‘You’re a thundering good chap, Charles, but you do let your imagination run away with you.’
(The upper class milieu: Sir Bartholomew Strange addressing Sir Charles Cartwright in Chapter 3 of ‘Three Act Tragedy’)

‘You believe in me?’ said Sir Charles. He was moved.
‘Yes, yes, yes. We’re going to get at the truth. You and I together.’
‘And Satterthwaite.’
‘Of course, and Mr. Satterthwaite,’ said Egg without interest.
(Young Lady Egg Gore flirting with old Sir Charles Cartwright, Chapter 12)

‘You must forgive us badgering you like this. But, you see, we feel that there must be something, if only we could get at it.’
(Classic expression of the frustration and bewilderment expressed by the investigators in all Christie’s novels, Chapter 13)

‘My God,’ burst out Sir Charles. ‘It’s a nightmare – the whole thing is utterly incomprehensible.’
(The same sense of complete perplexity expressed in all Christie’s novels as they approach their climax, Chapter 25)

‘Think! With thought, all problems can be solved.’
(The core of Poirot’s method, Chapter 23)

He was the sort of gentle creaking gate that would have lived to be ninety.
(Sweet old Reverend Babbington, Chapter 4)

‘Three Act Tragedy’ is the ninth Hercule Poirot novel (there were 2 non-novel books – a collection of short stories and the novelisation of a play by a different author – so strictly speaking it’s the 11th Poirot book).

Previous ones have contained passing mockery of the English police, solicitors and other professions or, alternatively, have used a strongly themed setting (the obvious ones being the train-bound stories ‘The Mystery of Blue Train’, 1928, and ‘Murder on the Orient Express’, 1934).

This one, as the title suggests, is dominated by theatrical metaphors and comparisons. The central protagonist is a former star of the London theatre, Sir Charles Cartwright who, very amusingly, treats every setting as a Stage on which he frequently plays one of his Famous Parts, from the Hearty Sailor to the Intrepid Detective. All of which gives the entire narrative a kind of theatrical, stagey feel which, seeing as the whole thing is preposterous bunkum, makes it all the more enjoyable. Leading up to Poirot’s clever explanation of the mystery which divides it, as per the title, into three acts, and allows him to conclude with a flourish, right at the end:

‘It is nothing – nothing. A tragedy in three acts – and now the curtain has fallen.’
(Chapter 26)

Talking of Poirot, though, the book is notable for One Big Thing which is that he very much takes a back seat. He is, for random, unexplained reasons, present at the first murder, of the harmless vicar at Sir Charles Cartwright’s dinner party. And he bumps into Mr Satterthwaite in a public park in Monte Carlo just long enough to discuss the case and then, completely gratuitously (obviously because Christie thought it was about time she did so) gives us a potted account of his life story.

But then he disappears from the narrative. All the running i.e. the discussing theories behind the two murders, and going off to interview witnesses and related characters, is carried out by the triumvirate of Cartwright, Satterthwaite and Egg. It is only when they are all back at the Crow’s Nest, in the very Ship Room where Babbington’s death occurred, and are in the middle of a ‘conference’ to pool their latest findings that there’s an unexpected knock on the door and Poirot pokes his head round.

Magically, he knows that they are having just such a ‘conference’ and accurately predicts what they’ve discovered up to now and so are thinking. He admits that when they talked here in this room, weeks earlier, later in the evening of Babbington’s death, he thought Sir Charles’s theory that it was murder was just theatrical hyperbole. But Sir Bartholomew’s death changes everything and he has returned to apologise.

‘And so, Sir Charles, I have come up to you to apologise – to say I, Hercule Poirot, was wrong, and to ask you to admit me to your councils. (Chapter 15)

Cartwright and Satterthwaite are delighted, though all three men notice that Egg is reluctant. She had been hoping, via the investigation, to get closer to her hero, Sir Charles. But after a moment’s hesitation she has to acquiesce, and Poirot is on the team!

But he promises to take a back seat, not to get involved in any of the active sleuthing, and act in a purely advisory or consultative capacity.

So ‘Three Act Tragedy’ is by way of being another of Christie’s experiments with the form or narrative of the detective story – one in which the famous detective appears but is, for long stretches, invisible and uninvolved, while other characters dominate the narrative and conduct most of the footwork.

