All posts tagged order and method

Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie (1933)

I am afraid that I have got into the habit of averting my attention whenever Poirot mentions his little grey cells. I have heard it all so often before.
(Captain Hastings tiring of Poirot – and he had another 24 novels and 30 years still to go)

‘I understood that you were an investigator of – crime, M. Poirot?’
‘Of problems, Lord Edgware. There are problems of crime, certainly. There are other problems.’ (Chapter 4)

‘Hastings, I would give a great deal to know what is behind that affair. There is something – I swear there is something.’
(The ‘there’s more to this than meets the eye’ trope, Chapter 4)

Poirot related the steps we had taken and the conclusion we had. (simple description of the theory-making that most of the books mostly consist of, Chapter 16)

‘The butler! Really, you surprise me.’ (one of the story’s many red herrings, Chapter 17)

It would awaken suspicion in an oyster. (Chapter 8)

Poirot made sympathetic noises, somewhat suggestive of a hen laying an egg. (Chapter 17)

‘Sorry, M. Poirot.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘But you did look for all the world like a dying duck in a thunderstorm.’ (Chapter 22)

‘Lord Edgware Dies’ is Agatha Christie’s seventh Hercule Poirot novel. It is once again narrated by his comically dense sidekick, Captain Hastings, who Poirot routinely insults and mocks but who he also needs to help him solve his cases, as he at one point explains (see below).

Setup

One morning George Alfred St. Vincent Marsh, fourth Baron Edgware, is found dead in the study of his home near Regent’s Park. He had been stabbed in the neck from behind while he was sitting at his desk. The doctor says he was stabbed the evening before. On that evening the butler had locked up because he thought the master had gone to bed.

Both his butler and maid testify that earlier on the fateful evening they saw Lord Edgeware’s disaffected wife, the famous American actress Jane Wilkinson, arrive, go into his study, spend some time with him, then sweep out. Now Jane stands to benefit from the murder since she inherits Edgeware’s fortune so she becomes suspect number one.

The only trouble is that she has a watertight alibi: she was at a dinner party hosted by Sir Montagu Corner out in Chiswick in the company of a dozen others, for the whole evening.

Now, the narrative had opened with Poirot and Hastings at the theatre attending a performance by the noted American female impressionist Carlotta Adams, which included an utterly convincing impersonation of Jane Wilkinson, her walk, and accent and mannerisms. Aha.

There’s lots of other clutter and confusion about the case so it takes Poirot a few hours to realise that it wasn’t Wilkinson who the butler and maid saw going into Lord Edgware’s study, it was Carlotta, impersonating Wilkinson. Someone paid Carlotta to do an impersonation of Wilkinson, dress like her, walk like her and visit her husband during the hours when the murder was committed, in order to implicate her.

As soon as Poirot realises this, he realises that Carlotta herself is in danger from the real murderer and races in a taxi with Hastings to her rooms but arrives too late. Carlotta herself has been found dead that same morning, apparently from an overdose of the sleeping draught, veronal.

We learn that earlier on the fatal evening, Wilkinson had been loudly telling her friends that she was too tired to go to Lord Corner’s dinner. Only at the last minute did she change her mind and decide to go.

So someone in Wilkinson’s close personal circle was under the impression she would be at home alone all evening, so that if they paid Carlotta to impersonate her visiting Edgware, and then somehow murdered Edgware soon afterwards, the guilt would fall very clearly on Wilkinson. She would be convicted for the crime and the inheritance would go to someone else depending, as always, on the precise terms of Edgware’s will.

Two people obviously stand to gain, namely 1) Miss Geraldine, Edgware’s daughter by his first wife (who ran off and left him) and who, Poirot discovers, hated her father with a passion; or his nephew, Captain Ronald Marsh, a ne’er-do-well who, in the standard way, led a dissolute lifestyle, had run up gambling debts, who had asked his uncle for a loan a few months earlier but had instead had his allowance cut off, so was bubbling with anger and revenge.

But the plan had gone awry because of Jane’s whimsical impetuousness i.e. changing her mind at the last minute and going to Corner’s dinner, contrary to everything she has been telling her friends. This is why the murderer’s plan had gone horribly wrong.

There is another major factor I haven’t mentioned yet. This is that, on the day Lord Edgware was murdered, Poirot had actually been to see him. At dinner after the theatre where they’d watched Carlotta perform, the night before, Poirot and Hastings had ended up at the same restaurant (the Savoy) as Jane Wilkinson (who had been at the same performance and so watched herself being lampooned) and she came over to their table. She introduced herself and, after initial chat, had asked Poirot if she could commission him for a simple task: could he go see Lord Edgware and persuade him to grant her, Wilkinson, a divorce. She has hated her marriage to Edgware who she describes as a sadistic monster, and has tried countless lawyers and arguments, but all have fallen on deaf ears.

So the next day Poirot and Hastings go to visit Edgware which gives us a sense of the man himself and the strange atmosphere of his household. I’m not sure how much Christie could say, just how much she was hampered by the censorship of the day, but the strong implication is that Edgware was a pervert: 1) his bookshelves are packed with classics of sadism and medieval torture; 2) his butler is an improbably beautiful young man (shades of Oscar Wilde and Dorian Grey); and 3) as they depart Hastings casts a glance back into his study and sees Edgware has an extraordinary primal expression of rage on his face.

That suave, smiling face was transformed. The lips were drawn back from the teeth in a snarl, the eyes were alive with fury and an almost insane rage. (Chapter 4)

Poirot concludes:

‘I fancy that he is very near the border line of madness, Hastings. I should imagine he practises many curious vices and that beneath his frigid exterior he hides a deep-rooted instinct of cruelty.’ (Chapter 4)

Anyway, personal impressions aside, the remarkable thing about the visit is that, far from putting obstacles in their way, Edgware immediately agrees to divorce Wilkinson and goes on to say that he wrote her a letter to that effect six months earlier. Both Poirot and Hastings are flabbergasted and so is Wilkinson when they report back to her. What had changed his previously obstructive attitude, and who had been concealing it from Wilkinson i.e. did someone intercept the letter he wrote her?

As usual with my Christie reviews, I’ll stop summarising there, just as the text enters the world of theories and speculations, as not only Poirot and Hastings develop theories, but so does Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard, not to mention secondary characters such as Miss Geraldine, as Captain Marsh (who now inherits the title Lord Edgware), Wilkinson’s former lover Bryan Martin, and so on and so on.

The text consists of visits to all these secondary characters, the new information and clues they provide, and the ever-changing theories they trigger among the investigators. until the reader is thoroughly confused and Poirot dramatically pulls the rabbit out of the hat and (in what Hastings calls his ‘lecture’ voice) reveals whodunnit and how.

Cast

  • Jane Wilkinson, Lady Edgeware — talented young American actress well known in London; impulsive and supremely egotistical, knowing or caring nothing for anyone else, for example, supremely disinterested in who murdered her husband or why; she lives at the Savoy Hotel
    • Ellis, her maid ‘a neat middle-aged woman, with glasses and primly arranged grey hair’
  • Carlotta Adams – ‘an American girl with the most amazing talent for single-handed sketches, unhampered by make-up or scenery’; ‘Soft, dark hair, eyes a rather colourless pale blue, pale face, and a mobile, sensitive mouth. A face that you liked but that you would find it hard to know again, if you were to meet her, say, in different clothes.’
    • Alice Bennett – Carlotta’s servant, who finds her dead in bed the morning after Lord Edgware is murdered
  • Miss Jenny Driver – friend of Carlotta’s, runs a hat shop in Moffatt Street, just off Bond Street, named Genevieve. ‘A small vivacious creature with flaming red hair’, ‘She was a pugilistic little creature. She reminded me in some ways of a fox terrier’
  • Bryan Martin – movie star, ‘a tall, extremely good-looking man, of the Greek god type’, at one time Jane Wilkinson’s boyfriend, but now she’s moved onto the rich Lord Merton
  • The Duke of Merton – ‘A young man of monkish tendencies, a violent Anglo-Catholic, he was reported to be completely under the thumb of his mother, the redoubtable dowager duchess. His life was austere in the extreme. He collected Chinese porcelain and was reputed to be of aesthetic tastes. He was supposed to care nothing for women’ – ‘twenty-seven years of age. He was hardly prepossessing in appearance, being thin and weedy. He had nondescript hair, going bald at the temples, a small, bitter mouth and vague, dreamy eyes. There were several crucifixes in the room and various religious works of art. A wide shelf of books seemed to contain nothing but theological works. He looked far more like a weedy young haberdasher than like a duke.’
  • Lord Edgeware – ‘a tall man of about fifty. He had dark hair streaked with grey, a thin face and a sneering mouth. He looked bad-tempered and bitter. His eyes had a queer, secretive look about them.’ “I enjoy the macabre. I always have. My taste is peculiar.”
  • Alton, Lord Edgeware’s butler – ‘one of the handsomest young men I have ever seen. Tall, fair, he might have posed to a sculptor for Hermes or Apollo. Despite his good looks, there was something vaguely effeminate that I disliked about the softness of his voice’
  • Miss Carroll – Lord Edgware’s secretary, ‘a pleasant, efficient-looking woman of about forty-five. Her fair hair was turning grey, and she wore pince-nez, through which a pair of shrewd blue eyes gleamed out on us.’
  • Miss Geraldine Marsh, LE’s daughter – ‘a tall, slender girl, with dark hair and a white face’, ‘tall, thin, white-faced girl, with her big haunting black eyes’
  • Captain Ronald Marsh – Lord Edgware’s nephew, ‘extravagant. Got into debt. There was some other trouble’ – inherits the title on his uncle’s death
  • Mr Widburn – ‘a tall, cadaverous man’ visiting London who’s know Lord E and also Sir Montague Corner
  • Mrs Widburn – ‘a plump, fair, gushing soul’
  • Mr Moxon – Wilkinson’s solicitor
  • Dr Heath – doctor who attended on Carlotta, ‘a fussy elderly man somewhat vague in manner’
  • Sir Montagu Corner – whose dinner party Jane Wilkinson attended the evening her husband was murdered. ‘He had a distinctly Jewish cast of countenance, very small, intelligent black eyes and a carefully arranged toupee. He was a short man—five foot eight at most’
  • Donald Ross – an actor they meet at Sir Montagu’s house, ‘a young fellow of about twenty-two, with a pleasant face and fair hair’
  • Corner’s butler – ‘a tall, middle-aged man of ecclesiastical appearance’
  • The taxi driver – ‘an old man with a ragged moustache and spectacles. He had a hoarse, self-pitying voice’

Poirot’s approach

‘Do you not know, my friend, that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desires and aptitudes? Mais oui, c’est vrai. One makes one’s little judgments – but nine times out of ten, one is wrong.’ (Chapter 1)

Poirot’s process has two parts, which can be summarised as:

  1. order and method – do all the facts fit into the theory?
  2. psychology – even if your theory corresponds with all the facts, do the actions ascribed to people match their psychology; are they psychologically plausible?

