Agatha Christie novel

 

 

Agatha Christie novel

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Agatha Christie is recognized as the most famous mystery author of all time. Known as the Queen of Crime, she is published in more languages than Shakespeare and is second only to the bible for the number of tongues that her books have been translated. Her play the Mousetrap opened in London in 1952, and to date, it is the longest running play in world history.  She achieved all of this without attending school; whatever education she received came at home. Christie’s interest in the genre of detection began early on.  At the age of eight, she was introduced to the stories of Sherlock Holmes by an older sister.  About the same time, her mother read aloud to the family from novels by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. 

Christie began writing while in her early 20’s.  During World War I as part of the war effort, she volunteered at a Red Cross dispensary.  Here she worked with medications and learned about chemicals and poisons.  This knowledge was put to use in her first novel, the Mysterious Affair at Styles.  Published in 1930, this book introduced her great detective, Hercule Poirot.   Poirot went on to appear in 39 novels and 50 short stories.  His sleuthing style was founded on method and order, the psychology of the criminal mind, clues and eventually eliminating a fair number of red herrings. He said, “Hercule Poirot solves crimes by use of the little grey cells.” Upon his death in the novel Curtain, Poirot became the only fictional character ever to be honored with an obituary on the front page of the New York Times. 

Christie modeled her other prominent literary sleuth after her grandmother.  The elderly spinster Miss Jane Marple was introduced in 1930 in Murder at the Vicarage.  Although Miss Marple only appeared in twelve novels, she was portrayed so many times in film, her screen fame eclipsed her literary reputation.   Jane Marple generally solved crimes by putting to use the wisdom that comes with old age, nosiness, cunning, and, more important, she was always willing to believe the worst of people.   She used experiences of life in a small English village to unravel crimes.  According to Miss Marple, “human nature is the same world over, whether in tiny St. Mary Mead or cosmopolitan London.  Circumstances might be altered, externals may change, but people’s reactions will tend to be the same, given the same set of human passions.”

40 years before Christie’s death, she wrote two novels intended as the last cases of her important detectives. Poirot’s last appearance was Curtain and Miss Marple’s last case was the Sleeping Murder. Both books were sealed in a bank vault for four decades and released when Christie was at the end of her life.  She died in 1976 at the age of 85.  She was a publishing phenomenon and a master story teller.

 

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MISS MARPLE – AN INTRODUCTION
Miss Marple, an elderly spinster living in a small English village, must be one of the least likely detectives ever to have graced the pages of fiction.
Jane Marple was an extension of the character of Caroline Sheppard, sister of the book’s narrator, from the 1926 Hercule Poirot novel The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd. Miss Sheppard is a late middle aged spinster who has the uncanny knack of knowing everything that goes on in her village. Agatha Christie clearly saw the potential to turn Miss Sheppard into a detective, and the following year, the first Miss Marple story was published.
We are told that Miss Marple spent almost all of her life in the archetypal English village of St Mary Mead, and that living in a small village allowed her to develop an outstanding knowledge of human nature that would prove invaluable to her as a detective.
It is a myth though that St Mary Mead had an unduly high crime rate, as only a few of the Marple tales were actually set in the village. The first Marple novel, 1930’s Murder At The Vicarage, must be regarded as the only real St Mary Mead village mystery novel. While St Mary Mead features in two more full length titles, in 1942’s The Body In The Library, once the body has been discovered at Gossington Hall in the village, much of the action takes place elsewhere. In the 1961 novel The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side, Gossington Hall sees more than one murder committed on the premises, but much of the novel is set in the film world of Gossington’s then owner, actress Marina Gregg.
Miss Marple featured in 12 novels and 20 short stories, which is much less than the 33 novels and 51 stories published which feature Christie's best known detective Hercule Poirot. This is possibly because the character of Miss Marple which Christie created would have seemed out of place in the international settings which are often used in her novels. Only once does Miss Marple solve a case abroad.

Although Poirot definitely accepted some cases with little or no financial reward, it is undoubtedly the case that some of his other cases made him a very wealthy man. With Miss Marple, while it is not explicitly stated that she conducted her sleuthing without financial reward, it is generally accepted that she was only remunerated for one case – the final Marple novel Nemesis - when she received a legacy in return for solving a matter of great significance.
Further comments on some of the Marple film and television adaptations appear under the relevant book titles later. But most Christie aficionados would acknowledge that the definitive screen Miss Marple was Joan Hickson, who appeared in BBC dramatisations of all 12 novels between 1984 and 1992. In more recent years, Miss Marple has been played on ITV by Geraldine McEwan and by Julia McKenzie, but these adaptations are almost universally regarded as being massively inferior to the BBC versions. Plot and character changes, introducing Miss Marple into Christie stories that did not feature her and unnecessary appearances by comedians are abundant in the McEwan and McKenzie screenplays. Other actresses to have played Jane Marple include Margaret Rutherford, Angela Lansbury, Helen Hayes and Gracie Fields.

The Murder At The Vicarage (1930)
The first Jane Marple novel holds a special place in the hearts of many Christie devotees. Its portrayal of English village life is nothing short of hilarious as it describes the scandals, trials and tribulations of St Mary Mead. Griselda Clement, wife of the village rector, hosts ‘tea and scandal’ parties at which three elderly spinsters – Miss Marple, Miss Caroline Wetherby and Miss Amanda Hartnell – and one local widow, Mrs Price-Ridley, meet to discuss the latest gossip. At the start of the book, Miss Marple is firmly considered to be one of the village’s ‘old pussies’, but after she has solved the baffling murder case she is presented with here, opinions of her not surprisingly change considerably.
The victim in this novel is Colonel Lucius Protheroe, owner of Old Hall, the second manor house of St Mary Mead. Col Protheroe is shot as he waits in the study of the vicarage, waiting for the vicar to return from what turns out to have been an unnecessary journey. The Reverend Leonard Clement not only sees his house turned into a murder scene, but he also narrates Murder At The Vicarage, the only occasion on which a Marple novel is narrated by another character.
Col Protheroe is almost universally disliked in St Mary Mead, and Miss Marple soon realises there are many villagers with a motive. His much younger second wife, Anne, is having an adulterous relationship with local artist Lawrence Redding, while the Colonel’s daughter also heartily dislikes her father. In his capacity as churchwarden he has accused either the vicar or his curate of stealing the collection money from the Sunday services; and as local magistrate he has recently sentenced local man Bill Archer to a jail term, much to the dismay of his girlfriend Mary, who is also Rev Clement’s incompetent housemaid. Furthermore a man claiming to be an eminent archaeologist is sniffing rather too closely around some of Old Hall’s valuables, and who exactly is the rather mysteriously named Mrs Lestrange?
The Murder At The Vicarage is the first time Miss Marple meets Detective Inspector Slack. Slack is extremely rude and officious, as evidenced by his unwillingness to listen to Rev Clement trying to tell him a vital piece of evidence early in his investigation, concerning the clock in his study. Not for the last time, at the end of the novel Slack is forced to eat humble pie and acknowledge the superior detective skills of Miss Marple.
Miss Marple’s neighbour Dr Haydock makes his first appearance as both local GP and police surgeon in this novel.
The case is ultimately solved when Miss Marple sees through the method by which the perpetrators attempted to ensure they were cleared of suspicion shortly after the murder. Their tactics are very similar to those adopted in the first Poirot novel, The Mysterious Affair At Styles, and bear some relation to those used in Witness For The Prosecution, perhaps Christie’s best play. The plot is also nearly identical to that of Christie’s 1926 short story The Love Detectives, which featured Harley Quin as investigator.
The opening chapter includes a very useful map of St Mary Mead, and from this it can be seen that the location of Miss Marple’s house in relation to the vicarage and to Old Hall left her extremely well placed to observe goings on at the time of the murder.
The BBC television adaptation stars Paul Eddington, famous for his portrayal of Jim Hacker in sitcom Yes Minister, as the Rev Clement. The ITV adaptation, despite the scriptwriter feeling the need to include flashbacks to a young Miss Marple having an affair with a married man, is certainly one of the most watchable in that series. Tim McInnerny stars as Rev Clement and Rachael Stirling is superb as his flighty wife. The BBC version has a much more accurate portrayal of Inspector Slack, played by David Horovitch, than the ITV version, where Stephen Tompkinson takes the role.