Plot summary

• Cornwall
• Monte Carlo
• Yorkshire
• London

Sir Charles Cartwright is a larger-than-life former actor; two year who has retired to the English Riviera where has had a luxury mansion constructed overlooking the sea (pretentiously named the ‘Crow’s Nest’).

House party Here he invites twelves guests to join him for a house party, half of whom have made the trip down from London, half who are locals. Rather randomly, one of the guests is the famous detective Hercule Poirot. When Cartwright’s friend Sir Bartholomew ‘Tollie’ Strange learns about Poirot attending, he jokes that they better watch out because murder seems to follow the little Belgian everywhere.

The vicar dies The party assembles and haven’t even sat down to dinner, are still enjoying cocktails in the ‘Ship Room’, when the local vicar, Mr Stephen Babbington, starts to choke, staggers to a nearby couch, collapses and dies. Who? Where? Why? What?

‘But why?’ cried Mrs. Babbington. ‘Why? What motive could there be for anyone killing Stephen?’ (Chapter 13)

Well Alan Manders for one. He revives the fact that, as a supposed communist, not so long ago he had a flaring argument with the vicar about the awful influence of Christianity, calling on churches all around the world to be swept away. But is that kind of political argument enough to murder someone?

Egg in love An important thread is that ‘Egg’ Gore, daughter of the impoverished aristocrat, Lady Mary Gore, appears to be passionately in love with old Sir Charles while, according to his observant friend, Satterthwaite, Sir Charles feels the same.

Interlude in Monte Carlo Again, with disarming randomness, Cartwright and Satterthwaite go on holiday to Monte Carlo where, by a boggling coincidence, Satterthwaite bumps into Hercule Poirot who confesses that he is bored. It’s here that he gives a potted account of his life story, explains that he is rich enough to retire, but is bored. Much later, when Satterthwaite is interviewing Manders, there’s a little exchange about Poirot.

‘That man!’ The expression burst from Oliver. ‘Is he back in England?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why has he come back?’
Mr. Satterthwaite rose.
‘Why does a dog go hunting?’ he replied. (Chapter 22)

Strange dies Luckily enough the English newspapers tell them that Cartwright’s close friend, Sir Bartholomew Strange, has also dropped dead at a dinner party he was giving at his home in Yorkshire, Melfort Abbey, with many of the same guests as attended Sir Charles’s ill-fated dinner in Cornwall. Can the two deaths be linked? In which case are they not from natural causes?

Nicotine poisoning When Sir Bartholomew’s death is attributed to nicotine poisoning, the authorities are persuaded to exhume Babbington’s body to see whether he died from the same cause.

The triumvirate Satterthwaite and Cartwright return to England, to Cornwall, where they meet up with Egg Gore and the threesome form a triumvirate a) agree that there’s more to this thing that meets the eye and so b) organise themselves as a team of sleuths, with different members tasked with interviewing various witnesses and connected persons.

Poirot reappears It’s in the middle of this conference, that Poirot makes the unexpected appearance I’ve described above, in Chapter 15 i.e. half way through the novel.

To Yorkshire Thus Satterthwaite and Cartwright travel up to Yorkshire, where they meet the country’s chief constable, the inspector in charge of the investigation, then visit the scene of Strange’s death (i.e. his grand country house), where they extensively interview the staff.

The missing butler In particular they follow up the local police’s main focus which is that Sir Bartholomew had recently retired his butler of long standing and taken on a new man, John Ellis. This Ellis disappeared from the house on the night of Strange’s death and no-one has seen him since.

The blackmail letters Poking around in Ellis’s room, Cartwright is struck by an ink stain on the carpet right in the corner of the room and, using his acting skills to impersonate a person huddled there, speculates that they were writing something when they heard footsteps coming along the hall, and so probably stuffed whatever they were writing under the gas heater. Sure enough they discover in just that location several drafts of what is obviously a blackmail note. Ellis knew something incriminating and planned to blackmail someone about it although, frustratingly, his drafts don’t include an addressee or any details.

The sanatorium They also visit the sanatorium set up at the nearby old Grange by Sir Bartholomew (who was a nerve specialist) for the treatment of patients with nervous breakdowns etc. As we all know, such places, in detective stories or thriller movies, are hotbeds of rumour and conspiracy. They interview the calm efficient matron.

