The Major blushed like a girl.
(Chapter 1)

There were all the usual laughs, whispers, stereotyped remarks.
(Chapter 2)

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

‘It’s always what you don’t expect in this life that happens, isn’t it, Mr Narracott?’
(The wisdom of Mrs Belling, landlady of the Three Crowns, Chapter 6)

‘That’s a rum go,’ ejaculated the Superintendent.
(Middle class slang, Chapter 10)

‘A lot of chuckleheads the police are, and so I’ve said before now.’
(Working class slang, Mrs Belling, Chapter 12)

Mr Curtis thoughtfully removed an aged pipe from the right side of his mouth to the left side. ‘Women,’ he said, ‘talk a lot.’
(One of the oldest tropes in literature, the hen-pecked husband, Chapter 13)

‘I hate a slobbering female,’ said Miss Percehouse. ‘I like one who gets up and does things.’
(No-nonsense old spinster Miss P, Chapter 17)

She paused, lost in thought. Two very different theories stretched out in opposite directions.
(Emily Trefusis, who emerges as the intellectual heroine of the story, Chapter 17)

‘Brian,’ said Emily thoughtfully, ‘is – well, a person to be reckoned with. He is rather unscrupulous, I should think, and if he wanted anything, I don’t think he would let ordinary conventional standards stand in his way. He’s not plain tame English.’
(Christie’s comic view of her compatriots, Chapter 25)

‘Never part with information unnecessarily. That’s my rule,’ said Inspector Narracott.
(Wise words, Chapter 26)

‘It just shows,’ said Charles, ‘that you never know.’
(Chapter 25)

Freelance detectives

Indeed, you never do know about people’s private lives and secret motivations… except that, in Agatha Christie novels and others of her ilk, in fact you do know. You very much do find out whodunnit, who was jealous of who, who fancied who, as well as a hundred and one other loose ends which by the story’s conclusion are all tied up neatly with a bow.

After a pleasurable day or two of being teased about the mystery, and trying to work it out from the plethora of clues packed into the narrative whodunnit – in the last chapter all is revealed, all is explained, there is closure for everyone, including the reader.

From one point of view, the main thing which distinguishes Christie’s books is who does the revealing and explaining. She is, of course, famous for the series of novels featuring Hercule Poirot as investigator, and the separate series featuring Miss Jane Marple in the same role. But alongside these she published 20 or so novels throughout her career without one of her two star sleuths – detective and crime novels which instead featured freelancers, amateurs, people caught up in a murder situation who find they have a gift for investigation, for interviewing people, for putting evidence together, and developing their own theories.

The Sittaford Mystery is one such ‘freelance’ detective story and the spirited amateur who emerges as its heroine is the wife of the initial suspect, a clever and very determined young woman named Emily Trefusis.

The background

The village of Sittaford is situated on the edge of Dartmoor. It is mid-winter and the moor and village are both deep in snow. The village is dominated by Sittaford House which was built ten years ago by Captain Joseph Trevelyan after he retired from the Royal Navy. He is wealthy and built his big house right on the shoulder of the moor under the shadow of Sittaford Beacon. He had purchased a large tract of land on which he first built the big house with all modern conveniences, then he had built six small bungalows, each in a quarter acre of ground, along the lane leading from the house down to the small village. The cottages are inhabited thus:

• Number 1 – Major Burnaby, Trevelyan’s oldest friend and sporting partner
• Number 2 – Captain Wyatt ‘a tall thin man with a very brown complexion, bloodshot eyes and grey hair. He was propped up with a crutch on one side’
  • Wyatt’s miserable-looking native servant, Abdul, ‘a tall Indian in a turban’
• Number 3 – Mr Rycroft, a dapper little gentleman whose cottage is stuffed with books about ornithology and criminology
• Number 4 – stern, strict Miss Caroline Percehouse, ‘a spinster of uncertain years and temper who had come down here to die… six years ago’ but has revived in the clear moorland air
  • currently being visited by her empty-headed young nephew, Ronnie Garfield
• Number 5 – Curtis, retired gardener at Sittaford House, with his garrulous wife Mrs Curtis, who lets rooms to outsiders
• Number 6 – Mr Duke, a shy retiring man with a military manner that nobody knows anything about

The village itself consists of three picturesque but dilapidated cottages, a forge, and a combined post office and sweet shop. The nearest town is Exhampton, six miles away. The nearest city is Exeter, a train ride away.