The Body In The Library (1942)
In real time, a further 12 years would elapse before a second full-length Marple novel was published, however, we have reason to suspect that a much shorter period has elapsed in St Mary Mead time. At the very end of Murder At The Vicarage, Mrs Clement reveals that she is expecting a baby, and in the early stages of The Body In The Library her child is crawling around the house, in the absence of any other information we must assume that this is the same child. This apparent contraction of time goes some way towards explaining her extraordinarily long detective career, otherwise we are asked to believe that Jane Marple, already elderly when we first meet her in 1927, was still alive and well and sleuthing some 44 years later!
In the early Marple short stories we meet Colonel Arthur Bantry and Mrs Dolly Bantry, the owners of St Mary Mead’s largest house Gossington Hall. In these stories they discover Miss Marple’s detective prowess, so when the body of a mysterious blonde young woman is dumped in Gossington’s library, strangled to death, the Bantrys know exactly who to call. Mrs Bantry is especially keen to receive Miss Marple’s assistance, before the village rumour mill starts to suggest that she or her husband had anything to do with the crime. The subsequent investigation sees Miss Marple and Mrs Bantry cement what would become a lifelong friendship.
A body in the library of a large country house is of course one of the clichés of detective fiction. In the 1936 Poirot novel Cards On The Table, reference is made to Poirot’s crime author friend Ariadne Oliver as the author of a book called The Body In The Library! Agatha Christie’s twist on this is to make the library a highly conventional one, but to make the body wildly exotic. On viewing the body, Miss Marple exclaims ‘she’s not real’, a remark which would prove to be very significant.
The victim is soon identified as Ruby Keene, a young dance hostess at the Majestic Hotel in Danemouth, on the coast 18 miles from St Mary Mead. Miss Marple and Mrs Bantry duly book in at the Majestic to pursue their investigations, and much of the subsequent action then takes place in Danemouth. Sir Henry Clithering, a retired Scotland Yard Commissioner who featured in several previous Miss Marple short stories, is enlisted by Miss Marple to try and get the official investigators to take her seriously. The murder of Ruby Keene is soon linked to the murder of Pamela Reeves, a local schoolgirl found in a burnt out car in a quarry near Danemouth.
As a novel in its own right, The Body In The Library deserves to be considered a Christie masterpiece, albeit one with a rather complex plot. However experienced readers of Christie’s work reading it for the first time may have seen similar tactics used to conceal a crime before. The tactics used by the murderers may be said to be a mirror image of those used in the Poirot novel of one year previously, Evil Under The Sun. The deception concerning the body also has echoes of the strategy adopted in the earlier Marple short story A Christmas Tragedy. There are certainly two people in the story who have a significant motive to murder Miss Keene, but did either, or both, actually have any opportunity to commit the crime?
Once again Miss Marple proves to have superior detective abilities than Inspector Slack. Recalling The Murder At The Vicarage early in the novel, Slack remarks how Miss Marple was able to solve that case due to her local knowledge, but incorrectly predicts ‘She’ll be out of her depth this time’.
Reflecting the fact that this is a very strongly plotted novel, both the BBC and ITV chose The Body In The Library to open their series of Marple screen adaptations. Joan Hickson had previously starred in the 1980 adaptation of Christie’s novel Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, and four years later, at the age of 78, she made her debut as Miss Marple. Christie of course never lived to see Hickson as Marple, but we may infer that the choice would have met with her approval, as when Hickson appeared in a 1946 stage production of the Poirot story Appointment With Death, Christie is reported to have said ‘I hope one day you will play my dear Miss Marple’. Fortunately Hickson was able to complete the last of the 12 Marple novels in 1992.
In 2003, Geraldine McEwan played Jane Marple for the first time in an ITV adaptation of the book. The dramatisation was infamous for the ‘lesbian twist’ applied to the solution, although now compared to some of the later modifications that would be used in this series, the change made here seems mild in comparison. As would be the case in many of the subsequent ITV Marples, comic actors or comedians played some of the more serious parts, here including Simon Callow as the Chief Constable and Ben Miller as local dandy Basil Blake. Joanna Lumley featured as Dolly Bantry.

The Moving Finger (1943)
One of Christie’s favourites, this novel is set in a small country town called Lymstock. A young man named Jerry Burton comes to live in Lymstock, with his sister Joanna, seeking some peace and quiet as he continues his rehabilitation from a flying accident.
A relaxing time is the last thing that Mr Burton, narrator of this novel, gets though. Shortly after his arrival he is shocked to receive a poison pen letter suggesting that Joanna and himself are not actually brother and sister. Mr Burton soon discovers that many such letters have been sent to residents of Lymstock.
Matters reach a head when the death by cyanide poisoning occurs of Mona Symington, wife of local solicitor Richard Symington. Mrs Symington had apparently committed suicide after receiving a particularly venomous letter. A short time later, the Symingtons’ maid Agnes Woddell is murdered, presumably because she knows the identity of the letter writer.
Miss Marple only appears late on in the story, after the deaths of Mrs Symington and Miss Woddell, after the vicar’s wife Maud Dane-Calthrop says she is going to call in an ‘expert’. Her expert does a fine job of course, but Miss Marple needs to set a risky trap for the criminal in order to provide definitive proof.
Psychological deduction is more usually associated with the Poirot novels, but here Miss Marple is able to draw significant deductions from the fact that all the allegations in the letters were false, and from the beautiful maid of the Symingtons, Elsie Holland, not receiving a letter. The phrase ‘No smoke without fire’ is uttered several times during the novel, and Miss Marple realises that the murderer has in fact managed to create a very clever ‘smokescreen’. There are certain echoes of the 1936 Poirot novel The ABC Murders here, although with one significant difference.