Mrs De Rushbridger But they also learn of the recent arrival of a new patient, a Mrs De Rushbridger suffering from a nervous breakdown and loss of memory. And the inexplicable fact that, when Sir Bartholomew was informed by phone that she had arrived at his sanatorium, he was overcome with delight and congratulated the butler, Ellis, who had brought the news, something considered very odd by the housemaid who witnessed it. Why did Mrs De Rushbridger’s arrival at his sanatorium bring Sir Bartholomew so much pleasure? And a lot later on, when Miss Wills mentions that Sir Bartholomew had told her he was experimenting with hypnotism in restoring lost memories… Is that significant?

Alan Manders At the same time, a glaring oddity about the Yorkshire dinner is that Egg’s sometime beau, the suave young Alan Manders, who had attended the Cornwall dinner, had contrived to crash his motorbike into the wall of Sir Bartholomew’s country estate, had been taken into the house and so invited along to the dinner.

Anyone who’s read Christie’s preceding novel, the comedy thriller ‘Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?’ will remember how a leading character fakes a crash into the wall of a grand estate in order to be invited to rest and recuperate up at the big house. It seems that she’s used the exact same plot device in her very next story. These stories being arch, knowing comedies, she has her characters comment on the plot device’s obviousness, as Sir Bartholomew comments to his friend Angela Sutcliffe:

‘A new method of gate crashing,’ he called it. ‘Only,’ he said, ‘it’s my wall he’s crashed, not my gate.’ (Chapter 20)

Anyway, it puts us the alert that this Mandel went to great and rather absurd lengths to get himself invited to the fatal dinner. Was it in order to poison Sir Bartholomew? But why?

Egg interviews Meanwhile, Egg goes up to London where she interviews in quick succession two key attendees of both dinner parties, Mrs Dacres the fashionable dress-maker, and her wastrel husband Freddie Dacres, plus a model at Mrs D’s boutique who discloses that: 1) the company, despite its gleaming facade, is actually in dire financial straits; 2) Mrs D was chatting to if not having an affair with a handsome rich young man who she hoped to persuade to invest in her company but that 3) this likely fellow had been ordered off on a long sea voyage by none other than the noted Harley Street nerve specialist, Sir Bartholomew Strange. Mrs Dacres can’t possibly have murdered Sir Bartholomew out of revenge for the despatch of her lover / financial saviour… can she?

Freddie Dacres’ slip I’ve forgotten to mention that when Egg talks to Freddie (who takes her to a nightclub where he gets steadily more drunk) he goes into a kind of drunken memory which seems to imply that he himself has been consigned to, or locked up in, Sir Bartholomew’s sanatorium:

‘Sir Bartholomew Strange. Sir Bartholomew Humbug. I’d like to know what goes on in that precious Sanatorium of his. Nerve cases. That’s what they say. You’re in there and you can’t get out. And they say you’ve gone of your own free will. Free will! Just because they get hold of you when you’ve got the horrors.’ (Chapter 19)

Before going on to suddenly remember that his wife (Cynthia Dacres) not to tell anyone about this. Because then someone, or the police, might suspect him of bumping off old Sir Bartholomew…

Stop It’s at this point, with half a dozen possible suspects identified and a number of storylines nicely bubbling away, that I will – as in all my Christie reviews – stop summarising the plot. Because 1) they get steadily so much more complicated that summarising them becomes impossible, and 2) I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who decides to read it (see link to the online text, below).

Cast

In Loomouth

Murder 1: The Reverend Stephen Babbington dies soon after drinking a cocktail during drinks prior to dinner at Sir Charles Cartwright’s seaside house at Loomouth in Cornwall.

