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One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie (1940)

‘It’s just like a serial, isn’t it? What’s the next thrilling instalment?’
(Jane Olivera mocks Poirot’s exposition of the case so far, p.102)

‘That dentist chap shooting himself, and then this Chapman woman packed away in her own fur chest with her face smashed in. It’s nasty! It’s damned nasty! I can’t help feeling that there’s something behind it all.’
(The same sense of some hidden meaning or conspiracy expressed in all Christie’s novels, voiced here by Alistair Blunt, p.151)

Within the limits of her chosen genre, I admire Agatha Christie’s experiments and innovations. Lots of her novels try out novel scenarios and variations on the basic idea of a murder mystery. This one belongs to the sub-genre of ‘murder mystery inspired by a nursery rhyme’, a category which she virtually invented – see Other Agatha Christie books and short stories which share this naming convention, such as Hickory Dickory Dock, A Pocket Full of Rye, Five Little Pigs, How Does Your Garden Grow? and ‘And Then There Were None’.

‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoe’ obviously refers to the popular children’s nursery rhyme:

One, two, buckle my shoe.
Three, four, shut the door.
Five, six, picking up sticks.
Seven, eight, lay them straight.
Nine, ten, a good fat hen.
Eleven, twelve, men must delve.
Thirteen, fourteen, maids are courting.
Fifteen, sixteen, maids in the kitchen.
Seventeen, eighteen, maids in waiting.
Nineteen, twenty, my plate’s empty.

(Actually the version I remember from childhood departs from this at several points.)

So the gimmick is that each of the novel’s ten chapters corresponds to one line of the rhyme. This is made most explicit when Poirot himself applies the rhyme, stating about half way through that he has ‘picked up the sticks’ (i.e. various bits of evidence) and now needs to ‘lay them straight’ i.e. arrange them into a coherent order. To give the passage:

He remembered how he had sat before, jotting down various unrelated facts and a series of names. A bird had flown past the window with a twig in its mouth. He, too, had been collecting twigs. Five, six, picking up sticks…

He had the sticks – quite a number of them now. They were all there, neatly pigeonholed in his orderly mind – but he had not as yet attempted to set them in order. That was the next step – lay them straight.

What was holding him up? He knew the answer. He was waiting for something. Something inevitable, fore-ordained, the next link in the chain. When it came – then – then he could go on…

And also, I was slow to realise the significance when very early on a car pulls up, the door opens, a woman’s leg emerges, wearing a shoe with a buckle, which snags on the door and comes off. Buckle my shoe. Indeed, the detail of this loose shoe buckle will turn out to be the thread which Poirot uses to unravel the whole case. Clever.

Plot summary

Poirot is going to the dentist. There are half a dozen people in the waiting room, going in or coming out of treatment, for the two dentists at the practice he visits, Mr Morley and Mr Reilly.

Next day Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard rings Poirot up and informs him that this bland inoffensive dentist, Morley, was found dead of a gunshot wound an hour after he treated Poirot. Was it suicide or murder?

So Japp and Poirot team up to interview all the employees at the practice and then all the patients in the appointments diary.

But barely have they started this process than another body turns up. A dodgy middle-aged foreigner, Mr Amberiotis, is found dead at his hotel, apparently from an overdose of the kind of local anaesthetic a dentist prescribes. For Japp this confirms the suicide theory: Morley accidentally gave Amberiotis a fatal overdose of anaesthetics, realised what he’d done, and killed himself out of shame and mortification. Doesn’t sound very likely, does it? Surely even a fool like Japp wouldn’t believe such an improbable story. And that’s one of the things wrong with this book; it never really persuades or grips.

Then another person on the list, Miss Sainsbury Seale steps out of her hotel (the Glengowrie Court Hotel) the next evening and doesn’t return for dinner or at all.

So everyone who attended the dentist’s that morning seems to be being bumped off or disappearing. Why? A whole new complexion is out on everything when Poirot goes out to Ealing to visit another patient on the list, a Mr Reginald Barnes.

One of the key figures in the waiting room was a ‘big bug’ named Alistair Blunt. Barnes now explains that Blunt is a key figure in the City and in the network of Britain’s financial system. If you were a foreign power seeking to overthrow Britain, or a communist activist seeking to sweep away the existing capitalist system, bumping off Blunt would be a good starting point.

So Barnes’ testimony to Poirot transforms this from being a boring domestic murder which would probably turns out to be about sex or who stands to gain from the dead man’s will – into an International Intrigue with overtones of spying and espionage. It plunges us back into the feverish world of Christie’s preposterous early spy novels like The Big Four, The Seven Dials Mystery and The Secret of Chimneys.

Here’s how Barnes explains it, to show you the cartoon level of the discourse:

‘That’s why certain people have made up their minds that Blunt must go.’
‘Ah,’ said Poirot.
Mr Barnes nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know what I’m talking about. Quite nice people some of ’em. Long-haired, earnest-eyed, and full of ideals of a better world. Others not so nice, rather nasty in fact. Furtive little rats with beards and foreign accents. And another lot again of the Big Bully type. But they’ve all got the same idea: Blunt Must Go!’

So Barnes’s theory is that ‘they’ (‘the organization that’s behind all this’) tried to persuade Morley to bump off Blunt but, when he refused, had to bump off him instead, and all the other people who, for one reason or another, might have seen or overheard something: Amberiotis, Miss Sainsbury Seal. So who actually shot Morley? His partner, Reilly.

So much for Mr Barnes’s theory. Is he right or is he paranoid and delusional? Poirot comes away wondering…

Next day Poirot goes to see Howard Raikes, a young American who was also waiting in the waiting room on the tragic morning (11.30 appointment). He finds him a firebreathing communist. I’m going to quote his big speech because of the way it echoes the sentiments expressed only a few years earlier by the writers of the Auden Generation, Auden himself and Louis MacNeice and especially Cecil Day Lewis who carried on being a communist after the war. When Auden wrote this kind of thing in verse in the early to mid-1930s it sounded thrilling and vivid; when Christie gives this speech to Raikes it sounds desperately immature and pathetic.

‘You’re Blunt’s private dick all right.’ His face darkened as he leaned across the table. ‘But you can’t save him, you know. He’s got to go – he and everything he stands for! There’s got to be a new deal – the old corrupt system of finance has got to go – this cursed net of bankers all over the world like a spider’s web. They’ve got to be swept away. I’ve nothing against Blunt personally – but he’s the type of man I hate. He’s mediocre – he’s smug. He’s the sort you can’t move unless you use dynamite. He’s the sort of man who says, “You can’t disrupt the foundations of civilization.” Can’t you, though? Let him wait and see! He’s an obstruction in the way of Progress and he’s got to be removed. There’s no room in the world today for men like Blunt – men who hark back to the past – men who want to live as their fathers lived or even as their grandfathers lived! You’ve got a lot of them here in England – crusted old diehards – useless, worn-out symbols of a decayed era. And, my God, they’ve got to go! There’s got to be a new world. Do you get me – a new world, see?’

Enquiries reveal that the missing Miss Sainsbury Seale was friends with a couple named Mr and Mrs Chapman and went to see them on the same day that Japp and Poirot interviewed her (at their flat in King Leopold Mansions, Battersea).

Enquiries reveal that Mr Chapman is currently abroad and that Mrs Chapman hasn’t been seen for weeks. In fact it’s over a month before one of the police investigators (Detective Sergeant Beddoes) becomes suspicious of Mrs Chapman’s lengthy absence and gets a pass key from the manager, and discovers a decomposed woman’s body locked in a trunk, presumed to be the missing Miss Sainsbury Seale.

When Poirot arrives, at Japp’s invitation, he sees that the woman’s face has been beaten to a pulp. All very disgusting but instantly made me realise – as always happens when anybody’s face has been smashed up in this kind of novel – that it’s been done to confuse the dead person’s identity and, sure enough, dental examination shows that the body is not Seale but Mrs Chapman.

Why? Maybe it’s just me but it felt like the story progresses at quite a slow pace. There are a lot of suggestive elements in it but somehow they don’t gel, and fail to create a sense of urgency or peril.

When he gets home, Poirot finds Mr Barnes waiting for him. He explains that Mr Albert Chapman, owner of the flat, is a spy! An agent for the British Intelligence Service, codename Q.X.912. The real question is why Barnes is telling Poirot all this? Out of the kindness of his heart, or has he been put up to it by someone?

Next thing Japp rings Poirot and tells him he’s been officially ordered to stand down the police enquiry into the murder. Clearly this has something to do with the Secret Service / espionage aspect of the whole thing. Japp is fuming at being stymied like this but Poirot, of course, being free of any official structure, can carry on investigating at will.

Next thing is Poirot receives a note from Alistair Blunt inviting him to come and stay at his country place at Exsham, in Kent. He’s barely finished reading the note when the phone rings and an unknown female voice tells him to give up his enquiries, steer clear of the case, keep his nose out of this business or else!

The narrative topples over into the ridiculous when there’s an attempt on the Prime Minister’s life. As he stepped out of Number 10 someone took a pot shot at him and missed. Now he just happened to be stepping out with what the press described as ‘a friend’ but Poirot quickly hears was the egregious Mr Alistair Blunt. Was the bullet meant for Blunt?

Not only that but the angry American communist Howard Raikes, one of the people in Morley’s waiting room that morning, just happened to be on the spot. He grabbed a man near to him and shouted to the police that he’d caught the shooter, only for this to be revealed as a mistake or decoy, because the person who fired the shot, a disgruntled Indian, was almost immediately caught with the gun on him. So what on earth was Raikes doing there and why on earth did he deliberately try to mislead the police?

As he prepares to go and stay with Blunt in Kent it becomes crystal clear that neither of Blunt’s womenfolk want him to go. Their relationship is a little complicated. Blunt was married to a woman named Rebecca Arnholt who was 20 years older than him, and a very successful financier in her own right, in fact critics said he only married her for her money. Julia Olivera was the niece of Rebecca Arnholt, being the daughter of Rebecca’s sister; and Jane Olivera is the daughter of Julia Olivera, and so Rebecca Arnholt’s grand niece.

Both of them are very superior creatures and loftily dismissive of Poirot who likens the scornful critical tones of old Mrs Olivera as like a ‘clucking hen’. It took me a moment to realise this is part of the joke or conceit or gimmick of the novel, whereby each chapter is named after – and to some extent cashes out or elaborates – a line from the rhyme, in this case ‘Nine, ten, a good fat hen’.