1. Order and method

Throughout the story Poirot is sharply contrasted with hapless Inspector Japp. Japp displays indefatigable energy, rushing all over the place, insisting on interviewing not only the major characters but tracking down peripheral figures no matter how marginally connected with the key events. In fact Poirot does his fair share of interviewing, too, but Christie is at pains to show how, having once assembled the key facts, Poirot spends just as much time in reflection, on pondering a narrative which takes account of all the facts, no matter how inconvenient.

‘I have noticed that, when we work on a case together, you are always urging me on to physical action, Hastings. You wish me to measure footprints, to analyse cigarette ash, to prostrate myself on my stomach for the examination of detail. You never realize that by lying back in an armchair, with the eyes closed, one can come nearer to the solution of any problem. One sees then with the eyes of the mind.’ (Chapter 1)

On several occasions we see Japp excitedly outlining his theory of events to Poirot and when Hastings or Poirot point out facts which don’t fit the narrative, Japp simply ignores them, sweeps them aside, says he’ll sort them out later.

POIROT: You think that covers all the facts?
JAPP: Well, naturally there are a lot of things we don’t know yet. It’s a good working hypothesis to go on with… (Chapter 16)

Japp skimps and settles for second best, a good enough fit:

‘Pity there’s no apparent motive, but a little spade work will soon bring it to light, I expect.’

‘No, I’m more than ever convinced it was the Adams girl. I’ve got nothing to prove it as yet, though…’

But it’s precisely these kinds of facts, the inconvenient details, the details which don’t fit and which Japp ignores, which Poirot spends his time sitting in an armchair revolving over and over in his mind till he can integrate them into a finished story.

‘There is something here I do not comprehend…’ (Chapter 25)

This is what he means by his much repeated mantra of reducing all the evidence to order and method.

‘But come, let us walk along the Embankment. I wish to arrange my ideas with order and method.’ (Chapter 4)

Japp thinks you must be always doing, finding, interviewing, examining the site etc – but he doesn’t devote nearly enough energy to reflecting on the evidence that he finds. His over-abundant energy is directly linked to his impatient, slapdash approach to theory. As the novel progressed I began to notice how many times they face off about this:

POIROT: You have a furious energy, Japp. It amazes me.
JAPP: Yes, you’re getting lazy. You just sit here and think! What you call employing the little grey cells. No good; you’ve got to go out to things. They won’t come.
(Chapter 17)

And Poirot to Japp:

‘You have the confidence—always the confidence! You never stop and say to yourself: ‘Can it be so?’ You never doubt—or wonder. You never think, “This is too easy!”’

2. Psychological consistency

Even when he and Hastings have devised a theory or narrative which accounts for most of the facts, there’s a last major stumbling block or test which is: do the actions ascribed to people in the theoretical model fit what we know about them? Are they psychologically plausible?

On numerous occasions the narrative perfectly matches what they know of the events, but Poirot still resists closure because he is convinced that so-and-so may be a thief but is not a murderer. Not only the facts must be explained by the theory, but the theory must match the psychology of the actors, as observed and analysed by Poirot. Over the years this has become the most interesting part, for him.

‘The psychology of character is interesting,’ returned Poirot, unmoved. ‘One cannot be interested in crime without being interested in psychology. It is not the mere act of killing; it is what lies behind it that appeals to the expert.’ (Chapter 1)

It’s this insistence on a believable psychology which separates Poirot most from the police. The police are only looking for enough evidence to secure a conviction whereas Poirot wants all the evidence plus psychological plausibility. And it’s this which he means when he refers to his much repeated phrase of employing the ‘little grey cells’ of the brain to solve a crime, rather than a magnifying glass or fingerprints.

‘At such moments the brain should be working feverishly, not sinking into sluggish repose. The mental activity — it is so interesting, so stimulating! The employment of the little grey cells is a mental pleasure. They and they only can be trusted to lead one through fog to the truth.’ (Chapter 1)

Poirot sings the power of the human brain:

‘Yes, yes, we can know. We shall know! The power of the human brain, Hastings, is almost unlimited.’ (Chapter 26)

Although that said, there are moments when Poirot’s egotism takes over and his claims to psychological expertise sound ridiculous.

‘Yes, Madame la Duchesse, I understand very well. I comprehend the mother’s heart. No one comprehends it better than I, Hercule Poirot.’ (Chapter 19)

It’s because all the facts have to fit together and the psychology of the players has to be right, that Poirot is so hard to please, hence his many laments on the same lines:

‘This seems the plain sailing and the above board. But there is something wrong. Somewhere or other, Hastings, there is a fact that escapes us. It all fits together, it is as I imagined it, and yet, my friend, there is something wrong.’ (Chapter 20)

As Japp is quick to complain:

‘The truth is you like things to be difficult. Here’s your own theory proved, and even that does not satisfy you. You are an odd sort of cove… Nothing ever satisfies you.’ (Chapter 20)

And:

‘He’s always been fond of having things difficult. A straightforward case is never good enough for him. No, it’s got to be tortuous.’ (Chapter 22)

3. Withholding his hand

I suppose there’s one final aspect to it all, which is that Poirot plays his cards very close to his chest, close as an oyster’, as Japp puts it. He doesn’t give much away and waits till the last minute to make his Big Reveal. To some extent this is just a function of the detective story as a genre, which strings people along until it’s quite ready to give up its secrets.

‘I wish you’d tell me what your theory – or your little idea – is?’
Poirot shook his head gently.
‘That is another rule. The detective never tells.’ (Chapter 17)

Poirot’s OCD

‘We will go round at once, my friend,’ he said; and, lovingly brushing an imagined speck of dust from his hat, he put it on his head. (Chapter 11)

Poirot’s obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is obviously assigned to him as a physical correlative of the mental obsession by which everything, every fact and observation and detail, must fit into the theory, with no discrepancies, nothing left out, nothing ruining the finished pattern of the story. It’s a simple enough device but, if anything, it’s noticeable how little she mentions it, only 3 or 4 times in this novel.

He greeted us both heartily. ‘Just going to have breakfast, I see. Not got the hens to lay square eggs for you yet, M. Poirot?’ This was an illusion to a complaint from Poirot as to the varying sizes of the eggs which had offended his sense of symmetry. (Chapter 5)

Old married couple

Hastings moans about Poirot like his wife, as if they are a married couple who get on each other’s nerves. This is humorous or, after a while, a bit tiresome, depending on taste.

Japp groaned. I felt a sneaking sympathy with him. Poirot can be intensely irritating at times. (Chapter 5)

I have a horror of doing anything conspicuous. The only thing that affects Poirot is the possibility of the damp or the heat affecting the set of his famous moustache.
(Chapter 10)

Poirot has the most irritating habit of joking at the wrong moment. (Chapter 12)

For example, it is obviously meant to be comic that he has had enough, more than enough, of listening to Poirot going on and on about the importance of ‘the little grey cells’, in fact he’s heard it so often that he thinks he will go mad if he has to hear it one more time.

I had fear an allusion to the little grey cells and was thankful to be spared it. (Chapter 3)

‘My questions, mon ami, are psychological. The little grey cells of the brain—’
‘Poirot,’ I said desperately. I felt that I must stop him at all costs. I could not bear to hear it all over again. (Chapter 14)

Hastings’s weakness for young ladies

As entirely predictable as Poirot’s catchphrases, his immense self-regard and stroking his moustaches, is Captain Hasting’s weakness for attractive young women. Considering that he’s married (he got married (he got married in the second Poirot novel, The Murder on the Links) and considerably older than these young women, it is all in questionable taste. Here he is finding himself haunted by a brief glimpse of Miss Geraldine in Lord Edgware’s house.

I recalled the startled face of the girl who had stood in the doorway. I could still see those burning dark eyes in the white face. That momentary glimpse had made a great impression on me. (Chapter 12)

And here is Poirot, just as predictably mocking his friend’s weakness.

‘You have always the tender heart, Hastings. Beauty in distress upsets you every.’ (Chapter 14)

And:

‘For the last hour I have been in a ladies’ beauty parlour. There was a girl there with auburn hair who would have captured your susceptible heart at once.’ (Chapter 25)

Hastings’s usefulness

And yet for all his mocking, Poirot needs Hastings to help him function, and this novel contains the fullest explanation yet of why:

‘No human being should learn from another. Each individual should develop his own powers to the uttermost, not try to imitate those of someone else. I do not wish you to be a second and inferior Poirot, I wish you to be the supreme Hastings. And you are the supreme Hastings. In you, Hastings, I find the normal mind almost perfectly illustrated.’
‘I’m not abnormal, I hope,’ I said.
‘No, no. You are beautifully and perfectly balanced. In you sanity is personified. Do you realise what that means to me? When the criminal sets out to do a crime his first effort is to deceive. Whom does he seek to deceive? The image in his mind is that of the normal man. There is probably no such thing actually —it is a mathematical abstraction. But you come as near to realizing it as is possible. There are moments when you have flashes of brilliance, when you rise above the averse, moments (I hope you will pardon me) when you descend to curious depths of obtuseness, but, take it all for all, you are amazingly normal. Eh bien, how does this profit me? Simply in this way. As in a mirror I see reflected in your mind exactly what the criminal wishes me to believe. That is terrifically helpful and suggestive.’ (Chapter 14)

And his stupidity

There are examples too many to mention where Poirot does or says something and Hastings thinks he’s losing it, barking up the wrong tree, is getting old and losing his powers. In every case, it is Hastings who is wrong. Here’s an example. They ask Jane Wilkinson’s maid, Ellis, to come for an interview. Half way through:

His hand, running aimlessly along the mantelshelf, caught a vase of roses and it toppled over. The water fell on Ellis’s face and head. I had seldom known Poirot clumsy, and I could deduce from it that he was in a great state of mental perturbation.