The setup

A few months before the story commences Captain Trevelyan was contacted by an estate agent acting on behalf of a colonial widow, one Mrs Willett from South Africa, who was looking for an isolated country house and had always had an interest in mysterious Dartmoor. Through the estate agent she made a very generous offer to Captain Trevelyan, a rather greedy man, and so the deal was done whereby Mrs Willett and her grown-up daughter Violet, leased Sittaford Hall for the winter while the Captain moved into a bungalow into Exhampton, six miles away.

The village is a small place and pretty much everyone gossiped and speculated about Mrs Willett’s real reasons for moving to such an isolated spot.

The séance

Meanwhile Mrs W and her daughter set about trying to make herself popular with the locals, hosting dinners and teas. On the Friday night in question they invite four local middle class characters to tea, being Captain Trevelyan’s long-standing friend, Major Burnaby, Mr Rycroft, Mr Ronnie Garfield and Mr Duke. Afterwards they go to play bridge but six is too many so someone playfully suggests they hold a séance.

So they select a small round table, turn the lights off, sit round it holding hands, amid much joking and irony and scoffing until – as always happens in fictions like this – the table really does begin to move and really indicates that a spirit from the other side wishes to speak to them.

The murder

Long story short, the message that comes through is that Captain Trevelyan is dead, murdered! Someone looks at their watch and sees that the time is precisely 5.25pm.

This breaks up the séance but also upsets his old friend Major Burnaby who, after some fretting, announces that he is setting off the six miles to Exhampton. He insists he will walk there because a) he is fit as a fiddle and despises cars etc b) it’s coming on to snow again and the road is already impassable to vehicles.

A few hours later, about 8pm, in the middle of the blizzard which has arrived as forecast, Major Burnaby arrives at Captain Trevelyan’s rented house, Hazelmoor. When nobody answers the door, he fetches the local police and the local doctor, Dr Warren a doctor and they enter the house through the open study window at the back. Here they find Captain Trevelyan’s dead body on the floor. Dr Warren estimates the time of death at between 5 and 6 pm. the cause of death is a fracture of the base of the skull and the implement is one of the long sand-filled draught excluders used around the house, which is full of sand.

Who murdered Captain Trevelyan, and why, and what on earth has a séance got to do with it? It takes 200 pages for the reader to find out but along the way two notable things happen: 1) the reader is introduced to an extraordinary number of characters who each have complicated backstories, often with secrets and lies of their own; 2) as already stated, although a detective inspector, Inspector Narracott is put on the case, and proceeds with admirable efficiency, his work is paralleled by the rise of the novel’s heroine, tough, committed and clever young Emily Trefusis.

Who she? Well the police quickly find out that on the day of his murder Captain Trevelyan had been visited by the eldest son of his hard-up sister Jennifer, one James Pearson. Soon after the estimated time of the murder this young man packed his bags at the local hotel and hurriedly caught a train out of town. It doesn’t take long to realise that he had a motive (he had come to see his uncle to beg him to help support his mother; plus he [James] was a beneficiary of Trevelyan’s will; plus a few enquiries reveal that he had been embezzling his employer’s money to fund speculations and had recently lost money) and the opportunity (he had gone to see Trevelyan at or very close to the time of the murder).

So the police arrest, charge and imprison James. But they hadn’t counted on James’s fiancée, Emily, who immediately devotes herself to proving her beloved’s innocence. When she arrives in Sittaford she quickly discovers a journalist from a national newspaper is in the town to hand over the prize for winning a national quiz competition to Major Burnaby. This young man, Charles Enderby, is overjoyed to be on the spot of a true-life murder mystery and sets about boosting his profile by cabling his editor back in London that he will get all kinds of exclusives.

This enthusiasm, plus the fact that she is very attractive, allows Emily to quickly size him up and realise that the can manipulate and use Charles for her own ends, something he half-consciously collaborates in as he starts to fall in love with her – or so he thinks. Here she is buttering him up something rotten.

‘One can’t do anything without a man. Men know so much, and are able to get information in so many ways that are simply impossible to women.’
‘Well – I – yes, I suppose that is true,’ said Mr Enderby complacently. (Chapter 11)

Cast

Here’s the vast cast list. Following the twists and turns of the backstories of a dozen or more of them become a full-time and quite demanding activity.

