‘They don’t understand – old people don’t… they can’t… They don’t know what it is to live!’
(young Theresa, Chapter 2)

‘Let me tell you that no matter is finished with until Hercule Poirot ceases to concern himself with it!’
(Poirot telling off Hastings, Chapter 6)

‘The dog hunts rabbits. Hercule Poirot hunts murderers.’
(Poirot to Hastings, Chapter 9)

‘If one is going to tell a lie at all, it might as well be an artistic lie, a romantic lie, a convincing lie!’
(Poirot justifying fibbing to the people he interviews, Chapter 10)

‘Always trouble after a death, anyway. A man or woman is hardly cold in their coffin before most of the mourners are scratching each other’s eyes out.’
(Miss Peabody, Chapter 10)

‘The various characters in our drama begin to emerge more clearly. In some ways it resembles, does it not, a novelette of olden days. The humble companion, once despised, is raised to affluence and now plays the part of lady bountiful.’
(Poirot acknowledging the hackneyed quality of many of Christie’s plots and characters, Chapter 12)

‘There is something in the depths there – yes, there is something! I swear it, by my faith as Hercule Poirot, I swear it!’
(The conviction that motivates the investigations of not only Poirot but the independent investigators in all her other murder mysteries, Chapter 18)

Dumb Witness

‘Dumb Witness’ is the 17th Hercule Poirot book, the 14th novel (given that the 17 include 2 books of short stories and a play). Interestingly, it is the last one to feature and, indeed be narrated by, his sidekick Captain Hastings, until the final Poirot novel, ‘Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case’ in 1975, a gap of nearly 40 years.

It’s notable because Hastings’s narrative only starts in Chapter 5, the first four chapter having been told by a third-party omniscient narrator, a combining of the two types of narrator which we had previously encountered in ‘The A.B.C. Murders’.

Christie was an restless experimenter not only with the form of her novels, but also the form of her murders. There is a relentless experimenting or playing with who the murderer turns out to be throughout the stories. The experiment in this one is having the murdered person dead and buried months before Poirot is even involved. So instead of being on the spot or arriving at the crime scene the next day, and interviewing everyone for a day or two before briskly revealing the murderer, this is more in the manner of a cold case, months old and, crucially, nobody thinks it was a murder. Everyone thinks an old lady passed away in a perfectly ordinary way, after a series of illnesses and accidents, and left her money to her companion. Bit odd, maybe, but nothing to see here, and the world has moved on.

So why does Poirot get involved or suspect anything untoward? Because, as in numerous previous novels, Poirot is roped in via a letter from the deceased. But the start of the mystery is that she, the deceased, Miss Emily Arundell, died in May and yet Poirot doesn’t receive the letter asking him to come and visit her till nearly two months later, 28 June – and the letter was dated 17 April. Hmm. Puzzling.

Setup

‘Dumb Witness’ is an amusing and entertaining portrait of the clash between the generations in the kind of traditional Victorian family which Christie herself grew up in.

In Miss Arundell’s day, women took second place. Men were the important members of society.

The old-fashioned character of 70-something Miss Arundell is persuasively, lovingly and entertainingly described. Miss Arundell is the doughty old representative of a grand family, the last survivor of five children to long-dead General Arundell, whose drunken binges were kept well hidden from the outside world.

The first four chapters describe her giving a house party for her three closest relatives: Charles and Theresa (brother and sister, children of Miss A’s brother Thomas) and Bella (daughter of Miss A’s sister, Arabella). In these opening scenes we learn how all three of them badly need the fortune Miss A is sitting on i.e. have plenty of motive to bump her off. In fact Charles freely admits telling her to her face that her tightness with money would lead to someone ‘bumping her off’.

These opening chapters are slow and detailed and entertaining and I was just starting to really like Miss Arundell’s character when the fifth chapter jumps us forward a couple of months to the June morning when Poirot opens the letter from her saying she is worried about a family affair and would like to consult him – except that, upon enquiring, Hastings and Poirot discover that Miss Arundell died a month ago, the will was read, she left her entire fortune to her lady companion, Miss Lawson (much to the anger of the three young relatives) and that the fine old Victorian house where the opening chapters are set, Littlegreen House, is up for sale.

If the fears Miss Arundell expressed in her letter to Poirot are justified, if someone was trying to murder her, if she was indeed murdered, then the case has not only gone completely cold but also nobody else, none of the authorities, even think a murder has been committed. Poirot has to first find the evidence that there even has been a murder, before he can think about trying to find the culprit.