By this stage we have learned that whenever Hastings concludes anything, it is wrong. Poirot, of course, spilled the vase onto Ellis to that, in the confusion, he could swap her glasses for a pair found near the body of the murdered Carlotta. I.e. it was a cunning plan which Hastings completely misunderstood.

One major challenge with reading the Poirot novels is putting up with the fact that Hastings is meant to know him better than anyone, spends decades in his company, observes him in calm or stressful situations thousands of times, and yet continually, from start to end of every novel, completely misunderstands and misinterprets everything that Poirot does.

The text’s bookishness

‘Nothing here,’ Japp was saying. And Poirot replied with a smile: ‘Alas! not the cigarette ash —nor the footprint —nor a lady’s glove—nor even a lingering perfume! Nothing that the detective of fiction so conveniently finds.’ (Chapter 7)

‘The police are always made out to be as blind as bats in detective stories,’ said Japp with a grin. (Chapter 7)

‘I called to see my uncle yesterday morning. Why? To ask for money. Yes, lick your lips over that. And I went away without getting any. And that same evening — that very same evening — Lord Edgware dies. Good title that, by the way. Lord Edgware Dies. Look well on a bookstall.’
(The wastrel nephew, Captain Marsh, Chapter 13)

‘I always find alibis very enjoyable,’ he remarked. ‘Whenever I happen to be reading a detective story I sit up and take notice when the alibi comes along.’ (Chapter 13)

‘You are like someone who reads the detective story and who starts guessing each of the characters in turn without rhyme or reason.’ (Chapter 14)

‘”Having no reason to fear the truth,” as the heroes in books always say.’ (Ronnie Marsh, Chapter 21)

‘I see, Holmes,’ I remarked, ‘that you have tracked the ambassadorial boots.’ (Chapter 25)

Or pulp:

‘You could have knocked me over with a feather when he stepped up to the man and said: “I believe you,” for all the world as though he were acting in a romantic melodrama.’ (Japp describing Poirot’s behaviour, in Chapter 22)

Poirot’s rum Baba

We went to a little restaurant in Soho where he was well known, and there we had a delicious omelette, a sole, a chicken and a Baba au Rhum of which Poirot was inordinately fond.
(Chapter 14)

Bon mots

Sir Montagu was the type of man to whom intelligence consisted of the faculty of listening to his own remarks with suitable attention.

Dope

Drugs played a big part in the novel before this one, ‘Peril End House’, in which a major character, Frederica ‘Freddie’ Rice, is a recovering drug addict, introduced to it by her hardened addict husband (‘He was completely debased. He was a drug fiend. He taught me to take drugs. I have been fighting the habit ever since I left him’); and chocolates laced with cocaine nearly kill off the lead character, Magdala ‘Nick’ Buckley.

Drugs aren’t nearly so central here, but are casually mentioned. When the actor, Donald Ross, discusses Carlotta’s death, he says he read in the newspaper that she overdosed.

‘You knew Carlotta Adams, did you not?’
‘No. I saw her death announced in the paper tonight. Overdose of some drug or other. Idiotic the way all these girls dope.’ (Chapter 15)

And:

‘There’s been a mention in the papers of the little gold box with the ruby initials. Some reporter wrote it up. He was doing an article on the prevalence of dope-taking among young actresses. Sunday paper romantic stuff.’

Cocaine: moral panics about drugs (and sex) are always with us.

Christie’s butlers

I think it’s in ‘The Seven Dials Mystery’ that there are three different butlers – rulers of three different posh houses, each depicted with Christie’s droll sense of humour – and they alerted me to look out for the butlers in all her books – not as important contributors to the plot, but for adding to the comedy and humorous tone of the stories. Lord Montagu’s butler is ‘a tall, middle-aged man of ecclesiastical appearance’ and later:

The butler inclined his head and withdrew, pontifical to the last. (Chapter 15)

It’s against this backdrop of old, discreet, almost invisible family retainers, that Lord Edgware’s butler, young and Adonis-like, shines out all the more vividly (and suspiciously).

Antisemitism?

I’ve highlighted the slurs or questionable descriptions of Jewish characters which litter Christie’s novels. This is no exception. Sir Montagu Corner is one.

I looked with some interest at Sir Montagu Corner. He had a distinctly Jewish cast of countenance, very small, intelligent black eyes and a carefully arranged toupee. He was a short man—five foot eight at most, I should say. His manner was affected to the last degree…

As we sipped [brandy] Sir Montagu discoursed. He spoke of Japanese prints, of Chinese lacquer, of Persian carpets, of the French impressionists, of modem music and of the theories of Einstein. Then he sat back and smiled at us beneficently. He had evidently thoroughly enjoyed his performance. In the dim light looked like some genie of medieval days. All round the room were exquisite examples of art and culture.

And now, Sir Montagu,’ said Poirot. ‘I will trespass on your kindness no longer but will come to the object of my visit.’ Sir Montagu waved a curious claw-like hand.
‘There is no hurry. Time is infinite.’

‘Claw-like hand’? I take the point that Montagu is a caricature, like all Christie’s characters, in this case an oddity, an eccentric, a super-refined millionaire who has retired from the city to his suburban retreat where he lives in a rarefied atmosphere of luxury and aesthetic perfection, a detective story Des Esseintes. But still… there is a noticeable anti-Jewish vibe in all her novels. Here’s Inspector Japp:

‘Captain Marsh now, his lordship as now is. He’s got a motive sticking out a yard. A bad record too. Hard up and none too scrupulous over money. What’s more he had a row with his uncle yesterday morning. He told me that himself, as a matter of fact, which rather takes the taste out of it. Yes, he’d be a likely customer. But he’s got an alibi for yesterday evening. He was at the opera with the Dortheimers. Rich Jews. Grosvenor Square.’

Why mention that they’re Jews? Because he’s just being factual, painting details, in the same way he didn’t really have to specify Grosvenor Square. But it’s there. Like an occasional nudge in the ribs and knowing smile.

Clichés and stereotypes

But then her books are made out of stereotypes and tropes, of all kinds of types, genders, ethnicities.

In ‘Peril At End House’, old Sir Matthew Seton is said to be ‘the second richest man in England’. I laughed out loud when I read in this story that Jane Wilkinson’s inamorato, Lord Merton, is ‘one of the richest men in England’. Nothing but the best for Agatha. Well, if you’re going to have rich people, they might as well be stereotypical rich people.

It’s yet another reminder of how the stories are assembled from a relatively limited range of stock types and scenarios (the old millionaire, the resentful daughter, the wastrel son, the contested will, and so on and so on). What’s so impressive is the way Christie managed to recombine the same 20 or so stock types and stereotypes over a career spanning nearly 60 years.

The fiend!

Hard to pick the top cliché where so many jostle for attention, but one which stood out in the previous one in the series, ‘Peril at End House’, is the way Christie gets Poirot to hype up the murderer, to make them out to be a Moriarty, a Napoleon of crime, a Satan, a fiend in human form etc. It happens in the final stretches of the novel as a deliberate and obvious way of ramping up the tension, excitement and entertainment. If you succumb to it, that is. In ‘Peril’ we had:

‘Oh! the devil! The clever, cruel devil! To think of that! Ah, but he has genius, this man, genius!’ (Peril at End House, Chapter 17)

Here Poirot melodramatically declares:

‘The murderer, see you, Hastings, is as cunning as a tiger and as relentless.’ (Chapter 26)

Recycling

In ‘Peril at End House’ Hastings is shocked when Poirot reads someone else’s private correspondence.

‘Poirot,’ I cried, scandalised. ‘You really can’t do that. It isn’t playing the game.’
‘I am not playing a game, mon ami.’ His voice rang out suddenly harsh and stern. ‘I am hunting down a murderer.’ (Chapter 13)

Exactly the same reaction here, when Poirot reads a letter Lord Merton is writing.

‘It’s not – not playing the game.’
‘I do not play games. You know that. Murder is not a game. It is serious.’ (Chapter 18)

Credit

‘Lord Edgware Dies’ by Agatha Christie was published in 1933 by the Collins Crime Club.

Related links

Related reviews

Leave a comment
by Simon on July 25, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Detective stories, Novel
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on July 25, 2025

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2025/07/25/lord-edgware-dies-agatha-christie/

Peril at End House by Agatha Christie (1932)

‘The little facts that are curious, I like to see them appear. They are significant. They point the way.’
‘The way where?’
‘You put your finger on the weak spot, my excellent Hastings. Where? Where indeed! Alas, we shall not know till we get there.’ (Chapter 4)

‘I cannot help feeling, Hastings, that there is something behind this – something that has not yet come to light.’ (Chapter 4)

‘Since this trouble with my back, I’ve read all the detective stories that ever were, I should think.
Nothing else seems to pass the time away so quick.’ (Mrs Croft laid up in bed, Chapter 5)

‘I am convinced that le bon Dieu created Hercule Poirot for the express purpose of interfering. It is my métier.’ (Poirot, Chapter 12)

Summary

This is the sixth Poirot novel and it’s not great. It’s certainly not as entertaining as its immediate predecessors, the non-Poirot stories The Murder at the Vicarage and The Sittaford Mystery. ‘Peril at End House’ suffers by comparison for at least two reasons:

  1. Poirot is not (heresy!) as entertaining a figure as Miss Marple, let alone the freelance female detectives in novels like The Secret of Chimneys or The Sittaford Mystery (Bundle Brent or Emily Trefusis, respectively).
  2. The story itself is thin and, instead of unfolding with impressive logic, felt to me contrived and propped up right up until the extraordinarily convoluted conclusion.

Poirot and Captain Hastings are staying at the most expensive hotel in the Cornish Riviera resort of St Loo. Here they meet a devil-may-care young woman, Magdala ‘Nick’ Buckley and her circle of friends. They’re based at the big old family house she owns perched out on the cliffs, the End House of the title. The house belonged to her dissolute grandfather, old Sir Nicholas. When her mother and father died, it was her grandfather who raised her, hence she is nicknamed after him, Nick.

The central premise of the book is that Poirot comes to believe someone is trying to kill Nick and sets out to protect her. He partly fails because at a party to watch the fireworks over the resort’s harbour, in the dark, someone mistakenly shoots dead Maggie Buckley, a cousin of Nick’s who had borrowed the latter’s distinctive shawl. At which point Poirot has Nick whisked off to a nursing home for her own protection. We are at page 100 of this 250-page book and the next 150 pages see Poirot puzzling out who would want to murder Nick and why.

