‘Charles wouldn’t kill anybody. He’s a very careful man.’
‘All the same, Mademoiselle, it is the careful men who commit the cleverest murders.’
(Murder in the Mews, chapter 6)

‘You are hopeful of success, M. Poirot?’ Lord Mayfield sounded a trifle incredulous.
The little man shrugged his shoulders. ‘Why not? One has only to reason – to reflect.’
(Poirot emphasising the importance of thinking, reflecting and pondering, The Incredible Theft, chapter 4)

‘This affair,’ he said, ‘is more complicated than it appears.’
(The classic statement which someone makes about the murder mystery in every Christie story, The Incredible Theft, chapter 4)

‘Leave it to Hercule Poirot. The lies I invent are always most delicate and most convincing.’
(Poirot’s immense self confidence, The Incredible Theft, chapter 4)

‘Good-morning, mademoiselle. Yes, it is as you say. You now behold a detective – a great detective, I may say – in the act of detecting!’
(Poirot gently mocking himself in Dead Man’s Mirror, Chapter 11)

‘Oh la la!’ cried Poirot. ‘I have been a fool, but a fool!’ The other stared at him.
‘I beg your pardon, M. Poirot?’
‘It is that a portion of the puzzle has become clear to me. Something I did not see before. But it all fits in. Yes, it fits in with beautiful precision.’
(The Eureka moment that occurs in every Poirot story, The Incredible Theft, chapter 5)

‘After breakfast,’ he said, ‘I will explain. I should like everyone to assemble in Sir Gervase’s study at ten o’clock.’
(The classic ‘you’re probably all wondering why I called you all together here this evening…’ moment, Dead Man’s Mirror, Chapter 12)

‘Murder in the Mews’ is a volume of four long short stories, some of them worked up from short stories previously published in magazines into 80-page novellas, long enough to require chapters.

1. Murder in the Mews
2. The Incredible Theft
3. Dead Man’s Mirror
4. Triangle at Rhodes

Murder in the Mews

It is Fireworks Night as Poirot and Inspector Japp are walking back to Poirot’s house. They take a short cut through a mews (Bardsley Garden Mews) and Japp jokes that it’s a good night for a murder because nobody would hear a shot.

Not to the reader’s complete surprise, next morning Poirot receives a phone call telling him that, guess what, there was a shot in that very same mews the night before, only it appears to have been a suicide.

So Poirot meets Japp at the murder scene and they start their investigation. 14 Bardsley Garden mews was shared by two young women, a Miss Jane Plenderleith and a youngish widow, Mrs Allen. Miss Plenderleith got home after being out of town for a few days (weekend with the Bentincks in Essex), knocked at her housemate’s door, discovered it was locked, called the police who came round, broke down the door and discovered Mrs Allen’s body on the floor, with a fatal gunshot wound to the head and the gun in her hand.

Except that the gun wasn’t really gripped, it had more the appearance of being placed in her hand. And, more tellingly, the shot is to her left temple whereas the gun was placed in her right hand. I.e. it’s an anatomically impossibility.

So Poirot and Japp set out to work in tandem but with their different approaches, interviewing the flatmate, Mrs Allen’s MP fiancé, various neighbours in other houses along the mews etc. The story is by way of being a nice comparison of the styles of the two men (something we have, of course, seen in quite a few of the novels) and so contains a number of familiar tropes e.g. Japp thinking Poirot is going soft / too old, when he dwells on apparent trivia.

‘Eh bien,’ said Poirot. ‘I shall complete my search for the unimportant. There is still the dustbin.’ He skipped nimbly out of the room. Japp looked after him with an air of disgust.
‘Potty,’ he said. ‘Absolutely potty.’
Inspector Jameson preserved a respectful silence. His face said with British superiority: ‘Foreigners!’
Aloud he said: ‘So that’s Mr Hercule Poirot! I’ve heard of him.’
‘Old friend of mine,’ explained Japp. ‘Not half as balmy as he looks, mind you. All the same, he’s getting on now.’
‘Gone a bit gaga as they say, sir,’ suggested Inspector Jameson. ‘Ah well, age will tell…’ (Chapter 4)

Poirot’s foreignness

Note how Japp’s slur on Poirot’s age is combined with Jameson’s smug contempt for Poirot’s foreignness, his outsiderness. But this ‘foreignness’ is very flexible; it has multiple purposes.

