on. It reminded me of a story I remembered from when I was at school. One of our English teachers was the, then unknown, now very well known, writer A. N. Wilson. Whilst he was teaching A-level English Lit, he had his first book published – The Sweets of Pimlico. The book opens with the three words: “That affected shit”. We schoolkids all thought that was a hoot. But Andy Wilson (as we affectionately knew him) was doing precisely the same thing – getting the editor and the reader hooked as early as possible. It didn’t serve him badly. In a rather nice twist, Christie re-uses her phrase at the end of the book, with a completely different effect – a symmetry of which Poirot would give the highest approval.

Re-reading The Murder on the Links now, I’m really impressed with this book. After the almost maniacal hectic pace of The Secret Adversary and the clue-a-paragraph nature of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, with this book Christie settled down to a much more comfortable speed, and gave her characters some space to develop. In fact, in addition to working out who killed Paul Renauld, the most enjoyable part of this book is its observations about its characters’ relationships. You see a much more human side to Poirot, most clearly portrayed in a scene near the end of the book when he severely loses his temper when a vulnerable character nearly gets killed because no one had told him she had changed bedrooms.

So what of our friend Captain Hastings? In one brief sentence early in the book, he describes himself as a “private secretary to an MP”. Well, he must be a very understanding MP, because Hastings never does a stroke of work for him during the next few weeks. I can’t recollect if this job of his will be referred to again in any of the later books – we will have to wait and see! You also see a gently teasing relationship develop between Poirot and Hastings, largely based on Hastings’ predilection for falling head-over-heels in love with the next pretty girl to come along. “Yesterday it was Mademoiselle Daubreuil, today it is Mademoiselle – Cinderella! Decidedly you have the heart of a Turk, Hastings! You should establish a harem!” However, Hastings considers their friendship is seriously put to the test with his willingness to perjure himself for the sake of his Cinderella. “Poirot would not take defeat lying down. Somehow or other, he would endeavour to turn the tables on me, and that in the way, and at the moment, when I least expected it.” Poirot, on the other hand, seems to take it in his stride. “I studied him attentively. He was wearing his most innocent air, and staring meditatively into the far distance. He looked altogether too placid and supine to give me reassurance, I had learned, with Poirot, that the less dangerous he looked, the more dangerous he was.” That’s a very insightful observation. Amusingly, the temporary stress on their friendship brings out all Hastings’ naturally British sense of doing the right thing: “It’s only fair to warn you” [he says to Poirot, who replies] “I know – I know all. You are my enemy! Be my enemy, then. It does not worry me at all.” “So long as it’s all fair and above-board, I don’t mind.” “You have to the full the English passion for “fair play!” And of course, Hastings will propound preposterous theories, barking completely up the wrong tree, where Poirot lets him sit in blissful ignorance for a while until he reveals the truth to Hastings’ total astonishment.

There are also some very vivid encounters between Poirot and Giraud of the Sûreté, full of professional and personal rivalry, point-scoring, and competitive clue-hunting. Their first meeting doesn’t go down too well. ““I know you by name, Monsieur Poirot,” [said M. Giraud]. “You cut quite a figure in the old days, didn’t you? But methods are very different now.” “Crimes, though, are very much the same,” remarked Poirot gently.” Giraud’s patronising attitude irritates Poirot profoundly (“not a word to Giraud…he treats me as an old one of no importance!”) but Poirot is determined to show him that his old-fashioned tried and tested methods will come to fruition in the end. Nowhere is his age more advantageous than when he recognises one of the suspects from a case he investigated twenty years before. There’s also an excellent passage where Poirot talks, in general, about the repetitive nature of crimes and recidivism of their perpetrators, borne out of his long experience. When he takes this general observation and relates it directly to this case, so much of the crime becomes instantly clear; detecting like painting by numbers.

But don’t let this give you the impression that this is an easy case for Poirot to solve. In The Murder on the Links, Christie created a story that develops, episodically, with so many twists and turns, that you’re constantly being wrong-footed by it – and it’s a complete delight. So many chapters end with something of a bombshell, that it’s like waiting for the drum beats at the end of an episode of Eastenders. Sadly I can’t tell you too much about those bombshells because it will give the game away – but if you take, say, Chapter 10 (Gabriel Stonor), there are half a dozen or so twists in that one short chapter alone. Suffice to say, I found this book a genuinely exciting and page-turning read.

As an aside, if I were personal friends with Captain Hastings (and I don’t think I ever would be), I’ve got some concerns about his romance. Having married off Tommy and Tuppence at the end of The Secret Adversary, Christie decides to tie up Hastings’ love life too – she confesses in her autobiography that, although she had envisaged Poirot and Hastings as a kind of Holmes and Watson combination, in fact she had already got rather bored of Hastings and was hoping to tie up his loose ends and despatch him to South America for good. Maybe that need to neatly despatch him is the reason for some inconsistencies with his fondness for the gentler sex. Consider his reflection about women on the first page of the book: “Now I am old fashioned. A woman, I consider, should be womanly. I have no patience with the modern neurotic girl who jazzes from morning to night, smokes like a chimney, and uses language which would make a Billingsgate fishwoman blush!” Hot on the heels of The Secret Adversary, this description fairly well encapsulates some aspects of the character of Tuppence – so we could assume he wouldn’t like her. However, this very character turns out to be none other than his beloved Cinderella. When she re-enters his life, at the scene of the crime, she acts just like the female detective of the previous book, with clever small talk, and a desire to poke her nose where it’s not needed. When Hastings reprimands her for what he calls her “ghoulish excitement”, she’s not having any of it. “Your idea of a woman is someone who gets on a chair and shrieks if she sees a mouse. That’s all prehistoric”. Yet this is the girl with whom he becomes besotted. “I strolled down to the beach and watched the bathers, without feeling energetic enough to join them. I rather fancied that Cinderella might be disporting herself among them in some wonderful costume, but I saw no signs of her.” Fantasising about her in a bathing costume? That’s probably soft porn for 1923. In the end, Cinderella turns out to be a girl of terrific bravery, who (in part) saves the day at the end of the book – so, again, very Tuppence-like. I trust Hastings will come to terms with his reappraisal of the kind of girl he likes.

As in the other early Christies, I again came across a few words, phrases and references that frankly had me bamboozled, so in case they do the same to you, let’s have a look at them. At the start of the book, Hastings is making his way back home from Paris by train: “I had made a somewhat hurried departure from the hotel and was busy assuring myself that I had duly collected all my traps, when the train started”. All my what? Was he expecting a mouse-infestation at his destination? I’ve scoured “trap” in my OED very thoroughly and can’t find a definition that fits. I presume he means “suitcases” but it’s just an assumption. If you know better, please let me know! When discussing the fact that the murderer wore gloves: “Of course he did” said Poirot contemptuously. “…the veriest amateur of an English Mees knows it – thanks to the publicity the Bertillon system has been given in the press.” Woh, hold on there. Veriest? Well apparently that was a superlative form of very back in the 17th century but even in 1923 its use would have been severely archaic. An English Mees? Again the OED doesn’t help. But someone else has asked about this on a website and the response was that a mees – in Belgium, no less – is the name of a tit (bird variety). So I guess today we might say “even a tiny bird would know it”. But the Bertillon system? Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914) was the French criminologist who invented the system of identification of criminals by anthropometric measurements, fingerprints, and so on. So now you know.

Mlle Daubreuil catches Hastings’ attention in many ways, not all of them of the purest. After a conversation with her, he says “she turned and ran back up the road, looking like a modern Atalanta”. Who? Obviously I’m not that well versed in Z-list Greek mythology celebrities. When Atalanta was born, her father wanted a son, so she was left on a mountain top to die. But she was raised by a family of bears, so ended up a fierce hunter who fought like bears, and who took an oath of virginity to the Goddess Artemis. So in all honesty she probably wouldn’t have been a lot of fun.

At one stage, Poirot and Hastings return to England to visit the Palace Theatre Coventry (I shan’t tell you why – if you’ve read the book you’ll know why, and if you haven’t, it will spoil it for you.) But there is no Palace Theatre in Coventry. In the early 1920s, Coventry boasted the Hippodrome Theatre and the Opera House. There was also the Alexandra, but that was primarily a cinema. So I guess this is just a bit of Christie whimsy. Hastings hates the show, because he’s too much of a snob for Music Hall, noting that there was a comedian trying to be George Robey and failing. Well I do know who George Robey was – Google it if you don’t. But he also describes an act called the Dulcibella Kids as having short fluffy skirts and immense Buster Brown bows. I’m afraid that reference passed me by. Buster Brown was an American comic strip character (who wore a smart suit with huge bows) whose adventures were published from 1902 until about 1921. But after that he lived on, in film, radio and even TV until the 1950s. Never heard of him. Anyway, when they’d finished, the Dulcibella Kids received “a full meed of applause”. A meed? Again, that’s a new one on me. It was mainly used in the 16th century to mean a reward, but according to the OED it came back into fashion in the early 20th century to mean “a fair share of”. Who says you don’t learn stuff from this blog? So educational. Finally, a character under stress is described – by a doctor – as being in danger of suffering from brain fever. Medically, this wouldn’t pass muster nowadays, but it’s interesting to see how much more knowledge we have of neurology over the past 90 years.

n my blog about The Secret Adversary I did a little financial analysis on the present day values of the sums Tommy and Tuppence were being paid. In this book, Poirot notes that Mme Daubreuil has paid in to her bank account a sum of 200,000 francs over the previous six weeks – I’ll leave you to deduce whether it was legally or otherwise acquired. But if you were curious, that translates to about £170,000 in today’s money. You could buy an awful lot of baguettes and onions with that.

As usual, I offer you my at-a-glance summary for The Murder on the Links:

Publication Details: 1923. My copy is a Pan paperback, published in 1971. According to Wikipedia, so it must be right, Christie dedicated it thus: “TO MY HUSBAND. A fellow enthusiast for detective stories and to whom I am indebted for much helpful advice and criticism”. In 1923 she was still happily married to Archie Christie. Interestingly, that dedication doesn’t appear in my copy.