What I found unsatisfactory was the way they first meet, when the young woman is poncing about on the terrace of the hotel and ducks her head when she thinks a wasp has buzzed by. Somehow Poirot mystically knows it is not a wasp but a bullet which she heard, and which also pierced the hat she was wearing. Poirot finds the bullet which pinged off the wall and landed at his feet, and then identifies the hole in the hat. This is a preposterous incident and a very weak premise to hang the rest of the book on. Why would anyone try to shoot the woman in a public place and when she’s just a few yards from the most famous detective in the world? For me the novel never recovers from this contrived and improbable beginning.

It’s in light of this failed assassination attempt that Nick and her friends mention three other recent ‘accidents’: when one night the big heavy framed painting hanging over her bed fell onto her pillow and it was only luck that she’d got up and was out of bed at that moment: the way her car ran away with her because the brakes had failed / been tampered with; on a walk along the cliffs a big boulder came bouncing down the path and only just missed her. So all this is what persuades Poirot that someone is trying to murder the flighty young woman, despite her own dismissal of all three ‘accidents’.

Next problem I had is that Nick makes it super-abundantly extra clear, especially after her friend is killed instead of her, that there is something Poirot, Hastings and all the others ‘don’t know’:

She only shook her head, reiterating: ‘You don’t know! You don’t know!’

And yet Poirot completely ignores her and bundles her off to the nursing home, wasting days devising lists of suspects and their possible motives when all along all he had to do was ask her. I was jumping up and down and yelling ‘ask her what she means’ but Poirot doesn’t get round to doing this till page 120, by which time I had already guessed from clues in the text what she was on about. In other words, Poirot was stupider and slower than me, a not particularly bright reader.

So 1) the book starts from a flawed or clumsy premise, and 2) in it Poirot is uncharacteristically dense and slow.

Next Poirot continually talks up and exaggerates the situation – someone is trying to assassinate a young woman – into a world historical crisis, claiming the would-be murderer is a fiend, an arch criminal, a devil etc etc rather than a would-be murderer. Similarly, he goes to pieces in his sympathy and compassion for Nick with every twist in the plot, in a way which seems ludicrously overblown.

Finally, I laughed in disbelief when, at the climax of the novel, Poirot suggests holding a séance to flush out the identity of the murderer. Altogether this felt like a contrived, stretched, implausible and tired effort, a big disappointment after the richly entertaining ‘The Murder at the Vicarage’ and ‘The Sittaford Mystery’.

Comedy

It starts promisingly enough, playing to the fundamental fact about the Poirot novels which is that they are comedies. Poirot’s preening pomposity and endless egotism are continually exaggerated for comic effect:

‘They say of me: “That is Hercule Poirot! – The great – the unique! – There was never any one like him, there never will be!” Eh bien – I am satisfied. I ask no more. I am modest.’ (Chapter 1)

‘Monsieur Poirot is – er – was – a great detective,’ I explained.
‘Ah! my friend,’ cried Poirot. ‘Is that all you can find to say? Mais dis donc. I say then to
Mademoiselle that I am a detective unique, unsurpassed, the greatest that ever lived!’
(Chapter 2)

So much so that when, later on, anyone remarks on his fame Christie doesn’t even have to describe Poirot’s smug preening.

‘You are a great detective, M. Poirot?’ said Mrs Buckley.
‘It has been said, Madame.’
(Chapter 16)

Just as exaggerated for comic effect are his sidekick Captain Hastings’s two key attributes which are 1) his obtuseness (continually not noticing evidence, facts, implications staring him in the face):

‘What I particularly missed was your vivid imagination, Hastings,’ he went on dreamily. ‘One needs a certain amount of light relief.’

‘Almost incredible, my poor Hastings, how you hardly ever do see ! It amazes me every time anew!’ (Chapter 1)

‘You have an extraordinary effect on me, Hastings. You have so strongly the flair in the wrong direction that I am almost tempted to go by it! You are that wholly admirable type of man, honest, credulous, honourable, who is invariably taken in by any scoundrel.’ (Chapter 4)

And 2) his weakness for a pretty face i.e. he is easily distracted by pretty women:

She looked rather lovely as she sat up in bed, her two hands clenched, and her cheeks burning.

and Poirot continually mocks him for both.

‘You would say that! It would appeal, I knew, to your romantic but slightly mediocre mind. Buried treasure – yes, you would enjoy that idea.’ (Chapter 9)

But somehow, somewhere along the way, all this stops being so funny and becomes a mannerism.

Self-referential bookishness

I can’t quite define exactly the effect but Christie repeatedly has her narrators or characters point out how much the plot they’re involved in resembles a cheap thriller, a detective story or movie, as if this self-awareness somehow elevates them above that level. Whereas it does the opposite and simply highlights how close to genre fiction, packed with the clichés and stereotypes of the genre, they actually are. Thus when someone tries to shoot the book’s lead female character, Miss Magdala ‘Nick’ Buckley.

‘And now we ask the question of the cinema, of the detective novel—Who profits by your death, Mademoiselle?’ (Chapter 3)

Or:

‘Well, this is all too, too marvellous. Do you think someone really wants to do away with me? It would be thrilling. But, of course, that sort of thing doesn’t really happen. Only in books.’ (Chapter 2)

Or when Christie has someone or other jokily compare Poirot and Hastings to Holmes and Watson:

‘One should not keep a dog and have to bark oneself,’ agreed Nick, with mock sympathy. ‘Who is the dog, by the way? Dr Watson, I presume.’
‘My name is Hastings,’ I said coldly.
(Chapter 2)

But again, Christie loses out by the comparison. Poirot may be well known but Sherlock Holmes is a global icon.

It was his constant dictum that all the world knew Hercule Poirot. Here was someone who did not.

So why does she do it numerous times in every novel? Was this knowing self-referentiality part of the genre itself? Do all detectives in all detective stories, at some point or another, compare themselves to Sherlock Holmes or suddenly realising that they’re behaving just like a character in a detective novel?

‘Since this trouble with my back, I’ve read all the detective stories that ever were, I should think. Nothing else seems to pass the time away so quick.’ (Mrs Croft laid up in bed, Chapter 5)

‘I have let myself go to the most absurd suppositions. I, Hercule Poirot, have descended to the most ignominious flights of fancy. I have adopted the mentality of the cheap thriller.’ (Chapter 9)

‘You have a tendency, Hastings, to prefer the least likely. That, no doubt, is from reading too many detective stories. In real life, nine times out of ten, it is the most likely and the most obvious person who commits the crime.’ (Chapter 9)

‘Oh dear, whoever would have thought of such a thing? Seems like an Edgar Wallace, doesn’t it?’ (nurse at the nursing home, Chapter 17)

(Richard Edgar Wallace, 1875 to 1932, wrote over 170 novels, many of them crime thrillers.)

‘Diable!’ said Poirot, as we walked away. ‘Is no one ever quite sure? In detective books – yes. But life – real life – is always full of muddle.’ (Chapter 17)

Retired

Also, I don’t understand why Christie had Poirot retire from working as a consulting detective in the second novel about him and then kept him in this state of supposed retirement for the next 40 years!

‘I am completely retired – but what will you? I have retired – I’m finished.’
‘You are not finished,’ I exclaimed, warmly.
Poirot patted my knee. ‘There speaks the good friend – the faithful dog. And you have reason, too. The grey cells, they still function – the order, the method – it is still there. But when I have retired, my friend, I have retired! It is finished! I am not a stage favourite who gives the world a dozen farewells. In all generosity I say, Let the young men have a chance.’

Except it’s the exact opposite which happens, in novel after novel: the young men don’t stand a chance; the world famous Hercule Poirot is always stepping in and solving everything for them. Poirot himself seems confused, or conflicted.

‘But surely I read that you had retired – that you’d taken a holiday for good and all.’
‘All ! Madame, you must not believe everything you read in the papers.’ (Chapter 5)

Symmetry OCD

Poirot was as jumpy as the proverbial cat. He walked about our sitting room all the afternoon, murmuring to himself and ceaselessly rearranging and straightening the ornaments.

He reached for his hat and carefully flicked an infinitesimal speck of dust from its surface. (Chapter 5)

With careful fingers he straightened the objects on the table in front of him. (Chapter 10)

See his thing with playing cards, below.

Cast

As usual, a fundamental part of Christie’s strategy is to create such a large cast of characters that just having Poirot discover all their basic backstories, and then uncover all the secrets they’re hiding, in such a way as to cast suspicion on most of them, actually makes up the text.

  • Poirot
  • Captain Hastings
  • Magdala ‘Nick’ Buckley – owner of the End House, ‘her small impudent dark head’, She is charming, Mademoiselle Nick, but she is a feather-head. Decidedly she is a feather-head.’
  • Commander George Challenger – would like to marry Nick
  • Frederica ‘Freddie’ Rice – Nick’s best friend, ‘Married to a beast—a man who drank and drugged and was altogether a queer of the worst description. She had to leave him a year or two ago.’ ‘She was an unusual type – weary Madonna describes it best. She had fair, almost colourless hair, parted in the middle and drawn straight down over her ears to a knot in the neck. Her face was dead white and emaciated – yet curiously attractive. Her eyes were very light grey with large pupils. She had a curious look of detachment… She impressed me, I think, as the most tired person I had ever met—tired in mind, not in body, as though she had found everything in the world to be empty and valueless.’ Turns out to be a drug addict.
  • Freddie’s husband aka ‘the mess’
  • Jim Lazarus – the art dealer in Bond Street, ‘He’s a Jew, of course, but a frightfully decent one’. ‘A tall, fair, rather exquisite young man, with a rather fleshy nose and over-emphasised good-looks, he had a supercilious manner and a tired drawl. There was a sleekness about him that I especially disliked.’
  • Charles Vyse – local solicitor, Nick’s cousin, stands to inherit End House if Nick dies
  • William Wilson – the gardener at End House, husband of…
  • Ellen Wilson – housemaid
  • their son, Alfred, who gleefully describes watching pigs being slaughtered
  • Bert and Mildred ‘Milly’ Croft – Australian couple who have rented the Lodge
    • Edith – their maid
  • Maggie Buckley – Nick’s sensible cousin: ‘It was, I think, her appearance of calm good sense that so attracted me. A quiet girl, pretty in the old-fashioned sense – certainly not smart. Her face was innocent of make-up and she wore a simple, rather shabby, black evening dress. She had frank blue eyes, and a pleasant slow voice.’
  • Dr Graham – the trusted local doctor, there’s always one
  • Colonel Weston – Chief Constable of Devon
  • The Reverend Giles Buckley – father of murdered Maggie Buckley, ‘a small man, grey-headed, with a diffident appealing manner’
  • Mrs Jean Buckley – ‘a woman of character, tall and fair and showing very plainly her northern ancestry’
  • Captain Michael Seton – dashing airman, engaged on a long-distance flight to Australia
  • Sir Matthew Seton – his gruff old uncle, ‘the second richest man in England’, who disapproved of his relationship with Nick Buckley (or any other woman, come to that)
  • Mr Whitfield – Captain Seton’s solicitor
  • matron of the nursing home where Nick is sent
  • Hood – orderly at the nursing home, ‘a stupid but honest-looking young fellow of about twenty-two’
  • nurse probationer at the nursing home

Conventions

1. Suspicion

Just like Miss Marple, Poirot is suspicious of everyone.