Poirot mocks the British A foreignness which comes into play a bit later when Christie has Poirot gently mock the English class system, as he does in quite a few of the novels, especially round ideas of being pukka or playing cricket, the right sort etc. Here’s Poirot interviewing Miss Plenderleith, who tells him that:

‘Charles has got a very good nose for anybody who isn’t well, quite – quite – ‘
‘And Major Eustace was not what you call quite – quite – ?’ asked Poirot.
The girl said dryly: ‘No, he wasn’t. Bit hairy at the heel. Definitely not out of the top drawer.’
‘Alas, I do not know those two expressions. You mean to say he was not the pukka sahib?’
A fleeting smile passed across Jane Plenderleith’s face, but she replied gravely, ‘No.’ (Chapter 6)

Poirot deploys his foreignness strategically, playing it up when he sees that it might be a way of getting round an interviewee, buttering them up or making them lower their defences. Here is Japp introducing Poirot to the MP:

‘By the way, let me introduce M. Hercule Poirot. You may have heard of him.’
Mr Laverton-West fastened himself interestedly on the little Belgian.
‘Yes-yes-I have heard the name.’
‘Monsieur,’ said Poirot, his manner suddenly very foreign. ‘Believe me, my heart bleeds for you. Such a loss ! Such agony as you must be enduring! Ah, but I will say no more. How magnificently the English hide their emotions.’ He whipped out his cigarette case. ‘Permit me – Ah, it is empty, Japp?’ (Chapter 7)

The point of this little bit of play-acting is to lull Laverton-West into tendering one of his cigarettes because the brand of cigarette stubs found in the murdered woman’s bedroom turn out to be an important clue.

Xenophobes hate Poirot’s foreignness And in moments of anger, Brits can use his foreignness against Poirot, as when their interviewing makes Major Eustace lose his temper.

‘Who are you, I’d like to know?’ Eustace turned and spat the words at him. ‘Some kind of damned dago! What are you butting in for?’ (Chapter 8)

Plot

It’s a sort of chamber piece because all the clues are at the scene, in the bedroom where the body was found, and the solution is relatively straightfoward, concerning a troublesome man, Major Eustace, who had been calling to see Mrs Allen over the past year or so…

Cast

• Hercule Poirot
• George – Poirot’s immaculate man-servant
• Inspector Japp
• Inspector Jameson – assisting Japp
• Dr Brett – police doctor, time of death etc
• Miss Jane Plenderleith – a dark, efficient-looking young woman of twenty-seven or eight’; drives an Austin Seven; plays golf
• Mrs Barbara Allen – the dead woman, married young (17) in India; husband, then baby daughter both died; came to England; years later was engaged to be married to…
• Charles Laverton-West MP – ‘a man of medium height with a very definite personality. He was clean-shaven, with the mobile mouth of an actor, and the slightly prominent eyes that so often go with the gift of oratory. He was good-looking in a quiet, well-bred way’
• Mrs Hogg – ‘I’m not one to gossip’ style working class neighbour
• Fred Hogg – small boy and eye witness to a late-night visitor to the house
• Major Eustace – someone Mrs Allen met in India, ‘ a man of forty-five, military bearing, toothbrush moustache, smartly dressed and driving a Standard Swallow saloon car’; ‘ a tall man, good-looking in a somewhat coarse fashion. There was a puffiness round the eyes small, crafty eyes that belied the good-humoured geniality of his manner’

Poirot’s obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)

Poirot explains why he makes such efforts to solve the mystery of the missing attaché case:

‘My friend, an affair must be rounded off properly. Everything must be explained.’