• Mr Satterthwaite – ‘a dried-up little pipkin of a man’ with a ‘little wrinkled face’
• Sir Charles Cartwright – 52, ‘an extraordinarily good-looking man, beautifully proportioned, with a lean humorous face, and the touch of grey at his temples gave him a kind of added distinction’ – has fallen in love with young ‘Egg’ Gore (below)
• Sir Bartholomew ‘Tollie’ Strange – ‘a well-known specialist in nervous disorders’
• Angela Sutcliffe – ‘a well-known actress, no longer younger, but with a strong hold on the public and celebrated for her wit and charm. She was sometimes spoken of as Ellen Terry’s successor’ – ‘How dull men are when they decide to settle down! They lose all their charm’
• Captain Freddie Dacres – dissolute, gambler, drinker, drug taker – ‘He spent a lot of time on racecourses – had ridden himself in the Grand National in years – ‘a little red, foxy man with a short moustache and slightly shifty eyes’
• Mrs Cynthia Dacres – owner of Ambrosine Ltd, a high-class, pretentious dress-making company and boutique in Bruton Street; Egg finds out from one of her models that the company is actually in dire financial straits
• Anthony Astor – pen-name for the female playwright Miss Muriel Wills, author of ‘One-Way Traffic’ – ‘tall and thin, with a receding chin and very badly waved fair hair. She wore pince-nez and was dressed in exceedingly limp green chiffon. Her voice was high and undistinguished’ – distinctly less classy than all the other bourgeois characters, as indicated by the location of her home, in downscale Tooting
• Lady Mary Lytton Gore – ‘Left as a widow very badly off with a child of three, she had come to Loomouth and taken a small cottage where she had lived with one devoted maid ever since. She was a tall thin woman, looking older than her fifty-five years. Her expression was sweet and rather timid’
• Hermione Lytton ‘Egg’ Gore – young and foolish and in love with Sir Charles Cartwright, a genuine Christian – ‘twice as alive as anyone in that room. She had dark hair, and grey eyes and was of medium height. It was something in the way the hair curled crisply in her neck, in the straight glance of the grey eyes, in the curve of the cheek, in the infectious laugh that gave one that impression of riotous youth and vitality’
• The Reverend Stephen Babbington – ‘quite a good fellow, not too parsonical,’ – ‘a man of sixty old, with kind faded eyes and a disarming diffident manner’
• Mrs Margaret Babbington – the reverend’s wife, ‘a big untidy woman. She looked full of energy and likely to be free from petty mindedness’
• Robin Babbington – their son, killed in India (they have three other sons: Edward in Ceylon, Lloyd in South Africa, and Stephen third officer on the Angolia)
• Oliver Manders – 25, a good-looking young fellow, ‘a handsome lad, with his dark, heavy-lidded eyes and easy grace of movement’ – with something foreign about his appearance triggering this exchange: Egg Lytton Gore says to him: ‘Oliver – you slippery Shylock -‘ and Mr Sattersthwaite, observing the exchange, thinks: ‘Of course, that’s it – not foreign – Jew!’. Later we find out his mother had an affair with a married man whose wife refused a divorce i.e. he’s a bastard, he was taken up by his rich uncle in the City
• Miss Milray – Sir Charles’s secretary: ‘Neither sudden deaths nor sudden changes of plan could excite Miss Milray. She accepted whatever happened as a fact and proceeded to cope with it in an efficient way’
• Hercule Poirot
• Temple – Sir Charles’s maid, ‘a tall girl of thirty-two or three. She had a certain smartness – her hair was well brushed and glossy, but she was not pretty. Her manner was calm and efficient.’
• Dr MacDougal – the principal doctor in Loomouth

In Yorkshire

Murder 2: Sir Bartholomew Strange dies during a dinner party he’s hosting for much the same guests who attended Cartwright’s party in Cornwall.

• Colonel Johnson – ’Yorkshire chief constable: ‘a big red-faced man with a barrack-room voice and a hearty manner’
• Superintendent Crossfield – managing the investigation into Sir Bartholomew’s death: ‘a large, solid-looking man, rather slow of speech, but with a fairly keen blue eye’
• Sir Jocelyn Campbell – local GP and toxicologist who was a guest at the dinner, who calls Strange’s time of death and suggests nicotine poisoning
• Doctor Davis – police doctor
• John Ellis – Sir Charles’s butler who disappears on the night of the death; later, letters threatening someone unknown with blackmail are found in his room
• Mr Baker – Sir Bartholomew’s usual butler, for the last seven years, but who had been taken ill, given a holiday, and been replaced by Ellis
• Miss Lyndon – Strange’s secretary
• Mrs. Leckie – Strange’s cook: ‘a portly lady, decorously gowned in black’
• Beatrice Church – Strange’s upper-housemaid: ‘a tall thin woman, with a pinched mouth, who looked aggressively respectable’
• Alice West – Strange’s parlourmaid ‘a demure, dark-eyed young woman of thirty’
• The Matron of the sanatorium – ‘a tall, middle-aged woman, with an intelligent face and a capable manner’
• Strange’s lodge keeper – ‘a slow-witted man of middle age’

In London

Where Satterthwaite, Cartwright and Egg plan their investigations and are joined by Poirot, in an advisory capacity.