‘What a suspicious old devil you are!’
‘You are right, mon ami. I am suspicious of everyone – of everything.’

Compare Miss M:

‘Ah!’ said Miss Marple. ‘But I always find it prudent to suspect everybody just a little. What I say is, you really never know, do you?’ (The Murder at the Vicarage, Chapter 16)

2. More

And early on in any of these mysteries someone always utters the classic trope of the genre, that there’s more to this affair than meets the eye:

‘I cannot help feeling, Hastings, that there is something behind this—something that has not yet come to light.’ (Chapter 4)

Compare:

‘Do you know, Clement,’ [Colonel Melchett] said suddenly, ‘I’ve a feeling that this is going to turn out a much more intricate and difficult business than any of us think. Dash it all, there’s something behind it.’
(The Murder at the Vicarage, Chapter 12)

And:

‘I think,’ said Inspector Narracott deliberately, ‘that there’s a lot more in this case than meets the eye.’
(The Sittaford Mystery, Chapter 4)

The strain of modern life

More than once Christie has had characters refer to ‘the strain of modern life’. She does it again here.

‘What do you mean exactly by that. Mademoiselle ? On top of everything else?’
‘I don’t mean anything particular. What the newspapers call ‘ the strain of modem life,’ I suppose. Too many cocktails, too many cigarettes – all that sort of thing. It’s just that I’ve got into a ridiculous – sort of state.’ (Chapter 5)

This phrase also crops up in some of Noel Coward’s 1920s plays. It was obviously a received idea and cliché of the time.

Poirot’s method

Poirot’s insistence on Order and Method and Psychology, is explained in every novel and quickly became formulaic.

‘Order and method! That is the first stage. To arrange the facts with neatness and precision. The next stage—’
‘Yes.’
‘The next stage is that of the psychology. The correct employment of the little grey cells…’ (Chapter 9)

Less flatteringly, there’s simply nosing around.

‘Mon ami,’ said Poirot, ‘I like to inquire into everything. Hercule Poirot is a good dog. The good dog follows the scent, and if, regrettably, there is no scent to follow, he noses around – seeking always something that is not very nice. So also, does Hercule Poirot. And often – oh ! so often – does he find it!’ (Chapter 16)

Poirot the outsider

There are some obvious points about Poirot. An essay I read said that Christie developed him during the First World War when the established doyen of detectives was Sherlock Holmes and the new author of adventure stories on the block was John Buchan. Holmes is obviously tall, fit, a dab hand with a sword, a drug addict, with a weird ability at the violin, in many ways a freak. Buchan’s heroes do lots of running round and biffing baddies. Both are true blue, public school Englishmen. Poirot is obviously conceived to be the opposite of all these things. Poirot is:

Foreign and so completely outside the English class system, completely outside, for example, the way Captain Hastings responds to other public-school educated military men as ‘pukka sahibs’. Thus his cross riposte to Hastings:

‘Poirot,’ I cried, scandalised. ‘You really can’t do that. It isn’t playing the game.’
‘I am not playing a game, mon ami.’ His voice rang out suddenly harsh and stern. ‘I am hunting down a murderer.’ (Chapter 13)

Outsider So he is an outsider to almost all English customs, cuisine, politics, traditions and so on, not just an outsider but a critic (for example, of England’s notoriously disgusting food).

Ambivalence he speaks with a French accent and has a French-sounding name and yet he isn’t French. Maybe it started out as a joke to make him Belgian and have every character he encounters think he’s French, but it turns into something more allegorical. Even in Europe, he doesn’t fit in. Or: he doesn’t fit in even with people’s stereotypes of foreigners. A Frenchman would be easy to dismiss given the millennium-old antagonism between the English and French. But Poirot both is (name and speech) and isn’t (actual nationality) French. He is neither fish, flesh nor fowl.

So whenever Poirot corrects people’s misconception about his nationality, it always wrongfoots them. Holmes is what people expect, tall, commanding, authoritative. Poirot always unsettles and unnerves people.

Short not tall – compare the over-6-foot-tall Sherlock.

Unmanly – he is dapper and preening and fussy, not at all like the manly and indifferent-to-appearance heroes like Richard Hannay / Sandy Arbuthnot. In fact Christie chose to emphasise this very unEnglish, unheroic fussiness by giving him symmetric obsessive compulsive disorder:

Symmetry OCD is a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) characterized by an intense need for things to be perfectly aligned, balanced, or arranged in a symmetrical manner. Individuals with this condition experience significant distress and anxiety when objects or patterns appear asymmetrical or imperfect.

Hence, on a physical level, his fussiness about his personal appearance, and his fiddling with objects on the table or mantelpiece to position them just so. Which is an obvious physical manifestation of the similar mental compulsion to arrange all the facts into a neat pattern. Given vivid embodiment when Poirot unexpectedly asks Hastings to go and buy him a pack of playing cards.

‘If you would be the good friend – the good helpful friend…’
‘ Yes’ I said, eagerly.
‘Go out, I beg of you, and buy me some playing cards.’
I stared. ‘Very well,’ I said coldly. I could not but suspect that he was making a deliberate excuse to get rid of me. Here, however, I misjudged him. That night, when I came into the sitting-room about ten o’clock, I found Poirot carefully building card houses – and I remembered! It was an old trick of his – soothing his nerves. He smiled at me.
‘Yes – you remember. One needs the precision. One card on another – so – in exactly the right place and that supports the weight of the card on top and so on, up.’ (Chapter 17)

Woman haters and other stereotypes

Christie uses the phrase woman hater’ in this novel and its immediate predecessors. Here, Captain Seton’s uncle, Sir Matthew Seton, is described as one.

‘He [Michael] comes of rather a mad family,’ he [Lazarus] said. ‘His uncle. Sir Matthew Seton who died about a week ago – he was as mad as a hatter.’
‘He was the mad millionaire who ran bird sanctuaries, wasn’t he?’ asked Frederica.
‘Yes. Used to buy up islands. He was a great woman-hater. Some girl chucked him once, I believe, and he took to Natural History by way of consoling himself.’ (Chapter 7)

In The Sittaford Mystery, the murdered man, Captain Trevelyan, is described by several characters as a ‘woman hater’. Mrs Willett has no time for this description.

‘I’ve known dozens of men like it. They are called women haters and all sorts of silly things, and really all the time it’s only shyness. If I could have got at him,’ said Mrs Willett with determination, ‘I’d soon have got over all that nonsense. That sort of man only wants bringing out.’
(Chapter 14)

Either 1) there were a lot of these ‘woman haters’ about in the 1920s and ’30s, or 2) Christie was particularly intrigued by them, or 3) the most likely explanation, they were yet another handy stock type of the kind her stories are constructed from (the timid vicar, the solid doctor, the handsome young artist, the flighty young woman etc etc).

Because our own age is obsessed by gender and riddled with feminist ideology, this kind of stereotype leaps out at us (just as our other modern obsession with race and ethnicity means that Christie’s stereotypical references to Jews and to any other racial type or ethnicity also leap out at the modern reader, and are liable to cause offence).

But the entire books are made of stereotypical incidents and stock character types. Modern readers just alight on some of the stereotypes, the ones which press modern buttons, and find them offensive. But if there were any Cockneys left, they might find Christie’s clichéd depiction of the Londoner Inspector Japp, offensive:

‘Well, you mustn’t be depressed, old cock,’ said Japp. ‘Even if you can’t see your way clear – well you can’t go about at your time of life and expect to have the success you used to do. We all of us get stale as the years go by. Got to give the young ‘uns a chance, you know.’
‘And yet the old dog is the one who knows the tricks,’ murmured Poirot. ‘He is cunning. He does
not leave the scent.’..
‘You’re a caution, isn’t he, Captain Hastings ? Always was. Looks much the same – hair a bit thinner on top but the face fungus fuller than ever.’
‘Eh?’ said Poirot. ‘What is that?’
‘He’s congratulating you on your moustaches,’ I said, soothingly.

‘A caution’, ‘Old cock’, ‘face fungus’ – these locutions are as stereotypical as the stereotyped posh young chap who says, ‘What ho! old chap’, the stereotyped maid who says, ‘Lord, Miss, it’s not my place’, the stereotyped military man who says, ‘Dashed bad business, Poirot’. Some of the characters themselves comment on how stereotypical they are.

‘The late Sir Matthew was the second richest man in England,’ replied Mr. Whitfield, composedly.
‘He had somewhat peculiar views, had he not?’
Mr. Whitfield looked at him severely.
‘A millionaire, M. Poirot, is allowed to be eccentric. It is almost expected of him.’ (Chapter 16)

It is certainly expected of him in this kind of novel. All these novels offer not only the challenge of the central puzzle and the challenges of all the related puzzles and mysteries which spin off from it, the entertainment value of Poirot and his comedy sidekick – but all the pleasures of recognising a gallery of stock types and caricatures, as recognisable and deeply pleasurable as characters in a panto.

Credit

‘Peril at End House’ by Agatha Christie was published in 1932 by the Collins Crime Club.