Poirot is driven down to the financier’s comfortable country house at Exsham in Kent in his chauffeur-driven Rolls (this is another obviously reassuring aspect of so many of Christie’s novels – it is that so many of the characters are reassuringly wealthy and upper class. It’s the same combination of nostalgia and fantasising about living that kind of life, that made the TV series ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ so popular when I was a boy, and more recently made ‘Downton Abbey’ such a hit. Petit bourgeois viewers and readers love fantasising about living the pampered lives of the Edwardian and Georgian upper classes, all country houses and huge staff.)

Anyway, the narrative had until now been all set in London and the urban setting gave the ridiculous spy story a kind of plausibility. Now setting switches to a plush country house, all gardeners and butlers, and changes tone entirely.

Here Poirot is introduced to Helen Montressor who is Blunt’s ‘cousin’. He interviews Blunt at great length, asking who would want to murder him etc. He discovers that one of the gardeners at the house is none other than Morley’s secretary’s fiancé, the touchy Frank Carter. He discovers that Jane Olivera a) hates and despises him (Poirot) for being so despicably bourgeois and b) reveals a surprising sympathy for Howard Raikes and his communist rhetoric.

The novel descends perilously close to farce when there is another assassination attempt on Blunt. Blunt is showing Poirot round his garden when a shot rings out. The bullet misses him but there is an immediate flurry in the laurel bushes and Howard Raikes falls through them, clutching Frank Carter who is holding a pistol. He claims he’s been framed, he was clipping some shrubs when the shot rang out and the gun was thrown at his feet.

When interviewed by the police, Frank claims he was offered the job by the Secret Service.

His instructions were to listen to the other gardeners’ conversations and sound them as to their ‘red’ tendencies, and to pretend to be a bit of a ‘red’ himself. He had been interviewed and instructed in his task by a woman who had told him that she was known as Q.H.56, and that he had been recommended to her as a strong anti-communist. She had interviewed him in a dim light and he did not think he would know her again. She was a red-haired lady with a lot of make-up on.

Poirot groaned. The Phillips Oppenheim touch seemed to be reappearing… (p.

E. Phillips Oppenheim (1866 to 1946) was a prolific writer of best-selling adventure fiction, featuring glamorous characters, international intrigue and fast action. So Christie’s two references to Oppenheim indicate how aware she was that her story, right from the start, verged on cheap populist melodrama.

Meanwhile, Raikes is on the scene both times someone fired a shot at Blunt. He is a communist hothead who thinks Blunt should be eliminated. Blunt’s posh niece Jane sympathises with him. Angry Frank Carter claims he’s some kind of fall guy for the Security Services. Behind all this lurks a series of unsolved murders and the involvement of a mystery British secret agent, Q.X.912. Could it get any more preposterous?

As usual, at this point I’ll stop summarising a) because it gets increasingly complicated before we arrive at the characteristically ludicrous and convoluted climax and b) I don’t want to give the game away.

‘I know, M. Poirot, that you have a great reputation. Therefore I accept that you must have some grounds for this extraordinary assumption—for it is an assumption, nothing more. But all I can see is the fantastic improbability of the whole thing.’ (p.225)

You can read the whole novel online.

Cast

Mr Henry Morley – dentist, ‘was a small man with a decided jaw and a pugnacious chin’
Miss Georgina Morley – Morley’s sister who keeps house for him, ‘a large woman rather like a female grenadier, ‘ tall and grim’
Gladys Nevill – Morley’s secretary, ‘a tall, fair, somewhat anæmic girl of about twenty-eight’
Frank Carter – Gladys’s fancy man, ‘ fair young man of medium height. His appearance was cheaply smart. He talked readily and fluently. His eyes were set rather close together and they had a way of shifting uneasily from side to side when he was embarrassed’ – turns out to be a blackshirt i.e. Fascist or, as the novel has it, ‘Imperial Shirt’
Agnes Fletcher – Morley’s house-parlourmaid
Mr Amberiotis – started as a Greek hotel keeper, known spy and possibly blackmailer
Alistair Blunt – quiet and modest and one of Britain’s great financiers
Rebecca Arnholt – Blunt’s dead wife, 20 years older than him, ‘a notorious Jewess’ in the words of Gladys Nevill
Julia Olivera – niece of Blunt’s deceased wife, Rebecca Arnholt, being the daughter of Rebecca’s sister
Jane Olivera – daughter of Julia Olivera and so Rebecca Arnholt’s grand-niece – American and offensive ‘She was tall, thin, and her face had an intelligence and aliveness that redeemed its lack of actual beauty. She was dark with a deeply tanned skin’ – madly in love with fellow American, Howard Raikes
Hercule Poirot
Alfred – boy assistant at the dentists’ surgery, ‘a boy in page-boy’s uniform with a freckled face, red hair, and an earnest manner’
Colonel Abercrombie – ‘a military-looking gentleman with a fierce moustache and a yellow complexion. He looked at Poirot with an air of one considering some noxious insect’
Miss Sainsbury Seale – posh, returned from India where she had unwisely married a Hindu who already had a wife, gives elocution lessons, keen amateur actress, ‘nearer fifty than forty. Pince-nez. Untidy yellow-grey hair’ – ‘a woman of forty odd with indecisively bleached hair rolled up in untidy curls. Her clothes were shapeless and rather artistic, and her pince-nez were always dropping off. She was a great talker’
George – Poirot’s butler
Chief Inspector Japp – of Scotland Yard, familiar figure from ten or so previous Poirot novels
Mr Reilly – Morley’s partner at the dental practice, young and flippant – ‘a tall, dark young man, with a plume of hair that fell untidily over his forehead. He had an attractive voice and a very shrewd eye’
Reginald Barnes – another patient (12 noon) who turns out to be a former Home office official and fantastically well informed about the international conspiracy to bump off Blunt
Mrs Harrison – proprietor of the Glengowrie Court Hotel
Mr Howard Raikes – American, embittered communist – ‘A lean hungry face, an aggressive jaw, the eyes of a fanatic. It was a face, though, that women might find attractive’ cf Ferguson in ‘Death on the Nile’
Mrs Merton – friend of Mrs Chapman, in whose flat at Battersea Miss Sainsbury Seale’s body is found
Mrs Adams – friend of Mrs Chapman, her name found on a letter in the murdered woman’s flat, lives in Hampstead, Poirot visits and questions

Method

‘You’re an odd man, M. Poirot.’
‘I am very odd. That is to say, I am methodical, orderly and logical—and I do not like distorting facts to support a theory—that, I find—is unusual!’

Women

Mrs Olivera clacked on. She was, thought Poirot, rather like a hen. A big, fat hen! Mrs Olivera, still clacking, moved majestically after her bust towards the door. (p.142)

Bookishness

Poirot asks the boy Arthur what he was reading:

What were you reading?’
‘Death at Eleven-Forty-Five, sir. It’s an American detective story. It’s a corker, sir, it really is! All about gunmen.’

‘Alfred reads detective stories – Alfred is enamoured of crime. Whatever Alfred lets slip will be put down to Alfred’s morbid criminal imagination.’

‘I’ve been looking forward, M. Poirot, to hearing a few of your adventures. I read a lot of thrillers and detective stories, you know. Do you think any of them are true to life?’
(Alistair Blunt)

As I’ve said, I think that Christie’s novels contain so many references to detective stories and thrillers in order to lower our standards of plausibility, help us suspend our disbelief and generally soften the reader up, ushering us into an imaginative world of preposterous goings-on.

Mr Barnes went on, tapping a book with a lurid jacket that lay on a table close at hand: ‘I read a lot of these spy yarns. Fantastic, some of them. But curiously enough they’re not any more fantastic than the real thing . There are beautiful adventuresses, and dark sinister men with foreign accents, and gangs and international associations and super crooks! I’d blush to see some of the things I know set down in print – nobody would believe them for a minute!’

The references to other detective stories, far from hiding the book’s artificiality, emphasise it, all the better to immerse the reader in the simple caricatures and preposterous plots of MurderMysteryWorld. As Japp remarks, citing the popular spy authors of the day:

As they went down the stairs again to No. 42, Japp ejaculated with feeling: ‘Shades of Phillips Oppenheim, Valentine Williams and William le Queux, I think I’m going mad!’ (p.122)

Sherlock Holmes

‘Talking of jobs, I’ve always been interested to know how you private detectives go about things? I suppose there’s not much of the Sherlock Holmes touch really, mostly divorce nowadays?’

The English

Among many other things, Poirot became vehicle by which Christie could express her amused fondness for her own nation and people. When Mr Morley’s secretary, Miss Gladys Nevill, comes to see him all of a-flutter, he knows how to calm her down.

Profiting by a long experience of the English people, Poirot suggested a cup of tea. Miss Nevill’s reaction was all that could be hoped for.
‘Well, really, M. Poirot, that’s very kind of you. Not that it’s so very long since breakfast, but one can always do with a cup of tea, can’t one?’
Poirot, who could always do without one, assented mendaciously.

Christie’s unfeminism

Glady’s boyfriend is unreliable, keeps losing jobs etc. But Gladys is naively confident that her love will redeem and change him, as so many women before her have made the same mistake.

‘But it will be different now. I think one can do so much by influence, don’t you, M. Poirot? If a man feels a woman expects a lot of him, he tries to live up to her ideal of him.’

Poirot sighed. But he did not argue. He had heard many hundreds of women produce that same argument, with the same blithe belief in the redeeming power of a woman’s love. Once in a thousand times, he supposed, cynically, it might be true.

In fact it is a running thread through all Christie’s books, this opinion that lots of women are attracted to bad men, to wrong ‘uns.

It was not as though he had any particular belief in, or liking for, Frank Carter. Carter, he thought dispassionately, was definitely what the English call a ‘wrong ’un’. He was an unpleasant young bully of the kind that appeals to women, so that they are reluctant to believe the worst, however plain the evidence. (p.171)

English sentimentality

‘It is not I who am sentimental! That is an English failing! It is in England that they weep over young sweethearts and dying mothers and devoted children. Me, I am logical.’ (p.204)

You only have to look at most Victorian art to see how vast a slab of sugary sentimentality used to be a central characteristic of the English.

Bookishness

Japp mocking Poirot’s claims that Morley was murdered triggers the self-mocking of her own genre and style which Christie deploys in every one of her novels.

‘If—only if, mind you—that blasted woman committed suicide, if she’d drowned herself for instance, the body would have come ashore by now. If she was murdered, the same thing.’
‘Not if a weight was attached to her body and it was put into the Thames.’
‘From a cellar in Limehouse, I suppose! You’re talking like a thriller by a lady novelist.’
‘I know—I know. I blush when I say these things!’
‘And she was done to death by an international gang of crooks, I suppose?’ (p.107)

After a minute or two, Japp went on with his summing up of the Sainsbury Seale situation.
‘I suppose her body might have been lowered into a tank of acid by a mad scientist—that’s another solution they’re very fond of in books! But take my word for it, these things are all my eye and Betty Martin. (p.109)

Wittgenstein

Poirot insists that 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. And so it is here, again.