How many pages until the first death: 12. Great that you get stuck in nice and early. There are two more deaths too, but are they murders…?

Funny lines out of context: Disappointingly few:
“Jumping up…let down the window and stuck her head out, withdrawing it a moment later with the brief and forcible ejaculation…”
“”My only aunt!” She exclaimed”.
“”I would hardly have credited it,“ said Poirot thoughtfully, “but women are very unexpected”.

Memorable characters:
This is probably the book’s weakest aspect. I don’t think any of the major characters are particularly memorable – maybe Cinderella, because she’s different from the other rather stuffy people in it. Oh and M. Giraud from the Sûreté. Anyone trying to patronise Poirot has got to be interesting.

Christie the Poison expert:
Poisons don’t really play a part in this book, although there is an interesting observation about the properties of Primula. “The gardening gloves Auguste admitted to be his. He wore them when handling a certain species of primula plant which was poisonous to some people.” I wonder if the people behind the cheese spread know this?

Class/social issues of the time:

The book was published just five years after the end of the First World War, so wartime memories were still vivid for many people. Hastings reminds us that he was invalided out of the army after the Somme, and it’s interesting to see his instantly patriotic reaction when faced with any implied criticism of his homeland, even in a throwaway line. When the servant Françoise is answering M. Hautet’s questions she says: ““One could see that he was on the brink of a crisis of the nerves. And who could wonder, with an affair conducted in such a fashion? No reticence, no discretion. Style anglais, without doubt!” I bounded indignantly in my seat, but the examining magistrate was continuing his questions, undistracted by side issues.”

The book contains some of the classic Christie distrust of foreigners but not as much as in others – maybe the fact that it is set in France made it less appropriate. Nevertheless there is still a lot of suspicious mutterings about interlopers from Santiago and obvious-looking foreigners in railway stations.

Perhaps more interestingly – and I have to be careful here not to give away too much of the plot – there is a lot of moralising about the sins of the fathers; with specific reference to choosing a suitable person to marry, and avoiding an unsuitable one. “”A truly beautiful young girl – modest, devout, all that she should be. One pities her, for, though she may know nothing of the past, a man who wants to ask for her hand in marriage must necessarily inform himself, and then –“ The commissary shrugged his shoulders cynically. “But it would not be her fault!” I cried, with rising indignation. “No. But what will you? A man is particular about his wife’s antecedents”.

Classic denouement:
Christie has been dropping so many plot twists all along that it’s a little hard to identify quite where the denouement begins. The explanation for the second death starts over fifty pages from the end, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as solving the crime is concerned. The final eight pages explain all. If you’re hoping for Poirot to call all the suspects in to a big room where he slowly identifies the murderer, you’ll be disappointed.

Happy ending? Certainly. Hastings has met his Cinderella, and although we don’t know what will happen next, the augurs look good. And Poirot does his marriage counselling act on another character, with the implication that another couple will live happy ever after.

Did the story ring true? There are of course coincidences in the story as a whole, but at no point did I question the general credibility of the book – and I found the rivalry between Giraud and Poirot extremely believable.

Overall satisfaction rating: 9/10. The constant twists and turns lead you up and down garden paths and everywhere but the truth, and are really entertaining. Plus I had the added excitement of having completely forgotten whodunit – and I didn’t get it right on this re-read. An undervalued little gem of a book.

Thanks for reading my blog of The Murder on the Links, and if you’ve read it too, I’d love to know what you think. Please just add a comment – but don’t tell us whodunit! Next up in the Agatha Christie Challenge we are still in 1923, but a few months later with Christie’s first published selection of short stories under the title Poirot Investigates. Once again, we will meet Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings setting their combined minds to solve a number of devious crimes. It will be interesting to compare short stories with a full length novel. I’ll blog my thoughts about it in a few weeks’ time. In the meantime, please read it too then we can compare notes! Happy sleuthing!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

The Agatha Christie Challenge – The Secret Adversary (1922)

Posted on by

STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which we meet Tommy and Tuppence, who form The Young Adventurers Ltd, and through a combination of hard work and good luck prevent the evil Mr Brown from capturing secret documents that could cause a world war. Don’t worry if you haven’t read the book yet, its big secret is the identity of Mr Brown and I’m hardly likely to tell you that now, am I?

So, greetings to Mr Thomas Beresford and Miss Prudence Cowley, who, as Tommy and Tuppence, are full of daring and spirit, consider everything a jolly jape and a wizard wheeze, were bred to enjoy the finest things in life but are down on their uppers and haven’t a bean to scrape together, old bean. But with Agatha Christie’s appreciation of post-war youngsters getting their act together and plundering their dressing-up box of resourcefulness, T&T are bound to succeed right from the start.

Having chosen an old man as detective in her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Christie went for a completely different tack with this her second. Whilst Poirot is well into his seventies, T&T are described as having “united ages” which “would certainly not have totalled forty-five”. They’d both survived the First World War; Tommy, heroically injured in both France and Mesopotamia, “stuck in Egypt till the Armistice happened”, finally demobbed and job-hunting ever since; and Tuppence, a VAD nurse and a driver in London, a fine example of an upper middle class gel doing her bit. They’re frightfully good at the smart and swanky small talk of the era, and have a very playful relationship, which Christie conveys with a great sense of fun and animation in their conversations. Like John Cavendish in Styles, Tommy describes his late mother as “the mater”, and they both come from good, if impoverished, stock, with Tuppence’s father being an Archdeacon – although Tommy has a rich, but distanced, uncle. It’s clear that Christie really loves her new characters – and she writes about them so enthusiastically that we fall in love with them too.

In her autobiography, Christie reveals the trigger for writing this book. “Two people were talking at a table nearby, discussing somebody called Jane Fish. It struck me as a most entertaining name. I went away with the name in my mind. Jane Fish. That, I thought, would make a good beginning to a story – a name overheard at a tea-shop – an unusual name, so that whoever heard it remembered it. A name like Jane Fish – or perhaps Jane Finn would be even better. I settled for Jane Finn – and started writing straight away.” Inspired by the notion that overhearing one name can set a chain of events going that could overthrow civilisation as we know it, Christie embarks on a sequence of outrageously far-fetched coincidences necessary to set up the story. Let’s consider them.

Coincidence #1, that Jane Finn, a name plucked out of the obscure recesses of Tuppence’s brain, is the name of the girl who was given the secret paperwork.
Coincidence #2, that Tuppence knew intimately the pensionnat in Paris where Whittington wants to send her (Madame Colombier’s in the Avenue de Neuilly).
Coincidence #3, that Tommy knows “Mr Carter” from his days in the Intelligence Corps in France.
Coincidence #4, that of all the Jane Finns in the world, both Carter and Hersheimmer – in reply to Tommy’s vague newspaper advertisement – are thinking of the same Jane Finn as T&T and Mr Brown. I know that it’s almost 100 years ago, but, as an indication, I did a little research and there are currently 28 Jane Finns on Facebook alone.

Now that IS a coincidence. Perhaps the plotline didn’t seem quite so fanciful back in 1922. By associating it, on the very first page, with the real-life story of the sinking of the Lusitania, just seven years before the book was published, and still vivid in many readers’ minds, maybe Christie gave it a sense of reality that it lacks today.

Something The Secret Adversary has in plentiful common with The Mysterious Affair at Styles is detail. In that first novel, the detail was in the plethora of clues that dripped from each page so that you could barely read a paragraph without having to go back and check up on all the new information you had amassed before progressing further. In Adversary, it’s all about adventure and activity. No pausing for reflection here, no time to consider what Poirot’s little grey cells might make of the situation; it’s all out action and hurtling from scrape to scrape. Christie’s dedication tells you precisely what she wants the reader to get out of this book: “To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure”. That feels a bit patronising to me; but as we know from the present day, our war veterans can, like Tommy, frequently find it difficult to find suitable employment, and for most people in the early 1920s, money was very tight, and I guess they didn’t have that much excitement in their lives. So Christie let her imagination run riot and came up with this fantasy of a crime novel, where our heroes hide behind curtains, pretend to be domestic servants, scour cliff-edges for hidden documents and play up against Bolsheviks and other foreign agitators, all in the cause of tracking down the elusive Jane Finn and uncovering the true identity of Mr Brown.

And all this is set in the context of the growing relationship between Tommy and Tuppence, which Christie amusingly and rather tenderly allows to blossom under their very noses without them quite realising it. As the days pass and Tuppence hasn’t heard from Tommy (the last we read was that he had a sudden blow on the head), she gently realises how much she misses him. It starts off with her not enjoying the adventure so much without him: “for the first time, Tuppence felt doubtful of success. While they had been together she had never questioned it for a minute. Although she was accustomed to take the lead, and to pride herself on her quick-wittedness, in reality she had relied upon Tommy more than she realized at the time. There was something so eminently sober and clear-headed about him, his common sense and soundness of vision were so unvarying, that without him Tuppence felt much like a rudderless ship.”

Yet she makes excuses for how she feels. “”Little fool,” she would apostrophize herself, “don’t snivel. Of course you’re fond of him. You’ve known him all your life. But there’s no need to be sentimental about it.”” Thirty pages later, she still hasn’t heard from him: “Her eyes fell on a small snapshot of Tommy that stood on her dressing-table in a shabby frame. For a moment she struggled for self-control, and then abandoning all presence, she held it to her lips and burst into a fit of sobbing. “Oh, Tommy, Tommy,” she cried, “I do love you so—and I may never see you again….” At the end of five minutes Tuppence sat up, blew her nose, and pushed back her hair. “That’s that,” she observed sternly. “Let’s look facts in the face. I seem to have fallen in love—with an idiot of a boy who probably doesn’t care two straws about me.””