Related links

Related reviews

Leave a comment
by Simon on July 23, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Crime, Novel
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on July 23, 2025

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2025/07/23/peril-at-end-house-agatha-christie/

The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie (1928)

‘My name is Hercule Poirot,’ he said quietly, ‘and I am probably the greatest detective in the world.’
(Poirot, modest as ever, ‘The Mystery of the Blue Train’, chapter 17)

‘They will grab at the money and abuse you all the more afterwards.’
‘Well,’ said Katherine, ‘let them if they like. We all have our own ways of enjoying ourselves.’
(Katherine Grey’s plucky sense of humour, chapter 8)

‘What is important? What is not? One cannot say at this stage. But we must note each little fact carefully.’
(Poirot in typically sententious mode, chapter 11)

How should it have occurred to Ruth, except as the wildest coincidence, that the first person that the maid should run across in Paris should be her father’s secretary? Ah, but that was the way things happened. That was the way things got found out.
(Or at least that was the way things happen in classic detective stories which abound in outrageous coincidences and improbable situations.)

‘You are the goods, Monsieur Poirot. Every time, you are the goods.’
(Mr Van Aldin gets his money’s worth, chapter 25)

‘At the tennis one meets everyone.’
(Tennis, one of the 1920s’ new sports crazes, along with golf)

Executive summary

Millionaire’s daughter Mrs Ruth Kettering is travelling to the south of France on the famous Blue Train when, somewhere between Paris and Lyons, she is murdered in her compartment. Her jewel case, including the famous red rubies her father gave her, is stolen. Who did it? Suspicion falls on two obvious suspects:

  1. Her ne’er-do-well husband, Derek Kettering, heir to a title and large inheritance but is deeply in debt due to his addiction to gambling; who Ruth’s father was telling her to divorce because of his infidelity; and whose hard-hearted mistress, the dancer Mirelle, had suggested would be much better off if Ruth died before she divorced him because then he would inherit her millions; and who was on the same train heading south as Ruth, although he swears they were travelling separately and he didn’t know she was on it too.
  2. The Comte de la Roche: Ruth’s long-term secret lover, a seducer and exploiter of rich women well known to the police, who had written to Ruth asking her to come and visit him in the south of France and explicitly told her to bring the precious rubies because he was writing a book about famous gems; might he have been the mysterious man seen by various eye witnesses entering Ruth’s compartment soon before her death?

It just so happens that Poirot was travelling on the very same Blue Train and so, once the murdered woman’s body is found, he volunteers his services to the local police and sets about untangling the complicated motives of all the major players in the story, along with various peripheral figures (such as Ruth’s maid, Van Aldin’s secretary, and the mysterious figure of ‘the Marquis’).

Only after Christie has strewn the narrative with numerous red herrings and complicated but ambiguous details, does Poirot finally identify the murderer.

Longer summary

‘The Mystery of the Blue Train’ is the fifth Poirot novel. But it is not narrated by his sidekick, Captain Hastings, who doesn’t appear at all, so it lacks the layer of (often unwitting) comedy which Hastings brings to the stories. And it completely lacks the sparkling high spirits of the very funny comedy murder mysteries, The Secret of Chimneys and ‘The Mystery of the Seven Dials’, with their cast of wonderfully droll and self-aware young chaps and chapesses. Those two novels have preposterously complicated and far-fetched plots but that just makes them all the more amusing.

By striking contrast, ‘The Mystery of the Blue Train’ is a much more sober affair: there is only one murder and the three leading figures are rather boring. Katherine Grey is a former lady’s companion, who has led a boring life until the old lady she’s been caring for dies and leaves her a fortune; Derek Kettering is a suave but impetuous adulterer, quick to anger; and the Comte de la Roche is a slick con-man. No real laughs between the three of ’em.

Instead there’s such a long and elaborate build-up of character and backstory meaning that Poirot doesn’t appear until chapter 11 of this 36-chapter book.

Van Aldin-Ruth-Derek

Nothing is too good for American millionaire Rufus Van Aldin‘s daughter, Ruth. Which is why the narrative opens with him doing dodgy deals amid Paris’s criminal underworld, and even fighting off a mugging attempt by the notorious ‘Apaches’ or street criminals, in order to get his hands on some world-famous red rubies, including the legendary Heart of Fire which was supposedly worn by Catherine the Great of Russia. Why these lurid opening scenes? 1) Nominally in order to give them tom his beloved daughter Ruth. But 2) also to create a sense of crime and violence which is to loom over the rest of the novel.

Van Aldin’s daughter, Ruth, is no soft touch.

Ruth Kettering was twenty-eight years of age. Without being beautiful, or in the real sense of the word even pretty, she was striking looking because of her colouring. Van Aldin had been called Carrots and Ginger in his time, and Ruth’s hair was almost pure auburn. With it went dark eyes and very black lashes—the effect somewhat enhanced by art. She was tall and slender, and moved well. At a careless glance it was the face of a Raphael Madonna. Only if one looked closely did one perceive the same line of jaw and chin as in Van Aldin’s face, bespeaking the same hardness and determination. It suited the man, but suited the woman less well. From her childhood upward Ruth Van Aldin had been accustomed to having her own way, and anyone who had ever stood up against her soon realized that Rufus Van Aldin’s daughter never gave in.

Unfortunately, no amount of gifts can conceal the fact that Ruth is unhappy because she is married to the Honourable Derek Kettering who is a drawling philanderer who cares nothing for her.

…thirty-four, lean of build, with a dark, narrow face, which had even now something indescribably boyish in it…

In the scene where he gives Ruth his dramatic present of super-valuable rubies, Van Aldin also forces her to concede that, after putting up with Derek’s wretched behaviour for years, it’ about time she divorced him. Ruth appears reluctant because (the narrative strongly implies) any court case might bring out the fact that Ruth herself has been less than an angel, and we slowly realise this is because she has remained in touch with her first love, the louche Comte de la Roche.

In a separate scene Van Aldin calls Derek Kettering in for an interview. He loathes his son-in-law and tells him he must divorce his daughter but Derek infuriates the old man with his suave irony and flippancy. He counters Van Aldin’s criticism of him by pointing out that the main reason Ruth married him was because he is heir to the title of Lord Leconbury, ‘one of the oldest families in England’. When the current Lord dies, Derek will inherit the title and the grand house at Leconbury and Ruth will become its mistress. Derek says Ruth is well aware it would be a shame to divorce him (Derek) now, just as his father is on his last legs, just as he is about to inherit the title, at which point Ruth would become a Lady and chatelaine of a grand English country house. Derek leaves Van Aldin with the parting shot that the father (Van Aldin) ought to know the daughter (Ruth) better than he evidently does.

Derek then goes to the apartment of his lover, the attractive but slovenly Mirelle.

The dancer was a beautifully made woman, and if her face, beneath its mask of yellow, was in truth somewhat haggard, it had a bizarre charm of its own.

In their conversation it becomes clear that Derek is very poor, he has borrowed large sums against the promise of his inheritance and managed to lose most of it gambling. When he jokily describes how losing Ruth would leave him utterly penniless Mirelle makes it clear she will leave him if he is ruined. There is no love lost between them. She jokily suggests that Derek should bump off Ruth while they’re still married; then her fortune would come to him. But he doesn’t take it seriously and storms out.

Meanwhile, Van Aldin hires a private detective, Mr Goby, to find out the dirt on Derek, mainly confirming for Van Aldin what the reader has just learned – that he is broke and has a mistress.

After some business in the City, Van Aldin calls in again on his daughter and almost bumps into a man coming out of her hotel apartment. Only talking to Ruth does he realise that the man was Armand, the Comte de la Roche.

The Comte’s charm of manner was usually wasted on his own sex. All men, without exception, disliked him heartily.

Now it comes out that when Ruth was living in Paris she fell deeply in love with the Comte but her father, convinced he was a swindler (which the novel goes on to show that he is), broke them up and more or less forced her to marry Derek. So she blames her father for wrecking the love of her life and attaching her to a drawling wastrel (Derek).

Summary so far

To summarise: Van Aldin is pressurising his daughter Ruth to divorce her no-good husband Derek. Derek has discussed the possibility of murdering Ruth to ensure he inherits her fortune. Ruth is reluctant to take divorce proceedings because any legal action is likely to bring out the fact that she has carried on having an affair with the Comte de la Roche i.e. been just as unfaithful as Derek.

As for the Comte, we don’t get many scenes with him early on so we are inclined to Van Aldin’s view that he is a gold-digger, that he has always only pretended to love Ruth in order to get his hands on her fortune. The arrival of the famous red rubies in Ruth’s possession has only raised the stakes all round. And Mirelle is a wild card because she alternately loves Derek (for his money) and hates him (for threatening to leave her / becoming penniless).

In other words the three men and two women in this matrix of relationships all have good reason to resent and dislike each other.

On an impulse Derek decides that he wants to get away from London and drops into the Thomas Cook shop in Piccadilly to buy a ticket on the Blue Train to the Riviera. (Unbeknown to him, his wife is also going to be travelling on the same train, in response to the letter from the Comte.) And here (in the Thomas Cook office) he bumps into a mysterious grey-haired lady, who is also buying a ticket on the Blue Train. Who is she?

Miss Katherine Grey-Lady Tamplin

At which point we are introduced to a new thread and the other major character in the story:

Katherine Grey was thirty-three. She came of good family, but her father had lost all his money, and Katherine had had to work for her living from an early age. She had been just twenty-three when she had come to old Mrs Harfield as companion… Katherine Grey was born with the power of managing old ladies, dogs, and small boys, and she did it without any apparent sense of strain.

The Katherine narrative is more straightforward. For years she has been a companion to old Mrs Harfield in the sleepy village of St Mary Mead. The old lady has recently passed away. When Katherine goes to see the family solicitor, she expects she will get a little nest egg from the old lady who was always frugal, but is astonished to learn she had been nursing a small fortune which will now come to Katherine. What shall she do with it and with her life? Well, certainly buy some nice clothes but what then?

It’s at this juncture that Katherine receives a letter from one Lady Tamplin. A chapter is devoted to introducing her in her villa in the south of France. Lady Tamplin is:

A golden-haired, blue-eyed lady in a very becoming negligee. That the golden hair owed something to art, as did the pink-and-white complexion, was undeniable, but the blue of the eyes was Nature’s gift, and at forty-four Lady Tamplin could still rank as a beauty.

Lady Tamplin lives with her dim husband, ‘Chubby’, and her sharp, ironic daughter, the Honourable Lenox Tamplin.

A daughter such as Lenox was a sad thorn in Lady Tamplin’s side, a girl with no kind of tact, who actually looked older than her age, and whose peculiar sardonic form of humour was, to say the least of it, uncomfortable.