A snare cunningly laid—a net with cords—a pit open at his feet—dug carefully so that he should fall into it.

He was in a daze—a glorious daze where isolated facts spun wildly round before settling neatly into their appointed places.

It was like a kaleidoscope—shoe buckles, 10-inch stockings, a damaged face, the low tastes in literature of Alfred the page-boy, the activities of Mr Amberiotis, and the part played by the late Mr Morley, all rose up and whirled and settled themselves down into a coherent pattern.

For the first time, Hercule Poirot was looking at the case the right way up… (p.176)

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 the German 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.

Which all 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 🙂

1930s slang: ‘lay’

Christie always lards Inspector Japp’s speech with plenty of Cockney slang to emphasise his lower class, not-so-well-educated character. I was struck in this novel by use of the word ‘lay’ which I don’t think I’ve seen used in this way before.

He was in close touch with some of our Central European friends. Espionage racket.’
‘You are sure of that?’
‘Yes. Oh, he wasn’t doing any of the dirty work himself. We wouldn’t have been able to touch him. Organizing and receiving reports – that was his lay.’

And:

‘Did you know that Miss Sainsbury Seale was a close friend of the late Mrs Alistair Blunt?’
‘Who says so? I don’t believe it. Not in the same class.’
‘She said so.’
‘Who’d she say that to?’
‘Mr Alistair Blunt.’
‘Oh! That sort of thing. He must be used to that lay.’ (p.108)

Thoughts

‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoe’ is a reversion to the preposterous atmosphere of international intrigue, secret crime organisations, spies and espionage, which characterised The Secret of Chimneys and The Seven Dials Mystery. Only with measurably less of the charm and humour which made those early novels so hilarious.

Credit

‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoe’ by Agatha Christie was published by the Collins Crime Club in November 1940.

Related reviews

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1940s reviews

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by Simon on September 1, 2025 • Permalink

Posted in Detective stories, Novel

Tagged Agatha Christie, Agnes Fletcher, Albert Chapman, Alfred, Alistair Blunt, Auden Generation, Battersea, Betty Martin, British Intelligence Service, Cecil Day-Lewis, Chief Inspector Japp, Collins Crime Club, Colonel Abercrombie, communist, Death on the Nile, Detective Sergeant Beddoes, Downton Abbey, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Ealing, espionage, Exsham, Frank Carter, George, Georgina Morley, Gladys Nevill, Glengowrie Court Hotel, Heinrich Herz, Helen Montressor, Henry Morley, Hercule Poirot, Howard Raikes, Inspector Japp, international intrigue, Isaac Newton, Jane Olivera, Julia Olivera, Kent, King Leopold Mansions, Louis MacNeice, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Miss Sainsbury Seale, Mr Amberiotis, Mr Chapman, Mr Morley, Mr Reginald Barnes, Mr Reilly, Mrs Adams, Mrs Alistair Blunt, Mrs Chapman, Mrs Harrison, Mrs Merton, murder, Murder Mystery, narrative, novel, Number 10, nursery rhyme, One Two Buckle My Shoe, Poirot, Prime Minister, Q.X.912, Ray Monk, Rebecca Arnholt, Reginald Barnes, Rolls Royce, Sainsbury Seale, Scotland Yard, Security Services, Sherlock Holmes, spying, The City, The Principles of Mechanics, The Secret of Chimneys, The Seven Dials Mystery, Upstairs Downstairs, Valentine Williams, William le Queux, Wittgenstein

Posted by Simon on September 1, 2025

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The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (1930)

‘My dear young man, you underestimate the detective instinct of village life. In St. Mary Mead everyone knows your most intimate affairs. There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.’
(The vicar, Leonard Clement, explaining village life to Lawrence Redding, the artist, Chapter 4)

‘You must understand that I heard this on the best authority.’ In St. Mary Mead the best authority is always somebody else’s servant.
(Clement’s droll sense of humour, Chapter 25)

‘Anyway, I don’t think Mr Raymond West is so frightfully clever as he pretends to be.’
‘Very few of us are,’ I said. (Chapter 25)

Introducing Miss Marple

This is the first Agatha Christie novel to feature Miss Jane Marple, who would go on to appear in 20 short stories and 11 further novels.

Miss Marple always sees everything. Gardening is as good as a smoke screen, and the habit of observing birds through powerful glasses can always be turned to account.
(Clement, the narrator)

‘Miss Marple may be mistaken.’
‘She never is. That kind of old cat is always right.’
(Griselda on Miss M.)

‘Confound the woman, she couldn’t know more about it if she had committed the murder herself.’ (Chief Constable Melchett)

‘I’m afraid that observing human nature for as long as I have done, one gets not to expect very much from it.’
(The lady herself)

One of the pleasures of this unusually long detective novel is watching Miss Marple grow into the character of ‘Miss Marple’, as Christie gets the bit between her teeth.

Leonard Clement

‘The Murder at the Vicarage’ is a first-person narrative told by Leonard ‘Len’ Clement, the vicar of a little village, St Mary Mead, in the fictional county of Downshire (Chapter 12). Christie obviously had fun striking what you could call a hesitant, mildly disapproving, vicarly tone right from the start.

It is difficult to know quite where to begin this story, but I have fixed my choice on a certain Wednesday at luncheon at the Vicarage. (Opening sentence)

It’s this reasonable, educated but self-deprecating tone and personality which dominate and define the text.

When I got back to the Vicarage I was my usual faded, indeterminate self… (Chapter 26)

‘Faded, indeterminate’ Clement is married to Griselda, younger than him, attractive but flirtatiously playful.

Griselda is nearly twenty years younger than myself. She is most distractingly pretty and quite incapable of taking anything seriously. She is incompetent in every way, and extremely trying to live with. She treats the parish as a kind of huge joke arranged for her amusement. I have endeavoured to form her mind and failed. (Chapter 1)

Years later, Griselda remains proud of seducing the vicar in just 24 hours:

‘I’m everything you most dislike and disapprove of, and yet you couldn’t withstand me!… I make you frightfully uncomfortable and stir you up the wrong way the whole time, and yet you adore me madly.’ (Chapter 1)

Unimpressed with Clement’s staidness and devotion to duty etc, she playfully threatens him with having an affair with the young artist, Lawrence Redding, who’s come to the village and set up his studio in a shed in the vicarage’s grounds, and is painting a portrait of Griselda.

‘You don’t deserve me. You really don’t. I’ll have an affair with the artist. I will — really and truly. And then think of the scandal in the parish.’ (Chapter 1)

Living with Clement and Griselda are his 16-year-old nephew, Dennis, and their brusque and incompetent maid, Mary.

It is repeatedly stated how innocent and unworldly Clement is, so much so that I did wonder whether this was a blind and whether there would turn out to be the same kind of twist as in ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’.

‘Ah! well, sir,’ he said tolerantly, ‘you’re a clergyman. You don’t know half of what goes on.’
(Chapter 17)

‘She has been ill,’ I said mildly.
‘Ill? Fiddlesticks. You’re too unworldly, Mr Clement.’
(Chapter 25)

The murderee

In Chapter 5 Clement comes home to discover the loud and unpopular Colonel Protheroe dead in his (Clement’s) study, shot through the back of the head as he sat at his (Clement’s) writing desk writing a note. Protheroe is the lord of the manor, local magistrate, who lived up at the Old Hall with his daughter, Lettice, and second wife, Anne, and is notorious for his loud-mouthed, boorish insensitivity. So who shot him? And why?

The cast

In the first four chapters leading up to the murder, Christie introduces an impressive number of characters and gives at least five of them plausible motives for committing the murder. Part of this is done by a tea party Griselda arranges for the four village gossips (or ‘old cats’ as Miss Cram calls them), four old ladies one of whom is Miss Marple and from whom she is, to begin with, indistinguishable. Only slowly but steadily does she emerge as a kind of super-sleuth in his own right.

Here’s a complete list of characters. I’ve added M for motive to the characters with obvious motives to kill Colonel Protheroe.