• Captain Joseph Trevelyan – confirmed old bachelor, owner of Sittaford House which he has rented to Mrs Willett and her daughter, while he moves into a cottage (named Hazelmoor) in the nearest town, Exhampton, ‘known as a woman hater’, doesn’t like his habits upset
• Hazelmoor’s owner Miss Larpent. Middle-aged woman, she’s gone to a boarding house at Cheltenham for the winter
• Evans – long-term cook and handyman for Captain Trevelyan, ‘retired naval chap. Ugly customer in a scrap’, ‘a short thick-set man. He had very long arms and a habit of standing with his hands half clenched. He was clean shaven with small, rather pig-like eyes, yet he had a look of cheerfulness and efficiency that redeemed his bulldog appearance’. Evans has recently married…
• Rebecca Belling, now Mrs Evans, daughter of the local pub landlady
• Major Burnaby – Captain Trevelyan’s old friend and sports partner, nowadays more into crosswords and acrostics, lives at Number 1 the cottages, gruff, bluff, ‘naturally a silent man’, sceptical about the séance which he thinks is stuff and nonsense
• Mrs Willett – ‘a tall woman with a rather silly manner – but her physiognomy was shrewd rather than foolish. She was inclined to overdress, had a distinct Colonial accent…’ ‘a fashionable sort of woman. Dressed up to the nines’
• Miss Violet – her daughter, very nervous. In Burnaby’s view ‘Pretty girl – scraggy, of course – they all were nowadays. What was the good of a woman if she didn’t look like a woman? Papers said curves were coming back. About time too’
• Mr Ryecroft – ‘a little, elderly, dried-up man’, ‘an enthusiast on birds’. Member of the Psychical Research Society, lives in Number 3 the Cottages – ‘You must forgive me, Miss Trefusis, I am deeply interested in the study of crime. A fascinating study. Ornithology and criminology are my two subjects’
• Mr Ronald Garfield – ‘a fresh-coloured, boyish young man’, according to his bed-ridden Aunt, Mrs Percehouse, ‘a good lad in his way, but pitifully weak’
• Mr Duke – a recent arrival, just bought the last of the six bungalows, Number 6, in September. He is ‘a big man, very quiet and devoted to gardening’
• Elmer – ‘the proprietor of the sole car in the place, an aged Ford, hired at a handsome price by those who wished to go into Exhampton’
• Constable Graves – local policeman
• Dr Warren – lives almost next door to the police station, first to examine the body and declare time of death
• Inspector Narracott – ‘a very efficient officer. He had a quiet persistence, a logical mind and a keen attention to detail which brought him success where many another man might have failed’
• Sergeant Pollock of the Exhampton police
• Superintendent Maxwell – Narracott’s superior
• Mrs Belling – proprietor of the Three Crowns. ‘Mrs Belling was fat and excitable, and so voluble that there was nothing to be done but to listen patiently until such time as the stream of conversation should dry up’ (note Christie’s mockery of several gabby old women in this novel, as in its predecessor, The Murder at the Vicarage)
• James Pearson – down from London on a flying visit, soon to be questioned and arrested
• Young male estate agent at Messrs. Williamson, ‘You learn never to be surprised at anything in the house business’
• Mr Kirkwood – partner in Messrs. Walters & Kirkwood, Trevelyan’s solicitors, co-executor of his will, ‘an elderly man with a benign expression’
• Charles Enderby – reporter for the Daily Wire come down to Exhampton to award Major Burnaby a cheque for £5,000
• Mrs Jennifer Gardner – Captain Trevelyan’s sister, lives in Exeter at The Laurels – ‘A tall, rather commanding woman came into the room. She had an unusual looking face, broad about the brows, and black hair with a touch of grey at the temples, which she wore combed straight back from her forehead.’.. ‘Character – that was what it was. Aunt Jennifer had about enough character for two and three quarter people instead of one’
• Captain Robert Gardner – Aunt Jennifer’s husband, was invalided out of the army after the war with shell shock which has paralysed all his limbs (allegedly)
  • Beatrice – her ‘slipshod’ maid
  • Nurse Davis – nurse for bed-ridden Captain Gardner
• Mary Pearson, Trevelyan’s other sister, mother of three adult children i.e. Trevelyan’s nephews and niece
• James, 28 – ‘good-looking, indeed handsome, if you took no account of the rather weak mouth and the irresolute slant of the eyes. He had a haggard, worried look and an air of not having had much sleep of late.’ In the opinion of Emily his fiancée: ‘Dear Jim, dear, sweet, boyish, helpless, impractical Jim. So utterly to be depended on to do the wrong thing at the wrong moment.’
• Emily Trefusis – ‘a very exceptional kind of young woman. She was not strikingly beautiful, but she had a face which was arresting and unusual, a face that having once seen you could not forget. There was about her an atmosphere of common sense, savoir-faire, invincible determination and a most tantalizing fascination’… ‘This business-like and attractive girl.’
• Sylvia, 25 – ‘small and fair and anaemic looking, with a worried and harassed expression. Her voice had that faintly complaining note in it which is about the most annoying sound a human voice can contain.’ Sylvia is married to:
• Martin Dering – ‘You may have read his books. He’s a moderately successful author’
• Brian – out in Australia, in Inspector Narracott’s view ‘a hot-tempered, high-handed young man’
• Mrs Curtis – occupies Number 5 the Cottages; rents out rooms. ‘A small, thin, grey haired woman, energetic and shrewish in disposition.’
• Curtis – former gardener at Sittaford House, ‘a rather gruff looking grey-haired old man’
• Miss Caroline Percehouse – lives at Number 4 The Cottages, ‘a spinster of uncertain years and temper who had come down here to die, according to Mrs Curtis, six years ago’. ‘An elderly lady with a thin wrinkled face and with one of the sharpest and most interrogative noses that Emily had ever seen.’ Despite or because of this, Emily comes to respect her insight and judgement.
  • Ronald Garfield is her useless nincompoop nephew; she is his Aunt Caroline
• Captain Wyatt – occupant of Number 2 the Cottages with an Indian servant – ‘The Captain’s habit of letting off a revolver at real or imaginary cats was a sore trial to his neighbours.’ ‘The young men of the present day make me sick,’ said Captain Wyatt. ‘What’s the good of them?’ [sounding remarkably like D.H. Lawrence]
• Amos Parker – greengrocer at Exhampton, supplies Sittaford
• Mrs Hibbert at the post office
• Mr Pound, the blacksmith
• Mr Dacres – Emily’s solicitor, who is undertaking Jim’s defence