The police just need enough evidence to secure a conviction; Poirot, driven by his OCD / personal predilections, needs to understand every ramification of a case, and tie off every lose end, as Japp mocks:

‘Though what this attaché-case business has to do with the crime I can’t imagine. I can’t see that it’s got anything at all to do with it.’
‘Precisely, my friend, I agree with you – it has nothing to do with it.’
‘Then why… No, don’t tell me! Order and method and everything nicely rounded off! Oh, well, it’s a fine day.’ (Chapter 9)

Bookish references

‘How long has she been dead?’
‘She was killed at eleven thirty-three yesterday evening,’ said Brett promptly. Then he grinned as he saw Japp’s surprised face.
‘Sorry, old boy,’ he said. ‘Had to do the super doctor of fiction!’ (Chapter 2)

Sherlock Holmes reference

As I’ve pointed out in my reviews of all the novels, Christie felt compelled to make at least one jokey reference to Sherlock Holmes in every one of her stories. Here there are two:

‘Damnation!’ Japp said. ‘I knew there was something. But what the devil is it? I searched that case pretty thoroughly.’
‘My poor Japp – but it is – how do you say, obvious, my dear Watson‘?’ (Chapter 9)

At the climax:

‘It was odd, very odd, that the room should smell – as it did, perfectly fresh.’
‘So that’s what you were getting at!’ Japp sighed. ‘Always have to get at things in such a tortuous way.’
‘Your Sherlock Holmes did the same. He drew attention, remember, to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time – and the answer to that was there was no curious incident. The dog did nothing in the night-time.’ (Chapter 10)

Cars

Major Eustace drives a Standard Swallow saloon car, Miss Plenderleith drives a Baby Austin Seven.

• Google images of a Standard Swallow saloon car
• Google images of a Baby Austin Seven

Baba and sirrop and chocolate

Poirot’s favourite dessert is a Baba au Rhum i.e. rum baba.

• Wikipedia article on rum Baba

His favourite drink is the non-alcoholic sirop de cassis, ‘syrup of the blackcurrants’ or blackcurrant cordial, not unlike the English cordial, ‘Ribena’.

Poirot always drank chocolate for breakfast – a revolting habit.
(Captain Hastings telling us in ‘Dumb Witness’)

Payoff

‘Not murder disguised as suicide, but suicide made to look like murder!’
‘Yes, and very cleverly done, too. Nothing over-emphasised.’

2. The Incredible Theft

We are among the posh, the ‘top drawer’ of society, at a dinner party given by Lord Mayfield with half a dozen posh guests. The dinner has two purposes. In attendance is Air Marshal Sir George Carrington and he has come to discuss with Lord M ‘a discovery that will probably revolutionise the whole problem of air defence’ which was, of course, of burning importance in the troubled mid-1930s as the shades of war deepened. That’s how it’s described initially, but then this morphs into repeated references to ‘the new bomber’, its design and specification.

The second aspect of the evening is the presence of Mrs Vanderlyn. She is a very attractive mature lady who has had no fewer than three husbands, rather comically one each from each of Britain’s possible enemies, Italy, Germany and Russia, is reputed to have ‘contacts’ in each of those countries, and lives a luxury life far beyond her apparent income. In other words, as Lord Mayfield explains to Sir George, she is probably a spy. The thing is no-one’s been able to pin anything on her. And so this dinner is not only the pretext for a chat about the new bomber between the two chaps, but by way of being bait to persuade Mrs V to take a risk, to come out into the open, and to be caught. At which point she can be arrested, interrogated and neutralised.

But all this is hidden behind the gentle manners of a posh dinner party and so, after dinner, the ladies retire, the chaps drink port and smoke cigars, then reconvene in the drawing room to play some hands of bridge. By then it’s late and most of the party retire to bed, while Sir George and Lord M go for a stroll on the terrace outside his office (which has french windows opening onto it).

It’s while during this stroll that they see a shadowy figure nip out of his study and into the night. Moments later they re-enter the study where Lord M’s secretary, Mr Carlile has gathered the technical specifications of the new bomber for the men to discuss.

Except it isn’t there! When Lord M leafs through the papers, he asks where the spec has gone, Carlile insists he just put it there but then himself can’t find it. When quizzed, he says 5 minutes earlier he heard a woman’s scream, and ran into the hall to find Mrs Vanderlyn’s maid standing on the stairs claiming she’d seen a ghost. It took a few minutes to calm here down and send her backstairs to bed, at which point Carlile returned to the study and Lord M and Sir George entered it.

It must have been during those few minutes of his absence that someone darted into the study, stole the specifications, and this was the figure the old chaps saw nipping off into the darkness. Someone has stolen the ‘discovery that will probably revolutionise the whole problem of air defence’!!