Meanwhile, how was Tommy faring? Circumstances require that he and Julius work together a lot, and when he discovers that Julius has proposed to Tuppence, Tommy has to undergo a lot of self-examination. “Tuppence and Julius! Well, why not? Had she not lamented the fact that she knew no rich men? Had she not openly avowed her intention of marrying for money if she ever had the chance? Her meeting with the young American millionaire had given her the chance—and it was unlikely she would be slow to avail herself of it. She was out for money. She had always said so. Why blame her because she had been true to her creed? Nevertheless, Tommy did blame her. He was filled with a passionate and utterly illogical resentment. It was all very well to SAY things like that—but a REAL girl would never marry for money. Tuppence was utterly cold-blooded and selfish, and he would be delighted if he never saw her again! And it was a rotten world!”

But when it looks as though the gang have murdered Tuppence, Tommy is on high alert with distress. “”Well, I’m darned!” said Julius. “Little Tuppence. She sure was the pluckiest little girl——” But suddenly something seemed to crack in Tommy’s brain. He rose to his feet. “Oh, get out! You don’t really care, damn you! You asked her to marry you in your rotten cold-blooded way, but I LOVED her. I’d have given the soul out of my body to save her from harm. I’d have stood by without a word and let her marry you, because you could have given her the sort of time she ought to have had, and I was only a poor devil without a penny to bless himself with. But it wouldn’t have been because I didn’t care!” “See here,” began Julius temperately. “Oh, go to the devil! I can’t stand your coming here and talking about ‘little Tuppence.’ Go and look after your cousin. Tuppence is my girl! I’ve always loved her, from the time we played together as kids. We grew up and it was just the same. I shall never forget when I was in hospital, and she came in in that ridiculous cap and apron! It was like a miracle to see the girl I loved turn up in a nurse’s kit——”” And so on. I think it’s fair to say, it’s love.

As usual when reading an early Christie, I found myself checking back to the dictionary and other online references to understand some of her words that have fallen out of general use. Tommy and Tuppence first bump into each at Dover Street tube station – where is that? I can reveal that it became Green Park station in 1933. Tuppence is wearing “a small bright green toque over her black bobbed hair”. I’m sure if you’re into fashion you understand that, but I’d never heard of a toque before – it’s a small hat without a projecting brim. On another occasion, Tommy interrupts her silent chain of thought, much to her annoyance, to which Tommy retorts “Shades of Pelmanism!” The Pelman in question was one Christopher Louis Pelman, founder of the Pelman Institute for the Scientific Development of Mind, Memory and Personality in London, in 1899. Pelmanism was his system of memory training, which also involved a game where you had to memorise the positions of matching pairs of cards, face-down on a table. Largely a distant memory itself nowadays, Pelmanism had some distinguished followers, including Rider Haggard, Robert Baden-Powell and Jerome K Jerome. “There may be trouble with the A.S.E.” says the German voice that Tommy hears from his hiding place when trying to track down Mr Brown. Five points to you if you know that the A.S.E. was the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, one of the “New Model” trade unions that developed in the 19th century, and whose name actually changed to the Amalgamated Engineering Union before the book had been published – Christie hadn’t kept up to date with the times there, score one against her.

Then there are a few nice phrases that we don’t see much today. When Tuppence decides to visit Sir James with Julius, this was to be her plan: “She would meet Julius, persuade him to her point of view, and they would beard the lion in his den.” How’s that? I’ve never heard that phrase before. The OED defines it as to “attack someone on his or her own ground or subject”, but by all accounts it goes back to the Book of Samuel and the story of David, a shepherd who pursued a lion that had stolen one of his sheep. David bravely seized the lion “by his beard” and killed him. So how come I’ve never come across that one before? And when Tommy and Julius discover a package of blank paper, Tommy suspects the use of sympathetic ink – say again? But apparently that was just another name for Invisible ink – I wonder why they used the word sympathetic? When Tommy writes to Mr Carter he says “something’s turned up that has given me a jar”. Given him a what? I think – but I’m not entirely certain – this is an 18th century usage meaning “given me a shock”. Fascinating use of language! But one phrase I did recognise – and I haven’t heard in years – comes when Julius tells Tommy “I must be going to Colney Hatch”. The Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle would also use that phrase. Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum opened in 1851, and the phrase became widely used as an alternative to “I must be going mad”.

I did a little interesting extrapolation of financial values at the time. Tuppence would be the first to accept that she’s very keen on money, so I thought it would be interesting to find out how much she’s working for. We don’t quite know how much blackmail money Whittington paid Tuppence when she visits him at the offices of Esthonia Glassware, but he was willing to pay £100 for her to spend three months doing nothing in Paris. £100 in 1922 is roughly the equivalent of £4000 today, so if he paid her that much money, no wonder T&T were eating in the most expensive restaurants to celebrate. Bizarrely, Carter’s suggested salary for their detective work was just £300 a year, to both Tommy and Tuppence, which equates to just £12000 each today, just about minimum wage level. It may not have been much, but at least there was equal pay for women, which would have been highly unlikely in 1922.

So here’s my regular at-a-glance summary for The Secret Adversary:

Publication Details: 1922. My copy is a Pan paperback, published in 1970.

How many pages until the first death: 105. That might feel quite a long wait, but solving a murder seems somehow less important in this book that tracking down Jane Finn and uncovering the identity of Mr Brown.

Funny lines out of context:
“The movies—of course! Your American word for the cinema.” This was relatively new technology – stupid people could be confused.

“Wonder what she’s been up to. Dogging Rita most likely.” Good Lord, that’s a surprise.

“Feeling more tongue-tied than ever, Tommy ejaculated “Oh!” again.” Not sure if that’s what he said or if it was a sound effect.

Any number of lines describing Julius and his gun:
“”I rather wish that fellow would come along,” said Julius. He patted his pocket. “Little William here is just aching for exercise!””

“Tommy kept a respectful silence. He was impressed by little William.”

“”And I tell you,” retorted Julius, “that Little Willie here is just hopping mad to go off!” The Russian wilted visibly. “You wouldn’t dare——” “Oh, yes, I would, son!””

“Little Willie and I will come behind.”

Memorable characters:
Tommy and Tuppence themselves are pretty memorable, and as this book introduces them it contains a fair amount of description and idly just watching them do stuff. Apart from them, the two major characters of Julius and Sir James are nicely realised – and poles apart – with Julius a very “in-your-face” rich American and Sir James a more dignified and aloof Brit.

Christie the Poison expert:
The first death comes as a result of administering chloral, or as the doctor first thought, an accidental overdose. It was actually chloral that formed the “knock-out” element of a traditional Mickey Finn. It’s not currently licensed for use, but it can be used as a sedative. You wouldn’t describe it as a poison though.

However, the second death is simply described as someone collapsing, “whilst an odour of bitter almonds filled the air.” That’d be cyanide poisoning.

Class/social issues of the time:
Christie goes into great detail about potential political subterfuge with the fallout over the secret papers, with much speculation about the Labour movement and how it would react. At the time of writing, Britain hadn’t yet experienced a Labour government, and the fear and distaste of these Bolshevik ruffians is palpable in Christie’s writing. There is a lot of concern about the behaviour of the trade unions, which Tommy turns into a joke when he doesn’t want to start work early in the morning: “My union, Tuppence, my union! It does not permit me to work before 11 a.m.” Some things don’t change, though – there is huge disapproval of socialists with money: “Put on a thick coat, that’s right. Fur lined? And you a Socialist!”
The secret document that T&T are trying to keep from Mr Brown could be used to bring down (and worse) the government. Mr Carter’s politics are clear. ““As a party cry for Labour it would be irresistible, and a Labour Government at this juncture would, in my opinion, be a grave disability for British trade, but that is a mere nothing to the REAL danger… Bolshevist gold is pouring into this country for the specific purpose of procuring a Revolution….”

Before Mr Brown is thwarted there is fear: “the 29th was the much-talked-of “Labour Day,” about which all sorts of rumours were running riot. Newspapers were getting agitated. Sensational hints of a Labour coup d’état were freely reported. The Government said nothing. It knew and was prepared. There were rumours of dissension among the Labour leaders. They were not of one mind. The more far-seeing among them realized that what they proposed might well be a death-blow to the England that at heart they loved. They shrank from the starvation and misery a general strike would entail, and were willing to meet the Government half-way. But behind them were subtle, insistent forces at work, urging the memories of old wrongs, deprecating the weakness of half-and-half measures, fomenting misunderstandings.” Once Mr Brown is defeated, “to most people the 29th, the much-heralded “Labour Day,” had passed much as any other day. Speeches were made in the Park and Trafalgar Square. Straggling processions, singing the Red Flag, wandered through the streets in a more or less aimless manner. Newspapers which had hinted at a general strike, and the inauguration of a reign of terror, were forced to hide their diminished heads. The bolder and more astute among them sought to prove that peace had been effected by following their counsels.”

Political extremists infiltrate the parties – when Carter asks Tommy to try to recognise some of the people in Mr Brown’s gang, we can see Christie’s distrust of anything other than True Blue. “You say two faces were familiar to you? One’s a Labour man, you think? Just look through these photos, and see if you can spot him.” A minute later, Tommy held one up. Mr. Carter exhibited some surprise. “Ah, Westway! Shouldn’t have thought it. Poses as being moderate. As for the other fellow, I think I can give a good guess.” He handed another photograph to Tommy, and smiled at the other’s exclamation. “I’m right, then. Who is he? Irishman. Prominent Unionist M.P. All a blind, of course. We’ve suspected it—but couldn’t get any proof.”

On a more mundane level, the class difference between, on the one hand, Tommy and Tuppence, and their soon to be long-term associate Albert, is clearly shown in their use of language. T&T are full of the swanky small talk, whereas Albert-speak is littered with “Lord!” and “Lumme!” and “Mark my words” and “Blest if I’d have known you! That rig-out’s top-hole.” Where T&T’s fantasies run to Lobster a l’américaine, Chicken Newberg, Sole Colbert or Sole á la Jeanette, Albert’s are firmly rooted in the shlock detective B-movies of the day. Some of the dramatic tension and humour of the story are created when people are engaged in activities outside their class – such as Tuppence in domestic service, or Julius shimmying up a tree.