Long list isn’t it, and there’s barely a person in it who doesn’t turn out to have their own secrets and backstories which, when either Inspector Narracott or Charles Enderby or Emily Trefusis stumble upon, deduce or discover them doesn’t, for a portion of the narrative, make them seem like a possible suspect.

It’s like a child’s kaleidoscope where the steady arrival of new facts and discoveries continually changes the investigators’ hypotheses, and overturn or modify any the reader might have been devising. In this sense the stories are very dynamic, presenting a constantly shifting landscape of theories and interpretations.

Emily Trefusis

In the Chief Constable’s opinion, ‘a managing young woman’, and ‘a young woman who prided herself on being sharper than other people’, Emily quite quickly emerges as the heroine of the book. She is absolutely determined to clear her fiancé’s name and so throws her impressive intellect and redoubtable willpower into solving the mystery of the murder.

‘We shall find something,’ said Emily. ‘I always find something.’
Mr Enderby could well believe that. Emily had the kind of personality that soars triumphantly over all obstacles. (Chapter 11)

‘We’ll assume that it is true,’ said Emily firmly. ‘I am sure that in detection of crime you mustn’t be afraid to assume things.’ (Chapter 15)

Bonding with Miss Percehouse.

‘Here is someone,’ thought Emily, ‘who goes straight to the point and means to have her own way and bosses everybody she can. Just like me only I happen to be rather good-looking and she has to do it all by force of character.’ (Chapter 17)

Mrs Curtis’s view:

‘A deep one – and one that can twist all the men round her little finger.’ (Chapter 21)

And, as I’ve mentioned, Emily does twist poor Charles Enderby entirely round her little finger in order to get him onto her team and working to free her fiancé.

Emily’s theory of ‘angle of attack’

I didn’t entirely understand this but the phrase is repeated and Emily herself uses it to describe her approach.