• Sydney Sandford – the newest and youngest decorator of the moment, designed Mrs Dacres’ dress boutique
• Doris Sims – model at Mrs Dacres’ boutique who Egg interviews, and tells her Mrs Dacres is hard up but she had been schmoozing a young rich man in a bid to get investment, but then he was ordered to take a long sea voyage, by his physician, the nerve specialist Sir Bartholomew Strange (!)

In Kent

• Old Mrs Milray – Sir Charles’s secretary’s mother, ‘an immense dumpling of a woman immovably fixed in an armchair conveniently placed so that she could, from the window, observe all that went on in the world outside’ (Chapter 24)
• Serving woman at the bakers where Egg and Sir Charles have a simple lunch

Love

Satterthwaite observes the love that cannot speak its name between Sir Charles Cartwright, 52, and young Egg Gore, young enough to be his daughter. Daddy issues.

It was, he [Satterthwaite] thought, an odd situation. That Sir Charles was overwhelmingly in love with the girl, he had no doubt whatever. She was equally in love with him. And the link between them the link to which each of them clung frenziedly was a crime a double crime of a revolting nature.
(Chapter 12)

Poirot’s life story

Early in the novel the setting moves to Monte Carlo where Mr Satterthwaite comes across Poirot sitting in a public park. Suddenly, for no very good reason, the Belgian tells him his life story:

‘See you, as a boy I was poor. There were many of us. We had to get on in the world. I entered the Police Force. I worked hard. Slowly I rose in that Force. I began to make a name for myself. I made a name for myself. I began to acquire an international reputation. At last, I was due to retire. There came the War. I was injured. I came, a sad and weary refugee, to England. A kind lady gave me hospitality. She died – not naturally; no, she was killed. Eh bien, I set my wits to work. I employed my little grey cells. I discovered her murderer. I found that I was not yet finished. No, indeed, my powers were stronger than ever. Then began my second career, that of a private inquiry agent in England. I have solved many fascinating and baffling problems. Ah, monsieur, I have lived! The psychology of human nature, it is wonderful. I grew rich. Some day, I said to myself, I will have all the money I need. I will realise all my dreams.’ (Chapter 6)

So that explains why he is retired and able to dally.

‘My time is all holidays nowadays. I have succeeded. I am rich. I retire. Now I travel about seeing the world.’ (Chapter 6)

Poirot’s motivation

‘Like the chien de chasse, I follow the scent, and I get excited, and once on the scent I cannot be called off it. All that is true. But there is more… It is – how shall I put it? – a passion for getting at the truth. In all the world there is nothing so curious and so interesting and so beautiful as truth…’ (Chapter 17)

Poirot’s method

‘I see the facts unbiased by any preconceived notions.’ (Poirot, Chapter 16)

‘My friend, do not ask me to do anything of an active nature. It is my lifelong conviction that any problem is best solved by thought.’ (Chapter 16)

‘Mon ami,’ said Poirot, ‘be guided by me. Only one thing will solve this case – the little grey cells of the brain. To rush up and down England, to hope that this person and that will tell us what we want to know – all such methods are amateurish and absurd. The truth can only be seen from within. (Chapter 25)

‘You mean it’s a lie?’ asked Sir Charles bluntly.
‘There are so many kinds of lies,’ said Hercule Poirot.
(Chapter 23)

And comparing his approach with his fellow investigators’:

‘You have the actor’s mind, Sir Charles, creative, original, seeing always dramatic values. Mr. Satterthwaite, he has the playgoer’s mind, he observes the characters, he has the sense of atmosphere. But me, I have the prosaic mind. I see only the facts without any dramatic trappings or footlights.’ (Chapter 25)

And once again we find him building houses out of cards as a way of meditating or letting his thoughts flow, much to Egg’s disgust (Chapter 26).