There’s also an observation on what Christie might have termed the criminal class: “The man who came up the staircase with a furtive, soft-footed tread was quite unknown to Tommy. He was obviously of the very dregs of society. The low beetling brows, and the criminal jaw, the bestiality of the whole countenance were new to the young man, though he was a type that Scotland Yard would have recognized at a glance.” I expect his eyes were too close together too.

And we have the usual distrust of foreigners found in a Christie novel, but here with added terrorist/intrigue/post-war flavour, and Tommy is the chief recidivist:

When Tommy first receives Julius P Hersheimmer’s card, he asks “Do I smell a Boche?” When he observes “Number 14” in Mr Brown’s gang, he says “If that isn’t a Hun, I’m a Dutchman!” And during his “bluffing” altercation with Boris, after the latter, in pure schoolboy war comic language says “speak, you swine of an Englishman,” Tommy replies “that’s the worst of you foreigners. You can’t keep calm”.

Classic denouement: Fairly protracted and elongated, covering the best part of thirteen pages, and in three distinct phases – the truth about the identity of Jane Finn, the last minute heaping of suspicion onto an innocent person, and finally the revelation of the truth. It’s definitely an exciting read. The diary confessional element to the denouement gives it an additional dimension – it was a device Christie used again in (if I remember rightly) Crooked House.

Happy ending? Very. The blossoming romance of Tommy and Tuppence results in a ham-fisted proposal, and another couple also get engaged. Not only that, but there is much rejoicing in the fact that Mr Brown’s plot has been foiled, as this means there will be continued peace and not war – and you can’t get a much happier ending than that. Oh, and Tommy gets back in touch with his rich uncle who proves himself to be a nice old geezer, who with one wave of his financial magic wand, puts all T&T’s money troubles to rest: “In future I propose to make you an allowance—and you can look upon Chalmers Park as your home.”

Did the story ring true? There’s an enormous amount of coincidence, and T&T survive by the skin of their teeth. The fact that Mr Brown is revealed to be a man of extreme intelligence, overweening self-confidence but with the Achilles’ heel of insisting on writing a diary so that he can enjoy seeing his brilliance in writing, is, I think, highly believable.

Overall satisfaction rating: 7/10. I miss the traditional “murder mystery/whodunit” aspect in this book, and, like its predecessor, I find it a little over-frantic. But there’s much to enjoy and the characterisations of Tommy and Tuppence themselves make it worth reading alone.

Thanks for reading this summary of The Secret Adversary, and if you’ve read it too, I’d love to know what you think. Please just add a comment – but don’t tell the world who Mr Brown is! Next up in the Agatha Christie Challenge we move from 1922 to 1923, with the second appearance of Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings in The Murder on the Links. I read this when I was a very young man and can’t remember much about it, so I am looking forward to revisiting it. I’ll blog my thoughts about it in a few weeks’ time. In the meantime, why not read it too? Happy sleuthing!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

The Agatha Christie Challenge – The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

Posted on by

STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which we are introduced to Hercule Poirot, who solves the murder of a wealthy re-married widow by strychnine poisoning, wading through an inordinate number of clues and red herrings before finally coming to the truth. If you haven’t read the book yet, I promise I won’t tell you whodunit!

So we say Bonjour to M. Hercule Poirot, detective extraordinaire, with a number of silly francophone phrases like “Nom d’un nom d’un nom!” When he goes off on a rant, you almost expect him to break into a Morecambe and Wise-like “Sacré Beaujolais et Bon Appetit!” He is accompanied as ever by his faithful Hastings, who plods alongside his master like a keen but rather stupid bloodhound, sniffing out his beloved clues. And of course it is Hastings who narrates the story, as he (nearly) always does.

The book was written in 1916, but not published until 1920 (1921 in the UK). As such, it reveals a picture of privileged life in an Essex country manor during World War One, with a well-to-do family doing what they can for the war effort: saving scrap paper, working for the Voluntary Aid Detachment, milking cows, and so on. It also explains how Poirot and Hastings dovetail into their Christie-land relationship. Poirot was one of the refugees who had taken residence in the village of Styles St Mary “by the charity of that good Mrs Inglethorp” (soon to be the late Mrs Inglethorp). Captain Arthur Hastings was “invalided home from the Front; and after spending some months in a rather depressing Convalescent Home” chanced upon his boyhood friend John Cavendish, and thus came to stay with him at Styles, his mother’s home (that’s the aforementioned Mrs Inglethorp).

Hastings remembers Poirot at the height of his professional prowess: “a very famous detective…a marvellous little fellow…a funny little man, a great dandy, but wonderfully clever”. Inspector Japp is brought in to investigate the crime on behalf of the police and he instantly recognises Poirot as the detective with whom he worked in 1904, solving “the Abercrombie forgery case”. So depending on whether you take this book to date from 1916 or 1920, you’re looking at a period of 12-16 years earlier when Poirot was active in the Belgian police force; it’s hard to extrapolate Poirot’s age with any accuracy, and in her autobiography Christie regrets having made him so old at the beginning of her writing career! But Hastings does provide us with the classic description of Poirot’s appearance: “He was hardly more than five feet, four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible. I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound.” Maybe it is not a coincidence that the OED defines “eggheaded” as “(a) having an egg-shaped head; (b) colloq intellectual, highbrow” and that its usage dates from the early 20th century, around the time this book was published.

Poirot and Hastings are best buddies but they do sometimes have a prickly relationship. Hastings admits at one stage that he is “nursing a grudge against [my] friend’s high-handedness”. Here follows a typical conversation between them when the relationship is strained: “After lunch Poirot begged me to accompany him home. I consented rather stiffly. “You are annoyed, is it not so?” he asked anxiously, as we walked through the park. “Not at all,” I said coldly. “That is well. That lifts a great load from my mind.” This was not quite what I had intended. I had hoped that he would have observed the stiffness of my manner.” On another occasion, Hastings is trying to hurry Poirot along to interview a witness but the latter has slowed down to admire the symmetry of the flower beds: “”Yes, but this affair is more important.” “And how do you know that these fine begonias are not of equal importance?” I shrugged my shoulders. There was really no arguing with him if he chose to take that line.” Poirot always teases Hastings on affairs of the heart; in The ABC Murders he jokes with him about his fondness for pretty girls with auburn hair, and in The Mysterious Affair at Styles Hastings is instantly captivated a girl who has “great loose waves of…auburn hair”, to whom he proposes marriage on the spur of the moment, and who of course turns him down with “don’t be silly…you know you don’t want to!” Hastings reflects on the unsuccessful proposal with typical understatement: “Thinking over the interview, it struck me as being profoundly unsatisfactory.”

This being the fourth of Christie’s novels that I have re-read as part of the Agatha Christie Challenge, but the earliest to have been written, I am struck by the difference in writing style from the other three books. The Mysterious Affair at Styles stands out in two aspects. The first is that it contains an overwhelming number of clues and red herrings. Christie wrote the book in response to a bet from her friend Madge, “that the author, who had previously never written a book, could not compose a detective novel in which the reader would not be able to “spot” the murderer, although having access to the same clues as the detective” (from the dust jacket of the First Edition). It probably required the high level of facts and evidence within the book in order to satisfy the terms of the bet, but to the reader it’s almost overkill. To get the best out of this book you have to read it slowly and carefully, with frequent pauses for thought, consideration and reflection. If you read it like a throwaway paperback, everything in it just becomes a blur.

The second outstanding aspect is its style. Hastings’ narrative is very clinical, factual, almost journalistic (in a good sense) in its reporting, going into forensic detail about Poirot’s investigation and the clues he uncovers. In comparison with the later works, it feels formal and stilted. Where in other books, plot developments occur through conversation and observation, in this book you often get the feeling you are reading a witness statement: “I had arrived at Styles on the 5th of July. I come now to the events of the 16th and 17th of that month. For the convenience of the reader I will recapitulate the incidents of those days in as exact a manner as possible.” Simply waiting to meet Cynthia at the dispensary has a military police feel about it: “we were detained under suspicion by the hospital porter”. A major segment of the plot development takes place in a courtroom and several pages read more like court reports and transcripts than a novel. Whilst this provides good suspense – courtroom scenes are always exciting – the reader does miss out on the sense of a personal narrative. But then again, no doubt it helped Christie win her bet. The book also gives the reader direct access to some of the evidence – with floorplans of both Styles House and Mrs Inglethorp’s bedroom, and facsimile representations of jottings on the back of an envelope, a letter written by Mrs Inglethorp, and the writing on a torn scrap of paper. It encourages the reader to play a more active role in solving the crime, rather than just sitting back and letting Poirot do all the work for us. No lazy read, this.

It’s fascinating how language changes over a relatively short period of time. Given that this book was written 99 years ago, as I was reading it I noticed a few words and references that completely bewildered me. Do any of these five phrases mean anything to you?

1 – As suggested earlier, the character of Cynthia is first seen wearing a VAD uniform. The Voluntary Aid Detachment was a unit that provided field nursing services, mainly in hospitals in the UK, the majority of volunteers being women and girls. Christie herself was a VAD nurse, as was Tuppence Beresford, who we’ll be meeting in the next book in the Agatha Christie Challenge. It’s probably to my great shame that I’d never heard of this fine bunch of people.

2 – We all know the saying that someone’s walked over my grave but I’ve never heard “as if a goose were walking over my grave,” as Mrs Inglethorp remarks. I’ve read that the derivation of that comes from a back-formation of goose bumps or goose pimples, but I also wonder if there might be a connection with the more common phrase “a ghost walking over one’s grave”.

3 – Poirot says if Inglethorp is guilty he will hang him “as high as Haman”. Never heard that before. It refers to a Bible story in the Book of Esther, where Haman builds a really high gallows so that when he hangs his enemy it becomes a major spectacle – however, he gets hanged instead. Book of Esther, Chapter seven if you want to look it up.