She wished with all her heart that she had met the dead man even if only once. It was so hard to get an idea of people you had never seen. You had to rely on other people’s judgment, and Emily had never yet acknowledged that any other person’s judgment was superior to her own. Other people’s impressions were no good to you. They might be just as true as yours but you couldn’t act on them. You couldn’t, as it were, use another person’s angle of attack. (Chapter 16)

She had no intention of allowing any angle of attack to remain unexplored. (Chapter 16)

As she investigates more i.e. sets out to meet and interview everyone in the village, everyone who knew the captain, and his extended family, Emily develops a ‘system’ not a million miles from Hercule Poirot’s similar systematicness (except Poirot keeps everything in his head):

At the moment she felt disinclined for anything but solitude. She wanted to sort out and arrange her own ideas. She went up to her own room, and taking pencil and notepaper she set to work on a system of her own. (Chapter 17)

And:

And then deliberately she set herself to think out things from the beginning, going over every detail that she knew herself or had learned by hearsay from other people. She considered every actor in the drama and outside the drama. (Chapter 26)

Elsewhere she justifies her freelance approach to Charles.

‘All public things are much better done by the police. It’s private and personal things like listening to Mrs Curtis and picking up a hint from Miss Percehouse and watching the Willetts – that’s where we score.’ (Chapter 25)

The ‘relying on’ stunt

‘Stunt’ occurs a lot in the 1920s, indicating a scam or schtick or technique or method. A little way into the novel Emily stumbles on a clever way to manipulate the men around her. This is to tell them that she is only a helpless lickle ickle girly and she is so grateful that she’s found a big strong man like them to rely on – at which point no self-respecting man can fail to ruffle up his chest feathers, feeling flattered that he is coming to the rescue of this damsel in distress. Works every time. And gets funnier with every repetition.

To Charles Enderby:

‘That’s just what I mean to do,’ said Emily with a complete lack of truth, ‘It’s so wonderful to have someone you can really rely on.’ (Chapter 11)

To Mr Ryecroft:

‘It’s so wonderful,’ she said, using the phrase that in the course of her short life she had found so effectual, ‘to feel that there’s someone on whom one can really rely.’ (Chapter 16)

To Inspector Narracott:

‘How men do stick together,’ went on Emily looking over the telegrams. ‘Poor Sylvia. In some ways I really think that men are beasts. That’s why,’ she added, ‘it’s so nice when one finds a man on whom one can really rely.’ (Chapter 27)

And not just on men. here she is buttering up bed-ridden Captain Gardner’s nurse:

‘How splendid,’ said Emily. ‘It must be wonderful for Aunt Jennifer to feel she has somebody upon whom she can rely.’
‘Oh, really,’ said the Nurse simpering, ‘you are too kind.’
(Chapter 20)

Ronnie Garfield’s theory

Ronnie is an impecunious Bertie Wooster type of upper-class twit. At one point he is given his own dim-witted ‘theory’, regarding the third cousin, Brian Pearson, who everyone thinks disappeared off to Australia years earlier.

‘Fellows that go off to the Colonies are usually bad hats. Their relations don’t like them and push them out there for that reason. Very well then – there you are. The bad hat comes back, short of money, visits wealthy uncle in the neighbourhood of Christmas time, wealthy relative won’t cough up to impecunious nephew – and impecunious nephew bats him one. That’s what I call a theory. (Chapter 23)

Bookish

Here, as in all her novels, I’m getting used to Christie regularly having her characters describe how they feel as if they’re living in a detective novel, or how things resemble (or don’t) similar scenes you read about in books.

‘What a scoop it would be,’ said Mr Enderby, ‘if you and I discovered the real murderer. The crime expert of the Daily Wire – that’s the way I should be described. But it’s too good to be true,’ he added despondently. ‘That sort of thing only happens in books.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Emily, ‘it happens with me.’
(Chapter 11)

‘Just like a sixpenny [crime novel] I got at Woolworth’s the other day, ‘The Syringa Murders’ it was called. And do you know what led them to find the real murderer, Miss? Just a bit of common sealing wax.’
(The chambermaid at the Three Crowns, Chapter 12)