Leonard Clement the vicar – the modest, disapproving narrator; ‘Nobody would suspect you of anything, darling,’ said Griselda. ‘You’re so transparently above suspicion’
Griselda – Clement’s carefree, playful young wife, who enjoys teasing Clement that she’s being wooed by Lawrence Redding the painter who’s doing her portrait
Dennis – Clement’s 16-year-old schoolboy nephew, jokey and playful
Mary Adams – their rude maid, a notoriously bad cook
Hawes – the new curate, only arrived three weeks ago (suspicious!), has High Church views and fasts on Fridays
Colonel Lucius Protheroe – grumpy local squire and JP, opponent of ritual in church (so opposed to Hawes), ‘the kind of man who enjoys making a fuss on every conceivable occasion’. He disapproves of his daughter Lettice posing for the young artist Lawrence Redding in just her bathing suit. According to Griselda both his wife and his daughter are fed up to the back teeth with him. In fact his first wife couldn’t bear him and ran off. As local magistrate he has just sentenced 3 poachers, one of whom swore vengeance.
Lettice Protheroe – ‘a pretty girl, very tall and fair and completely vague’. She casually implicates herself when she tells Clement: ‘If only I had some money I’d go away, but without it I can’t. If only father would be decent and die… if he doesn’t want me to want him to die, he shouldn’t be so horrible over money.’ Lettice, in her vague, wishy-washy way, thinks she’s in love with the artist Lawrence Redding. M
Mrs Ann Protheroe, the Colonel’s second wife and Lettice’s step-mother. Protheroe married her five years ago. Clement is astonished to enter the artist’s studio one afternoon to discover her in a passionate embrace with the artist Redding. He backs out and a few minutes later she comes to his study to apologise but explain that she’s living a life of perfect misery with Protheroe and is desperate for change. Clement comments: ‘She impressed me now as a very desperate woman, the kind of woman who would stick at nothing once her emotions were aroused. And she was desperately, wildly, madly in love with Lawrence Redding, a man several years younger than herself.’ M
Lawrence Redding – handsome 30-year-old artist visiting the village and staying in the vicarage grounds. After dinner at the Vicarage he tells Clement he is sincerely in love with Ann Protheroe, he wants to rescue her from her tyrant husband, and wishes Protheroe were dead: ‘Oh! I didn’t mean I was going to stick him in the back with a knife, though I’d offer my best thanks to anyone else who did so…’ M
Mrs Price Ridley – one of the village’s gossipy old ladies, ‘a devout and fussy member of my congregation’
- Clara, her maid, aged 19
Miss Wetherby – another old lady, ‘a mixture of vinegar and gush’
Miss Hartnell – another old lady, ‘weather-beaten and jolly and much dreaded by the poor’. ‘It is difficult with Miss Hartnell to know where narrative ends and vituperation begins.’
Miss Marple – fourth of the quartet of village ladies, but Clement realises she is sharper than the others and will, of course, go on to a career in the later books and stories. According to Clement she is ‘a white-haired old lady with a gentle, appealing manner’. According to ever-critical Griselda, ‘that terrible Miss Marple’ is ‘the worst cat in the village’. Clement admits that she spies on everyone under cover of birdwatching.
Mrs Estelle Lestrange – an outsider, recently arrived in the village, taken a house for the summer, bit mysterious, ‘a cultured woman who knew something of Church history and architecture’
- ‘She was a very tall woman. Her hair was gold with a tinge of red in it. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were dark, whether by art or by nature I could not decide. If she was, as I thought, made up, it was done very artistically. There was something Sphinxlike about her face when it was in repose and she had the most curious eyes I have ever seen — they were almost golden in shade’
- ‘She was a curious woman — a woman of very strong magnetic charm’
Estelle has some kind of dark secret which she can’t bring herself to reveal to Clement (‘No, I don’t think anyone can help me. But thank you for offering to do so’), who goes away from a visit to her rented cottage thinking: ‘This woman would stick at nothing’. And then we learn that she visited the Colonel on a mysterious errand the day before the murder. Will she turn out to have some hidden connection with Protheroe? M
Dr Stone – a well-known archæologist who has recently come to stay at the Blue Boar while he superintends the excavation of an ancient barrow situated on Colonel Protheroe’s property. A ‘bald-headed dull old man’, ‘He was a little man. His head was round and bald, his face was round and rosy, and he beamed at you through very strong glasses he is known to have had a big argument with Protheroe about something to do with his project. Does that make him a suspect? M
Dr Stone’s secretary, Miss Gladys Cram – ‘Miss Cram is a healthy young woman of twenty-five, noisy in manner, with a high colour, fine animal spirits and a mouth that always seems to have more than its full share of teeth’. The old ladies (above) disapprove of an unmarried young woman staying in the same inn (the Blue Boar) as Dr Stone, who is married but visiting without his wife. Could they be having an affair? If Stone had anything to do with Protheroe’s death, would Miss Cram protect him?
Dr Haydock – local GP, ‘a good fellow, a big, fine, strapping man with an honest, rugged face’, called by Clement as soon as the latter discovers the body in his study.
Constable Hurst – village policeman, telephoned by Dr Haydock as soon as the latter ascertains that Protheroe is dead.
Inspector Slack – ‘a dark man, restless and energetic in manner, with black eyes that snapped ceaselessly.’ ‘His manner was rude and overbearing in the extreme.’ A ‘conceited ass’ according to Dr Haydock.
Colonel Melchett – Chief Constable of the county, ‘a dapper little man with a habit of snorting suddenly and unexpectedly. He has red hair and rather keen bright blue eyes.’ Patronising: ‘There’s a lot of talk. Too many women in this part of the world.’
Archer – the poacher Protheroe sentenced to jail and who threatened him with revenge. He has been walking out with Clement’s slovenly maid, Mary. This means that she, the maid Mary, joins the list of possible suspects. M
Manning – Protheroe’s chauffeur, ‘a nice lad, not more than twenty-five or six years of age’
Dr Roberts – the coroner
Cherubim – the village chemist
Staff at Old Hall:
- Mrs Simmons – the housekeeper
- Mrs Pratt – the cook
- Rose – a main, ‘a pretty girl of twenty-five’
- Gladys – the kitchenmaid
Mrs Sadler — Hawes’s landlady

As you can see, some are Direct Suspects, having explicitly stated they want Protheroe out of the way, being: his daughter who wants his money; his wife who finds living with him unbearable; Redding who wants him out of the way so he can pursue his affair with Ann Protheroe.

Could Dr Stone be added to this list because of the alleged row he had with Protheroe? He’s not in the same category as the Direct Suspects.

Then there are the Indirect Suspects who have no known connection with Protheroe but are suspicious presences who’ve been behaving oddly, of whom Mrs Lestrange is the leading example.

Details

The reader notices how, in the first four chapters, Christie introduces and sketches an impressive number of characters. Less obvious is the way she introduces lots of circumstantial details. What happens in the novel – as in life, I imagine – is that the moment the murder is discovered, scores of tiny details which had up until that moment been just part of the forgettable stuff of everyday life, suddenly become immensely important.

For example, Protheroe had an appointment to meet the vicar at 6.15 or so but they’d delayed their appointment while chatting in the village high street. Could someone have overheard? Just before 6, Clement was called away to attend Abbott, a parishioner who was dying but when he got there he found the man well, and none of his household had made the call? So who did, presumably to get him away from the vicarage so they could commit the crime?

Similarly, the clock on the study table was knocked over, smashed and stopped at the moment of death, frozen at 6.22pm. But as Clement tries to tell the Inspector, he always keeps it set 15 minutes too fast in a bid to outwit his own tardiness. So much is made of the time and this discrepancy, that I’d bet it turns out to be a vital clue.

And at dinner the evening before, conversation had turned to the subject of guns and Redding the artist had admitted to owning a .25 Mauser pistol, a souvenir from the war. So when the police identify the bullet which killed Protheroe as coming from a Mauser .25 it seems an open and shut case. Especially as in the few minutes before he returned to the vicarage, Clement had encountered Redding just outside the building looking white as a sheet, talking and behaving oddly, then running off.

Next morning everyone discovers that later the evening of the crime, at 10pm, Redding turned himself into the police, handed over the gun and confessed that he did it. So he was charged and locked up, news which travels like wildfire through the village.

But the reader of any detective story knows this is too simple and obvious – and also too early in the story: the real motive is likely to be much more convoluted and the real killer a well-hidden secret.

Anyway, as with my other Christie reviews, I’ll stop my summary here because it’s always at this point that her detective stories metamorphose from a description of events into an increasingly complicated labyrinth of competing theories. Not only do the police have theories about whodunnit, but so do all the main characters – Miss Marple starts her involvement by telling an astonished Clement she can think of no fewer than seven suspects:

‘Quite that, I should think,’ said Miss Marple absently. ‘I expect every one of us suspects someone different.’ (Chapter 26)

And the plot is carefully constructed so that over the next 200 pages or so, a steady trickle of new clues and revelations are released, which disprove some theories, support others, or provide evidence for entirely new ones. As a disgruntled Inspector Slack says, in a phrase which could be the motto of all her books:

‘You can’t get definite proof of anything in this crime! It’s theory, theory, theory.’ (Chapter 25)

And Christie has her characters themselves comment on the depth and complexity of the thing:

‘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.’ (Chapter 12)

And:

‘You know,’ I said to Griselda, ‘I don’t feel we are really at the end of this case yet.’
‘You mean not till someone has really been arrested?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean that. I mean that there are ramifications, under-currents, that we know nothing about. There are a whole lot of things to clear up before we get at the truth.’ (Chapter 22)

And:

‘To tell you the truth,’ I said, as I fetched her shawl, ‘the whole thing seems to me a bewildering maze.’ (Chapter 26)

Right up till the final revelation which overthrows the whole lot of them in a dazzling denouement.

Maps

To help the reader the text contains a map of the village and a sketch of the vicarage, just some of the fleet of details the narrative is packed with.

Map of St Mary Meads showing the main houses, with the Vicarage slap bang in the middle

And:

Interior of the vicar’s house

It is an entertainment designed to puzzle, tease and amuse the reader. Trying to summarise these convolutions and complexities would be a fool’s errand.

Miss Marple’s approach

Slowly at first, Miss Marple begins to share, in a quiet and understated way, her thoughts about the murder which, as they accumulate through the story, grow into a worldview and a methodology.

Motive and opportunity The basics of all detective work.

‘Motive and opportunity.’ (Chapter 30)

All the facts must be accounted for If anything is not accounted for by your theory, pause it.

‘I know, dear Mr Clement, that there are many ways we prefer to look at things. But one must actually take facts as they are, must one not? And it does not seem to me that the facts bear the interpretation you put upon them.’ (Chapter 6)

‘The point is,’ she said, ‘that one must provide an explanation for everything. Each thing has got to be explained away satisfactorily. If you have a theory that fits every fact — well, then, it must be the right one. But that’s extremely difficult.’ (Chapter 26)

‘One’s own belief — even so strong as to amount to knowledge — is not the same as proof. And unless one has an explanation that will fit all the facts (as I was saying to dear Mr Clement this evening) one cannot advance it with any real conviction.’ (Chapter 30)

‘I thought you were going to say something, my dear. And it is often so much better to let things develop on their own lines.’ (Chapter 6)

Suspect everyone Her spinster scepticism, or cynicism.

‘One never can be quite sure about anyone, can one? At least that’s what I’ve found.’ (Chapter 9)

‘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?’ (Chapter 16)

‘But Mrs Clement was completely out of it,’ interrupted Melchett. ‘She returned by the 6.50 train.
‘That’s what she said,’ retorted Miss Marple. ‘One should never go by what people say.’ (Chapter 30)

Intuition

‘That is a very sound way of arriving at the truth. It’s really what people call intuition and make such a fuss about. Intuition is like reading a word without have to spell it out. A child can’t do that because it has had so little experience. But a grown-up person knows the word because they’ve seen it often before.’ (Chapter 11)

Noticing details

They realised, you see, that I am a noticing kind of person… (Chapter 30)

I don’t know whether Miss Marple had any inkling of all this. Very probably she had. Few things are hidden from her. (Chapter 30)

‘It is,’ she said, ‘a Peculiar Thing. Another Peculiar Thing.’ (Chapter 21)

A phrase she repeats several times to describe noteworthy anomalies.

Becoming Miss Marple

On one level the entire novel is about her flexing her wings and growing into the role of ‘Miss Marple’. One by one, she overcomes the scepticism of the men, the vicar being the first to realise her qualities.