All of which explains why I described it as being a characteristically interesting experiment in the form of the detective novel and the type of murder.

So, as you might expect, Poirot and Hastings head off to Market Basing, where they pretend to be interesting in buying the house in order to be given a tour by the servants (who have agreed to stay on and maintain it till it is sold), discreetly pumping them for information along the way. They then interview everyone they can find in the town, namely Miss Arundell’s contemporary, the acid-tongued Miss Peabody, staid young Dr Donaldson, and the two spiritualist sisters, Miss Julia and Miss Isabel Tripp, close friends of the companion who inherited Miss A’s fortune, Miss Minnie Lawson.

Then it’s back to London to interview the younger generation – Charles and Bella and Theresa – in a bid to understand whether a murder did in fact take place and, if so, who committed it…

It seems too obvious to suspect that Miss Lawson, the person who gained most, was the culprit. More like Christie is the notion that one of the aggrieved three younger relatives tried to pull off a complicated plot which backfired and left Miss Lawson the beneficiary. Or is it a double bluff, and the apparently dim, ineffectual Miss Lawson was in fact a cunning mastermind?

First of all we have to accompany Poirot as he delves deeper into bitter grievances and poisonous enmities of yet another Christie family which turns out to be at war with itself.

‘Miss Peabody tells us that Charles Arundell would murder his grandmother for twopence. Miss Lawson says that Mrs Tanios would murder any one if her husband told her to do so. Dr Tanios says that Charles and Theresa are rotten to the core, and he hints that their mother was a murderess and says apparently carelessly that Theresa is capable of murdering any one in cold blood. They have a pretty opinion of each other, all these people!’ (Chapter 18)

Cast

• Miss Emily Arundell of Littlegreen House in the little country town of Market Basing, well over seventy, the last of a family of five
• Bob – her wire-haired terrier
• Miss Wilhelmina ‘Minnie’ Lawson – her paid companion (and lackey), very interested in seances and clairvoyancy etc. Emily doesn’t think much of her: ‘Poor Minnie! Emily Arundell looked at her companion with mingled affection and contempt. She had had so many of these foolish, middle-aged women to minister to her – all much the same, kind, fussy, subservient and almost entirely mindless’ – and: ‘She is a fool,’ said Aunt Emily, ‘but she is a faithful soul. And I really believe she is devoted to me. She cannot help her lack of brains’

Miss Arundell has three surviving relations:

• Bella Biggs – ‘Emily Arundell’s niece, had married a Greek, Dr Jacob Tanios. And Emily Arundell’s people, who were what is known as “all service people,” simply did not marry Greeks’ – Bella ‘was a good woman – a devoted wife and mother, quite exemplary in behavior – and extremely dull!’ — In Miss Arundell’s mind a Greek was ‘almost as bad as an Argentine or a Turk’ – Bella had money of her own but Tanios has lost it through speculations – now they want money to pay for the education of their children, Mary and Edward and John
• Theresa – beautiful and grand, engaged to young Dr Donaldson – ‘Theresa’s clothes were expensive, slightly bizarre, and she herself had an exquisite figure’ – she wants Miss A’s money to continue funding her lifestyle but also free Donaldson to do his research – ‘[Miss Arundell] had no control over Theresa since the latter had come into her own money at the age of twenty-one. Since then the girl had achieved a certain notoriety. Her picture was often in the papers. She belonged to a young, bright, go-ahead set in London – a set that had freak parties and occasionally ended up in the police courts’
• Charles – ‘tall and good-looking with his slightly mocking manner… charming though he was, was not to be trusted’ – Charles wants Miss A’s money to pay his numerous debts
• Dr Tanios – a big, bearded, jolly-looking man, married to Bella, but a) has lost most of her money on bad speculations and b) is controlling
• Dr Rex Donaldson – assistant to Market Basing’s established old doctor, ‘a fair-haired young man with a solemn face and pince-nez’, fiancé of Theresa, clever but ineffectual