And, just as in every Poirot story, there comes the Eureka moment:

‘Mon dieu‘ cried Poirot.
‘What is it? Has anything happened?’
‘Yes, indeed something has happened. An idea. A superb idea. Oh, but I have been blind – blind –’
(Chapter 26)

Poirot’s pride

Mr. Satterthwaite studied him [Poirot] with interest. He was amused by the naïve conceit, the immense egoism of the little man. But he did not make the easy mistake of considering it mere empty boasting. An Englishman is usually modest about what he does well, sometimes pleased with himself over something he does badly; but a Latin has a truer appreciation of his own powers. If he is clever he sees no reason for concealing the fact.
(Chapter 17)

Poirot’s subterfuge

But behind these latter qualities turns out to be cunning. Obviously Christie was in an explanatory mood because she not only inserts into this novel an overview of Poirot’s career, but also a clever explanation of his manner:

‘Ah, I will explain. It is true that I can speak the exact, the idiomatic English. But, my friend, to speak the broken English if an enormous asset. It leads people to despise you. They say – a foreigner – he can’t even speak English properly. It is not my policy to terrify people – instead I invite their gentle ridicule. Also I boast! An Englishman he says often, “A fellow who thinks as much of himself as that cannot be worth much.” That is the English point of view. It is not at all true. And so, you see, I put people off their guard. Besides, he added, it has become a habit.’ (Chapter 27)

Cunning as a serpent.

The English class system

Hercule Poirot, the little bourgeois, looked up at the aristocrat. He spoke quickly but firmly.

Bookishness

‘Mrs de Rushbridger was killed before she could speak. How dramatic! How like the detective stories, the plays, the films!’ (Poirot in Chapter 27)

In previous reviews I’ve developed the idea that Christie having her characters regularly compare their situations and scenarios to the stereotypes and clichés of detective stories (or movies) serves several purposes. 1) It pre-empts criticism from critics or readers who may be tempted to complain about the corny (or preposterous) plot developments. 2) But at the same time it draws attention to the artificiality of the whole genre and nudges you away from even trying to compare anyone or anything that happens to ‘real life’, gently nudging you into the entirely fictional land of Detective Stories, where anything can happen, where anyone can disguise themselves as anyone else in order to carry out the most ludicrously complicated crimes.

Hence the succession of ‘nudges’ in this story.

‘You know, Egg, you really are detestably hearty. And your tastes are childish – crime – sensation – and all that bunk.’ (Manders to Egg, Chapter 5)

‘How superior detective stories are to life,’ sighed Sir Charles. ‘In fiction there is always some distinguishing characteristic.’ (Chapter 9)

‘What was his manner on the night of the tragedy?’ asked Mr Satterthwaite in a slightly bookish manner. (Chapter 9)

They left it in a somewhat disconcerted fashion. Their zeal as detectives was momentarily damped. Possibly the thought passed through their minds that things were arranged better in books. (Chapter 10)

‘The idea of gain we can now put definitely away,’ he said. ‘There does not seem to be anybody who (in detective story parlance) could benefit by Stephen Babbington’s death.’ (Chapter 15)

‘I’m afraid,’ said Lady Mary, ‘that that’s rather too clever for me.’
‘I apologise. I was talking rather bookishly.’ (Chapter 14)

‘Dash it all,’ went on Sir Charles with feeling, ‘in detective stories there’s always some identifying mark on the villain. I thought it was a bit hard that real life should prove so lamentably behindhand.’
‘It’s usually a scar in stories,’ said Miss Wills thoughtfully.
‘A birthmark’s just as good,’ said Sir Charles. (Chapter 21)

As Egg and Mr. Satterthwaite stood waiting for the lift, Egg said ecstatically: ‘It’s lovely – just like detective stories. All the people will be there, and then he’ll tell us which of them did it.’ (Chapter 23)

But these narrow quotes risk missing the bigger picture which I mentioned at the start, which is the book’s relentless comparison of lots of scenes to The Stage, with Sir Charles Cartwright ready, at the drop of a hat, to step into character as The Intrepid Detective, much to the amusement of his wry, observing friend, Mr Satterthwaite.

The new woman

Every generation going back to the 1880s thinks it has invented The New Woman, fearlessly defying the conventions of a Man’s World, and competing with men on their own terms etc etc. Christie’s independent novels almost always feature a variation on this type. In ‘Three Act Tragedy’, Egg Gore is a kind of caricature of the modern young woman, headstrong, impatient, taking the lead.