4 – Miss Howard refers to the detectives swarming about the house as “a lot of Paul Prys”. Paul Pry was a comical busybody and nosey parker in a play of the same name that first appeared in 1825, and continued to be popular until the 1870s.

5 – When Poirot exclaims to himself “triple pig!” I have no idea what he’s on about, unless it’s a variation on something like “cochon d’un cochon d’un cochon”. Really the man talks very strangely sometimes.

So here’s my at-a-glance summary for The Mysterious Affair at Styles:

Publication Details: 1920. My copy is an American print, Bantam paperback, published in 1970. I bought it from a second hand stall on a summer holiday in Sorrento, if I remember rightly, in 1978.

How many pages until the first death: 25. Just the one death.

Funny lines out of context: Not very many. In fact the most insightful line is a serious observation from Poirot: “one may live in a big house and yet have no comfort”.
“Mr. Wells was a pleasant man of middle-age, with keen eyes, and the typical lawyer’s mouth.”
“As I walked away, I met an aged rustic, who leered at me cunningly.” One of Shakespeare’s rude mechanicals perhaps?
“He tried several [keys], twisting and turning them with a practiced hand, and finally uttering an ejaculation of satisfaction.”
“”Silly ass!” I ejaculated.”

Memorable characters:
Mary Cavendish is quite a complex character, standing up for herself and being emotionally forthright. Evelyn Howard is described as having “a deep voice, almost manly in its stentorian tones, and had a large sensible square body” – possibly a forerunner of The Mousetrap’s Miss Casewell?

Christie the Poison expert:
Poison runs through this book like the River Thames. The murderer’s choice is strychnine, but not only is it administered to kill the victim, it’s also distilled, bought at a shop, found in other medicines and is kept in the dispensary.

Lawrence uses it to accuse Bauerstein: “poisons are his hobby, so of course he sees them everywhere”.

But Lawrence too is suspected of dabbling in the poison: “I suppose I must have taken up the bottle”…”Did you abstract any of the contents of the bottle?”… “I once studied to be a doctor. Such things naturally interest me”…”So poisons “naturally interest” you, do they?”

There’s technical talk: “Strychnine has an unusually bitter taste. It can be detected in a solution of 1 in 70,000, and can only be disguised by some strongly flavoured substance.”

There’s comparison talk: “I dare say he soaked fly paper, as I told you at the beginning.” “That is arsenic – not strychnine”, said Poirot mildly. “What does that matter? Arsenic would put poor Emily out of the way just as well as strychnine”.

Even Poirot gets fed up with it: “one thing does strike me. No doubt it has struck you too…that there is altogether too much strychnine about this case.”

Class/social issues of the time:
The Styles household is a very upper class affair; a household where a grown man refers to his mother as “the mater”; a household where married couples still have separate bedrooms.

This is how Hastings describes the manner in which the household goes about the business of mourning: “Under the circumstances, we were naturally not a cheerful party. The reaction after a shock is always trying, and I think we were all suffering from it. Decorum and good breeding naturally enjoined that our demeanour should be much as usual, yet I could not help wondering if this self-control were really a matter of great difficulty. There were no red eyes, no signs of secretly indulged grief. I felt that I was right in my opinion that Dorcas was the person most affected by the personal side of the tragedy. I pass over Alfred Inglethorp, who acted the bereaved widower in a manner that I felt to be disgusting in its hypocrisy.”

When Poirot and Hastings are considering the behaviour of Mary Cavendish, arguing with her mother-in-law, Poirot notes “it was an astonishing thing for a woman of her breeding to do.”

There’s also an argument with her husband, where Mary reveals her independence, but which also reveals the way a woman was meant to behave in those days: “”Am I to understand that you will continue to see Bauerstein against my express wishes?” “If I choose.” “You defy me?” “No, but I deny your right to criticize my actions. Have you no friends of whom I should disapprove?” John fell back a pace. The colour ebbed slowly from his face. “What do you mean?” he said, in an unsteady voice. “You see!” said Mary quietly. “You do see, don’t you, that you have no right to dictate to me as to the choice of my friends?” John glanced at her pleadingly, a stricken look on his face. “No right? Have I no right, Mary?” he said unsteadily. He stretched out his hands. “Mary——” For a moment, I thought she wavered. A softer expression came over her face, then suddenly she turned almost fiercely away. “None!”

There is the usual mistrust of foreigners found in Christie books. Dorcas the maid, who is seen as a stalwart of traditional values says as an aside: “I don’t hold with foreigners as a rule”. Hastings takes an instant dislike to the foreign-surnamed Dr Bauerstein: “The sinister face of Dr. Bauerstein recurred to me unpleasantly. A vague suspicion of everyone and everything filled my mind. Just for a moment I had a premonition of approaching evil.” He hates spending time with him: “My evening was utterly and entirely spoilt by the presence of Dr. Bauerstein.” John Cavendish also uses racial language to criticise Bauerstein: “I’ve had enough of the fellow hanging about. He’s a Polish Jew, anyway.” An exchange between Poirot and Hastings on Bauerstein includes the lines: “A very clever man—a Jew, of course.” “The blackguard!” I cried indignantly.”

And whilst on the subject of language that’s considered offensive today but was run-of-the-mill then, Dorcas says that in one of their dressing-up games evenings (they sound simply hilarious – not) there was some difficulty removing stage make-up: “Burnt corks they use mostly—though ’tis messy getting it off again. Miss Cynthia was a n***** once, and, oh, the trouble she had.””

It’s also an interesting to note that in 1916 a perfectly respectable reason for buying over-the-counter strychnine was to poison a dog. Can you imagine someone saying that in a shop today?!

Classic denouement: About as classic as it gets, basically covering the final two chapters (twenty pages) with Poirot holding a little réunion in the salon, and revealing the name of the murderer in a flurry of panache with the final two words of the penultimate chapter. Every red herring is sorted out, every clue is dismissed or validated.

Happy ending? Certainly! Two happy couples in fact.

Did the story ring true? I find it slightly hard to believe the instance of one character impersonating another, but apart from that all the jigsaw puzzle pieces fit nicely together.

Overall satisfaction rating: Perhaps a surprisingly low 5/10. It’s a clever book, and a challenging book, but I think it’s one of the least satisfying to read as a piece of detective escapism. And that’s primarily what you want from a Christie.

So that’s my little summary of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and if you’ve read it too, I’d love to know what you think. Please just add a comment – but don’t give the whodunit game away! Next up in the Agatha Christie Challenge, and continuing in chronological order, it’s the first appearance of Tommy and Tuppence in The Secret Adversary. There have been recent TV and stage adaptations so you might be sick of it, but give the book a try, my memory is that it’s an entertaining and quite exciting read. I’m looking forward to finding out if I’m right, and I’ll blog my thoughts about it in a few weeks’ time. Thanks for reading, and happy sleuthing!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

The Agatha Christie Challenge – The ABC Murders (1936)

Posted on by

STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which Hercule Poirot is challenged by a serial murderer to solve apparently random killings in an alphabetical sequence, the only clue being that an ABC railway guide is always found near the body. And, like before, don’t worry, you can read this without finding out whodunit!

If you’ve read my earlier Agatha Christie blogs, gentle reader, you will be aware that this was the third Christie I read as a kid and the first of those to feature Hercule Poirot. I don’t think at that time I’d seen any film or TV adaptation of a Poirot book so had absolutely no preconceptions as to how he’d look or behave. What you quickly pick up reading the book is his vanity regarding his hair colour and his moustaches (always moustaches with Poirot, never just one moustache) – his love of symmetry, symptomatic of clarity of thought I suspect, and the fact that he is fully aware of all his idiosyncrasies: “I am like the prima donna!” he says in Chapter One. Re-reading The ABC Murders I was struck by the difference of approach of Christie’s two major sleuths. Miss Marple (as seen in A Pocket Full of Rye and At Bertram’s Hotel) is very quiet. She listens, she considers, she assembles thoughts in her mind but rarely thinks out loud. By the time she comes out with some devastatingly accurate dissection of a crime, it’s already fully formed and reasoned in her brain.

Poirot, on the other hand, thinks out loud all the time. He hardly does anything silently. He experiments with his suspects by splashing out wayward accusations to see how they react. He exercises his famous little grey cells in open banter with his friend and narrator, Captain Hastings, whom he teases for the latter’s partiality to a pretty girl with auburn hair. Poirot can’t resist the occasional portentous pronouncement. Chapter One ends: “You are in error, my friend. You do not understand my meaning. A robbery would be a relief since it would dispossess my mind of the fear of something else.” “Of what?” “Murder”, said Hercule Poirot.” And whereas you feel Miss Marple offers her sleuthing advice out of an altruistic sense of justice, Poirot and Hastings are in it for the challenge, almost for the craic. “If you could order a crime as one orders a dinner” asks Poirot, “what would you choose?” “Let’s review the menu” replies Hastings. “Robbery? Forgery? No, I think not. Rather too vegetarian. It must be murder, red-blooded murder, with trimmings, of course.” The last line of the book reads: “So, Hastings – we went hunting once more, did we not? Vive le sport”. It’s no coincidence that Poirot’s main gripe with the murderer appears to be that the crimes committed were “not sporting”.

In 1936 Christie was absolutely at the top of her game. She was 46 years old, this was her 18th full length novel and the 11th to feature Poirot. This is a highly inventive story, with the apparent identity of its murderer seemingly obvious right from the start (you suspect that this could be like Christie’s version of a Columbo TV film, knowing the identity of the murderer and then working back to see how Columbo solved the crime) but it’s only at the end that you realise that both the apparent murderer and the reader have both been led up the garden path. Structurally too, it’s inventive, with its two different narrators – not just Hastings, but also several chapters entitled “(Not from Capt Hastings’ personal narrative)”. There’s a vast amount of smoke and mirrors, much obfuscation from the criminal mind, committing murders for no reason than to obscure the truth, and it’s written with a great sense of pace and excitement, as you wonder just how far down the alphabet you’re going to get before Poirot works it all out.