The point is that the Katherine Grey who has just inherited a fortune is a distant relative of Lady Tamplin. Lady T has just read about the legacy in The Times and sees an opportunity to mulct some money out of the innocent Katherine. So this is why Lady T decides to invite Katherine to come and stay with them on the Riviera, so that she and Lenox can introduce her into the ways of the upper class and/or try to extract some of her fortune from her, and writes her a letter of invitation to come and stay. At a loose end, Katherine agrees to accept the invitation.

So this is what she is doing at Thomas Cook’s offices in Piccadilly. Here she recognises the man in the queue to be served; he nearly bumped into her in the Savoy Hotel that morning (as he came out of the suite inhabited by the visiting millionaire Van Aldin). It is Derek Kettering. He has reserved a berth on the Blue Train to the Riviera on the 14th of the month under the name of his man, Pavett. Katherine follows him in the queue, and also buys a berth on the Blue Train to the Riviera on the 14th of the month.

What neither of them know is that Derek’s wife, Ruth, is also going to be on the same Blue Train because she has been invited to come and meet him in the south of France by the Comte.

After Derek’s got back home from buying his ticket, he is paid a visit by Van Aldin’s secretary, Major Knighton, ‘a tall fair man with a limp’ from a wound received in the war. Deeply embarrassed, Knighton presents van Aldin’s final offer that, if Derek doesn’t contest the divorce, VA will give him £100,000 flat. Derek listens then tells him to go to hell. Then tells his man to start packing his bags for his trip to the south of France.

On the Blue Train

So Ruth and Katherine are on the same Blue Train and end up sitting opposite each other at lunch and get talking. After over a decade as a lady’s companion, Katherine is used to listening, has an aura of confidentiality about her. So they quickly become confidential and Ruth confesses that she is going against her father’s explicit orders, to meet her lover in the south of France. Katherine learns all about her marital misfortunes but nonetheless advises her to telegram her father when the train gets to Paris to let him know where she’s going, and Katherine agrees.

They two women pass the afternoon on the train in their different ways, then, at dinner, Katherine finds herself sat opposite a small man with a waxed black moustache and an egg-shaped head. Well, any Christie fan immediately knows who this is – the world-famous detective Hercule Poirot, who is all politeness, charm and egotism.

‘It is true that I have the habit of being always right—but I do not boast of it.’ (Chapter 10)

He notices that Katherine is reading a detective novel (a roman policier in French). She says she enjoys reading them because such things never happen in real life. Poirot politely points out that sometimes they do. Either way a connection has been made between them.

More minor incidents occur the most significant of which is that just before the train reaches Lyon, Katherine thinks she sees the man she saw in the Thomas Cook office, in the corridor and then entering the compartment of Ruth. She thinks. Later she is not 100% sure…

The murder

When the train reaches Nice a train assistant knocks on the door, then enters, and discovers Ruth’s body. She is lying peacefully up in her bed, with her head turned away. Only when he shakes her does the train assistant realise she is dead. She has been strangled from behind and then, notable detail, her face severely disfigured by punches or blows.

The police are called in the shape of M. Caux the Commissary of Police. One by one they interview witnesses in an office in the station. The Commissary is surprised when there’s a knock on the door and in looks the famous Hercule Poirot. He and the other police officials enthusiastically welcome Poirot’s offer to help the investigation, so from here on he sits in on all the interviews of all the relevant witness.

It’s in this context that he meets Katherine again and notes that ‘From the beginning we have been sympathetic to each other’ going on to say, in his confidential manner:

‘This shall be a ‘roman policier‘ à nous. We will investigate this affair together.’ (Chapter 11)

And a little later:

‘This is our own roman policier, is it not?’ said Poirot. ‘I made you the promise that we should study it together. And me, I always keep my promises.’ (Chapter 20)

To some extent, Katherine replaces the figure of Captain Hastings, as a sort of assistant who he can bounce ideas off, muse out loud with and thus, at the same time, share his ideas with the reader.

At the Villa Marguerite

When she is released from questioning by the police, Katherine continues her plans. She is met at Nice station by Lady Tamplin’s husband, the harmless ‘Chubby’ Evans (Lady T’s title derives from a former marriage), and taken to the Villa Marguerite. Katherine quickly gets the measure of its three inhabitants:

She looked in turn at the three people sitting round the table. Lady Tamplin, full of practical schemes; Mr. Evans, beaming with naïve appreciation, and Lenox with a queer crooked smile on her dark face. (Chapter 12)

Later there is lunch and she is staggered to find herself sitting next to the (to her, unnamed and unknown) man who she saw in the queue at Thomas Cook’s, and then saw on the Blue Train. Even more staggered when a servant hands him a message and reveals his name is Kettering and so she learns that he is the husband of the murdered woman.

The cops

Van Aldin is in the middle of doing work with his secretary when he gets the telegram saying his daughter has been murdered. He immediately makes plans to catch the first train south and 24 hours later is joining the investigation, along with his own theories and prejudices (he thinks the murder must be Derek).

Cut to Van Aldin and his secretary arriving in Nice and being introduced to the French police and Poirot. They question Ruth’s maid, Mason. Oddly, Ruth had told her to stay behind, in Paris, at the Paris Ritz, and await further instructions. Why?

Van Aldin is staggered to learn that Ruth had taken her jewels with her, in a red morocco case, even the red rubies, when he had specifically told her to lock them in a safe deposit in London. All becomes clear when the French Juge d’Instruction, M. Carrège, produces a letter found on Ruth’s body, sent from the Comte, telling her to bring her jewels with her as he claimed to be writing a book about famous jewels.

The conference of cops gravitates to the theory that this Comte did the murder and stole the jewels, bringing themselves into conflict with Van Aldin who is unshakably convinced that it was his no-good son-in-law. Van Aldin hires Poirot on a commercial basis, as a freelance investigator, and the book takes on a new complexion. Out of the rather anarchic setup, we emerge into clarity knowing that whatever happens going forward, Poirot will, eventually, fix it all. For example it is Poirot who discovers that the Comte is staying at a villa he’s rented, the Villa Marina at Antibes.

So the police call in for questioning, or requestioning, the following witnesses: the Comte, Derek Kettering, the maid, and Katherine.

And it’s at this point that the plot becomes convoluted in the familiar Christie way because a straightfoward narrative of events starts to get overlaid and mixed up with the theories developed by the various personnel:

  • obviously the police have their theories
  • Poirot hints at his ideas, not least in conversations with Katherine, and adds questions to the police interrogations designed to confirm or refute them
  • Van Aldin has his simple animus against Derek and carries out his own interviews with Katherine and the maid to try and prove his point
  • and we are party to Katherine’s evolving theories about who did what, where.

‘But this is an entirely new theory,’ cried Knighton. (Chapter 33)

So it’s at this point that I’ll stop even trying to summarise the plot because from here onwards it consists of all the characters concocting theories which themselves continually shift and need updating as more information becomes available:

  • Who did the cigarette case found on the train with a monogrammed ‘K’ belong to?
  • What is the renowned and unscrupulous jewel merchant M. Papopolous (and his daughter Zia) doing in Nice?
  • What favour did Poirot do for Papopolous 17 years ago, and why does he call it in now?
  • What role is played by the mysterious figure M. Papolous refers to as ‘the Marquis’?
  • What is Derek’s mistress Mirelle doing in Nice and, furious at being dumped by him (‘She looked not altogether unlike a leopardess, tawny and dangerous’), will her spiteful denunciation persuade the police that Derek is guilty?

And many more convoluted questions. Not to mention the two leading suspects engaging in guilty behaviour of one sort or another.

You can read the whole thing, along with its surprising denouement, online. Here are a few scattered thoughts or observations.

Poirot

Poirot drew himself up. ‘Leave it in the hands of Hercule Poirot,’ he said superbly; ‘have no fears. I will discover the truth.’ (Chapter 24)

‘I am a good detective. I suspect. There is nobody and nothing that I do not suspect. I believe nothing that I am told.’ (Chapter 35)

Retirement

As always, I am puzzled why Poirot is permanently presented as having retired.

‘This is M. Hercule Poirot; you have doubtless heard of him. Although he has retired from his profession for some years now, his name is still a household word as one of the greatest living detectives.’ (Chapter 14)

How odd of Christie to introduce her detective as having retired just as he was about to embark on a 40-year career of solving crimes (that last Poirot book was published in 1974).

Poirot’s process

As far as I can tell Poirot’s process has two aspects: 1) record the facts and lay them out as logically and dispassionately as possible, 2) supplement the facts with psychology: why would so-and-so do x? Is it consistent with his or her character?

Here he is on the facts:

‘Let us arrange our facts with order and precision….’

‘I mean nothing,’ said Poirot. ‘I arrange the facts, that is all.’

And on the importance of psychology:

Poirot wagged an emphatic forefinger. ‘The psychology.’
‘Eh?’ said the Commissary.
‘The psychology is at fault. The Comte is a scoundrel—yes. The Comte is a swindler—yes. The Comte preys upon women—yes. He proposes to steal Madame’s jewels—again yes. Is he the kind of man to commit murder? I say no! A man of the type of the Comte is always a coward; he takes no risks.’

In summary:

‘It is nothing,’ said Poirot modestly. ‘Order, method, being prepared for eventualities beforehand—that is all there is to it.’ (Chapter 21)

‘I am always punctual,’ said Poirot. ‘The exactitude—always do I observe it. Without order and method—’

Poirot’s green eyes

As to Poirot’s other characteristics, they are all here to please fans. The green light in his eyes when he becomes excited:

Poirot sat up suddenly in his chair. A very faint green light glowed in his eyes. He looked extraordinarily like a sleek, well-fed cat. (Chapter 17)

When the car had driven off he relapsed into a frowning absorption, but in his eyes was that faint green light which was always the precursor of the triumph to be. (Chapter 28)

As Lenox remarks:

‘I have rather lost my heart to him. I never met a man before whose eyes were really green like a cat’s.’ (Chapter 29)

Poirot’s monstrous ego

‘Voilà,’ said the stranger, and sank into a wooden arm-chair; ‘I am Hercule Poirot.’
‘”Yes, Monsieur?’
‘You do not know the name?’
‘I have never heard it,’ said Hippolyte.
‘Permit me to say that you have been badly educated. It is the name of one of the great ones of this world.’
(Chapter 29)

Papa Poirot

The spooky way he refers to himself as Papa Poirot, especially when talking to women.