I stared at the old lady, feeling an increased respect for her mental powers. (Chapter 11)

I was silent, but I did not agree with him. I was quite sure that Anne Protheroe had had no pistol with her since Miss Marple had said so. Miss Marple is not the type of elderly lady who makes mistakes. She has got an uncanny knack of being always right. (Chapter 12)

For all her fragile appearance, Miss Marple is capable of holding her own with any policeman or Chief Constable in existence. (Chapter 9)

Now how did the woman know that I had been to visit Mrs Lestrange that afternoon? The way she always knows things is uncanny. (Chapter 16)

I have a poor sense of time myself (hence the keeping of my clock fast) and Miss Marple, I should say, has a very acute one. Her clocks keep time to the minute and she herself is rigidly punctual on every occasion. (Chapter 23)

In the art of seeing without being seen, Miss Marple had no rival… (Chapter 23)

Of all the ladies in my congregation, I consider her by far the shrewdest. Not only does she see and hear practically everything that goes on, but she draws amazingly neat and apposite deductions from the facts that come under her notice. (Chapter 26)

There is always some perfectly good and reasonable explanation for Miss Marple’s omniscience… (Chapter 26)

Others’ opinion:

REDDING: You know, old Miss Marple knows a thing or two.
CLEMENT: She is, I believe, rather unpopular on that account. (Chapter 19)

‘She has a powerful imagination and systematically thinks the worst of everyone.’
‘The typical elderly spinster, in fact,’ said Melchett, with a laugh. (Chapter 9)

And the way she deploys her Spinster Cynicism to comic effect against the pompous men.

‘I’m afraid there’s a lot of wickedness in the world. A nice honourable upright soldier like you doesn’t know about these things, Colonel Melchett.’ (Chapter 9)

Triumph

All leading to the final two chapters where Miss Marple turns out to have a sounder grasp of events, character and human psychology than all the male characters put together.

There was something fascinating in Miss Marple’s resumé of the case. She spoke with such certainty that we both felt that this way and in no other could the crime have been committed. (Chapter 30)

Reading her triumph over the pompous cops and obtuse vicar is deeply enjoyable, even thrilling. She triumphs and her character is a triumph. No wonder Christie realised she’d struck gold and would go on to develop the character at length over many years to come.

Sexism

It was a hundred years ago in a country unrecognisable from modern Britain, so you might wonder why I even bother collecting the examples of the male characters’ everyday sexism except that it’s easy and amusing. Bombastic Colonel Melchett is the chief offender:

‘There’s a lot of talk. Too many women in this part of the world.’ (Chapter 7)

‘Women never like fiddling about with firearms. Arsenic’s more in their line.’ (Chapter 12)

Then there’s rude, dismissive Inspector Slack:

‘Mrs Protheroe acted in an exactly similar fashion, remember, Slack.’
That’s different. She’s a woman, and women act in that silly way. I’m not saying she did it for a moment. She heard he was accused and she trumped up a story. I’m used to that sort of game. You wouldn’t believe the fool things I’ve known women do…’ (Chapter 11)

‘Women cause a lot of trouble,’ moralised the inspector. (Chapter 25)

Self-important Constable Hurst:

‘You can’t take any notice of what old ladies say. When they’ve seen something curious, and are waiting all eager like, why, time simply flies for them. And anyway, no lady knows anything about time.’ (Chapter 23)

Even the vicar narrator, otherwise so sympathetic to everyone:

Melchett is a wise man. He knows that when it is a question of an irate middle-aged lady, there is only one thing to be done — to listen to her. When she has said all that she wants to say, there is a chance that she will listen to you. (Chapter 23)

‘Why,” I said, ‘I remember at the time Mrs Protheroe said it wasn’t like her husband’s handwriting at all, and I took no notice.’
‘Really?’
‘I thought it one of those silly remarks women will make.’ (Chapter 27)

Miss Marple herself makes a contribution:

‘My dear Colonel Melchett, you know what young women are nowadays. Not ashamed to show exactly how the creator made them.’ (Chapter 9)

Griselda:

‘I do hate old women — they tell you about their bad legs and sometimes insist on showing them to you.’ (Chapter 17)

Two points. 1) Whenever I read this kind of thing, it reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s powerful feminist tract Three Guineas which gathers an impressive array of evidence testifying to the universality of chauvinist, sexist, patronising, patriarchal attitudes throughout British society.

2) Then again, the entire book is a tissue of clichés and stereotypes (the handsome young artist, the reactionary old colonel, the lonely wife, the alienated daughter, the otherworldly vicar, the conservative chief constable – ‘all this namby-pambyism annoys me. I’m a plain man’ – and so on) so that most of the characters very much espouse, approve and express the received ideas of the day.

a) This makes them recognisable and assimilable by the great majority of readers i.e. they’re not high-falutin’ artists and psychological experimenters like the characters in Joyce or Lawrence or Woolf.

b) At a deeper level, the detective story as a genre requires most if not all of its characters to be stereotyped and predictable in order to function: if they were all unpredictable the thing would be as chaotic and unreadable as real life actually is; but if the majority of the characters are staid, recognisable and predictable it allows the reader to assimilate them, to register them and their values and be alert to the discrepancies and oddities which characterise real clues and (might) indicate the identity of the murderer.

Summary of sexism

‘They’re not doing so badly,’ I said. ‘One of them, at all events, thinks she’s got there.’
‘Our friend, Miss Marple, eh?’
‘Our friend, Miss Marple.’
‘Women like that always think they know everything,’ said Colonel Melchett.
(Chapter 27)

Colonel Melchett’s remark contains the implicit assumption that only men are allowed to think they know everything. Except that in this case, Miss Marple does know everything. She is The Spinster’s Revenge against the everyday chauvinism of men like Colonel Melchett.

Cats

A word means how it is used. Christie is fond of using ‘cat’ to mean gossiping, bitchy woman.

‘I rather like Miss Marple,’ I said. ‘She has, at least, a sense of humour.’
‘She’s the worst cat in the village,’ said Griselda. (Chapter 1)

‘Nasty old cat,’ said Griselda, as soon as the door was closed. (Chapter 3)

CLEMENT: Miss Marple may be mistaken.
GRISELDA: She never is. That kind of old cat is always right. (Chapter 3)

MISS CRAM: A girl wants a bit of life out of office hours, and except for you, Mrs Clement, who is there in the place to talk to except a lot of old cats? (Chapter 10)

‘She’d make a very good mannequin,’ said Griselda. ‘She’s got such a lovely figure.’ There’s nothing of the cat about Griselda. (Chapter 10)

‘Serve the old cat right,’ he [Dennis] exclaimed. ‘She’s got the worst tongue in the place.’ (Chapter 14)

MISS CRAM: Just because one of these gossiping old cats has nothing better to do than look out of her window all night you go and pitch upon me. (Chapter 25)

Shot

While I’m in the business of collecting quotes to make points, I noticed how Christie strategically threads the word ‘shot’ throughout the narrative. Obviously it mostly appears in the literal sense, when referring to the shot that killed Colonel Protheroes – but on a few other occasions it’s slipped in in a metaphorical sense, a few times before the murder takes place to anticipate it and a few times afterwards, giving a slight echoing, ringing repetition, which keeps the idea and sound of the one gunshot subliminally in the reader’s mind.

Proleptic (looking forward):

A ribald rhyme concocted by Dennis shot through my head. (Chapter 2)

That last Parthian shot went home. (Chapter 2)

Analeptic (looking back):

He was pacing up and down nervously, and when I entered the room he started as though he had been shot. (Chapter 24)

Bookish

Every Christie novel I’ve read so far contains multiple ironic, knowing references to the genre the story is in, detective stories:

‘It’s so mysterious, isn’t it, her arriving like this and taking a house down here, and hardly every going outside it? Makes one think of detective stories. You know — “Who was she, the mysterious woman with the pale, beautiful face? What was her past history? Nobody knew. There was something faintly sinister about her.” I believe Dr Haydock knows something about her.’
‘You read too many detective stories, Griselda,’ I observed mildly.
(Chapter 1)

And:

‘If this were only a book,’ he [Lawrence] said gloomily, ‘the old man [Protheroe] would die — and a good riddance to everybody.’ (Chapter 4)

And:

‘I see,’ I said, ‘that you are that favourite character of fiction, the amateur detective. I don’t know that they really hold their own with the professional in real life.’ (Chapter 16)

And:

‘You’ve been reading G. K. Chesterton,’ I said, and Lawrence did not deny it. (Chapter 16)

And:

‘I wonder,’ I said. ‘I think each one of us in his secret heart fancies himself as Sherlock Homes.’ (Chapter 26)

And:

‘I have been reading a lot of American detective stories from the library lately,’ said Miss Marple, ‘hoping to find them helpful.’ (Chapter 27)

And:

‘There is, I believe, an invention called a Maxim silencer. So I gather from detective stories.’ (Chapter 30)

And:

GRISELDA: I was — well, absolutely silly about him [Redding] at one time. I don’t mean I wrote him compromising letters or anything idiotic like they do in books. But I was rather keen on him once. (Chapter 24)

And:

‘I know that in books it is always the most unlikely person. But I never find that rule applies in real life.’ (Chapter 31)

The excitable schoolboy Dennis is a special case:

At Dennis’s age a detective story is one of the best things in life, and to find a real detective story, complete with corpse, waiting on one’s own front doorstep, so to speak, is bound to send a healthy-minded boy into the seventh heaven of enjoyment. (Chapter 6)

So when a murder mystery occurs right on his doorstep, Dennis is delighted:

‘Fancy being right on the spot in a murder case,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve always wanted to be right in the midst of one.’ (Chapter 6)

And sets off with a magnifying glass to look for clues which he helpfully gives to Inspector Slack who politely thanks him, pockets them and forgets all about them.

This chimes with the gleeful delight of the two children in ‘The Seven Dials Mystery’ who are thrilled to bits that a real-life murder has been committed at their house. This is a bit more profound than the simple comedy: it’s as if every novel contains a reminder that, although a murder is a tragedy to the victim and those closest to him or her, at even a small remove it’s an exciting relief from routine and boredom, and at one more remove, in the newspapers or other media, it’s just one more item in the news.

All these bookish references are trumped when Miss M’s nephew, Mr Raymond West, arrives on a visit and turns out to be a famous writer.

‘Raymond gets up very late — I think writers often do. He writes very clever books, I believe, though people are not really nearly so unpleasant as he makes out. Clever young men know so little of life, don’t you think?’ (Chapter 17)

The odd thing about him is how little part he plays in the story – after a few scenes and bits of dialogue he more or less disappears. Maybe an indication that Christie introduced just a few more characters, complications and red herrings than the story could actually bear. Who cares? It’s the book’s fecundity, its sense of being full to the brim and then overflowing with characters and sub-plots which makes it so enjoyable.

Butlers

I imagine many scholars will have written papers about Christie’s butlers, valets and servants, such as Poirot’s man, George or the three different butlers in ‘The Seven Dials Mystery’. They are always a comic joy.