So guess who Sir George advises Lord Mayfield to call in to solve the mystery and get the plans back? Clue: his name begins with P and ends in oirot.

Cast

• Lord Mayfield – ‘a big man, square-shouldered, with thick silvery hair, a big straight nose and a slightly prominent chin. It was a face that lent itself easily to caricature’
• Lady Julia Carrington – ‘a woman of forty, tall, dark and vivacious. She was very thin, but still beautiful. Her hands and feet in particular were exquisite. Her manner was abrupt and restless, that of a woman who lived on her nerves’
• Air Marshal Sir George Carrington – Lady Julia’s husband, ‘still retained the bluff breeziness of the ex-Naval man’
• Mrs Vanderlyn – ‘an extremely good-looking blonde. Her voice held a soupçon of American accent, just enough to be pleasant without undue exaggeration’
• Mrs Macatta MP – ‘a great authority on Housing and Infant Welfare. She barked out short sentences rather than spoke them, and was generally of somewhat alarming aspect’; a feminist
• Reggie Carrington – 21 and completely uninterested in Housing, Infant Welfare and indeed any political subject – ‘ the weak mouth camouflaged by the rather charming smile, the indecisive chin, the eyes set far apart, the rather narrow head’
• Mr Carlile – Lord Mayfield’s private secretary, ‘a pale young man with pince-nez and an air of intelligent reserve’, been with his lordship for nine years
• Mademoiselle Leonie – Mrs Vanderlyn’s attractive young French maid

Foreignness

Once again Poirot’s foreignness is brought up:

Lord Mayfield said slowly: ‘Why drag in a wretched foreigner we know nothing about?’
But I happen to know a lot about him. The man’s a marvel.’

And:

‘By the Lord, George, I thought you were too much of an old John Bull to put your trust in a Frenchman, however clever.’
‘He’s not even a Frenchman, he’s a Belgian,’ said Sir George in a rather shamefaced manner. (Chapter 3)

And:

‘To send for a queer foreigner like this seems very odd to me,’ said Reggie. ‘What has been taken, Father?’

Christie’s comic feminists

The book before this, ‘Cards on the Table’, is notable for the advent of a kind of avatar of Christie, an alter ego, the fictional female author of detective stories Mrs Ariadne Oliver who also happens to be a passionate and outspoken feminist. Well, there’s an echo of her here in the character Mrs Macatta, who is an MP, an ardent advocate of social reform, and a feminist. At least she’s quick to criticise men:

‘Lord Mayfield has brains,’ allowed Mrs Macatta. ‘And he has carved his career out entirely for himself. He owes nothing to hereditary influence. He has a certain lack of vision, perhaps. In that I find all men sadly alike. They lack the breadth of a woman’s imagination. Woman, M. Poirot, is going to be the great force in government in ten years’ time.’ (Chapter 6)

Nearly as critical of men as she is of women who don’t agree with her:

Poirot invited Mrs Macatta’s opinion of Mrs Vanderlyn – and got it.
‘One of those absolutely useless women, M. Poirot. Women that make one despair of one’s own sex! A parasite, first and last a parasite.’
‘Men admired her?’
‘Men!’ Mrs Macatta spoke the word with contempt. ‘Men are always taken in by those very obvious good looks.’

So she despises all men, and all women who don’t share her beliefs, and it all leads up to a call for the entire nation to be subjected to sweeping moral reform:

‘The evils of gambling, M. Poirot, are only slightly less than the evils caused by drink. If I had my way this country should be purified.’
Poirot was forced to listen to a somewhat lengthy discussion on the purification of England’s morals.

Tempting to say that feminists haven’t changed that much in the past 90 years, still the same unquestioning self-confidence, the dismissal of anyone who disagrees as morally deficient, still the same ambition to bring about a sweeping moral transformation, ban porn, overthrow the patriarchy, abolish the male gaze, end domestic abuse – no doubt all eminently worthy aims, and just as achievable as Mrs Macatta’s goals of ending drunkenness and immorality.

That’s my contentious view. What isn’t contentious is that Christie deliberately made her feminist characters figures of fun. She found full-on feminist views good material for humour.