Others

• Caroline Peabody – another older lady from a ‘good’ family, shares the same Victorian values as Miss Arundell: ‘They had known each other for considerably over fifty years. Miss Peabody knew of certain regrettable lapses in the life of General Arundell, Emily’s father. She knew just precisely what a shock Thomas Arundell’s marriage had been to his sisters. She had a very shrewd idea of certain troubles connected with the younger generation. But no word had ever passed between the two ladies on any of these subjects. They were both upholders of family dignity, family solidarity, and complete reticence on family matters’
• Julia and Isabel Tripp – friends of Minnie, spiritualists, vegetarians etc
• Dr Grainger – Emily’s doctor: ‘a man of sixty odd. His face was thin and bony with an aggressive chin, bushy eyebrows, and a pair of very shrewd grey eyes’
• Mr Gabler – estate agent: ‘a grey-haired, middle-aged man entered with a rush. His eye, a militant one, swept over us with a gleam.’
• Miss Jenkins – can’t-be-bothered assistant in the estate agent’s
• Ellen – the elderly house-parlour-maid,
• Annie – the cook
• Mr Lonsdale – local vicar
• Mr Purvis – the family lawyer, ‘a big, solidly built man with white hair and a rosy complexion. He had a little the look of a country squire. His manner was courteous but reserved’
• the gardener – ‘a big, rugged old man’
• local chemist – ‘a middle-aged man of a chatty disposition’
• Nurse Carruthers – nursed Miss Arundell in her final illness, ‘a sensible-looking, middle-aged woman’

Good humoured, amiable knowledge of life, or the kind of lives her characters lead. Thus the old lady’s bantering relationship with her doctor:

Emily Arundell replied with spirit – she and old Dr Grainger were allies of long standing. He bullied and she defied – they always got a good deal of pleasure out of each other’s company! (Chapter 4)

Poirot’s method

Christie repeats the basics of Poirot’s method.

‘As you say – a regrettable failure to employ order and method in the mental processes, and without order and method, Hastings –’
‘Quite so,’ I interrupted hastily. ‘Little grey cells practically non-existent.’ (Chapter 5)

Suspect everyone.

‘Mon ami, you know my suspicious nature! I believe nothing that any one says unless it can be confirmed or corroborated… “He says”, “she says”, “they say”. Bah! what does that mean? Nothing at all. It may be absolute truth. It may be useful falsehood. Me, I deal only with facts.’ (Chapter 12)

He hates talk of intuition or instinct. These are nothing but the accumulated insights of order and method.

‘Instinct! You know how I dislike that word. “Something seems to tell me” – that is what you infer. Jamais de la vie! Me, I reason. I employ the little grey cells.’ (Chapter 5)

‘You have the mistaken idea implanted in your head that a detective is necessarily a man who puts on a false beard and hides behind a pillar! The false beard, it is vieux jeu, and shadowing is only done by the lowest branch of my profession. The Hercule Poirots, my friend, need only to sit back in a chair and think.’ (Chapter 6)

The importance of psychology

‘Do not neglect the psychology – that is important. The character of the murder – implying as it does a certain temperament in the murderer – that is an essential clue to the crime.’
‘I can’t consider the character of the murderer if I don’t know who the murderer is!’
‘No, no, you have not paid attention to what I have just said. If you reflect sufficiently on the character – the necessary character of the murder – then you will realize who the murderer is!’
(Chapter 22)

Thinking

‘Then think, Hastings – think. Lie back in your chair, close the eyes, employ the little grey cells.’ (Chapter 25)

How to soften up your interviewee

I have often had occasion to notice how, where a direct question would fail to elicit a response, a false assumption brings instant information in the form of a contradiction. (Chapter 7)

Discussions of death and such matters do more to unlock the human tongue than any other subject. Poirot was in a position to ask questions that would have been regarded with suspicious hostility twenty minutes earlier. (Chapter 8)

Poirotisms

As far as I know I’ve coined the term ‘Poirotism’ for the occasions when Christie mocks her creation by having him mangle a well-known English proverb or saying. For some reason ‘Dumb Witness’ is particularly rich in Poirotisms.

‘On the contrary, my friend, ‘any old lie,’ as you put it, would not do. Not with a lawyer. We should be – how do you say it? – thrown out with the flea upon the ear.’ (Chapter 13)

‘The only thing is – I am afraid.’
‘Afraid? Of what?’
He said gravely: ‘Of disturbing the dogs that sleep. That is one of your proverbs, is it not?’
(Chapter 18)

‘It is true that I am pig-headed – that is your expression, I think? Yes, definitely I have the head of the pig,’ said my friend meditatively. (Chapter 21)

Poirot patted her reassuringly on the shoulder. ‘It was the narrow squeak – yes?’ (Chapter 26)

‘Bien,’ said Poirot, rising with the check in his hand. ‘We have done our part. Now it is on the knees of the gods.’ (Chapter 26)

‘She is not one who wishes to wash the dirty linen in public, as the saying goes.’ (Chapter 29)

Poirot and Hastings bicker like an old married couple

Poirot to Hastings:

‘This conversation has occurred on previous occasions. You are about to say that it is not playing the game. And my reply is that murder is not a game.’ (Chapter 15)

Hastings is confused:

‘You know, Poirot, I don’t quite understand all this.’
‘If you will pardon my saying so, Hastings, you do not understand at all!’ (Chapter 25)

Foreignness

Much is made of how the older generation of posh ladies don’t like or trust foreigners, specifically the Greek doctor, Tanios, who Miss Arundell’s niece Bella has married. Animosity against and distrust of him run through the story like a silver thread.