A very correct butler opened the door, with just the right amount of gloom in his bearing.
(Chapter 8)

Last word

Last word goes to the irrepressible Miss Marple. Here she is talking to the vicar narrator:

‘I remember a saying of my Great Aunt Fanny’s. I was sixteen at the time and thought it particularly foolish.’
‘Yes?’ I inquired.
‘She used to say: “The young people think the old people are fools; but the old people know the young people are fools!”‘
(Chapter 31)

Credit

‘The Murder at the Vicarage’ by Agatha Christie was published by the Collins Crime Club in 1930.

Related reviews

1930s reviews

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by Simon on July 18, 2025 • Permalink

Posted in Detective stories, Novel

Posted by Simon on July 18, 2025

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2025/07/18/the-murder-at-the-vicarage-agatha-christie/

The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie (1929)

‘I’m sorry, Bundle. Possibly the jolly old brain isn’t functioning as well as usual, but I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’
(One of the Bertie Wooster soundalike young chaps in ‘The Seven Dials Mystery’, page 159)

‘The Seven Dials Mystery’ is a murder mystery comedy, full of comically posh English characters, dastardly foreigners, an imperturbably solid English policeman and suavely reliable butlers, all fed into a preposterous plot about foreign powers trying to get their hands on the secrets of a new military invention. It is ludicrous from start to finish and very entertaining.

Also it’s a sequel. It’s in the same setting (a country house named Chimneys) and features many of the same characters (such as Superintendent Battle and Lady Eileen ‘Bundle’ Brent) as her 1925 novel The Secret of Chimneys.

For a start, the entire tone of the narrative and the dialogue sound like Christie lampooning or pastiching P.G. Wodehouse:

‘I say, oughtn’t we to have some lethal weapons? Chaps usually do when they’re going on this sort of stunt.’

‘What about me?’ she asked.
‘Nothing doing. You go to bed and sleep.’
‘Oh!’ said Bundle. ‘That’s not very exciting.’
‘You never know,’ said Jimmy kindly. ‘You may be murdered in your sleep.’

‘You ought to have told him what you thought of him.’
‘Unfortunately modern civilization rules that out,’ said Lord Caterham regretfully.

‘I know you’re the most frightful sport, Bundle, but—’
‘Cut out the compliments. Let’s make plans.’

‘I hope we shan’t go and shoot the wrong person,’ said Bill with some anxiety.
‘That would be unfortunate,’ said Mr Thesiger gravely.

The opening 30 pages or so of this book have more laughs in it than any of the Noel Coward plays I’ve just been reading, with a cast of posh young chaps entertaining doddering old aunties. Lady Coote’s interactions with the intimidating Scottish head gardener at Chimneys, in fact with all her staff, are priceless.

Lady Coote was… a lonely woman. The principal relaxation of her early married life had been talking to ‘the girl’—and even when ‘the girl’ had been multiplied by three, conversation with her domestic staff had still been the principal distraction of Lady Coote’s day. Now, with a pack of housemaids, a butler like an archbishop, several footmen of imposing proportions, a bevy of scuttling kitchen and scullery maids, a terrifying foreign chef with a ‘temperament’ and a housekeeper of immense proportions who alternately creaked and rustled when she moved, Lady Coote was as one marooned on a desert island.

As is caricature Lord Coote’s passion for that very 1920s game, golf:

Loraine had been at Chimneys for nearly a week, and had earned the high opinion of her host [Lord Coote] mainly because of the charming readiness she had shown to be instructed in the science of the mashie shot.

The dialogue of the bright young things staying at the country house, Chimneys, is humorously exaggerated.

‘And then, of course, the poor chap was dead. Which made the whole thing rather beastly.’

‘Thank the Heavens above I’m an educated man and know nothing whatever upon any subject at all.’

Everyone has posh nicknames – Pongo, Bundle, Codders, Socks.

The critics didn’t like ‘The Seven Dials Mystery’ and thought it was a lamentable lapse from the ‘serious’ tone required of a proper murder mystery. But I don’t read Christie for the whodunnit element, which I find ridiculously complicated and contrived – I mostly read her for what I’ve discovered is her broad comedy and so I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I have been really surprised reading Agatha Christie to discover 1) what pulpy trash she wrote early in her career (The Big Four) and 2) that she’s an essentially comic writer. Poirot is a comic creation and by and large we see him through the eyes of dim-witted Captain Hastings, who is an even more comic creation. They are a comedy duo – something which sets them apart from the superficially similar Holmes and Watson.

Bookish

Christie’s books are bookish but not in any intellectual sense, in the sense that she is very well aware that she is copying tropes and clichés from a zillion previous cheap thrillers and shilling shockers. The text is drenched in this ironic self-awareness, which is somehow meant to defuse the accusation that she was dealing in the most howling clichés.

‘A damned funny crowd,’ said Bundle, vigorously massaging her arms and legs. ‘As a matter of fact, they’re the sort of crowd I always imagined until tonight only existed in books.’

‘It’s impossible,’ said Jimmy, following out his own train of thought. ‘The beautiful foreign adventuress, the international gang, the mysterious No. 7, whose identity nobody knows – I’ve read it all a hundred times in books.’
‘Of course you have. So have I. But it’s no reason why it shouldn’t really happen.’

‘There’s the woman, of course,’ continued Jimmy. ‘She ought to be easier. But then, you’re not likely to run across her. She’s probably putting in the dirty work being taken out to dinner by amorous Cabinet Ministers and getting State secrets out of them when they’ve had a couple. At least, that’s how it’s done in books.’

‘An automatic, sir?’
‘That’s it,’ said Jimmy. ‘An automatic. And I should like it to be a blue-nosed one – if you and the shopman know what that is. In American stories, the hero always takes his blue-nosed automatic from his hip pocket.’

‘I say, Bundle,’ said Jimmy anxiously, ‘you haven’t been reading too much sensational literature, have you?’

‘What do you think it is?’ asked Bundle.
‘A white crystalline powder, that’s what it is,’ said Jimmy. ‘And to any reader of detective fiction those words are both familiar and suggestive.’

But having your characters (repeatedly) insist that this is the kind of thing that only happens in crime novels and thrillers doesn’t get you off the hook for copying the outlandish plots and melodramatic scenarios of previous crime novels and thrillers – it only emphasises the fact.

‘About this society, for instance – I know it’s common enough in books – a secret organization of criminals with a mysterious super-criminal at the head of it whom no one ever sees…

Maybe that’s why the whole thing is done in the frivolous style of Wodehouse, because it’s a way of defusing or deflecting criticism of its contrivance. Or maybe the constant harping on about how the plot is as wild as any silly thriller is part of the comedy.

Contemporary reviews

The reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement of 4 April 1929 put his finger on it: ‘It is a great pity that Mrs Christie should in this, as in a previous book, have deserted the methodical procedure of inquiry into a single and circumscribed crime for the romance of universal conspiracy and international rogues. These Gothic romances are not to be despised but they are so different in kind from the story of strict detection that it is unlikely for anyone to be adept in both.’

In her autobiography, Christie wrote that this book was what she called ‘the light-hearted thriller type’. She went on to say that they were always easy to write as they didn’t require too much plotting or planning, presumably in contrast to the very-tightly planned detective stories.

‘Light-hearted’. So that’s her own definition or genre.

Synopsis

Chimneys We are at an extended party at a posh country house, Chimneys, hosted by Sir Oswald and Lady Coote. Only a little into the book do we learn that Oswald is a self-made millionaire who made his fortune in steel, and who has rented Chimneys off its actual owner, Lord Caterham.

House guests The guests at the party are a bunch of posh young chaps – Gerry Wade, Jimmy Thesiger, Ronny Devereux, Bill Eversleigh, and Rupert ‘Pongo’ Bateman – along with some chapesses – Helen, Nancy and ‘Socks’.

The clock joke Wade has a habit of oversleeping so the others cook up a joke by motoring into the nearest town and buying eight alarm clocks which they place around his bedroom once he’s fast asleep.

Gerry dies The clocks go off, alright, everyone hears them, but no Gerry appears and next morning a footman finds Wade dead in his bed. There’s a bottle of chloral on his nightstand, so the more sensible guests, the police and then the coroner a few days later, conclude it was accidental overdose of this sleeping potion. But Thesiger notices that the alarm clocks they stashed around the room have all been neatly repositioned on the mantelpiece, and that one of them is missing. It is later found chucked out of the window into the hedge below. Why?

Lord Caterham returns A few days later the house party breaks up with most of the guests returning to London as the owner of the property, Lord Caterham and his daughter Lady Eileen ‘Bundle’ Brent, move back into Chimneys. In a comic Wodehousian way my Lord is disgruntled that someone had the bad manners to die in his house:

‘I don’t see why you’re so frightfully sensitive about it,’ said Bundle. ‘After all, people must die somewhere.’
‘They needn’t die in my house,’ said Lord Caterham.

The unfinished letter is a gung-ho type of chapess and she’s puzzled by aspects of Gerry’s death. She accidentally discovers a letter tucked away in the writing desk in the room where Wade was staying. It’s a draft of a letter he was writing to his half-sister, Loraine Wade, which contains the sinister sentence:

‘Look here, do forget what I said about that Seven Dials business. I thought it was going to be more or less of a joke, but it isn’t—anything but. I’m sorry I ever said anything about it—it’s not the kind of business kids like you ought to be mixed up in. So forget about it, see?’

What did he mean?

The young man who isn’t run over So Bundle decides to motor up to London to see Bill Eversleigh. She hasn’t got very far before a figure comes blundering out of the woods and, although she swerves, she thinks she’s run him over. Going back she realises she didn’t hit him but he is mortally wounded and expires anyway. Just before he dies he gasps out, ‘Seven Dials…’ and ‘Tell… Jimmy Thesiger’.

Bundle gets his body to a doctor who tells her that her car did not hit Devereux. He was shot.

George Lomax is having a party After handing the body over to the doctor, and answering some questions from the police, Bundle returns home. When she mentions ‘Seven Dials’ her father, Lord Caterham says that’s a funny coincidence. George Lomax, ‘His Majesty’s permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs’, had popped in, saying he was planning to have a political party at his home, Wyvern Abbey, the following week, but had received a ‘warning letter’, warning him off. What?

Bundle goes see Jimmy Thesiger So Bundle sets off a second time to drive up to London, to visit Jimmy Thesiger and discovers Loraine Wade also there waiting to see the tardy young man (who is woken and tended to by his excellent manservant Stevens, who bears a remarkable similarity to Jeeves). To cut a long story short, the three of them discuss the two mysterious deaths, the references to Seven Dials, and coalesce into a gang who agree to investigate the mystery, separate from the police.