Egg Lytton Gore had got him [Mr Satterthwaite] securely cornered on the fishing quay. Merciless, these modern young women – and terrifying! (Chapter 4)

‘Have patience,’ counselled Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Everything comes right in the end, you know.’
‘I’m not patient,’ said Egg. ‘I want to have things at once, or even quicker.’ (Chapter 12)

1930s diction

‘I hate women. Lousy cats. Did you see her clothes – that one with the green hair? They made me gnash my teeth with envy. A woman who has clothes like that has a pull – you can’t deny it. She’s quite old and ugly as sin, really, but what does it matter. She makes everyone else look like a dowdy curate’s wife. Is it her? Or is it the other one with the grey hair? She’s amusing – you can see that. She’s got masses of S.A…’ (Chapter 5)

‘I always think,’ said Egg, ‘that Mrs Dacres looks a frightful cat. Is she?’ (Chapter 18)

‘I’m not at all sure that I’m not a little jealous of her… We women are such cats, aren’t we? Scratch, scratch, miauw, miauw, purr, purr…’ She laughed. (Chapter 20)

Where ‘cat’ means gossipy bitch, and SA stands for sex appeal.

‘And so he’s legged it.’

Which I thought was a lower-class phrase from my own youth, but is obviously older.

Mrs. Dacres, looking as usual marvellously unreal, was (as Egg put it to herself) doing her stuff. (Chapter 18)

Penetrating

Her words came drawlingly, in the mode of the moment.
‘My dear, it wasn’t possible. I mean, things either are possible or they’re not. This wasn’t. It was simply penetrating.’
That was the new word just now – everything was ‘penetrating‘. (Chapter 2)

‘Now, do you like this? Those shoulder knots – rather amusing, don’t you think? And the waistline’s rather penetrating.’ (Chapter 18)

‘My dear, it was too penetrating for words!’ (Chapter 18)

‘Extraordinary fat women come and positively goggle at me. Too penetrating.’ (Chapter 18)

Modern psychology

Presumably, as the years passed from 1916 when Christie wrote her first novel, modern psychology became more and more well known, extensive, covered in newspapers and magazines, and so filtered into popular fiction, especially when the lead character (Poirot) is himself so interested in psychology, as he tells anyone who will listen.

‘How much crime depends, too, on that psychological moment. The crime, the psychology, they go hand in hand.’ (Chapter 17)

But in this story it is not only Poirot who talks about psychology, but other characters as well. The subject crops up when Mr Satterthwiate goes to see / interview staid old Lady Mary. Here’s Satterthwaite confidently describing an inferiority complex, a concept first developed by Freud’s follower Alfred Adler, around 1907 but which had, quite clearly, percolated through to the wider culture by 1934 if not some time before:

‘An inferiority complex is a very peculiar thing. Crippen, for instance, undoubtedly suffered from it. It’s at the back of a lot of crimes. The desire to assert one’s personality.’ (Chapter 14)

Surprisingly, maybe, Lady Mary turns out to have read up on the subject:

‘Some books that I’ve read these last few years have brought a lot of comfort to me. Books on psychology. It seems to show that in many ways people can’t help themselves. A kind of kink. Sometimes, in the most carefully brought-up families you get it. As a boy Ronald stole money at school – money that he didn’t need. I can feel now that he couldn’t help himself… He was born with a kink…’ (Chapter 14)

‘Every woman adores a fascist’ (Sylvia Plath)

Lady Mary fell for a wrong ‘un. Her father told her so and tried to forbid her from marrying ‘Ronald’ but, according to her, many women are attracted to problem men.

‘There doesn’t seem to be anything that warns girls against a certain type of man. Nothing in themselves, I mean. Their parents warn them, but that’s no good – one doesn’t believe. It seems dreadful to say so, but there is something attractive to a girl in being told anyone is a bad man. She thinks at once that her love will reform him.’
(Lady Mary, Chapter 14)

Her daughter, Egg, is a chip off the old block, although she’s much more forward and confident and cynical about it, in the modern style:

‘I like men to have affairs,’ said Egg. ‘It shows they’re not queer or anything.’
(Chapter 4)

Nonetheless, despite all this modern self-awareness, she seems to have fallen in love just as inappropriately, with an older man, with Sir Charles.