A Murder Is Announced (1950)
Miss Marple’s investigations take place this time in the village of Chipping Cleghorn, and once again she is staying with the local vicar and his wife. The Reverend Julian Harmon and his wife Diana (Bunch) provide hospitality to Miss Marple while she undergoes treatment at the Royal Spa Hotel in nearby Medenham Wells.
One day the village residents are surprised by an announcement in the Chipping Cleghorn Gazette:
‘A murder is announced and will take place on Friday October 29 at Little Paddocks at 6.30pm. Friends please accept this, the only intimation.’
At 6.30pm, a crowd of curious villagers has assembled at Little Paddocks, the house of a Miss Letitia Blacklock. The lights duly go out and a man appears shining a torch and shouting ‘Stick ‘em up’. At this stage some of those present are still saying things such as ‘How exciting’. However, the mood suddenly changes when two shots ring out and the intruder slumps to the ground. When the lights come back on, the dead intruder is quickly recognised as Rudi Scherz, a clerk at the Royal Spa Hotel who had recently paid a visit to Miss Blacklock. It is also soon discovered that Miss Blacklock has suffered a wound to her ear during the incident.
Miss Marple then enters the investigation, declaring somewhat brusquely to Detective Chief Inspector Craddock ‘A cheque. He altered it.’ It would seem that Scherz chose the wrong old lady to try and swindle! Miss Marple convinces the official investigators that Scherz was no more than a fall guy – that he didn’t have a gun with him and that the shots were actually fired by someone else in the house who snuck up behind him while he staged the sham hold-up. In later novels, Miss Marple would develop a close friendship with Inspector Craddock.
Miss Marple is unable to prevent two subsequent murders. Dora Bunner, an old school friend who now lives with Miss Blacklock, dies after taking some of Miss Blacklock’s painkillers, and Amy Murgatroyd is silenced after realising the significance of something she saw in the drawing room at Little Paddocks on the night of Scherz’s death. Miss Marple places great significance on Miss Murgatroyd’s final words ‘She wasn’t there, and particularly the emphasis placed on each of these words.
A Murder Is Announced is one of the Christie novels where quite audacious tricks are played on the reader concerning the names of certain characters. Much is made of the fact that there are people known as Pip and Emma who would appear to have a significant financial motive, and it is no surprise when Pip and Emma are revealed as characters who were introduced to the story early on. It is perhaps more difficult to guess the false identity that Emma is using, but when Pip is revealed, the reader is likely to feel somewhat annoyed at themselves for not guessing sooner. But are Pip and Emma the culprits?
This is undoubtedly a first-rate crime novel, widely regarded as one of the best Marple mysteries, however the murderer’s tactics echo those used in several other Christie works. The central plot device had already been used in the Poirot novel Peril At End House, and it would be used again in two 1960s Marple novels – The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side and At Bertram’s Hotel.
A Murder Is Announced had a successful run in the West End, and it remains a favourite of professional theatre companies and amateur dramatic societies to this day.

They Do It With Mirrors (1952)

Miss Marple is often portrayed by her author as being slightly dowdy and rather out of touch with modern trends. This is accentuated in the opening chapters of this novel as she meets Ruth Van Rydock, who many years ago attended finishing school with Jane Marple. Mrs Van Rydock asks of Miss Marple 'Have you seen what Christian Dior is trying to make us wear in the way of skirts?' This comment of course means nothing to Miss Marple! Mrs Van Rydock then expresses doubt that anyone would suspect that she and Miss Marple are the same age, although what that age might be is not stated.

Ruth then persuades Miss Marple to go and visit her sister, Carrie Louise Serrocold, as she is worried about her. Mrs Serrocold also attended the same finishing school, and like her sister she is also on to her third marriage, again of course a major difference from Miss Marple!

Shortly after her arrival, Miss Marple is given further reasons to be concerned about Mrs Serrocold. Then a heated argument is heard between Lewis Serrocold, Carrie Louise's husband, and Edgar Lawson, Mr Serrocold's secretary. Shots are fired, but no apparent harm results from their quarrel, but then it is discovered that Christian Gulbrandsen, brother of Mrs Serrocold's first husband, has been shot dead in another room at about the same time as the quarrel.

An actual mirror does not appear in the novel - the title is a lateral reference to how the first murder is committed. The use of the word 'they' in the title may also lead the reader to suspect that more than one person is involved. Besides the deception played at the time of the murder, one of the perpetrators has been performing another conjuring trick over an extended period of time, which provides a false motive for the killing of Mr Gulbrandsen.

Most of Christie's novels contain sufficient clues to allow the very astute reader to arrive at the solution. Sometimes, Mrs Christie supplies very significant clues and judges that the reader will not pick up on their significance. This certainly applies here, once you have reached the end of the book, go back to Chapter 7 and read the description of one of the criminals immediately after the quarrel, to see just how big a clue you were given.

Including the deaths of the murderers as they try and escape, five characters meet their death here, the highest body count of any Marple novel.

There is of course an excellent television adaptation of this novel starring Joan Hickson, and a passable version starring Julia McKenzie for ITV. But in spite of its stellar cast – including Bette Davis and John Mills as the Serrocolds – the 1985 Warner Brothers TV movie, under the American book title Murder With Mirrors, is best avoided.

A Pocketful Of Rye (1953)


Agatha Christie again looks to a nursery rhyme to provide her with the inspiration for this, her sixth Miss Marple title. Not long into the novel, business tycoon Rex Fortescue dies from taxine poisoning. In his pocket is found a quantity of rye, the first link the story makes with the nursery rhyme 'Sing A Song Of Sixpence'. Rex is murdered at his office, equivalent to the 'counting house' of the rhyme.

Rex is of course the Latin for king, so by extension his young wife Adele becomes the queen. The link with the rhyme continues as she dies 'in the parlour, eating bread and honey'. 

Miss Marple, keeping up to date with the case via newspaper reports back in St Mary Mead, soon realises the link, and deduces that the maid will be next to die. To her horror, she realises that the maid at the Fortescue house is Gladys Martin, who was originally trained for service by Miss Marple.

A taxi is immediately summoned to take her to Yewtree Lodge, where the Fortescue family lives, but she arrives too late to prevent the death of Gladys, who was indeed murdered while 'in the garden, hanging out the clothes', and suffered the final indignity of having a clothes peg placed on her nose. The novel then sees Miss Marple try and identify the culprit to try and make good on her failure to prevent Gladys' death.

A Pocketful Of Rye is a hugely enjoyable crime novel, and although experienced Christie readers may be able to identify the culprit, the method by which their apparent alibi is broken is much harder to deduce. Miss Marple's previous knowledge of what Gladys would say in certain situations, and her experience of Gladys' trusting and credulous nature is key to her solving the mystery. The reader may be able to draw on the first Marple short story, The Tuesday Night Club, for assistance.

In the novel we hear how there is a person called Ruby MacKenzie who may bear ill will against Mr Fortescue. In a situation that has echoes of Pip and Emma in A Murder Is Announced, it is no surprise when Mrs MacKenzie is unmasked as a character who has been in the novel all along under a different name.

Taxine, which is derived from yew plants, is certainly one of the more unusual poisons Christie used to dispose of one of her characters, however it is by no means the most unusual.

There is one poignant final moment when Miss Marple returns to St Mary Mead after solving the case. She finds a letter with familiar handwriting, and opens it to discover that Gladys had written to her telling her about her concerns about happenings at Yewtree Lodge. The letter provides final proof of the murderer's identity, with Gladys signing off by saying of him 'You can see what a nice boy he is'.

Yewtree Lodge is reportedly modelled on Agatha Christie’s house at Sunningdale in Berkshire, where she lived in the 1920s.

The ITV adaptation of this novel marked the debut as Miss Marple of Julia McKenzie. There is a strong case for saying that McKenzie's portrayal is the second best by any actress to date, although at times one gets the feeling that McKenzie is trying to do an impersonation of Joan Hickson, the definitive Miss Marple. The adaptation is one of the more faithful and more watchable in the ITV series, and includes a superb scene involving Prunella Scales as Ruby MacKenzie’s elderly mother.