Mafia joke When they ask Loraine what Gerry was writing to ask her to forget, she explains that she recently opened a letter addressed to him by mistake. It contained a list of names and numbers. Apparently, Gerry joked about there being an English version of the Mafia, except not as picturesque.

Hypothesis Jimmy summarises that the Seven Dials is a secret society which Gerry discovered, started off treating as a joke but learned was serious. He told Ronny Devereux about it and so, after they’d bumped off Gerry, the same people tracked down and bumped off Ronny. (All this is discussed in a jolly kind of way, just as Stevens arrives to announce that luncheon is served.)

Gerry was a spy When Bundle mentions that George Lomax is having a party but has received some kind of threat, Jimmy jumps to the conclusion that something is going to happen at this party (which it indeed does). He also shares the startling news that instead of being the dim, lazybones Gerry Wade came over as to his friends, he was in fact in the British Secret Service and spent most of the First World War in Germany as a spy.

‘Then the thing’s bigger than we thought. This Seven Dials business isn’t merely criminal—it’s international. One thing’s certain, somebody has got to be at this house-party of Lomax’s.’

Jimmy will go So Jimmy will attend this party at Wyvern Abbey, and he’ll get Bundle an invite but they both agree it’s too dangerous for Loraine to attend, which she meekly accepts (or appears to).

Superintendent Battle After lunch Bundle motors round to Scotland Yard where she meets up with Superintendent Battle, who appeared along with her in the book’s prequel. She shares everything she knows about the Gerry Wade case and asks to be let in on the facts. Battle tells her Bill Eversleigh will be able to help.

Date with Bill So she phones and makes a date to see Bill Eversleigh the following evening. First of all he tells her the guest list at George Lomax’s party. Then he tells her there’s a Seven Dials club. She insists he take her there, so off they go, arriving at 14 Hunstanton Street. They go in and dance and eat some fish and chips (!). Bundle notices that one of the staff was until recently a servant at Chimneys. That’s a bit of a coincidence.

Back at Chimneys Bundle goes back to Chimneys where she quizzes the staff and discovers the footman who left has been replaced by a new chap with the surname Bauer i.e. foreign. Hmm. Then she goes to see her redoubtable aunt, Marcia, Marchioness of Caterham, to get more information about the guests at Lomax’s forthcoming party.

Bullying Alfred Then she motors back up to London. Here she slips into disguise and goes along to the Seven Dials Club. Here she confronts the ex-footman with the accusation that he was somehow bribed to leave Chimneys. He simply says he was made a cash offer he couldn’t refuse by a Mr Mosgorovsky, the owner of the club.

The meeting room Bundle then persuades Aldred to show her the secret rooms upstairs, where illicit gambling goes on. He shows her the room but then reveals there is a secret latch into another room, the Meeting Room of the Seven Dials Society. Off to one side is a pair of cupboards. Bundle gets Alfred to squeeze her into one of them and then lock her into it, and promise to come back in the early hours to release her.

The Seven Dials society Why? Because there is a meeting of the Seven Dials committee planned and she plans to spy on it. Sure enough, a couple of hours later, the members of the secret society start to arrive.

From her hidden vantage point Bundle sees it all and it sounds exactly like the meeting of any other secret international organisation of conspirators. They call each other Number 1, Number 2 etc. There’s a Russian, an American, a Frenchman etc. They all complain that Number 7 never attends the meetings. And they are all wearing masks to conceal their identities, masks painted with the face of a clock, the dial. Seven dials!

She overhears them discussing the mysterious series of events in detail: discussing the murder of Gerry Wade, how they intend to manage the post-mortem on Ronnie Devereux, then they go through the guest list for the big party at George Lomax’s house. Clearly it is the next stage in the mystery for they explain how at this country house ‘party’ a German scientist called Eberhard will offer a secret formula for sale to the British Air Minister.

Far-fetched Then they all leave and Bundle has to put up with a few hours of exquisite discomfort locked in the closet before Alfred returns to unlock it and set here free, telling her the club is now empty. Her reporting of the meeting she’s just seen prompts the first of several jokey references to the far-fetched nature of the story.

‘A damned funny crowd,’ said Bundle, vigorously massaging her arms and legs. ‘As a matter of fact, they’re the sort of crowd I always imagined until tonight only existed in books.’

Briefing Jimmy After a few hours rest she rings up Jimmy to confer further. As she describes what she heard he echoes the absurd similarity between it all and the cheapest spy thriller:

‘It’s impossible,’ said Jimmy, following out his own train of thought. ‘The beautiful foreign adventuress, the international gang, the mysterious No. 7, whose identity nobody knows—I’ve read it all a hundred times in books.’
‘Of course you have. So have I. But it’s no reason why it shouldn’t really happen.’

Improved hypothesis Together they sketch out the plot. A man called Eberhard is attending the party at George Lomax’s. He is a German inventor and has developed a new technique for making super-strong steel. Implausibly, the German government turned it down so he’s brought it to the British government. Lomax has asked Sir Oswald the steel expert to assess it, while another guest is scheduled to be Sir Stanley Digby the Air Minister. So this ‘party’ is by way of being an unofficial conference on the viability of Eberhard’s invention and what Bundle overheard in the Seven Dials club is that the Seven Dials organisation intend to steal the formula.

A gun So Jimmy tells Bundle he is definitely attending this party and expects trouble. He asks his man, Stevens, to go and buy him a pistol. Again Christie jokily signals how much like a cheap spy thriller this is:

The party at Wyvern Abbey So Jimmy drives down to Wyvern Abbey the next day, where he meets and introduces Bundle to everyone. There’s half a dozen or more new characters for us to meet, and a lot of polite conversation as they all size each other up. In this respect it moves close to the classic Christie scenario of 8 or so suspects gathered in a country house where a crime is committed.

Bang in the night Long story short, after lots of banter and chat over dinner, all the guests go to bed. But Jimmy hears a noise in the library and goes downstairs. While here someone comes in and they have a fierce fight, which ends with shots being fired, one of them hitting Jimmy in the arm. but unbeknown to him, Bundle had also climbed out of her bedroom window and down the ivy and heard someone suspiciously creeping about on the terrace, when she turned a corner and blundered into who else by Superintendent Battle, being large and English and reassuring. After they’ve established why they are both there, Battle politely but firmly tells Bundle to go back to her bedroom. She’s just climbed back up the ivy when she hears shots from the library and goes running downstairs.

Loraine’s adventure Meanwhile the third member of this little gang of investigators, Loraine Wade, had been told not to attend the party at all but she disobeyed. That evening she dressed up in night adventure clothes and motored round to Wyvern Abbey. She has barely broken into the grounds and snuck up to the terrace when something lands, plop, at her feet. She picks it up. it is an envelope and a man is climbing out of a window above her.

Battle and bangs Loraine runs round the corner of the terrace smack into the arms of Superintendent Battle. He’s just asking her what she’s doing there when they both hear the shots and go running back to the french windows into the library.

Scene in the library Here they discover Jimmy unconscious, shot in the arm but alive. They tourniquet his arm then open the (locked) library door to let in all the other guests. They make several discoveries: first of all the assistant to the Air Minister, Terence O’Rourke, is found to have been drugged and the papers, which were in his keeping, to have been stolen. Next Sir Oswald comes in. He claims to have been out walking in the night air and seen someone running away across the lawn and, retracing their steps, to have found a small gun, which he now presents for everyone to see. Third, Loraine is produced, explains how she snuck into the grounds (against Jimmy’s advice) and caught the bundle which was thrown down to her, before she ran round the corner and bumped into Battle. Fourth, after all this exposition has taken a while, they discover behind a screen the unconscious body of one of the grandest guests, the Countess Radzky.

Countess Radzky’s version She has to be revived (comically) with a cocktail and proceeds to tell her account of the events i.e. she’s an insomniac, was in the library looking for a book when she heard the door slowly undo and so hid. She saw Jimmy come in and check everywhere out, then turn the lights off and sit down to see if anything happened, which it did an hour later when someone else came into the library and Jimmy leapt up to apprehend him, which turned into a fight, which led to shots being fired, Jimmy collapsing shot and the countess fainting.

Whodunnit This part, the centrepiece of the novel, is certainly like the classic country house whodunnit, with a number of clues and a variety of first-person accounts which clash or overlap and raise all kinds of questions.

Questions Who drugged Tommy O’Rourke and stole the papers? The same man who was climbing out the window when Loraine appeared? And why did he throw the bundle down to her? And why did he throw away his gun just where Sir Oswald could find it? And what was Sir Oswald doing prowling round the grounds in the early hours?

Next morning Superintendent Battle, George Lomax, Sir Oswald Coote and Jimmy Thesiger are joined by Bundle after breakfast at Wyverne Abbey and work through a variety of scenarios and hypotheses and that – as the narrative has arrived at a more convention country house whodunnit – is where I shall end my synopsis. If you want to find out what happens next, whodunnit and whether they get away with it, the entire text is easily available online, see link below. But I can hint at a happy ending:

‘Don’t tell me that you’re suffering from galloping consumption or a weak heart or anything like that, because I simply don’t believe it.’
‘It’s not death, said Bundle. ‘It’s marriage.’
‘Very nearly as bad,’ said Lord Caterham.

The strain

‘Twelve o’clock,’ said Bundle. ‘Good. I shall be here, if I’m still alive.’
‘Have you any reason to anticipate not being alive?’
‘One never knows,’ said Bundle. ‘The strain of modern life – as the newspapers say.’

Lord Caterham stared at him. It occurred to him that what was so often referred to as ‘the strain of modern life’ had begun to tell upon George.

Waster

Always thought the word ‘waster’ was a slang phrase referring to druggies from my boyhood in the 1970s. Surprised to find it being widely used in the 1920s (p.146).

Credit

‘The Seven Dials Mystery’ by Agatha Christie was published in 1929 by William Collins and Son. References are to the 1970 Fontana paperback edition.