Class issues play a major part in this book, with Hastings proving himself to be a complete snob – I’m not sure Hastings comes out of this book as all that decent a chap, actually. There’s much condescension about cheapness and commonness (of things and people) and a huge amount of xenophobia too. There are also many references to Christie’s favourite blanket theme that murderers are mad, with one of the suspects confessing that they had dreamed that they had committed the crimes. The Assistant Commissioner has no qualms about confronting the issue of mental incapacity: “In my day if a man was mad he was mad and we didn’t look about for scientific terms to soften it down”.

It’s definitely a book of its time in other ways – in that there are a number of words and phrases that are frankly meaningless today. One of the witnesses at the murder in Andover is a platelayer – a term that I have managed to go my entire life without having come across – that is, a person employed in laying, repairing and renewing plates on a tramway or railway (according to my OED). Dr. Thompson, who provides psychological insight into the criminal mind, is described as an alienist, a term that I am sure was already on its way out by the time this book was published (my OED suggests mid-19th century for that one). Miss Merrion of the Ginger Cat café is described as wearing “various fichus”, of which the OED says “a triangular piece of muslin, lace or the like, worn by women around the neck and shoulders, and formerly also over the head (mid-18th century). I guess she is an old-fashioned sort of character. Betty Barnard’s parents are proud of their snuggery – I’d heard of a snug but never a snuggery – it’s largely the same thing. Paranoia was referred to as paranoea – an early 18th century spelling; and who on earth today uses the word dugout to describe (OED again) “a person of outdated appearance or ideas, specifically a retired officer recalled to service” (19th century slang). I can’t believe that the young me sat reading this around 1970 with my dictionary by my side. I must have been thoroughly confused.

As far as matching the murderer’s personality with the murders is concerned, Mrs Christie does give us some genuinely good clues along the way, almost bending over backwards to show how someone with a penchant for doing A, would be the kind of person to commit these crimes. “We are confronted here by an unknown personage” says Poirot. “He is in the dark and seeks to remain in the dark. But in the very nature of things he cannot help throwing light upon himself”. Mrs Christie hides the culprit in plain sight, yet I’m pretty sure that for the most part the identity of the murderer comes as a surprise. I can’t remember if I guessed it when I was young – I don’t think I did. This time round, I had already remembered who the murderer was before I started reading, so it’s hard for me to judge.

Just as Chief Inspector Davy in At Bertram’s Hotel was partial to an old song from the musicals, Poirot gives us another musical quotation: “some of the time I love a blonde who comes from Eden by way of Sweden”. It’s from the song “Some Sort of Somebody” from Kern and Janis’ 1915 musical Very Good Eddie, not something that most people would have at the forefront of their minds nowadays. But not only does Mrs Christie make reference to such popular songs, she even refers to her own books. When Poirot and Hastings are discussing what makes the perfect crime, Poirot outlines a case where four people sit down to play bridge, and by the end of the evening the man by the fire is found dead – precisely the scenario for Cards on The Table, which would be published a few months later. Even further into the future, Japp teases Poirot that he will end up investigating his own death – have you read Curtain yet? No matter, that comes later on in the oeuvre!

So here’s my at-a-glance summary for The ABC Murders:

Publication Details: 1936. My copy is a third impression of the Fontana publication, from October 1967.

How many pages until the first death: 11. And they keep on coming at regular intervals.

Funny lines out of context:
A conversation between Poirot and Hastings where Poirot describes how choosy he is now over which crimes to investigate: “For Hercule Poirot nowadays, only the cream of crime.” “Has there been much cream about?”
“Is there anything – queer going on, sir?” “Yes my child. There is – something queer going on”.
“I hastily presented the strawberries to a small boy who seemed highly astonished and faintly suspicious. Poirot added the lettuce, thus setting the seal on the child’s bewilderment.”
“A man in drink can be like a ravening wolf.”
“In those hot dog days even his moustaches drooped”.
Hundreds of stories from imaginative people who had “seen a man looking very queer and rolling his eyes”.

Memorable characters: Well, not every book is lucky enough to have its own Alexander Bonaparte Cust. Not only is it a name to conjure with, but his odd presence cropping up throughout the book as the obvious murderer makes him stand out. It’s the juxtaposition between his grandiose name and his insignificant character that makes him interesting. Whilst Mrs Christie is happy to brandish the word “madman” around liberally throughout the book, Cust really does appear to be mad at times; although his final breakdown is said to be due to an epileptic fit.

Christie the Poison expert: No poison here. It’s all bumpings-off and knifings.

Class/social issues of the time:
Hastings thinks that everything about Mrs Ascher is beneath him. “The murder of an old woman who kept a little tobacco shop seemed, somehow, sordid and uninteresting”. He is further dismissive of the case: “This sordid murder of an old woman in a back street shop was so like the usual type of crime reported in the newspapers that it failed to strike a significant note.” When Poirot intimates that “she must have been beautiful once”, Hastings’ reaction is: “Really? I murmured incredulously”. Of her neighbours, Hastings observes: “There were a certain number of small shops interspersed between private houses of the poorer class. I judged that ordinarily there would be a fair number of people passing up and down – mostly people of the poorer classes”. He is dismissive of her possessions: “A couple of old worn blankets on the bed – a little stock of well-darned underwear in a drawer – cookery recipes in another – a paper-backed novel entitled The Green Oasis – a pair of new stockings – pathetic in their cheap shininess – a couple of china ornaments – a Dresden shepherd much broken, and a blue and yellow spotted dog – a black raincoat and a woolly jumper hanging on pegs – such were the worldly possessions of the late Alice Ascher.”

Despite Hastings’ pomposity about the Aschers, they themselves have their own class and social mores issues. Mr. Ascher was a bully and a cad in his treatment of his wife, frequently threatening violence. But could divorce have been an option? ““Your aunt never thought of freeing herself by legal means from this persecution?” “Well you see, he was her husband, sir, and you couldn’t get away from that.” The girl spoke simply but with finality.”

Christie was quick to equate cheapness with class and/or quality issues. Of the photograph of Betty: “Her hair had evidently recently been permed, it stood out from her head in a mass of rather frizzy curls. The smile was arch and artificial. It was certainly not a face that you could call beautiful, but it had an obvious and cheap prettiness”. But Betty too had issues: “Is she likely to have confided in any one? The girl at the café, for instance?” “I don’t think that’s likely. Betty couldn’t bear the Higley girl. She thought her common.”

And there’s a massive wave of distrust of foreigners. Riddell’s response to Poirot’s questioning: “Told it to the blarsted police, I ‘ave, and now I’ve got to spit it all out again to a couple of blarsted foreigners”. When Poirot asks Inspector Crome whether Betty was a pretty girl he mistakes his motivation for asking. “As to that I’ve no information,” said Inspector Crome with a hint of withdrawal. His manner said: “Really – these foreigners! All the same!” Even Poirot himself seems to understand the distrust. When thinking out loud about why ABC is committing these crimes, he wonders: “Is his motive direct personal hatred of me, of Hercule Poirot? Does he challenge me in public because I have (unknown to myself) vanquished him somewhere in the course of my career? Or is his animosity impersonal – directed against a foreigner?” When Cust is overhearing the to-ings and fro-ings of the public in Princess Gardens, Torquay, someone suggests “awful…do you think it was anything to do with the Chinese? Wasn’t the waitress in a Chinese café…” One of the traits Poirot sees in the person he accuses of being the murderer is “the partiality for England that had showed itself very faintly in the jeer at foreigners”. And indeed Poirot does get branded the rather splendid insult: “you unutterable little jackanapes of a foreigner!”

Two other observations about the class/social issues in this book; when Lily and Tom are discussing the policing of the case, he remarks that Inspector Crome is “a bit quiet and ladida – not my idea of a detective”. “That’s Lord Trenchard’s new kind” said Lily, with respect. “Some of them are ever so grand.” Trenchard had been the Metropolitan Police Commissioner from 1931 to 1935, and amongst his reforms had been greater education and training for police officers.

And we get to find out about Poirot’s opinion of foxhunting in a conversation between him and Hastings. “It is very terrible that, Hastings.” He was silent a minute. “You hunt the fox here?” “I don’t. I’ve never been able to afford to hunt. And I don’t think there’s much hunting in this part of the world.” “I meant in England generally. A strange sport. The waiting at the covert side – then they sound the tally-ho, do they not? – and the run begins – across the country – over the hedges and ditches – and the fox he runs – and sometimes he doubles back – but the dogs – “ “Hounds!” “- hounds are on his trail, and at last they catch him and he dies – quickly and horribly.” “I suppose it does sound cruel, but really – “ “The fox enjoys it? Do not say les bêtises, my friend.” Possibly Christie sets this up as a strong example of just how much a foreigner Poirot is, by not sharing in the simple harmless English pastime of foxhunting. (I’m being ironic here). Interesting Hastings only doesn’t hunt because he can’t afford it. You sense otherwise he’d throw himself into it with ruthless abandon.

Classic denouement: Absolutely! A really exciting read. All the suspects are gathered together, and Poirot makes a long and intentionally misleading speech so that we suspect a number of people of doing the deed. When the truth is revealed, the accused lashes out and attempts suicide but Poirot foils it. We even discover that Poirot tells a couple of porkies just to get the accused to confess. Great stuff.

Happy ending? Yes! The much-wronged Mr Cust has an improved social status, income and finally starts to enjoy life. And romance blossoms between two of the other suspects.

Did the story ring true? Although it’s highly far-fetched it really does ring true. You could easily imagine how someone with a lot of chutzpah and a deeply flawed personality could set up a similar crime.

Overall satisfaction rating: 10/10 – can’t see any reason to award it fewer points. A classic!