Interviews

For sure there are physical clues to be found and assessed but the core of the stories is Poirot’s lengthy interviews with the other characters / suspects. There’s a deep connection between the way he interrogates the characters and the art of the author herself. In a non-genre novel we get to understand the characters via their interactions in different settings. Whereas the Christie-style detective story, the characters are lined up as in a queue, sometimes literally in a queue, waiting to go one by one into the room where they will be interviewed by the moderator figure. This happens in Murder on the Orient Express, Death in the Clouds and again, here, where, the day after the robbery, Poirot makes his base in the study and then interviews each of the other characters one by one. This, not their interactions with each other, is how we find out about them.

It is very schematic, isn’t it? It’s almost like a diagram of a novel rather than a full, proper novel. In works like this and ‘Orient’ you see the narrative process reduced to its bare bones:

• mysterious event (murder or theft) occurs
• all the suspects are interviewed one by one at length
• the solution and explanation are revealed

Maybe it’s because the essence of the narrative is so samey that Christie was able to knock out such an impressive number of stories. Obviously the settings, characters and details change in every one. And yet, on the deepest level, they’re all the same.

Poirot’s symmetry OCD

Poirot went back to the fireplace and carefully rearranged the ornaments on the mantelpiece. (Chapter 7)

3. Dead Man’s Mirror

This is the longest of the three stories at 108 pages. On the face of it another murder mystery, it is also an extended satire on the foibles and eccentricities of the poshest of the English aristocracy.

Eccentric old Gervase Chevenix-Gore, last male descendant of a family which dates back to the Norman Conquest. The setup is simple. At his flat in London Poirot receives a letter from Gervase asking him to come and see him at the grand family home, as he suspects he is the victim of a fraud but must manage the matter with discretion. But when Poirot (having taken the train from London) arrives at the house, arriving just as the gong for dinner has been sounded to the dozen or so members of family and house guests all assembled there – Gervase doesn’t show up and when they break down the locked door of his study, they find him slumped at his desk, gun in hand, shot through the head, an obvious case of suicide. His desk faced a mirror and the bullet had gone through his skull and shattered this mirror.

However, only Poirot (and the reader) know that Gervase sent the letter inviting him down and so had no reason to commit suicide; the opposite, we would have expected him to be waiting to engage Poirot and explain what he wanted him to do.

So, in the time-honoured style, Poirot and Major Riddle set about interviewing all the family and guests, an entertaining assemblage of florid characters. Who had a motive? Who had the opportunity etc? As you would expect, the more the pair dig, the more cross-currents and motivations they discover, not least in the terms of the dead man’s will, often the first place to start in the murder of a rich old man. As Poirot puts it:

‘Do you not agree, my friend, that the more we learn, the less and less motive we find for suicide? But for murder, we begin to have a surprising collection of motives.’ (Chapter 8)

Surprising to Poirot maybe. Not to anyone who’s read an Agatha Christie story.

The mirror as metaphor

There’s generally very little symbolism in a Christie story. So I was struck when the mirror is used as a metaphor for the complexity of the situation which Poirot and Riddle (inevitably) uncover:

‘What the devil –’ began Major Riddle, and ended rather hopelessly: ‘It gets more and more difficult to keep track of this business.’
Poirot nodded. He had picked up the little piece of earth that had fallen from Ruth’s shoe and was holding it thoughtfully in his hand.
‘It is like the mirror smashed on the wall,’ he said. ‘The dead man’s mirror. Every new fact we come across shows us some different angle of the dead man. He is reflected from every conceivable point of view. We shall have soon a complete picture…’ (Chapter 10)

Cast

Preliminary

• Hercule Poirot
• Mr Satterthwaite – expert on the aristocracy, who we’ve met in ‘Three Act Tragedy’