‘You mock yourself at me,’ said Poirot genially, ‘but no matter. Papa Poirot, he always laughs the last.’ (Chapter 21)

Poirot’s arrogance

It amused her to see the little man plume himself like a bird, thrusting out his chest, and assuming an air of mock modesty that would have deceived no one. (Chapter 21)

Poirot raised a hand. ‘Grant me a little moment, Monsieur. Me, I have a little idea. Many people have mocked themselves at the little ideas of Hercule Poirot—and they have been wrong.’ (Chapter 21)

‘M. Van Aldin is an obstinate man,’ said Poirot drily. ‘I do not argue with obstinate men. I act in spite of them.’ (Chapter 27)

At several points he compares himself to God, as being the only two forces in the world you can utterly rely on.

‘Trust the train, Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it.’ The whistle of the engine came again. ”Trust the train, Mademoiselle,’ murmured Poirot again. ‘And trust Hercule Poirot. He knows.’
(Last words of the novel)

Praise from others

‘He is a very remarkable person,’ said Knighton slowly, ‘and has done some very remarkable things. He has a kind of genius for going to the root of the matter, and right up to the end no one has any idea of what he is really thinking.’ (Chapter 21)

Christie’s antisemitism

Apparently, the Anti-Defamation League in America complained to her publishers about the antisemitic stereotypes or tropes often found in Christie’s stories. ‘The Mystery of the Blue Train’ is no exception.

A little man with a face like a rat. A man, one would say, who could never play a conspicuous part, or rise to prominence in any sphere. And yet, in leaping to such a conclusion, an onlooker would have been wrong. For this man, negligible and inconspicuous as he seemed, played a prominent part in the destiny of the world. In an Empire where rats ruled, he was the king of the rats… His face gleamed white and sharp in the moonlight. There was the least hint of a curve in the thin nose. His father had been a Polish Jew, a journeyman tailor. It was business such as his father would have loved that took him abroad to-night. (Chapter 1)

A face like a rat?!

‘Seventeen years is a long time,’ said Poirot thoughtfully, ‘but I believe that I am right in saying, Monsieur, that your race does not forget.’
‘A Greek?’ murmured Papopolous, with an ironical smile.
‘It was not as a Greek I meant,’ said Poirot.
There was a silence, and then the old man drew himself up proudly.
‘You are right, M. Poirot,’ he said quietly. ‘I am a Jew. And, as you say, our race does not forget.’
(Chapter 22)

Christie’s sexism

Along with the stereotypes about Jews (and lots of other nationalities) go a raft of sexist generalisations about women. Obviously the books are of their time, allowances ought to be made etc, but it’s still notable. In particular there’s a lot of dwelling on the idea that women are attracted to romantic bad guys.

‘He is Lord Leconbury’s son, married a rich American woman. Women are simply potty about him.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, the usual reason—very good-looking and a regular bad lot.’
(Chapter 12)

I don’t know where we are on the idea that some women are attracted to bad boys. It’s been true in my experience, but my experience is just a drop in the ocean. It’s certainly a recurring trope in this story, because both the men in it are wrong ‘uns who both seem to be popular with the ladies and, in particular, with Katherine.

‘A mauvais sujet,’ said Poirot, shaking his head; ‘but les femmes—they like that, eh?’
He twinkled at Katherine and she laughed.
(Chapter 20)

But really the bad boy in question is Derek Kettering.

‘There are men who have a strange fascination for women.’
‘The Comte de la Roche,’ said Katherine, with a smile.
‘There are others—more dangerous than the Comte de la Roche. They have qualities that appeal—recklessness, daring, audacity…’

Poirot repeats the thought to Kettering:

‘Your reputation is bad, yes, but with women—never does that deter them. If you were a man of excellent character, of strict morality who had done nothing that he should not do, and—possibly everything that he should do—eh bien! then I should have grave doubts of your success. Moral worth, you understand, it is not romantic. (Chapter 24)

All this is relevant because by the middle of the novel it’s become clear that Katherine is being actively wooed, both by Kettering and by Knighton. On the face of it they represent two polar opposites: the smooth seducer versus the honest war hero. And we are shown Katherine developing feelings for both of them. But can it be as simple as all that?

Other sexisms

The story invokes what I assume to be another sexist caricature, namely that women are preternaturally attracted by the glamour of precious stones, in a way that men aren’t.

Her eyes grew misty, a far-away light in them. The Comte looked at her curiously, wondering for the hundredth time at the magical influence of precious stones on the female sex. (Chapter 19)

‘They are all the same, these women—they never stop telling tall stories about their jewels. Mirelle goes about bragging that it has got a curse on it. ‘Heart of Fire,’ I think she calls it.’
‘But if I remember rightly,’ said Poirot, ‘the ruby that is named ‘Heart of Fire’ is the centre stone in a necklace.’
‘There you are! Didn’t I tell you there is no end to the lies women will tell about their jewellery?’
‘You have the outlook cynical,’ [Poirot] murmured.
‘Have I?’ There was no mirth in his sudden wide smile. ‘I have lived in the world long enough, M. Poirot, to know that all women are pretty much alike.’ (Chapter 24)

Well, in that case, are not all men pretty much alike. In reality, this is a meaningless statement except to express a kind of worldly misogyny. As many other empty generalisations along these lines:

‘And yet, who knows? With les femmes, they have so many ways of concealing what they feel—and heartiness is perhaps as good a way as any other.’ (Chapter 26)

But maybe the general thought about all these sweeping generalisations – so easy to notice and condemn in our progressive times – is that genre fiction like this is based on generalisations about human nature. The generalisations may have changed with the times, but maybe genre fiction can only really function if it not only complies with the requirements of the genre itself, but also abounds in obvious, easy and stereotypical generalisations about human nature – reflecting the commonly accepted values of the day in order to make the whole thing easier to consume.

Men

And so along with generalisations about ethnic groups and women, there are also generalising, stereotypical remarks about men. When he and Zia step out of the casino at Monte Carlo, she points out this is the garden where so many men have committed suicide after losing everything.

Poirot shrugged his shoulders. ‘So it is said. Men are foolish, are they not, Mademoiselle? To eat, to drink, to breathe the good air, it is a very pleasant thing, Mademoiselle. One is foolish to leave all that simply because one has no money—or because the heart aches.’
(Chapter 28)

And here is Katherine’s old lady friend, Miss Viner, later in the novel:

‘I was wrong about that young man of yours. A man when he is making up to anybody can be cordial and gallant and full of little attentions and altogether charming. But when a man is really in love he can’t help looking like a sheep. Now, whenever that young man looked at you he looked like a sheep. I take back all I said this morning. It is genuine.’ (Chapter 30)

Sweeping generalisations about men and women are probably the oldest trope in all literature. Think for a moment about Shakespeare or Jane Austen.

Bookishness and self-referentiality

As I’ve pointed out in all my Christie reviews, she knows she is writing popular detective stories and part of this always seems to be having your characters point out that they seem to be appearing in a story which is remarkably like a piece of popular detective fiction. There’s a curious self-aware, meta aspect to these frequent reminders that the characters are in a fiction.

‘She has all the instincts of a lady, as they say in books,’ said Lenox, with a grin. (Chapter 12)

‘They say she is wearing a ruby the size of a pigeon’s egg—not that I have ever seen a pigeon’s egg myself, but that is what they always call it in works of fiction.’ (Chapter 31)

A central example is the way Poirot first bonds with Katherine while she is reading a crime novel and Christie gives them a little exchange about the value of such things.

‘I see, Madame, that you have a roman policier. You are fond of such things?’
‘They amuse me,’ Katherine admitted.
The little man nodded with the air of complete understanding.
‘They have a good sale always, so I am told. Now why is that, eh, Mademoiselle? I ask it of you as a student of human nature—why should that be?’
Katherine felt more and more amused.
‘Perhaps they give one the illusion of living an exciting life,’ she suggested.
(Chapter 10)

This allows Poirot, once the murder is revealed, to suavely suggest that she join him in solving the murder. And, in their conversations, to remind her (and the reader) of the conventions of the genre of the book they are reading.

‘You confess that you read detective stories, Miss Grey. You must know that anyone who has a perfect alibi is always open to grave suspicion.’
‘Do you think that real life is like that?’ asked Katherine, smiling.
‘Why not? Fiction is founded on fact.’
‘But is rather superior to it,’ suggested Katherine.
‘Perhaps.’
(Chapter 21)

This self-referentiality is partly, I think, humorous. It makes the reader smile. And also it is a continuous reminder of the whimsically artificial nature of these kinds of books.

Humour

For me the single biggest appeal of Agatha Christie’s books is her consistently buoyant humorous tone. The entire story is told in a kind of tone of indulgent good humour (the entire character of Poirot is essentially comic), as well as comic interactions between other characters. In this novel the comedy is pre-eminently associated with Lady Tamplin and her daughter. Lady T is funny because of her predictable tone of snobbery and avarice.

‘I should like to meet Mr. Van Aldin,’ said Lady Tamplin earnestly; ‘one has heard so much of him. Those fine rugged figures of the Western world’—she broke off—’so fascinating,’ she murmured. (Chapter 21)

Which is perfectly complemented by the droll and knowing comments of her daughter, Lady Lenox, in exchanges like this:

‘Mademoiselle [Katherine] is wanted at the telephone,’ said Marie, appearing at the window of the salon. ‘M. Hercule Poirot desires to speak with her.’
‘More blood and thunder. Go on, Katherine; go and dally with your detective.’

Or:

‘What did Major Knighton ring up about?’ inquired Katherine.
‘He asked if you would like to go to the tennis this afternoon. If so, he would call for you in a car. Mother and I accepted for you with empressement. Whilst you dally with a millionaire’s secretary, you might give me a chance with the millionaire, Katherine. He is about sixty, I suppose, so that he will be looking about for a nice sweet young thing like me.’ (Chapter 21)

And:

‘Major Knighton was very particular to say it was Mr. Van Aldin’s invitation,’ said Lenox. ‘He said it so often that I began to smell a rat. You and Knighton would make a very nice pair, Katherine. Bless you, my children!’ Katherine laughed, and went upstairs to change her clothes.

It’s fun.

Credit

‘The Mystery of the Blue Train’ by Agatha Christie was published in 1928 by William Collins and Son.

Related links

Related reviews

Leave a comment
by Simon on July 14, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Antisemitism, Comedy, Detective stories, Novel
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on July 14, 2025

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2025/07/14/the-mystery-of-the-blue-train-agatha-christie/