I hope you enjoyed this little rundown of The ABC Murders, and if you’ve read it too, I’d love to know your thoughts about it. Please just add a comment – but don’t give the whodunit game away please! From now on in the Agatha Christie Challenge, we’re going back to the books in chronological order. So the next on the list is Christie’s first Hercule Poirot book – and indeed her first book of all – The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Please feel free to catch up on that one, and I’ll be blogging my thoughts about it in a few weeks’ time. Thanks for reading, and happy sleuthing!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

The Agatha Christie Challenge – At Bertram’s Hotel (1965)

Posted on by

STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which Miss Marple assists the police in solving the assault of a forgetful cleric, discovering the mastermind of a sequence of high value robberies and identifying the true identity of the murderer of a hotel employee, all in a seemingly respectable and old-fashioned London hotel. And, like before, don’t worry, I won’t spill the beans about whodunit!

At Bertram’s Hotel was the second Christie I read as a kid, and I think the main reason I chose it from the bookshop was because I liked the cover illustration! The elegantly made-up ladies’ hand, concealing an expensive looking chocolate and holding a bullet as though it was a cigarette probably came across to the young Master Chrisparkle as being somewhere on the sexy/sophisticated scale. It makes a great contrast with the blurry, eerie night-time illustration of the hotel in the background, with just the lone commissionaire outside – almost as though he was going to do battle with the sophisticated lady. Not an inaccurate interpretation of events, as it happens.

The main character in this book is really the hotel itself. Mrs Christie spends a lot of time coming back to how it’s a building of innate taste and class, providing good service to an older clientele, and recreating an Edwardian feel during what was actually the Swinging Sixties. The general unlikeliness of such an establishment spills over into a realisation that the hotel is, indeed, not all that it seems. Yes, in part it’s a real hotel, a solid building with a good reputation, with real guests and real staff; but it’s also a façade for other activities performed by dubious characters and criminals; and the two are seamlessly intertwined. Nothing is as it seems to be: “the china, if not actually Rockingham and Davenport, looked like it”. A stark contrast throughout between Edifice and Artifice.

Both of Christie’s main amateur detectives are elderly, but their actual ages are not stated. Poirot (we haven’t met him yet, soon will though! in his first appearance in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) is described as retired from the Belgian police force after many years of devoted service; and he has developed a limp. So he’s obviously of some age then. Miss Marple first appeared in The Murder in the Vicarage (1930), and she was in her late-sixties from the very beginning. So what age would she be in 1965? Well, not knocking 100, that’s for sure. Neither character has a real-time age-progression throughout their Christie-careers, but Miss Marple has definitely got a little older by the time this novel came around. The fortnight at Bertram’s was a holiday treat given to her by her nephew and his wife. When explaining why she chose this quaint old London hotel and not a more snazzy location, she says “I stayed there once – when I was fourteen”. When she’s later reflecting on the changes of the years, Mrs Christie tells us “it was fifty – no, nearer sixty years since she had stayed here”. I take that to indicate somewhere between 56 and 59 years; so add that to 14, and I can conclusively prove that, in 1965, Miss Marple was aged somewhere between 70 and 73 years old!

But, hovering around my mid-50s as I am, I really object to Mrs Christie declaring people to be elderly when they’re really only a little bit older than I am. Canon Pennyfather, who is a doddery, forgetful old buffoon is 63. That seems to be her favourite age to choose when she wants to impress on you how past it they are – Helen MacKenzie in A Pocket Full of Rye was the same. Interestingly, Mrs Christie herself had attained the age of 75 in 1965, and she certainly wasn’t past it. There’s another character in At Bertram’s Hotel who’s marked as elderly beyond his years – Mr Bollard of the jeweller’s shop patronised by Elvira. He is described as “the senior partner of the firm, an elderly man of sixty-odd”. Even worse, the character of Egerton, one of Elvira’s trustees with his hands on her purse strings, is 52 years old and describes himself as “well advanced in years”. I’m finding it hard to get my head around this.

Moving on! There is a lovely air of nostalgia littered throughout this book and personally I think it’s got more than its fair share of elegant turns of phrase for a Christie novel – let’s face it, she’s not known for her literary quality. In that reverie where Miss Marple works out that it’s nearly sixty years since she’s stayed at Bertram’s, she reflects on the then and now with rather charming, delicate observations. “The out of date returns as the picturesque”, she says of the hotel, which today would be a good description of anything that we would now refer to as “retro”. The opening description of the hotel includes the fact that: “there were two magnificent coal fires; beside them big brass coal scuttles shone in the way they used to shine when Edwardian housemaids polished them, and they were filled with exactly the right sized lumps of coal”. That’s a typically nostalgic look back at how life seemed to be more pleasant in the “good old days”, whereas of course by 1965 the whole heating issue was dealt with by modern radiators, creating a much more efficient way of keeping warm. High standards of modern cleanliness too are seen as having a negative connotation: “A connecting door led to a bathroom which was modern but which had a tiled wallpaper of roses and so avoided any suggestion of over-frigid hygiene”.

Elsewhere Miss Marple reminisces about how wonderful it was to shop at the Army and Navy Stores, how you used to be able to get proper glass cloths, how you left an address for your purchases to be delivered to, and how sad it was to see that a splendid old house now has four front-door bells (so it must have been converted into four flats). Egerton’s offices are located “in one of those imposing and dignified squares which have as yet not felt the wind of change”. Even Chief-Inspector Davy seems to have his head filled of old nonsense: “Why must they call me Mary when my name’s Miss Gibbs” he muses, taking a line from a long gone musical comedy; followed by the slightly misquoted “tell me, gentle stranger, are there any more at home like you? A few, kind sir, and nicer girls you never knew”, from the 1899 musical Floradora.

I find this book hugely enjoyable because of its constant aside observations, its Dickensian minor characters and its gentle approach to the crimes involved. I would normally prefer something much punchier, but I guess this one is the exception that proves the rule. There’s very little in the way of cold-blooded evil; and that’s perfectly in keeping with the nature of the criminal minds at work. Well-structured and thoughtfully characterised, this is classy Agatha Christie country.

So, gentle reader, here’s the at-a-glance summary for At Bertram’s Hotel:

Publication Details: 1965. My copy is a third impression from April 1969.

How many pages until the first death: The only murder takes place on page 140. Sounds like a long time to kill, but you’re not hanging around, kicking your heels waiting for something to happen – there’s a strong sense of intrigue right from the very start.

Funny lines out of context: thin pickings in this book, on the whole. But here are some nice lines –
“There were people who would have smiled in gentle derision at this pronouncement on the part of an old-fashioned old lady who could hardly be expected to be an authority on nymphomania”.
“Where can we go and talk? That is to say without falling over some old pussy every second”.
“Mrs McCrae, Canon Pennyfather’s housekeeper, had ordered a Dover sole for the evening of his return. The advantages attached to a good Dover sole were manifold. It need not be introduced to the grill or frying pan until the Canon was safely in the house. I could be kept until the next day if necessary. Canon Pennyfather was fond of Dover sole; and, if a telephone call or telegram arrived saying that the Canon would after all be elsewhere on this particular evening, Mrs McCrae was fond of a good Dover sole herself.”
“Inspector Campbell drew his papers towards him and gave Father the ascertainable facts in so far as they had been ascertained. “Doesn’t sound as if he’d gone off with a choirboy””.
“So then we hit upon getting Dr Stokes to come and have a look at you. We still call him Dr Stokes although he’s been struck off. A very nice man he is, embittered a bit, of course, by being struck off. It was only his kind heart really, helping a lot of girls who were no better than they should be.”

Memorable characters: The central character of Bess Sedgwick is very fully written, a glamorous, flawed, sensuous woman, full of daring and attitude. “Bess Sedgwick stubbed out her cigarette in her saucer, lifted a doughnut and took an immense bite. Rich red real strawberry jam gushed out over her chin. Bess threw back her head and laughed, one of the loudest and gayest sounds to have been heard in the lounge of Bertram’s Hotel for some time”. That’s a very visual and realistic description of someone who really lives life to the full.
She doesn’t feature a lot but I also feel the receptionist Miss Gorringe is a very believable character. “She knew every one of the clientele and, like Royalty, never forgot a face. She looked frumpy but respectable. Frizzled yellowish hair (old-fashioned tongs, it suggested), black silk dress, a high bosom on which reposed a large gold locket and a cameo brooch.”

Christie the Poison expert: Nope. It’s all handguns in this one.

Class/social issues of the time: Linked to the nostalgia theme.
The smoking room is reserved for gentlemen only.
A conversation between Mr Humfries, the hotel manager, and Colonel Luscombe, a guest: “We endeavour to give people anything they ask for”. “Including seed cake and muffins, yes I see. To each according to his need – I see…. Quite Marxian”.
Miss Marple gratefully remembers how her mother steered her away from an unsuitable liaison with a young man, and reflects on the relationships between mothers and daughters nowadays: “These poor young things. Some of them had mothers, but never mothers who seemed to be any good – mothers who were quite incapable of protecting their daughters from silly affairs, illegitimate babies, and early and unfortunate marriages. It was all very sad.”
A socially awkward situation: “He remembered he hadn’t paid for it. He attempted to do so; but Henry raised a deprecating hand. “Oh no sir. I was given to understand that your tea was on the house. Mr Humfries’ orders. “Henry moved away. Father was left uncertain whether he ought to have offered Henry a tip or not. It was galling to think that Henry knew the answer to that social problem much better than he did!”
There’s a wonderful display of snobbery by Miss Gorringe towards Chief-Insp Davy, when she assumes he is just a mere sergeant; she is much more responsive towards the more junior (but better dressed) Inspector Campbell.

Classic denouement: Well certainly an exciting one. In the space of a few pages, suspicion alights from one person to another to another. There’s a big showdown between Davy and the alleged murderer, who, instead of putting up their hands with an “it’s a fair cop, guv”, actually tries to escape and run away. The truth of whodunit is only revealed in the final three pages; where the murderer fails a test of decent character which makes Davy only more resolved to seek justice.

Happy ending? Not discernibly. There aren’t many people to come out of the whole sorry affair unscathed.