At the house

• Gervase Chevenix-Gore
• Vanda Chevenix Gore – his wife, ‘an Arbuthnot, very handsome girl. She’s still quite a handsome
  woman. Frightfully vague, though. Devoted to Gervase. She’s got a leaning towards the occult, I believe. Wears amulets and scarabs and gives out that she’s the reincarnation of an Egyptian Queen’ – thinks she’s a reincarnation of Hatshepsut and before that, was a priestess in Atlantis’
• Ruth Chevenix-Gore – adopted daughter: ‘they’ve no children of their own. Very attractive girl in the modern style’ – ‘a well-chiselled nose, slightly aquiline, and a clear, sharp line of jaw. Her black hair swept back from her face into a mass of little tight curls. Her colouring was of carnation clearness and brilliance, and owed little to make-up. She was, so Hercule Poirot thought, one of the loveliest girls he had seen’ – ‘a devilishly attractive girl. Has played havoc with most of the young fellows round here’
• Hugo Trent – Gervase’s nephew – ‘Pamela Chevenix-Gore married Reggie Trent and Hugo was their only child’ – in ‘the Blues’ i.e. The Royal Regiment of Horse Guards – ‘ a moustache and an air of modest arrogance’
• Susan Cardwell – house guest, ‘rather a good-looking girl with red hair’
• Colonel Bury – an old friend of the family’, ‘almost a tame cat about the house. Kind of A.D.C. to Lady Chevenix-Gore’, ‘follows her about like a dog’
• Mr Forbes – an old friend and the family lawyer, both devoted to Vanda back in the day – very proper and formal, ‘I never guess’ – wears a pince-nez
• Godfrey Burrows – Gervase’s secretary, ‘ good-looking, and knows it. Not quite out of the top drawer’ – turns out he thinks Gervase’s attitude was feudal and ridiculous
• Miss Lingard – ‘little, middle-aged prim woman’, research assistant for the history of his family which Gervase has been writing for the last six months
• Captain Lake – Sir Gervase’s agent for the estate, ‘a tall, fair-haired man in a lounge suit’
• Snell – the butler

The investigation

• Major Riddle – Chief Constable of the fictional county of Westshire, ‘a tall, spruce-looking man’
• the police surgeon – ‘a lank elderly man with grizzled hair’
• police inspector – ‘a tall impassive-faced man in plain clothes’
• Mr Forbes – family lawyer

Bookish references

‘It’s all very well, Poirot. But the evidence is clear enough. Door locked, key in his own pocket. Window closed and fastened. I know these things happen in books – but I’ve never come across them in real life.’ (Chief Constable Riddle, Chapter 5)

Or the movies:

‘You’re getting a bit too sensational, I think, Poirot.’
‘You think what I suggest is too like the pictures? But life, Major Riddle, is often amazingly like the pictures.’ (Chapter 8)

The tribulations of being rich

Christie’s stories testify, now and then, to the impact of the 1930s Depression, pointing out that all wealthy people have taken a hit. The Chevenix-Gore family lawyer in this story, says the family fortune has been impacted. More impactful, though, was some bad investment advice given him by his friend Colonel Bury. When they interview him, Bury justifies himself against his friend’s reproaches:

‘Didn’t seem to realise that the whole world was going through a period of crisis. All stocks and shares bound to be affected.’ (Chapter 8)

While the lawyer draws a general, and amusing, conclusion:

Mr Forbes sighed. ‘Retired soldiers are the worst sufferers when they engage in financial operations. I have found that their credulity far exceeds that of widows and that is saying a good deal.’ (Chapter 6)

Poirot is old

We (well I) are hoodwinked into thinking Poirot is a reasonably agile, late-middle-aged man by the image of sprightly dapper David Suchet in the extensive ITV adaptations. And yet the texts themselves often tell a different story, emphasising that Poirot is, quite simply, ‘a small, elderly man’.

The revelation

You can’t help smiling when, at the conclusion of his investigations, Poirot asks the household to convene in the study for his big explanation which he kicks off with the classic phrase:

‘I have asked you all to come here so that you may hear the true facts of Sir Gervase’s suicide.’ (Chapter 12)

It’s as enjoyably, reassuringly formulaic as panto.

4. Triangle at Rhodes

‘Human nature is simply fascinating. Don’t you think so, M. Poirot?’
(posh Miss Lyall accidentally puts her finger on Poirot’s central axiom, Chapter 1)

Improbably, Poirot is on holiday on the Greek island. He is of the old school which believes in completely covering your body in the sun. Beside him sits:

Miss Pamela Lyall, who sat beside him and talked ceaselessly, represented the modern school of thought in that she was wearing the barest minimum of clothing on her sun-browned person.