Bella had married a foreigner – and not only a foreigner – but a Greek. In Miss Arundell’s prejudiced mind a Greek was almost as bad as an Argentine or a Turk. The fact that Dr Tanios had a charming manner and was said to be extremely able in his profession only prejudiced the old lady slightly more against him. She distrusted charm and easy compliments.

Or as Miss Peabody puts it:

‘His manners are really delightful. But I don’t trust foreigners. They’re so artful!’ (Chapter 15)

Here’s the housekeeper, Ellen:

‘Miss Bella’s husband, the foreign doctor, he went out and got her a bottle of something, but although she thanked him very politely she poured it away and that I know for a fact! And I think she was right. You don’t know where you are with these foreign things.’ (Chapter 20)

Even Hastings is prey to glib stereotypes about swarthy Mediterranean types:

I must say that my first sight of Dr Tanios was rather a shock. I had been imbuing him in my mind with all sorts of sinister attributes. I had been picturing to myself a dark bearded foreigner with a swarthy aspect and a sinister cast of countenance. Instead, I saw a rotund, jolly, brown-haired, brown-eyed man… (Chapter 17)

Poirot mocks Hastings for his xenophobia:

‘You found him an agreeable man, open-hearted, good-natured, genial. Attractive in spite of your insular prejudice against the Argentines, the Portuguese and the Greeks – a thoroughly congenial personality?’ (Chapter 18)

This of course echoes and amplifies the fact that Poirot himself is a foreigner and outsider in England, although he can see it both ways i.e. sometimes he feels an outside to the class system, posh public school diction about ‘playing the game’, about the intricacies of the aristocracy, and so on. But other times he is able to use his outsiderness, as when he soothes Bella’s irritation at old Miss Arundell for mistrusting her husband.

‘As you say, elderly ladies distrust foreigners sometimes,’ said Poirot. ‘I am sure they think that English doctors are the only doctors in the world. Insularity accounts for a lot.’ (Chapter 16)

Abroad was far away

But it’s as well to remind ourselves that 1936 was not 2025: there were far fewer means of travel, planes were expensive, cruise ships time consuming, and so travel abroad was a luxury, a rarity. Hence the atmosphere of exoticness and luxury which trails around her stories set on the Blue Train or Orient Express or Rhodes. As demonstrated by this statement by Dr Tanios which was, presumably, unremarkable in its day:

‘Yes, indeed. I am very fond of my wife.’ There was a rich tenderness in his voice. ‘I always feel it was so brave of her to marry me – a man of another race – to come out to a far country – to leave all her own friends and surroundings.’ (Chapter 23)

Nobody would think of moving to Greece as a brave action, leaving friends and family for ‘a man of another race’ nowadays.

Sherlock

There is always at least one reference to Sherlock Holmes in every one of her novels. It’s compulsory. Here there are two.

‘Poirot, I – the humble Watson – am going to hazard a deduction.’
‘Enchanted, my friend. What is it?’
I struck an attitude and said pompously: ‘You have received this morning one letter of particular interest!’
‘You are indeed the Sherlock Holmes! Yes, you are perfectly right.’ (Sherlock Holmes)

And she mentions the incident of the dog in the night-time, again.

‘Well, out with it. What’s the interesting point? I suppose, like the “incident of the dog in the night-time”, the point is that there is no interesting point!’ (Chapter 5)

In praise of things Victorian

The sympathetic descriptions of old Miss Arundell take in an appreciation of her old-fashioned habits and values, the Victorian values Christie herself (born 1890) was brought up amidst in her late-Victorian childhood and, to some extent, an affectionate portrait of her mother and her lady friends and their generation. Anyway, the book has notably more references to Victoriana of various types than any of her earlier books.

‘She has made her bed and she must lie on it.’ And having uttered this final Victorian pronouncement she went on: ‘I am going to the village now…’ (Chapter 1)

But her sensible, shrewd, Victorian mind would not admit that for a moment. There was no foolish optimism about the Victorians. (Chapter 3)

This room was definitely Victorian. A heavy mahogany dining-table, a massive sideboard of almost purplish mahogany with great clusters of carved fruit, solid leather-covered dining-room chairs. On the wall hung what were obviously family portraits.