Did the story ring true? For the most part it’s a complete flight of fantasy. Eccentric, unlikely and rather weird. However, the characters are largely believable and many of the more interesting conversations have a definitely realistic feel.

Overall satisfaction rating: 8/10

So, have you read At Bertram’s Hotel? What are your thoughts about it? Please let me know – but don’t give the whodunit game away please! Next up in the Agatha Christie Challenge is the first Hercule Poirot book I read – The ABC Murders. If you fancy catching up with that one, I’ll be blogging my thoughts about it in a two weeks’ or so time. Thanks for reading, and happy sleuthing!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!

The Agatha Christie Challenge – A Pocket Full of Rye (1953)

Posted on by

STOP PRESS: The Agatha Christie Challenge is now available as a book in two revised volumes – details at the end of this blog post!

In which Miss Marple solves the murders of a rather hectoring boss and father, and other members of his family and domestic household. A goldmine, a prodigal son, a nursery rhyme, a vengeful family and an unseen boyfriend all play a part. And just so that you don’t have to worry – I won’t reveal the identity of the murderer!

So here we are, having finished the first of my Agatha Christie re-reads. A Pocket Full of Rye, which I always want to write as A Pocketful of Rye, which apparently is wrong. This was my first exposure to Miss Marple in print, having only known her in the form of Margaret Rutherford on screen. As I mentioned elsewhere, the wonderful Miss Rutherford was a very over-the-top version of Miss Marple, and when you read the books with her in mind, it’s like an indivisible sum – Miss Rutherford into Miss Marple simply won’t go. On a re-read, or perhaps to a new reader, it’s maybe surprising that Miss Marple doesn’t appear in the book until almost halfway through; if you think she’s going to be the central character, think again. With hindsight you realise that this Miss Marple is much more like the Joan Hickson TV version – quiet, unassuming, and with all her activity going on in the cerebrum rather than in outward shows of derring-do. When the book first appeared, Miss Marple was already an extremely well-established character, and the vast majority of Mrs Christie’s readers wouldn’t have needed much in the way of an introduction to her. But if this is the first Christie you read, then you might be slightly underwhelmed when you meet her. The only adjectives Mrs Christie gives you to describe her when she first appears are elderly, charming, innocent, fluffy and pink. Not that much to go on!

I must have been very confused reading this book as a child. Not only does Miss Marple not feel like Margaret Rutherford, there’s all sorts of confusions with characters’ names too. For example there’s a Mrs Fortescue, who’s also known as Jennifer Fortescue, or Mrs Percival, or Mrs Val. I bet I thought they were four different people. There’s a character called Vivian Dubois, but, in one paragraph, where he is worried that the police will find some love letters, Mrs Christie actually refers to him as Vincent (and not Vivian), presumably by mistake. I probably thought they were twins. I wonder if that’s in all copies of the book, or just an error in my copy – the last paragraph of Part One of Chapter XI refers, if you want to check! Then there are the two Fortescue brothers, Lancelot and Percival (so named because their mother was a fan of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King). I probably thought it was a nod to 60s comedy calypso performer Lance Percival. Miss Ramsbottom’s overnight guest prior to Miss Marple was a Christian missionary by the name of Dr Mary Peters. All that evangelising and a gold medal winning pentathlete too. All highly confusing.

I’ve already mentioned how it was that Pocket Full of Rye was the first Christie book I read, and I do remember clearly the excitement of reading a “grown-up novel”. When you come to recollect the book though, I have to admit that it isn’t on the whole particularly memorable. Some Christies you can remember huge tracts from, including all the characterisations, the identity of the murderers and their victims, and even some of the best speeches and conversations. For me, A Pocket Full of Rye doesn’t come under that category. I couldn’t remember whodunit before I read it, and even whilst I was reading it, it didn’t come back to me. In fact I made a guess at whodunit whilst I was re-reading it – and I was wrong. So from that point of view, it’s written well enough to keep you guessing and it disguises its final reveal pretty effectively. The only thing I could remember about the book is who the victims were, and how they tied into the nursery rhyme. I don’t think it’s one of her most suspenseful reads, and it’s more of a mathematical puzzle than a character-based plot.

What did strike me as interesting was a running theme that to be a murderer you must be insane. Right from the start Inspector Neele considers his suspects’ mental health: “He classified Miss Griffith as a) not the type of a poisoner, b) not in love with her employer, c) no pronounced mental instability, d) not a woman who cherished grudges.” Later, an anxious Mrs Pat Fortescue tells Miss Marple “somebody in this house is mad, and madness is always frightening because you don’t know how mad people’s minds will work. You don’t know what they’ll do next.” During the denouement conversation Inspector Neele regrets that the murderer won’t be hanged because they’re “crazy” – to which Miss Marple replies that the person is “not crazy, Inspector, not for a moment!” This delight in applying mental health labels even applies to one of the victims, whom family members want to be assessed as suffering from “G.P.I. – General Paralysis of the Insane”. That’s an old fashioned terminology you don’t hear today.

There’s also a linked interchange about the nature of poisoners between Pat and Lance. “There’s something awfully frightening about a poisoner”, said Pat. “I mean it must be a horrid, brooding, revengeful mind”. “So that’s how you see it? Funny! I just think of it as businesslike and cold-blooded”. “I suppose one could look at it that way.” She resumed with a slight shiver, “all the same, to do three murders… Whoever did it must be mad.” Oh, that old chestnut again.

I was also not particularly impressed with these couple of sentences: “At the Pinewood Private Sanatorium, Inspector Neele, sitting in the visitors’ parlour, was facing a grey-haired, elderly lady. Helen MacKenzie was sixty-three, though she looked younger.” Sixty-three?? Elderly?? “Though she looked younger” but still considered elderly?? I’m not that far behind Helen and I still don’t think I’m middle-aged yet. But it is an interesting observation of what was considered elderly a mere 62 years ago, when this book was written.

The book isn’t over-stuffed with narrative threads but there are a couple of clever garden paths that lead you nicely astray and take your eye off a more obvious solution to the mystery. Miss Marple’s on quite good form, taking St Mary Mead as a microcosm of a world of seething emotions and all sorts of lawksamercy. Indeed, she has a personal link to one of the victims, so perhaps it’s not unsurprising that the two worlds collide.

So, gentle reader, for each of Mrs Christie’s books that I re-read I’m going to provide what I hope will be a helpful “at-a-glance” summary of how the book stacks up. See what you think about this assessment:

Publication details: 1953. My copy is a 1980 paperback by Fontana, 188 pages. In about 1979, I met a girl who was really into Agatha Christie. In order to impress her, I lent her a big carrier bag full of my Christie paperbacks. She moved. I had to spend ages finding replacement copies at car boots and charity shops. This was one of the many such copies.

How many pages until the first death: 7. That’s what I like, no hanging about.

Funny lines out of context: “there’s a sprinkling of….old pussies who love to potter round with a trowel”.
“He had that rather forced masculinity which is, in reality, nothing of the kind. He was the type of man who “understands” women.”
““Lovely legs she’s got,” said Constable Waite with a sigh. “And super nylons”.”
“I do think women ought to stick together, don’t you, Inspector Neele?”
“I began to realise, about two years after we were married, that Freddy wasn’t – well wasn’t always straight”.

Memorable characters: none outstanding; maybe Mary Dove, for her sangfroid under pressure. The way Mrs Crump is described reminded me of how you imagine Mrs White to be in Cluedo. By the way, does anyone else find it funny that the name of the Sergeant who first mentions the grain in the deceased’s pocket is called Hay? I was expecting a whole range of characters whose names were based on aspects of an arable farm.

Christie the poison expert? Yes definitely. Everything you wanted to know about taxine but were afraid to ask.

Class/social issues of the time: Quite a bit. Mrs Christie describes Yewtree Lodge as “the kind of mansion that rich people built themselves and then called it “their little place in the country”… a large solid red brick structure, sprawling lengthwise rather than upward, with rather too many gables, and a vast number of leaded paned windows. The gardens were highly artificial…” In other words, disgustingly nouveau riche.
Of a missionary visitor, Miss Ramsbottom says “black as your hat but a true Christian”. I can never quite decide if Mrs Christie was a latent racist or if it was just the mores of her time and “set”. Maybe this re-read will help me come to a conclusion. When asked about blackbirds, Lance replies “do you mean genuine birds, or the slave trade?”
Young Gerald is described as “an intellectual… he’s got a lot of unconventional and progressive ideas that people don’t like”.
Crump the butler is distrusted. For no apparent reason than for his stupid surname and the fact that he’s a butler.
You wouldn’t describe Mrs Christie as a feminist: “Adele Fortescue was a sexy piece….Her appeal was obvious, not subtle. It said simply to every man “Here am I. I’m a woman.””

Classic denouement? Not really. There’s no big showdown; the denouement takes the form of Miss Marple having a quiet, private conversation with Inspector Neele, explaining whodunit, how and why; the book ends before he confronts the murderer. Probably the best interrogation is by Neele on Dubois, where he reveals he knows the content of the first victim’s will.

Happy ending? Again not really. An innocent character is about to get a nasty shock, although another is saved from a blackmail situation. Miss Marple has a moment of triumph in the last sentence, but it’s not earth-shattering stuff.

Does the story ring true? The crime and the Sing-a-song-of-sixpence theme dovetail nicely. But Miss Marple gains access to Yewtree Lodge ridiculously easily.

Overall satisfaction rating: 7/10

What do you think? Any comments welcome, but please try not to spoil the whodunit aspect for anyone who hasn’t read it.

Next book to read will be At Bertram’s Hotel, as that was the second book I read when I first discovered Mrs Christie’s work. Feel free to read or re-read and we’ll have a post-mortem in a week or two’s time!

If you enjoy my Agatha Christie Challenge, did you know it is now available as a book? In two revised volumes, it contains all my observations about Christie’s books and short stories, and also includes all her plays! The perfect birthday or Christmas gift, you can buy it from Amazon – the links are here and here!