‘I know what you’re thinking. Like in books there ought to be some little incident that I should remember that would be a clue. Well, I’m sorry, but there isn’t any such thing.’
(Chapter 15)

They went up the small path and entered the cottage. The interior was charming. Bookcases lined the walls. Emily went from one to the other glancing curiously at the titles of the books. One section dealt with occult phenomena, another with modern detective fiction, but by far the greater part of the bookcases was given up to criminology and to the world’s famous trials.
(Chapter 16)

‘Yes, Miss Trefusis, I see exactly what you mean. You’ll understand that contrary to the popular belief in novels it is extremely difficult to fix the time of death accurately.’
(Dr Warren, Chapter 18)

‘But then you know what the police are – always butting in on the wrong tack. At least that’s what it says in detective novels.’
(Ronnie again, Chapter 21)

‘Of course,’ said Emily, ‘the person it ought to be is Abdul. It would be in a book. He’d be a Lascar really, and Captain Trevelyan would have thrown his favourite brother overboard in a mutiny – something like that.’
(Chapter 25)

‘It’s generally understood in books, he said, ‘that the police are intent on having a victim and don’t in the least care if that victim is innocent or not as long as they have enough evidence to convict him. That’s not the truth, Miss Trefusis, it’s only the guilty man we want.’
(Inspector Narracott, Chapter 26)

She took each drawer out and felt behind it. In detective stories there was always an obliging scrap of paper. But evidently in real life one could not expect such fortunate accidents…
(Chapter 28)

Plus what I’ve come to realise is the obligatory reference to Sherlock Holmes which crops up in pretty much every Agatha Christie novel.

‘I say, are you doing any sleuthing? If so, can I help? Be the Watson to your Sherlock, or anything of that kind?’
(Upper-class twit Ronnie Garfield, Chapter 21)

Stereotypes

As discussed in earlier reviews, there’s not a lot of point picking out stereotypical and (nowadays insulting) generalisations about gender and ethnicity because detective stories like these are made out of stereotypes. Every character is a type as broad and recognisable as the types in Pilgrim’s Progress or Restoration comedy or Sheridan – the crusty old Royal Navy bachelor, the keen-as-mustard newspaper reporter, the worried mother and nervous daughter, the solid dependable doctor, and so on and so on.

It’s the familiarity of these types which is such a large part of the enjoyment. It’s like the types you meet in pantomime or sitcoms, utterly predictable and therefore reassuring and amusing. It’s so relaxing not having to cope with the complexities and unreadability of real life, and instead slip into a smooth and totally understandable world of reassuringly familiar caricatures. Obviously lots of them harbour secrets and one of them is a murderer but it really doesn’t matter, because everything will be revealed and explained and competently put to rest.

Gabby old women

The book before this, ‘The Murder at the Vicarage’ and in this one, Christie makes a big deal out of several older female characters who can’t stop talking, namely Mrs Curtis:

Left to his own devices Charles Enderby did not relax his efforts. To familiarize himself with life as lived in Sittaford village he had only to turn on Mrs Curtis much as you would turn on the tap of a hydrant. Listening slightly dazed to a stream of anecdote, reminiscence, rumours, surmise and meticulous detail he endeavoured valiantly to sift the grain from the chaff. He then mentioned another name and immediately the force of the water was directed in that direction. (Chapter 21)

‘It’s almost a disease the way that woman talks,’ said [Mrs Willett]. (Chapter 21)

‘That chattering magpie of a woman, Mrs Curtis. She’s clean and she’s honest, but her tongue never stops, and she pays no attention to whether you listen or whether you don’t.’ (Chapter 28)

All complemented by Mrs Curtis’s pantomime lack of self awareness:

‘Curtis will be wanting his tea and that’s a fact,’ said Mrs Curtis without moving. ‘I was never one to stand about gossiping.’ (Chapter 21)

Pushing back

But sometimes Christie enjoys pushing back against expectations. Thus in ‘The Murder at the Vicarage’ Miss Marple is a rebuttal of all the tired clichés the pompous male policemen spout against a) women and b) old women, in particular.

And so Emily Trefusis feels similarly unexpected. To me she feels like she’s kicking back against clichés about ‘young women today’ etc. In this she is linked to and Lady Eileen ‘Bundle’ Brent in the wonderfully entertaining The Secret of Chimneys and its sequel, The Seven Dials Mystery. This is why Mrs Percehouse’s opinion seems more than usually important:

‘I hate a slobbering female,’ said Miss Percehouse. ‘I like one who gets up and does things.’ (Chapter 17)

In their different ways, Bundle, Marple and Emily are just such women.