In especial, one big jar with a lid on it seemed to attract him. It was not, I fancy, a particularly good bit of china. A piece of Victorian humour – it had on it a rather crude picture of a bulldog sitting outside a front door with a mournful expression on its face. (Chapter 8)

Morton Manor proved to be an ugly substantial house of the Victorian period. (Chapter 10)

[Miss Peabody] She chuckled – a rich Victorian fruity chuckle. (Chapter 10)

‘He’s a dear little doggie…’

Personally I don’t like dogs. Out on country walks I’ve been terrorised, chased and bitten by them, and seen small children scared out of their wits by huge barking animals, to have anything but fear and aversion to them. Plus the dog poo everywhere. And the streets reeking of dog pee whenever it rains.

But I appreciate that tens of millions of people love dogs, including Christie, and this book is by way of being a tribute to doggy love in the shape of the charismatic wire-haired terrier named Bob, old Miss Arundell’s pet, who everyone claimed to love and play ball with.

I’ve mentioned the two narrators – the third-person narrator who opens the novel and then Captain Hastings who takes over – but in a jokey way there’s a third voice, because Christie spends some time imagining what Bob the dog is saying, via his barks and expression. Thus:

The bushes were thin at that point and the dog could be easily seen. He was a wire-haired terrier, somewhat shaggy as to coat. His feet were planted wide apart, slightly to one side, and he barked with an obvious enjoyment of his own performance that showed him to be actuated by the most amiable motives.
‘Good watchdog, aren’t I?’ he seemed to be saying. ‘Don’t mind me! This is just my fun! My duty too, of course. Just have to let ’em know there’s a dog about the place! Deadly dull morning. Quite a blessing to have something to do. Coming into our place? Hope so. It’s durned dull. I could do with a little conversation.’ (Chapter 6)

Or:

[Poirot] stopped and patted Bob. ‘Brave chien, va! You loved your mistress.’
Bob responded amiably to these overtures and hopeful of a little play went and fetched a large piece of coal. For this he was reproved and the coal removed from him. He sent me a glance in search of sympathy.
‘These women,’ it seemed to say. ‘Generous with the food, but not really sportsmen!’ (Chapter 8)

Christie also appreciated the savage violence of dogs, although I imagine the following is intended to be humorous and charming:

Then we strolled off in the direction of Littlegreen House. When we rang the bell. Bob immediately answered the challenge. Dashing across the hall, barking furiously, he flung himself against the front door.
‘I’ll have your liver and your lights’ [note 1] he snarled. ‘I’ll tear you limb from limb! I’ll teach you to try and get into this house! Just wait until I get my teeth into you.’ (Chapter 20)

Everyone thinks their dog is a sweety, and when it barks its head off at small children or the postman or terrifies cows or savages sheep, it’s always ‘playing’, right up till the moment when it rips a baby’s face off. Ellen the housekeeper makes the usual dog owner’s excuses:

‘He makes such a noise and rushes at people so it frightens them [but] he’s quite all right, really.’

For dog owners and lovers, their beast frightening the living daylights out of people is just fine. They don’t mean it, really.

Anyway, what with all this emphasis on Bob the dog (not a very imaginative name, is it?) and his involvement in the first suspicious incident i.e. Miss Arundell supposedly tripping over his rubber ball and falling down the stairs and nearly breaking her neck, and with the cover of the book featuring a big picture of a wire-haired terrier, I for a long time thought that Bob would turn out to be the dumb witness of the title – that somehow something the dog did would provide the key which unlocks the case. So it was very disappointing to reach the end of the book and find out this wasn’t the case.

Note 1: incidentally, in that quotation, ‘lights’ is a butcher’s term meaning ‘the lungs of an animal, typically pigs, sheep, or other livestock.’

House prices

Here’s the estate agent’s details for Littlegreen House:

‘Period house of character: four reception rooms, eight bed and dressing rooms, usual offices, commodious kitchen premises, ample outbuildings, stables etc. Main water, old-world gardens, inexpensive upkeep, amounting in all to three acres, two summer-houses, etc. Price £2,850 or nearest offer.’

Bargain.

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Credit

‘Dumb Witness’ by Agatha Christie was published in 1937 by the Collins Crime Club.

Related links

• Dumb Witness online (PDF)
• Agatha Christie website

Related reviews

• Agatha Christie reviews
• 1930s reviews