 

4.50 from Paddington (1957)
This tale begins when Elspeth McGillicudy tells her friend Jane Marple that, while travelling by train, another train passed hers, on which a woman was being strangled to death. When no body comes to light on the train or on the track, the police dismiss the story, but undeterred, Miss Marple undertakes the train journey herself and realises that if the body had been pushed off the train at a particular point, it would have rolled down the embankment into the grounds of Rutherford Hall.
At this point we learn that Miss Marple has recently suffered a severe bout of pneumonia, and that her wealthy and extremely generous nephew Raymond West paid for one Lucy Eyelesbarrow to nurse her back to health.
Miss Eyelesbarrow is portrayed as the perfect nurse-housekeeper, and is such an engaging character that one wishes Agatha Christie had made use of her again in subsequent novels. However, in her only appearance, Lucy takes a job at Rutherford Hall, on Miss Marple’s direction, to search for the body.
Rutherford Hall is the residence of the Crackenthorpe family, and after oh-so-clever Lucy has discovered the body of the unfortunate woman seen on the train, two members of the Crackenthorpe family also suffer an untimely death. It would appear that their deaths are part of a desire on the part of the killer to increase his share in a ‘tontine’, an archaic method by which an estate was divided on death.
Miss Marple’s suspicions grow gradually, but it requires her to stage an elaborate charade, with the assistance of Mrs McGillicudy, in order for her to be sure.
Christie was often accused of not playing by the rules in novels such as The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd and Murder On The Orient Express. It is this writer’s opinion that while the solutions to these novels were certainly daring, Christie still played fair with the reader, in that sufficient clues were still provided. However, what occurs here is surely much more questionable, as a vital fact that provides the killer with their motive is withheld.
A version of 4.50 from Paddington, under the title Murder She Said, was the first of four Marple films made in the 1960s starring Margaret Rutherford, and the only one that would be based on a Marple novel. The second and third Rutherford films were loosely based on Poirot novels and the last was an original screenplay. These films seem to place the emphasis firmly on comedy rather than on detective drama, and Rutherford totally fails to convince as Marple. Agatha Christie was said to be delighted that these films were not a success, however she did become friends with Rutherford and would dedicate her next Marple novel, The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side, to Rutherford.

The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side (1962)
The title here is taken from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shalott:
‘Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
The curse is come upon me;
Cried the Lady of Shalott
Dolly Bantry quotes, or rather misquotes, this poem to try and describe the frozen look seen on the face of actress Marina Gregg shortly before a murder took place. Mrs Bantry uses ‘doom’ instead of ‘curse’. This is the last of the St Mary Mead novels, although the action centres once again on Gossington Hall rather than the everyday life of the village.
In the early stages of the novel, we are told about how life in St Mary Mead has changed over the years. There is now a new housing development which has increased the village population significantly, and with it has come a new supermarket that Miss Marple finds extremely confusing. One of her ‘tea and scandal’ colleagues from Murder At The Vicarage, Miss Wetherby, has passed away, and Rev Leonard Clement has moved on from St Mary Mead – the new vicar is not named and plays no significant part until he supplies a vital piece of evidence near the end of the book which explains the ‘frozen look’ and leads Miss Marple to the solution.
Changes have also occurred in Miss Marple’s personal life, and not always for the best. She has had to surrender control of her beloved garden to a jobbing gardener. Considered too old to live alone by Dr Haydock, she also has a live-in housekeeper in the shape of the extremely irritating Miss Knight. Fortunately this situation changes for the better at the end of the book.
Significant changes have also occurred at Gossington Hall. We learn that Arthur Bantry has died, and that Dolly Bantry now lives in the Hall’s East Lodge. The Hall itself is now owned by a late middle-aged American actress called Marina Gregg and her husband Jason Rudd, a film director.
Whereas Gossington was merely used to dump a body in The Body In The Library, as many as four murders occur in the house this time – the last appears to be murder, but this is not certain. The first unfortunate victim is Heather Badcock, a resident of the village’s new housing development. Ms Gregg agrees to open up Gossington for a St John’s Ambulance fete, at which Mrs Badcock, secretary of the local St John’s association, dies after drinking a poisoned cocktail, one possibly intended for Ms Gregg.
We are told that Ms Gregg is making her comeback after several years away from the limelight due to a nervous breakdown. As the body count increases, it becomes increasingly obvious what the cause of her breakdown was.
The solution is a clever trick, but one that the experienced Christie reader will by now have little difficulty in spotting. The exact same method of murder was used 27 years earlier in the Poirot short story Triangle At Rhodes. The use of a startled look by one of the characters calls to mind Appointment With Death, and a few years later Christie would use it again in A Caribbean Mystery.
Inspector Craddock returns as official investigator here, and his relationship with Miss Marple is now so close that a visit to Miss Marple’s for tea is one of his first calls on being assigned the case. He even refers to Miss Marple’s house as ‘headquarters’.
This is one Christie novel where revelations of previously unknown family relationships are widespread. The last of these, occurring in the closing pages of the book, is widely regarded by Christie scholars as being one revelation too many, and wisely this twist has been dropped from all of the screen adaptations of this novel.
This is probably one of the best known Marple novels, as it has been the subject of three such adaptations. In 1980, the novel was adapted for cinema under the shortened title The Mirror Crack’d. Angela Lansbury played Miss Marple for the only time, and Dame Elizabeth Taylor played Marina Gregg. Dame Elizabeth is an apt choice for the part as Ms Gregg is an actress who has had several husbands and is past her prime, something which surely applied to her come 1980. The film is not cited as one of the highlights of her career, however her version of the ‘look of doom’ is a particularly fine piece of drama. Rock Hudson played Jason Rudd and James Fox featured as Inspector Craddock, in a film spoiled by the inclusion of a number of old jokes about the Hollywood film industry.
In 1992, at the age of 86, Joan Hickson brought the curtain down on her career as Miss Marple with an adaptation of this novel. She died six years later, and will be fondly remembered by Christie fans as the definitive Miss Marple. The ITV version of 2009 is one of the more watchable adaptations of Marple novels made by that channel.

 

 

A Caribbean Mystery (1964)

The last three Marple novels written all centre around Miss Marple on holiday, and this novel represents the only recorded instance of her leaving the United Kingdom. Raymond West has paid for her to have a relaxing holiday on the fictional Caribbean island of St Honore, as she continues her recuperation from illness. 

Predictably, her stay turns out to be far from relaxing, as three people are murdered. The first to die is Major Palgrave, who only the previous day had offered to show Miss Marple what he claimed was a picture of a murderer, only to suddenly give a startled look and hurriedly put the photo away. Major Palgrave is described as being something of a bore, who is always telling one of a number of long-winded stories about crime he has encountered. Miss Marple is to regret not listening to the Major more carefully, as her failure to do so hinders her investigation significantly.

A Caribbean Mystery is not a Christie classic, but it does involve an ingenious modus operandum and a 'why didn't I see that?' solution. One of the killer's tactics would shortly be used again in the Poirot novel Third Girl, having already had a trial run in The Cretan Bull, one of the Labours of Hercules cases solved by Poirot. Miss Marple is assisted in identifying and apprehending the criminal by one Jason Rafiel, a wealthy fellow guest, and his staff. This novel would be the only occasion Mr Rafiel met Miss Marple, but not the last time he would have a major impact on one of her cases.

The Warner Brothers Television adaptation of this novel, dating from 1984, starred American actress Helen Hayes as Miss Marple for the second and last time and brought the curtain down on her extraordinary 75-year long acting career.

At Bertram's Hotel (1965)

Raymond West again treats his aunt, this time he allows her to stay at Bertram's Hotel in London, where we are told Miss Marple stayed as a girl. Almost immediately she senses something is not quite right. Miss Marple notices that nothing has changed in the many decades since her last visit, and the phrase 'too good to be true' is often repeated in the novel.

When elderly and confused hotel resident Cannon Pennefather is beaten over the head and subsequently found in a dazed state close to the location of a large train robbery, Miss Marple's suspicions that the hotel is the centre of a criminal operation are enhanced further. But who is the ringleader?

Despite using an ingenious method of committing a crime, At Bertram's Hotel fails to provide a compelling narrative. As in all full-length Marple or Poirot novels, a murder takes place, however here it occurs much later in the book than usual.