He-man

Crops up in various texts from the period. Was obviously a newish slogan or catchphrase in the 1920s.

‘I think path digging will be your only sport.’
‘I’ve been at it all the morning.’
‘Oh! you he-man!’
‘Don’t laugh at me. I’ve got blisters all over my hands.’
(Miss Violet teasing Ronnie Garfield, Chapter 1)

Woman hater

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)

I’d like to see her have a go at Andrew Tate.

The press

In a deceptively comic way Christie shows how mendacious and distorting the English press are. All the complexity of human life has to be cramped and chopped up to fit newspaper stereotypes. Thus young Charles Enderby is comically open with Emily about how he’s rewritten their conversations to suit the medium’s requirements.

‘Er – I hope you don’t mind, I have just posted off an interview with you?’
‘Oh! that’s all right,’ said Emily mechanically. ‘What have you made me say?’
‘Oh, the usual sort of things people like to hear,’ said Mr Enderby. ‘Our special representative records his interview with Miss Emily Trefusis, the fiancée of Mr James Pearson who has been arrested by the police and charged with the murder of Captain Trevelyan – Then my impression of you as a high-spirited, beautiful girl.’
‘Thank you,’ said Emily.
‘Shingled,’ went on Charles.
‘What do you mean by shingled?’
‘You are,’ said Charles.
‘Well, of course I am,’ said Emily. ‘But why mention it?’
‘Women readers always like to know,’ said Charles Enderby. ‘It was a splendid interview. You’ve no idea what fine womanly touching things you said about standing by your man, no matter if the whole world was against him… I put in a very good bit about Captain Trevelyan’s sea career and just a hint at foreign idols looted and a possibility of a strange priest’s revenge – only a hint you know.’
(Chapter 17)

Christie had had personal experience of the Press’s commitment to lying and distorting people’s actions and words in order to produce copy that sells newspapers during the famous incident of her disappearance in 1928. All things considered, it’s striking how mild her satire on the Press is. Later she has her cops give a more considered view:

‘What was he doing there? Enderby, I mean?’
‘You know what journalists are,’ said Narracott, ‘always nosing round. They’re uncanny.’
‘They are a darned nuisance very often,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Though they have their uses too.’ (Chapter 24)

Height

Christie doesn’t like gabbing women but she has a penchant for tall characters. Tall is good.

Mrs Willett covertly, that she did not look a fool. She was a tall woman with a rather silly manner – but her physiognomy was shrewd rather than foolish… (Chapter 1)

Inspector Narracott was a very efficient officer. He had a quiet persistence, a logical mind and a keen attention to detail which brought him success where many another man might have failed.
He was a tall man with a quiet manner, rather far away grey eyes, and a slow soft Devonshire voice. (Chapter 4)

‘Violet.’ He had hardly noticed the girl who had followed her in, and yet, she was a very pretty girl, tall and fair with big blue eyes. (Chapter 14)

This was a young man not more than twenty-four or five years of age. Tall, good-looking and determined, with none of the hunted criminal about him. (Chapter 22)

Premise

I’ll sign off with another version of that cliché quoted at the top.

‘But one never knows. He’s no fool, that fellow, whatever else he is.’
‘No, he’s an intelligent sort of chap.’
‘His story seems straightforward enough,’ went on the Inspector.
‘Perfectly clear and above board. Still, as I say, one never knows…’ (Chapter 5)

You never know, you never know… until the final chapters of the novel where all is revealed and then… we all know, light is shed in all the dark corners, the culprit is arrested, all the other anomalies and mysteries are cleared up, and we all achieve complete closure, all in time for bed.

Credit

‘The Sittaford Mystery’ by Agatha Christie was published by the Collins Crime Club in 1931.

Related links

• The Sittaford Mystery online
• Agatha Christie website

Related reviews

• Agatha Christie reviews
• 1930s reviews

‘Always dropping in – dropping in – too much dropping in. If I don’t choose to see anyone for a week, or a month, or a year, that’s my business.’ (Captain Wyatt)