There’s another nugget of social history, when one of the characters laments that Rhodes is such a long way to travel from England. Yes but just imagine, says, Miss Sarah Blake, if it was easier to get to:

‘Yes, but then it would be awful. Rows and rows of people laid out like fish on a slab. Bodies everywhere!’ (Chapter 1)

Which is exactly what started to happen in the 1970s with the advent of package holidays and has been happening ever since. Fifty years of over-tourism.

Anyway, this Miss Lyall thinks that people watching is the most fascinating hobby. Surprisingly, maybe, Poirot observes that people in the end fall into very obvious types or categories and rarely act out of character. In a downbeat way, he says it becomes, in the end, quite boring. The sea is more varied and interesting.

So Poirot was advised to come to Rhodes in October, out of season, when the hotels would be empty. Instead he is distressed to discover seven or eight English guests and among them two squabbling couples.

Valentine Chantry has been a world famous model for 16 years or so, with a succession of flashy husbands and now proceeds to drive the latest one, a brutish naval commander, Tony, wild with jealousy, by flirting outrageously with gullible young Douglas Gold, much to the disgust of Gold’s wife, Marjorie.

So the two men fancy the same honeypot woman (Valentine) making up one of the oldest relationship stereotypes in the world, the Eternal triangle.

Poirot unhappily observes all this happening but it delights another hotel guest, the catty, humorous Miss Pamela Lyell, the one with no attachments who loves watching people. In conversation with Poirot, she even humorously teases out of him that he fears there might be a murder!

So then the murder actually takes place. The male characters are sitting round. Gold has bought the first round of drinks, including a pink gin for the commander. In come the women who have been off on an outing. Tony Chantry chivalrously offers to buy drinks. When his wife asks for a pink gin, he pushes the one in front of him over to her and goes up to the bar. She drains the glass to the dregs then comes over funny, turns blue and dies. As she cries out the commander comes running back and shouts at Douglas that that drink was intended for him, Tony. When the police are called they indeed find the rest of the poison (‘A form of stropanthin. A heart poison’) in Gold’s jacket pocket.

So it looks like an open and shut case. Gold, twisted any way she wanted him by Valentine, wanted to poison Tony Chantry to get him out of the way so he could marry Valentine, but his plan went disastrously wrong when Tony unexpectedly handed over his (poisoned) drink to Valentine.

Except that that’s not what happened at all. And in the short seven-page final chapter, Poirot explains to an amazed Miss Lyall a completely different and true explanation of what really happened and why.

Cast

• Hercule Poirot
• Miss Pamela Lyall – ‘whose principal interests in life were the observation of people round her and the sound of her own voice’
• Miss Sarah Blake – her friend
• Valentine Chantry – now 39, famous model since she was 16, staggeringly beautiful, had 5 husbands etc
• Commander Tony Chantry – ‘a commander in the navy… silent, dark, with a pugnacious jaw and a sullen manner. A touch of the primeval ape about him’
• Mr Douglas Gold – 31, ‘extremely good-looking, in an almost theatrical manner. Very fair, crisply curling hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, narrow hips. He looked more like a young man on the stage than a young man in real life, but the moment he opened his mouth that impression faded. He was quite natural and unaffected, even, perhaps, a little stupid’
• Mrs Marjorie Gold – 35, ‘ a small woman-rather like a mouse. She was not bad-looking, indeed her features were regular and her complexion good, but she had a certain air of diffidence and dowdiness that made her liable to be overlooked’
• old General Barnes – ‘a veteran who was usually in the company of the young’

Bookishness

The General chuckled. ‘She’s finding him a little bit difficult! One of the strong, silent men you hear about in books.’ (Chapter 2)

Poirot’s egotism and modesty

And though Hercule Poirot was a conceited little man where his profession was concerned, he was quite modest in his estimate of his personal attractions. (Chapter 2)

‘Every woman adores a fascist’

[Mr Gold] said to Poirot, ‘That man’s a brute!’ And he nodded his head in the direction of the retreating figure of Commander Chantry.
‘It is possible,’ said Poirot. ‘Yes, it is quite possible. But les femmes, they like brutes, remember that!’
Douglas muttered: ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if he ill-treats her!’
‘She probably likes that too.’ (Chapter 2)

5. Language

Poirotisms

I’ve mentioned how Poirot’s foreignness is raised a number of times. It can also be used for pure comic purposes, as when Christie has Poirot mangle an English proverb or common phrase, as he does at least once in every story:

‘For the same reason, when she sets out the following day to get rid of the golf clubs, she continues to use the attaché-case as a – what is it – kippered herring?’
‘Red herring,’ Japp said.
(Murder in the Mews, Chapter 10)

Poirot held up a hand. ‘I do what you call explore all the avenues.’
(The Incredible Theft, Chapter 4)

‘Ah, yes, it is what you call the old gasp – no, pardon, the old wheeze, that – to come back for a book. It is often useful!’
(The Incredible Theft, Chapter 4)

‘One has, sometimes, a feeling. Faintly, I seem to smell the fish.’
(Dead Man’s Mirror, Chapter 1)

1930s slang

• bad hat – bad man
• gasper – basic cheap make of cigarette
• old cock! – Japp’s Cockney / vulgar term of affection, cruder version of ‘old chap’
• pukka sahib – literally ‘genuine master’, metaphorically ‘good chap’, approved by the British upper middle-class value system
• legal wallah – wallah is a Hindi term meaning ‘in charge’ so in British India came to be used in association with a profession or action e.g. ‘rickshaw-wallah’; Major Riddle is asserting his membership of the ruling class of the Empire by consciously using imperial slang, in this case referring to the family lawyer, Mr Forbes

Posh diction

According to Christie, posh people like Lord Maybury use contemporary slang but emphasise their superiority to it by using quotation marks:

• ‘She’s an American subject. I know that she’s had three husbands, one Italian, one German and one Russian, and that in consequence she has made useful what I think are called “contacts”.’
• ‘I know,’ Lord Mayfield continued, ‘that in addition to having a seductive type of beauty, Mrs Vanderlyn is also a very good listener, and that she can display a fascinating interest in what we call “shop”.’
• ‘You see, George, to use the language of the movies, we’ve nothing actually “on” the woman. And we want something!’

Related is:

‘Do you yourself approve of Mr Burrows?’ The colonel delivered himself of the opinion that Godfrey Burrows was slightly hairy at the heel, a pronouncement which baffled Poirot completely, but made Major Riddle smile into his moustache.
(Dead Man’s Mirror, Chapter 8)

The same phrase as was used in ‘Murder in the Mews’. Maybe Christie had heard it somewhere and it amused her enough to slip it into the speech of several posh chaps.

Changing definitions of age

In ‘Cards on the Table’ Mrs Lorrimer is considered an old woman at 63.

‘But I am 56, my boy. In another four years I shall probably be a nasty old man continually haunting the society of unwilling debutantes.’
(Lord Mayfield in The Incredible Theft)

Charity

There are lots of reasons for Christie’s runaway bestselling status:

• the narratives are written with beautiful clarity and zip along at speed
• the large casts of posh characters appeal to the same audiences who love Downton Abbey and other early 20th century costume dramas i.e. a kind of vicarious snobbery
• the books (much more than the often clumsy TV and movie adaptations) are always beamingly good humoured, and sometimes very funny
• although one or two people are ‘murdered’, these alleged murders are totally unlike the sickening, disgusting murders of real life – they are accepted by one and all as ‘tokens’ in an entertainment, conventionalised events designed to deliver all the other psychological / reading pleasures I’ve listed – only very rarely does a murder really upset the story’s characters and cut through to the reader, the most obvious example being the teagirl, Betty Barnard, killed in The ABC  Murders which devastates her poor family

Lastly, there is an air of charity and forgiveness about them. There are lots of other things about it but, in the end, the most notable thing about ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ is that Poirot, understanding their motives, lets all the murderers off, lying to the police so that they can get away.

Same in ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’. When the murderer is revealed, so is her sad story and the nobility of her motivation. When she piteously begs Poirot not to reveal the truth of her identity, he charitably agrees.

Despite the ostensible subject matter of murder, the tone of the narratives, and the attitude of most of the characters and, above all, of the master character, Poirot, is one of understanding, compassion and forgiveness. I think it’s this quality which makes them somehow such comforting and reassuring reads.

Credit

‘Murder in the Mews’ by Agatha Christie was published in 1937 by the Collins Crime Club.

Related links

• Murder in the Mews online (PDF)
• Agatha Christie website

Related reviews

• 1930s reviews