In his excellent book Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, John Curran describes the solution to one of the crimes as 'an even more breathtaking conspiracy than that of Murder on the Orient Express'. While there are echoes of that novel's main revelation, to suggest that Bertram's is anything other than a much inferior novel to Orient Express would be wrong.

The inspiration for Bertram's is claimed to be Brown's Hotel on Albemarle Street. 

The BBC dramatised At Bertram's Hotel and cast George Baker as the police investigator. An ITV executive was sufficiently impressed to cast Baker as Ruth Rendell's detective Chief Inspector Wexford in a long running series of adaptations of Rendell's work.

Nemesis (1971)

Nemesis was the last Marple novel Christie wrote. Although 1976 would see the publication of Sleeping Murder, this title had in fact been written decades earlier. The Miss Marple we encounter in Nemesis is undoubtedly portrayed as being much older than the one in Sleeping Murder - in the opening chapters she wonders if she will live another 12 months - and although Miss Marple's death was never documented in the same way that Poirot's was, the fact that in Nemesis she receives financial reward for her services adds to the feeling of finality that pervades this book.  Like many of Christie's later works, this is a 'murder in the past' novel.

While it seems likely that Poirot was handsomely rewarded for some of his cases, Miss Marple remained steadfastly an 'amateur sleuth', as opposed to Poirot's 'professional private detective'. It is never explicitly stated, but it is reasonable to assume that she undertook her sleuthing without the thought of a reward. However, all that changes when she is informed that Jason Rafiel, a key character from A Caribbean Mystery, has died and left her GBP 20,000 in his will on condition that she successfully solves a crime. In another example of 'Christie time' working slower than real time, we are told that Miss Marple met Mr Rafiel in the West Indies 'a year ago', yet A Caribbean Mystery was published some seven years before Nemesis.

Nemesis was the nickname Mr Rafiel gave to Miss Marple when she unmasked a killer at large in a hotel on a Caribbean island. Remembering her success, he asks her from beyond the grave to undertake another investigation. Initially she is given no indication of what the crime is, but she is asked to go on a Historic Homes & Gardens holiday coach tour. On arrival, Miss Marple is intrigued by some of her fellow passengers, and it soon transpires that several other people have also been invited at Mr Rafiel's behest.

At one of the stopping points on the tour, a resident of the local manor house approaches Miss Marple and invites her to stay, saying that Mr Rafiel had asked her to do so. It then quickly becomes clear that the crime Miss Marple is supposed to investigate is the murder of a local girl called Verity Hunt, who was engaged to Mr Rafiel's son Michael, and for which Michael is currently in prison. As so often in Christie novels involving investigations into past murders, another murder takes place in the present as a result of the investigations being re-opened.

Like Hallowe'en Party and another late period Poirot, Dead Man's Folly, Nemesis ventures into the area of child murder, although the motives for the murders of Verity Hunt and Nora Broad in this novel are entirely different from those uncovered by Poirot.

The end of the book sees Miss Marple explaining her conclusions at great length to a distinguished panel that includes the Home Secretary, and dreaming of 'marrons glaces' and 'visits to the opera' with her legacy.

Like Miss Marple, Christie was herself very elderly when writing this book, and several things related to the novel do not add up. Mr Rafiel had arranged for Elizabeth Temple and Professor Wanstead to go on the coach tour, and for the Bradbury-Scotts and Archdeacon Brabazon to meet Miss Marple during the tour, but how could he be sure that they would all keep their side of the bargain? Is it really realistic to expect to murder a moving target by rolling a rock down a hill? How do Miss Marple's 'guardian angels' know the exact time at which an attempt will be made on Miss Marple's life, and why, if he is so keen to see Michael's name cleared, does Mr Rafiel not specify the crime in question in his will?

For these reasons, as well as the fact that the field of suspects is limited, Nemesis is not a first-rate whodunnit. However, it still makes for compelling reading, if only as more of a tragic love story than a murder mystery.

Nemesis was adapted for the BBC with the usual skill. In this programme, Burgh Island Hotel in Devon features in the first few minutes as Mr Rafiel's house. Burgh Island was the setting for the novel And Then There Were None and both the novel and television adaptation of the Poirot mystery Evil Under The Sun. The ITV version of Nemesis, while having some merit as an original screenplay, is scarcely recognisable as an adaptation of Christie's work.

 

Sleeping Murder (1976)

This was the last Agatha Christie full-length novel to be published. Christie died on January 12 1976 at the age of 85, and was buried in the churchyard at Cholsey in Berkshire. In October that year this Marple novel, written several decades earlier, hit the shelves.

There is a widespread belief amongst Christie biographers that this title was written around 1940, at the same time as Christie wrote Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. However, the painstaking work of John Curran for Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, and the sequel Murder in the Making, has revealed that Christie was still planning this novel in 1948. As Curran points out, a close examination of the novel confirms the true date of writing, as there is a reference to the 1943 novel The Moving Finger and a quote about the war which implies that the war is over.

While Curtain depicts a very elderly and infirm Poirot, who dies before the end of the book, Sleeping Murder appears to feature a younger Miss Marple than some of the 1960s novels. The death of Miss Marple was never documented, and for reasons explained earlier we must regard Nemesis as her final case.

Once again we find Miss Marple accepting the hospitality of Raymond West.  During a visit to the theatre to watch The Duchess Of Malfi, one of the party, a young woman called Gwenda Reed, married to Raymond’s cousin, screams and rushes out on hearing these words uttered by the character Ferdinand:

‘Cover her face, mine eyes dazzle, she died young’.

Suddenly Gwenda has a vision of a young woman lying strangled in the hallway at Hillside, and a killer reciting these lines. Aided by Miss Marple, Gwenda soon discovers that she lived in the very same house for a short time when three years of age. This explains some of the earlier feelings of familiarity with the house, but also raises the chilling prospect that 18 years previously, a murder was committed at Hillside.

Gwenda and her husband Giles cannot resist the temptation to investigate, with Miss Marple in tow of course, but some of the things Gwenda learns about her family are extremely painful. The investigations also lead to a maid in the house at the time of the murder being silenced to prevent her telling what she knows.

There is of course one remarkable coincidence to swallow – that a young woman would return to the United Kingdom after 18 years and purchase the very same house she lived in as a child. However one feels that this is excusable on the grounds that the coincidence is the basis for an excellent novel.

John Curran’s investigations have also revealed that Christie’s original title for this novel was Cover Her Face. A likely reason for the change of title is that in the years between writing and publication, fellow crime writing legend P.D. James used this title.

Readers with knowledge of the Duchess of Malfi have a real advantage when it comes to identifying the killer.