This theme was aired extensively in ‘Murder on the Blue Train’ where young Ruth Kettering is said to be attracted to Comte Armand de la Roche precisely because he had such a bad reputation. And in the novel after this, ‘Death in the Clouds’ where sweet Jane Grey is attracted (without knowing it) to the serial killer, Norman Gale:

‘A killer,’ said Poirot. ‘And like many killers, attractive to women.’
(Death in the Clouds, Chapter 26)

It’s tempting to attribute the belief to Christie herself, but I’m more inclined to think it’s one of the many standardised clichés and stereotypes which she used to construct her ludicrous stories.

Dinner menu

I’ve read thousands of novels in which characters have thousands of breakfasts, lunches and dinners but it never ceases to amaze me how little detail most authors give of the specific dishes consumed at any meal. This novel features a very rare description of the actual dishes served at a dinner, and so an interesting sidelight on social history.

Soup, grilled sole, pheasant and chipped potatoes, chocolate soufflé, soft roes on toast.
(Chapter 7)

Cornwall’s reputation

‘I always think Cornwall is rather terribly artisty… I simply cannot bear artists. Their bodies are always such a curious shape.’
(Mrs Dacres in Chapter 18)

Poirot and Wittgenstein

Right at the end of his neat explanation of the crime, how it was done and why, Poirot draws a general conclusion. Solving a murder mystery requires a certain amount of fact finding, obviously yes yes yes – but then what is really required is thinking long and hard so as to arrange everything that is known into a logical sequence which fits all the facts and matches the psychology of the people involved i.e. is psychologically plausible. Hence his repeated insistence in all the books on the imperative importance of sitting back and thinking.

To be more precise, you have to find the right angle, the right vantage point, from which all the facts fit into a logical and psychologically consistent pattern.

‘Now here I admit that Sir Charles was right and I was wrong. I was wrong because I was looking at the crime from an entirely false angle. It is only twenty-four hours ago that I suddenly perceived the proper angle of vision – and let me say that from that angle of vision the murder of Stephen Babbington is both reasonable and possible.’ (Chapter 27)

Now this idea, that a mental problem is only a problem because we are looking at it from the wrong perspective, and that what is required is not finding a solution so much as finding the right angle from which to regard the facts – this reminded me exactly of the later philosophy of the twentieth century’s greatest philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. In my review of the brilliant biography of Wittgenstein by Ray Monk, I summarise his later attitude thus:

Wittgenstein isn’t about making theories or coming up with theoretical foundations. He wants to release people from their confusions and perplexities by making them see the ‘problem’ in a new way, from a different perspective. There are no solutions. But if you see problems from the right angle, they cease to be problems any more and so the lack of solutions, also, ceases to cause you anxiety and worry. Philosophy is the therapy which cures anxiety about philosophical problems.

Apparently Wittgenstein was fond of quoting the physicist Heinrich Herz who struggled with the problems in mechanical theory bequeathed by Isaac Newton’s notion of ‘force’. But in his book The Principles of Mechanics, Herz explained that if you dumped the notion of force altogether and simply observed the wide variety of events which used to be corralled together to create the definition – if you actually just looked at what was in front of your eyes – then all the ‘problems’ raised by hanging onto Newton’s out-dated notion simply disappeared.

“When these painful contradictions are removed, the question as to the nature of force will not have been answered; but our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to ask illegitimate questions.” (Quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk, 1991, page 446)

Wittgenstein was delighted by this passage because it exactly epitomised his own approach to the so-called ‘problems’ of philosophy.

And closely matches the approach of the great fictional detective.

‘Me, I have dealt with crime for many years now. I have my own way of regarding things‘

Poirot has a way, an angle, a perspective, which again and again solves complex mysteries which all his peers, whether professional or amateur, find impossible to solve. And he nearly always ends up by saying that, once regarded from the correct angle, most of these ‘insoluble’ puzzles turn out to be astonishingly simple.

So the twentieth century’s greatest detective and its greatest philosopher shared this fundamental approach in common 🙂

Credit

‘Three Act Tragedy’ by Agatha Christie was published in 1935 by the Collins Crime Club.

Related links

• Three Act Tragedy online (PDF)
• Agatha Christie website

Related reviews

• Agatha Christie reviews
• 1930s reviews

‘I’d never seen a murder at close hand before. A writer’s got to take everything as copy, hasn’t she?’
‘I believe that’s a well-known axiom.’ (Chapter 21)