This novel is the first of three occasions when Agatha Christie made use of a curious conversation. Gwenda visits a sanatorium during the course of her investigation, and there an old lady asks her ‘Is it your poor child, my dear?’, and goes on to suggest that there is a child’s body behind the fireplace. This conversation would appear again in the 1961 novel The Pale Horse and it would form a significant part of the plot in the 1968 Tommy & Tuppence Beresford novel By The Pricking Of My Thumbs. (Of course in spite of its date of publication, Sleeping Murder was actually written well before these 1960s titles.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Charles Osborne: The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie
Anne Hart: Agatha Christie's Miss Marple
John Curran: Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks
John Curran: Murder in the Making

 

Source: http://www.martinsaxon.com/bm.doc/marple-novels.doc

Web site to visit: http://www.martinsaxon.com

Author of the text: indicated on the source document of the above text

The Reader as a Fellow Detective

Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles

This paper examines Agatha Christie’s first work, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, from several aspects, in order to show how the structure of this novel makes the reader’s personal investigation possible, difficult and entertaining at the same time. First of all, the basic features of the clue-puzzle genre, related to this novel in particular, will be introduced. The Styles Affair deserves special attention among clue-puzzle stories, since it does not only contain the compulsory elements of the genre, but also reflects upon them. The concepts of ‘whodunit’ and ‘fair play’ will be analysed. In addition, an answer to the following question will be given: why does the reader, as a fellow-detective, know even more than Poirot? The setting and the narration of the story will be discussed in detail, as well as the unique character of the detective, and the constant duality of reason and emotion. The main aim of this analysis is to reach a fuller understanding of the special experience of reading the Styles Affair.      
First of all, an outline of the genre has to be drawn. Clue-puzzle fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction in general. The name ‘clue-puzzle’ refers to the need for the reader’s active participation in searching for clues, and putting them together. The period when clue-puzzle stories flourished, the so-called ‘golden age’, is defined in Scaggs (2oo5), in the glossary of technical terms, as follows: “In crime fiction, the Golden Age refers to the period between the First and Second World Wars, and is usually used to refer specifically to the flowering of British talent and to the mysteries written in Britain during this time. The Golden Age is often identified as starting in 1920 with the publication of Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles.” (Scaggs, 2005: 145.)
The ‘Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction’ includes a study on this period, written by Stephen Knight, who claims that “The Mysterious Affair at Styles appeared in 192O and it gathers together the archetypical features of the clue-puzzle”. (Knight, 2003: 77.) It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Styles Affair did not so much follow the rules of the clue-puzzle structure, but rather it was one of the first works that created it.
To justify Knight’s statement, it is enough to have a look at these archetypical features, a list of which is given in his book, ‘Crime Fiction 18oo-2ooo’. Three of these, which are entirely justified by the Styles Affair, should be quoted here. First of all, “the victim has some wealth and authority, a person against whom malicious hostility and envy can credibly be raised…” This description applies to Mrs. Inglethorp. Secondly, “the social setting is also exclusive. Professional criminals and members of the working classes play very minor roles and servants are used only as passing suspects.”  “Most of the real suspects will be relatives or close associates of the important dead person […] But finally they will be reduced to one, or sometimes two working together.” (Knight, 2oo4: 87-88.) In the Styles Affair, there are in fact two people working together, to murder Mrs. Inglethorp, her best friend and her husband. Some other features that Knight mentions will be discussed in more detail, in later parts of this essay.
Besides these characteristics, two key expressions, ‘whodunit’ and ‘fair-play’ should be clarified. Clue-puzzle stories are often called ‘whodunit’ stories, suggesting that the central question is always who has done it. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, this question is answered at the very end of Chapter 12: “Let me introduce you to the murderer, Mr. Alfred Inglethorp!” Still, the book does not end at this point. To reveal the identity of the murderer is crucial, but, of course, the essence of a ‘whodunit’ story includes giving answers to other questions as well. Namely, the why, and the how, or, to be precise, two how’s, that of the murder and that of the detection. These are also important questions, all of which have to be answered at the end. This is done in Chapter 13, titled ‘Poirot Explains’.
In his book ‘Crime Fiction’, Scaggs talks about a question mark that hangs over all mystery stories, and he says that this question mark “…encourages the reader to imitate the detective, and to retrace the causative steps from effects back to causes, and in so doing to attempt to answer the question at the heart of all stories of mystery and detective fiction: who did it?” (Scaggs, 2005: 34.)
The reader’s attempt to solve the mystery along with the detective is a central element of all clue-puzzle stories. It appears together with the requirement that the reader must have exactly the same knowledge about the facts that the detective has. Otherwise, the reader would not have equal chances to succeed. This phenomenon is usually referred to as ‘fair play’.
A simple and clear definition is provided by Scaggs: “ ‘Fair Play’ is the notion that a mystery or detective story should, in principle, at least, be capable of being solved by a careful and observant reader.” (Scaggs, 2004: 36.)
The term is mentioned in Knight’s study on Golden Age as well: “…the most widely known and most unusual element of the clue-puzzle form, [is] the fact that the reader is challenged to match the detective’s process of identifying the murderer and there should be therefore ‘fair play’: the reader must be informed of each clue that the detective sees.” (Knight, 2003: 79.) This is the reason why the interrogations have to be included in the text in full length, as well as all six ‘points of interest’ that Poirot discovers, when he examines Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedroom.
What is fascinating about the notion of ‘fair play’ is that it is not only analysed in studies on Agatha Christie, but it is also referred to, both by Poirot and Hastings, in The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Three excellent examples can be found in the novel, to support this claim.
Firstly, at the beginning of the chapter concerned with the 15th and 16th July, Hastings says the following: “For the convenience of the reader I will recapitulate the incidents of those days in as exact a manner as possible”.
Secondly, during one of their conversations, Poirot tells Hastings these words: “I am not keeping back facts.”
Thirdly, at the end of the book, Poirot is mocking Hastings, when he says: “What idiots we had been…” and “[I gave you] several hints. You would not take them.” and “I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself.”
All these examples illustrate how the Styles Affair reflects on its own ‘fair play’ structure, implying the following ‘message’ for the reader: You know just as much about this affair as Poirot does. It is only up to your intellectual efforts whether you too will be able to draw the same conclusion.
In addition, ‘fair pay’ also means that, in a clue-puzzle story, the murderer(s) and their motifs must be found somewhere inside the world of the novel. Due to this special constraint, certain types of explanations have to be ruled out, such as accidence, madness, supernatural powers, or the involvement of a figure from the outside, a professional assassin for instance.   
Something else should be mentioned here. To be precise, in the story of the Styles Affair, the readers do not have exactly the same amount of knowledge that the detective has. They know a good deal more.
Hastings meets nine people in person during the first two days of his visit. John and Mary Cavendish, Mr. and Mrs. Inglethorp, Evie Howard, Cynthia Murdoch, Lawrence Cavendish, Dr. Bauerstein and the wife of Farmer Raikes. These people are introduced not only to Hastings but also to the reader. However, the readers are already in a completely different position. In their eyes, these people are not merely members or friends of an English family. They are possible suspects.
The reader is already aware that a murder will take place here, in the near future, while Hastings and Poirot have no idea about this. As far as the readers’ personal investigation is concerned, they have a considerable advantage. They can also return to earlier parts of the novel, in order to re-examine clues, related to their favourite suspects.
Therefore, the experience of reading this book is accompanied by a constant process of suspecting. The reader is likely to share Hastings’s impressions: “The air seemed rife with suspicion”, or “a vague suspicion of everyone and everything filled my mind.” In Christie, what makes the process of suspecting truly fascinating and difficult is not only to find right clues, but rather to recognize the many fake or irrelevant ones. On the one hand, all of the visible signs – someone’s face suddenly blushes or gets pale after a question was asked – have some inner content. On the other hand, this content may have nothing to do with the crime at all.
For example, after his arrival, Hastings has tea with the members of the family in the garden. As far as this conversation is concerned, the reader has to be aware that every single statement might become crucial help for solving a mystery, at some later stage in the story. Thus, the value and the significance of these sentences cannot be estimated at this point. This conversation in the garden is a very good example of the novel’s self-reflectivity. People are chatting about crime stories and poisoning, while they are within a crime story, which includes poisoning.  
Knight mentions that the effect of suspecting people within the family instead of people from the outside is that the sense of danger becomes as intimate as possible. The threat is closer this way, and this disturbing impression might cause a sense of unease, in family members as well as in the reader. Applying Knight’s remarks to the book discussed in this paper, this phenomenon is summed up in Miss Howard’s warning that she addresses to Hastings, before she leaves: “They are a lot of sharks – all of them.”
In order to guarantee the chance of a successful personal investigation for the reader, the setting of the story should be more or less enclosed. This is true about the location of Styles Affair, being a country-house, called Styles Court. This setting is a secluded world, in more than one sense, which is very typical of the clue-puzzle structure. 
First of all, the mansion is isolated geographically. It lies a mile away from the village, called Styles St. Mary, which is two miles away from the train station. This information is provided by Hastings. When he arrives, John has to give him a lift. On his way to Styles Court, Hastings feels like he suddenly strayed into another world. The peaceful beauty of the landscape, according to Hastings, makes the thought of war, going on not far from there, almost impossible. Hastings’s remark also sharpens the contrast between this seemingly idyllic setting and the violent murder, which is to take place soon.
As Knight mentions, in his study on Golden Age crime fiction, “the setting of the crime is enclosed in some way. […] Though more stories were set in the city than is often realised, it would still be in a sequestered area, an apartment or at most a few streets, and the archetypical setting of the English novels (unlike most of the American ones) was a more or less secluded country house…” (Knight, 2003: 77-78.)
In our case, the setting of the murder is even more restricted. It is reduced to a single bedroom, with all three doors being bolted from the inside. This way, Christie combines two variants of the clue-puzzle form in one work, the so-called ‘country house mystery’ and the ‘locked room mystery’. When Scaggs discusses the sub-genres of crime fiction, based on the possible settings of the murder, he writes the following: “The most frequently visited of these [sub-genres] include the country-house mystery and the locked-room mystery, in which various ingenious methods of committing a murder in a hermetically sealed environment formed the core.” (Scaggs, 2005: 51) Other sub-genres include the so-called ‘snow-bound mystery’, or the ‘murder afloat’, where the location has to be a ship, a train, or a plane. These two are also combined by Christie, in the Murder on the Orient Express.
Secondly, besides the geographical setting, the family is isolated in a social sense. On the one hand, those, who live here, rarely leave. It is enough to think of John Cavendish. Despite his age (45), and being married, he still lives at Styles with his stepmother. If somebody, who has been living here, does leave the place, it is a shock to everyone. The example is Evie Howard’s sudden departure. After a fierce quarrel with Mrs. Inglethorp, she insists on leaving right away.
The puzzled members of the family find Evie’s decision very odd. As it is revealed in the end, they were right. She had a special reason to leave – she knew that a murder would soon take place, and she did not want to be present. 
On the other hand, this socially isolated family does not easily accept anyone from the outside. The arrival of the new husband, Alfred Inglethorp, breaks the coherence of this intimate community. John says that “the fellow is an absolute outsider”. This critique mirrors the general attitude of the family towards this stranger.
Even Mrs. Ingethorp, who has been living at Styles for decades, is not entirely accepted as a full member of the family. After her death, the sorrow is not so great, and Poirot remarks that „it is not as though there was a blood tie. She has been kind and generous to these Cavendishes, but she was not their own mother.”
Even though the family and their mansion are represented as a secluded world, some people are welcome here, such as Hastings and Poirot. Hastings is accepted, because he has been a friend of the family since his childhood. In order to see why Poirot can enter this secluded world, his character has to be analysed in detail.
Hercule Poirot is one of the most consciously constructed (and most widely known) literary characters. However, he is also one of the least examined and interpreted ones. He was introduced to the public for the first time in The Mysterious Affair at Styles. First, he is referred to as a friend of Hastings, the narrator. Later, it turns out that he is also a friend of the family. Mrs. Inglethorp offered hospitality to seven Belgian refugees in Styles St. Mary, including Poirot, who has been living in the village for some time now.
Although the family, as it has been discussed, is an enclosed and intimate community, they let Poirot enter their private sphere. This is due to the fact that he is the opposite of an official policeman, in many ways.
In the official way of investigating, male, physical power plays an important role. The interrogations are done in a cold, matter-of-fact manner. Such an impersonal and unemotional detective figure would cause unease and distrust in the family. Poirot’s methods are completely different. He is “discretion itself”, as Hastings says, when John Cavendish expresses his fears about a scandal.
Poirot is willing to spend a lot of time chatting nicely and patiently to people, about their impressions, ideas, emotions, and other seemingly irrelevant issues. He is very emphatic and understanding. He attributes great importance to gossip and to intuitions as well.
These ways of investigating are traditionally considered female. Due to his methods, Poirot is accepted in the home of the family, in the domestic sphere, which is conventionally connected to women. As Knight says, in connection with the Styles Affair: “From the start Christie’s less than heroic detective, Hercule Poirot relies on his ‘little grey cells’, but in fact his method and focus are primarily domestic: a central question is why the spills on the mantelpiece were rearranged. Because the crucial information comes through knowledge associated with a female sphere, the detective model is significantly feminised.” (Knight, 2003: 82.)
Poirot is even more obviously distinguished from rough, male detective heroes and Bogey-like private-eyes, by his external features. One should only think of his obsession with neatness and order, his perfect clothing, his sophisticated language and subtle movements.
A hypothesis about Poirot’s femininity could be mentioned here. The majority of crime fiction readers at Christie’s time were women. “…lending libraries which […] were the basic medium for dissemination of the new clue-puzzle novels had a 75 percent female audience.” (Knight, 2003: 81.) According to Susan Rowland (2001), the fact that the – mostly female – audience needed a detective figure that they could rely on, and identify with, led to the feminised character of Poirot. However, it has to be kept in mind that when Agatha Christie’s books became widely read among men as well, as they are today, Poirot’s popularity has not decreased at all. 
Poirot’s explicit otherness is emphasised by the fact that he is an absolute foreigner. As Rowland writes, the name Hastings always reminded English people of how they were defeated by the French. In Christie, this name has a similar, symbolic meaning. It embodies a French-speaking man’s victory over an Englishman, only not in the military, but in the intellectual sense.
As it has been mentioned, the relation between the reader and the detective figure has to be based on trust. Similarly to Hastings, the reader can turn to Poirot for guidance if things become too confusing or uncertain. However, Poirot, in the Styles Affair, usually insists on keeping his opinion to himself, since Hastings could not keep any secret. Even when Poirot is willing to give some hints, these are usually very difficult to understand at once. When Hastings desperately asks Poirot to explain what he deduces from the facts, Poirot urges Hastings “to use his natural faculties.” Thus, before solving the great mystery of the affair, the little mysteries of Poirot’s remarks should be solved, one by one. These remarks are usually considered signs of plain folly by other characters. As Hastings says: “Surely the war had affected the little man’s brain.”
Although Poirot does mention the significance of psychology, this never means serious and deep analysis. His purpose is rather to gain an impression of somebody’s personality in overall, and he does not search for motifs and explanations inside the sub-conscious. Rowland claims that “what Golden Age crime fiction does is to question the legitimacy of psychoanalysis functioning as a cultural authority claiming to explain all crime and deviance.” (Rowland, 2001: 97.)
Poirot’s methods imply the belief that every action is triggered by reasons that can be explained. The rationalised world, which is necessary for the success of these methods, will be described below. The contrast between this world and the highly sentimental, subjective narrator, Hastings, will be discussed in detail.
As it has been quoted, Stephen Knight called Poirot a “less than heroic detective”. This description originates in the fact that Poirot’s methods are not based on masculine, physical strength, but purely on intellectual power. However, the ‘little grey cells’ could not deal with unaccountable things that happen absolutely by chance. In other words, the success of Poirot’s logic-based investigation is only possible in a world where everything makes sense. Therefore, events of the Styles Affair, unlike events of reality, have to be governed by the laws of rationality.
All types of actions, either murder or investigation, have to be triggered by reasons that can and will be revealed and explained by thorough analysis. As Poirot puts it, “one fact leads to another – so we continue. […] There is something missing – a link in the chain that is not there. We examine. We search.”
Obviously, such an entirely logical world may seem very implausible. This effect is counterbalanced in two ways. Firstly, it is part of Poirot’s job to reassure the reader’s belief in the possibility of a completely coherent story, with his encouraging remarks, such as “there is no murder without a motive” and “time will show which of us is right.” Secondly, the book contains two maps, as well as the “exact reproduction” of a piece of paper, and the “facsimile” of an envelope and a letter, found by Poirot. Due to these special elements, the story has an air of reality. This creates the convincing illusion that the reader is given authentic pieces of evidence, which played crucial roles in a true murder case. Scaggs claims that “…the central importance of realist spatial setting is evident in the almost obligatory presence of maps in Golden Age fiction. The Mysterious Affair at Styles features a map of the murdered Mrs. Inglethorp’s bedroom, and most of Christie’s subsequent novels also feature maps, whether or not they are helpful to the reader.” (Scaggs, 2005: 51.)
The maps and the exact copies of letters and other pieces of paper inside the book have another function as well. The circumstances necessary for ‘fair-play’ have to be guaranteed for the reader. This becomes most difficult when visual information is concerned. What Poirot can see, the reader can only read about and imagine. This fact places the reader into a disadvantageous position, with unequal chances. The special elements mentioned above are provided inside the book in order to avoid this problem of ‘unfair-play’.
Even though the Styles Affair, as it has been shown, is overwhelmingly rational, an objective representation of this world is not possible in this case, since this would require an impersonal, omniscient and omnipotent narrator. Instead of this, the story is narrated by an amiable, naive, sentimental guy, Hastings, whose perspective is a highly subjective one.
As far as the reader’s personal investigation is concerned, the role of the narrator cannot be overestimated. When the reader searches for clues, trying to guess whether someone is lying or not, the description of meta-communication becomes a central element. However, Hastings’s reports of people’s facial expressions and behaviour are always very blurred. They are constantly accompanied by an account of his own personal impressions, emotions and comments.
For instance, when he mentions that John “seemed very excited and restless”, Mrs. Inglethorp looked “flushed and upset”, Mary Cavendish was “odd and disturbed”, or Mr. Inglethorp was “unusually quiet”, it must not be forgotten that these are only Hastings’s personal opinions. Sometimes he even reminds the reader of this fact, when he begins one his descriptions by saying: “It might have been my own fancy, but…”
Although Hastings does mention those scraps of information that could serve as keys to solve the mystery, he never realises their connection and importance. For example, while the weather is really hot (Mary: “It’s almost too hot.”), Mrs. Inglethorp asks Dorcas, the housemaid, to light the fire in her room. (“Have you lighted the fire in my room as I told you?”) Of course, these pieces of information are not easy to connect, since they are placed far from each other inside the text. It is no wonder that later, when Hastings explains to Poirot what has happened so far, Poirot tells him that: “You have a good memory and you have given me the facts faithfully. Of the order in which you present them, I say nothing – truly, it is deplorable!” This phenomenon about the narration is somewhat odd. At the time when Hastings tells the story of the Styles Affair, the case has already been solved. Hastings actually knows everything about it, and he could easily highlight the clues for the reader. Still he does not do this, but pretends to be as naive as he was back then, so that he does not spoil the fun for the reader.
Thus, most of the time, the reader has no other chance but to see the world as Hastings sees it. The only possibilities of objective description, when the reader’s perception is not filtered through Hastings’s perception, are the dialogues. These are not affected by Hastings’s personality. Therefore, they offer another perspective for the reader, an objective one.
The difference between the objective and subjective perspectives often becomes a source of humour. For instance, Hastings describes Mary Cavendish as an “enigmatical woman”, and he sees in her eyes a “vivid sense of slumbering fire”. He also tells that he began to distrust Dr. Bauerstein as soon as he was introduced to him. On the one hand, these remarks might suggest that these characters have something to hide. On the other hand, it is much more likely that Hastings is simply beginning to fall in love with Mrs. Cavendish, without knowing anything about it, and his distrust towards the doctor is the result of plain jelousy, since Mary seems to be attracted to the man. In these cases, the reader becomes wiser than the narrator. 
Finally, some other peculiar phenomena should be mentioned, related to Hastings’s emotional character. Firstly, when Knight collects the typical features of the clue-puzzle genre, he claims that “romance is rare”. (Knight, 2003: 79.) Due to Hastings, romance is not only not absent from this story, but it is doubly present. Hastings’s heart flames up first for Mrs. Cavendish, then for Miss Cynthia. Yet, we cannot talk about frantic affections, judging, at least, from the fact that he accepts the ladies’ refusals very easily.
Secondly, Knight also claims that, as far as the depiction of affections is concerned, Golden Age crime stories confine themselves to the necessary minimum. It is absolutely true about the Styles Affair that certain upsetting scenes are not included in the text, such as the arrest of the murderer, or execution itself. However, Knight also claims that, “the real pain and degradation of violent death [is not] represented.” (Knight, 2003: 78.) This is not completely justified by the Styles Affair. Even though there is no blood in this case, the horrible sight of Mrs. Inglethorp’s agony is described very minutely and vividly by Hastings. “A strangled cry from the bed startled me. A fresh access of pain seized the unfortunate old lady. The convulsions were of a violence terrible to behold. […] A final convulsion lifted her from the bed, until she appeared to rest upon her head and her heels, with her body arched in an extraordinary manner.” It has to be added that, apart from this description, the drama, or the philosophical weight of death itself is not represented in the story. This is due to the fact that, in a crime story, even death has to be secondary, since the central element is the procedure of the investigation.
At the end of this essay, the end of the novel should be examined. Generally speaking, the aim of investigation in crime-fiction is to return to an earlier state, which preceded the murder, and which was characterised by order and stability. According to Scaggs, this should not be understood merely in a social or moral sense, but also as emotional stability. “…the resolution of the mystery in Christie, as in Gothic fiction, is often marked or accompanied by romantic resolution.” (Scaggs, 2005: 47.) Scaggs’s observation is justified by the Styles Affair, which has a surprisingly happy and emotional end. It is dominated by the upheavel of romantic affections, as far as the two couples, Mary and John, and Cynthia and Lawrence are concerned.
As it has been shown, the setting, the narration, the murder, the detecitve, the possible suspects and the possible motifs in the Styles Affair are all highly premeditated, and designed to suit the reader’s personal investigation. Therefore, this story is not only about a murder in a country-house and an investigation, it is also about the clue-puzzle genre. Poirot is not the only person who investigates. He is accompanied by Hastings, who is keen on having his own hypothesis, and always shares it with the reader. Besides Hastings, Poirot is, in a sense, accompanied by the reader as well, who is constantly encouraged to embark on a personal investigation by constructing several theories, and become a fellow-detective.

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Knight, Stephen:       The Golden Age. In: Martin Priestman (ed.): The Cambridge    Companion to Crime Fiction. Cambridge University Press: 2003.

                                    Crime Fiction, 1800-2000. Palgrave-Macmillan: 2004.

Scaggs, John:            Crime Fiction. Routledge: 2005

Rowland, Susan:       From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell. Palgrave: 2001.

 

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Agatha Christie novel

 

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Agatha Christie novel