Related reviews

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1920s reviews

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by Simon on July 16, 2025 • Permalink

Posted in Adventure, Detective stories, Novel

Posted by Simon on July 16, 2025

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The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie (1925)

‘Oh, damn!’ cried Virginia, jamming down the receiver. It was horrible to be shut up with a dead body and to have no one to speak to.
(Virginia Revel, chapter 8)

‘I’m sorry it were a foreigner,’ said Johnson, with some regret. It made the murder seem less real. Foreigners, Johnson felt, were liable to be shot.
(Constable Johnson, chapter 10)

‘The whole thing’s horribly mysterious.’
(Virginia Revel, chapter 15)

‘I should like to tell you the story of my life,’ he remarked, ‘but it’s going to be rather a busy evening.’
(Anthony, chapter 9)

‘Do you talk?’ asked Bundle. ‘Or are you just strong and silent?’
(Bundle to Anthony, chapter 15)

‘We’ve never had a murder in the house before. Exciting, isn’t it? I’m sorry your character was so completely cleared this morning. I’ve always wanted to meet a murderer and see for myself if they’re as genial and charming as the Sunday papers always say they are.’
(Bundle to Anthony, chapter 15)

‘I find talking to foreigners particularly fatiguing. I think it’s because they’re so polite.’
(Lord Caterham, chapter 16)

Bundle looked at him with lifted eyebrows. ‘Crook stuff?’ she inquired.
(Chapter 22)

‘I never deny anything that amuses me.’
(Anthony, chapter 27)

‘Oh, Anthony,’ cried Virginia. ‘How perfectly screaming!’
(Chapter 30)

International conspiracies

I thought the ridiculous novel ‘The Big Four’ with its plot about a fiendish international crime organisation must be an aberration in Christie’s oeuvre, which I had been led to believe was all about country house murder mysteries but not a bit of it – ‘The Secret of Chimneys’ is also about international intrigue and secret organisations, centres on political events on the other side of Europe and an international criminal master of disguise, not to mention gold hunting in Africa and American undercover detectives, all leading up to an outrageous series of revelations and reversals. And it was followed by a sequel (‘The Seven Dials Mystery’) which is even more preposterous. So half her output in the 1920s has more in common with espionage fiction than sedate murder mysteries.

Synopsis

Anthony Cade’s two tasks

The story starts in faraway Rhodesia. Here a jolly good chap named Anthony Cade is making money as a tour guide for pasty Brits. He bumps into an old pal, James McGrath, who gives him two rather bizarre tasks which both require a bit of backstory.

Count Stylptitch Some time earlier, in Paris, he’d seen a man be set upon by a group of thugs and had gone to his rescue. the man turned out to be Count Stylptitch, a courtier in the court of King Nicholas IV of the fictional country of Herzoslovakia. This country is notorious for its assassinations, and seven years earlier King Nicholas had been assassinated and the country became a republic. Count Stylptitch went into exile in Paris where McGrath happened to save him from a beating.

McGrath forgot about it until a few weeks ago when he received a parcel. It contained the memoirs of this Count Stylptitch and a note to the effect that if he delivered the manuscript to a certain firm of publishers (Messrs. Balderson and Hodgkins) in London on or before October 13, he would receive £1,000. Now McGrath is just about to go on an expedition into the interior of Africa in search of fabled gold mines, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so he asks Anthony a favour. Can he travel back to London, under the name James McGrath, hand over the manuscript to the publishers, and receive the £1,000. How about if he gives him 25%, £250. Anthony is sick of being a tour guide and so says yes.

Dutch Pedro But as if that wasn’t contorted and implausible enough, McGrath gives Anthony a second task. This is also related to a Good Samaritan intervention, for some time earlier, in Uganda, McGrath saw a man drowning in a river, dived in and saved him. Once rescued, this man (derogatorily referred to throughout simply as a ‘Dago’ [‘an insulting and contemptuous term for a person of Italian or Spanish birth or descent’]), although going under the name of Dutch Pedro, gives McGrath the most valuable thing he owns which turns out to be a bundle of love letters written by a married Englishwoman to someone not her husband. The D*** had been blackmailing her and now handed over the letters to McGrath so that he could blackmail her in his turn. The letters don’t contain an address but two clues: at one point they mention a place, a country house called Chimneys.

‘Chimneys?’ [Anthony] said. ‘That’s rather extraordinary.’
‘Why, do you know it?’
‘It’s one of the stately homes of England, my dear James. A place where Kings and Queens go for weekends, and diplomatists forgather and diplome.’

And one of the letters is signed with a name, Virginia Revel.

Right. So McGrath is tasking Anthony with taking both the memoirs and the letters back to England, handing over the memoirs to the nominated publisher, and tracking down and handing the letters back to this lady, Virginia Revel. Right. OK.

International intrigue

The second element in the setup and the reason all the action converges on this country house, Chimneys, is as follows. Oil has recently (and implausibly) been discovered in Herzoslovakia. At the same time the people have become disillusioned with their republican government and many hanker for a return of the monarchy. The British government is prepared to back the return of the nearest relative to the assassinated Nicholas IV to the throne, Prince Michael, in exchange for the new king and his government signing favourable oil concessions to a syndicate of British oil companies. These are represented by a Jewish businessman, Mr Herman Isaacstein (who is described with a wealth of antisemitic tropes and stereotypes).

The current Secretary of State, the permanently anxious and stressed George Lomax, who lives at a country pile named Wyvern Abbey, persuades his friend, the easy-going Lord Caterham, to host an informal meeting of all the people involved in this international plan, at his country house, Chimneys (seven miles from Wyvern). Here’s the tone of humorous Lord Caterham and his daughter:

‘Who wants to be a peer nowadays?’
‘Nobody,’ said Bundle. ‘They’d much rather keep a prosperous public house.’

They want to conceal the meeting’s true nature from a curious world (and the press) and so George asks Lord Caterham to invite other, ‘neutral’ guests to make it look like a genuine country house party. As George explains:

GEORGE: ‘One slip over this Herzoslovakian business and we’re done. It is most important that the Oil concessions should be granted to a British company. You must see that?’
LORD CATERHAM: ‘Of course, of course.’
GEORGE: ‘Prince Michael Obolovitch arrives the end of the week, and the whole thing can be carried through at Chimneys under the guise of a shooting party.’

So all converging on this lovely stately home are:

Lord Caterham – owner of Chimneys and reluctant host
Lady Eileen ‘Bundle’ Brent – eldest daughter of Lord Caterham
The Honourable George Lomax – Foreign Office
Bill Eversleigh – Lomax’s secretary
Herman Isaacstein – financier of the British oil syndicate
Prince Michael Obolovitch of Herzoslovakia –
Captain Andrassy – his equerry
Hiram P. Fish – collector of first editions, invited to the house party by Lord Caterham
Virginia Revel – cousin of George Lomax, daughter of a peer, society beauty and young widow of…
Timothy Revel, former British envoy to Herzoslovakia i.e. is familiar with the country and its politics
Tredwell – the grey-haired old butler

More about Chimneys:

Clement Edward Alistair Brent, ninth Marquis of Caterham, was a small gentleman, shabbily dressed, and entirely unlike the popular conception of a Marquis. He had faded blue eyes, a thin melancholy nose, and a vague but courteous manner. At one time Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, he had always bulked largely in the counsels of the Empire, and his country seat, Chimneys, was famous for its hospitality. Ably seconded by his wife, a daughter of the Duke of Perth, history had been made and unmade at informal week-end parties at Chimneys, and there was hardly anyone of note in England—or indeed in Europe—who had not, at one time or another, stayed there.

In London

But before we get to Chimneys, there are some important and ‘exciting’ scenes in London, some to do with Count Stylptitch’s memoirs, some to do with the blackmail letters of Virginia Revel.

The memoirs The thing about the Count’s memoirs is they may contain compromising information or stories about the assassinated king and his court which will wreck the Royalists’ plan of getting back into power. So on his first day back in London, Anthony he is approached by two different Herzoslovakian men who both try to acquire the manuscript. The first is a Count who supports the Royalist faction and offers to outbid the publisher in order to suppress any embarrassing information it might contain. Cade politely but firmly refuses. The second is a member of a revolutionary group, the Comrades of the Red Hand (‘They’re very fond of executing traitors. It has a picturesque element which seems to appeal to them’), who demands that Anthony hand it over at gunpoint. But Anthony is not only frightfully posh (Eton and Oxford) but because of his time in Africa, is lean, fit and can handle himself. So he disarms the man and sends him away.

The publisher McGrath mentioned phones Cade the next day, telling him that a) the situation has become very dangerous, with people contacting them and threatening them against publishing it and b) promising to send their employee, Mr Holmes, to pick up the memoir, which he duly does, takes delivery of the manuscript and hands over a cheque for £1,000. So Anthony thinks he has concluded one of his two tasks successfully.

So he carries out the next stage in his plan, which is to ditch the alias of James McGrath which he has used up to this point in order to get the £1,000 from the publishers. So he checks out of the posh Blitz Hotel where’s he’s been staying (and with that ‘James’ McGrath’ disappears from public records) and gets a taxi to a much cheaper hotel where he checks in under his own name, Anthony Cade.

However, just before he left the Blitz, he received a message brought by a messenger boy. This was written by George Lomax, who says he has only just learned of McGrath’s arrival in Britain with the fateful memoirs, and was begging James McGrath not to hand them over to the publishers until he (McGrath) comes to see him (Lomax) at a country house party being held this weekend at Chimneys.

Well, thinks Anthony laconically, it’s too late to prevent the handing over of the memoirs, and he is no longer ‘James McGrath’, but all this fuss about Chimneys doesn’t half tempt him to travel down to the place and gatecrash this weekend party.

The letters As to the blackmail letters, to go back a bit, the night before he checked out of the Blitz, Anthony awakens to discover one of the hotel waiters he recognises, Giuseppe, has broken into his room and is rummaging through his luggage. They have a fight, which is long enough for Anthony to see his face and hear his Italian accent, but the waiter breaks away and escapes and Anthony then discovers he has taken the packet of letters with him. Anthony suspects the man had been hired by one of the Herzoslovakian factions and took the letters by mistake, imagining a bunch of documents tied up in a bundle must be the famous memoirs.

So on one level this is a tale of two manuscripts, which get mixed up.

Virginia Revel

During these exciting two days Anthony had been trying to track down the ‘Virginia Revel’ mentioned in the letters. He had discovered from the telephone directory that there were six Virginia Revels in the London area and had begun the process of visiting them to identify the correct one.

Now we cut to the experiences of the Virginia Revel who the story is going to increasingly feature. But the important thing to bear in mind is that she is not the Virginia Revel of the letters. She never wrote the letters, she’s got nothing to do with them. She is the wrong Virginia Revel.

But the Italian waiter who stole the bundle from Anthony’s hotel room, having realised their blackmail potential, makes the same mistake as everyone else and approaches her, the wrong Virginia Revel, with a sample letter. He turns up at Virginia’s home and, unaware that she did not write the letters and that her husband is dead, he attempts to blackmail her.

Now here’s the thing about this book, its characters, plot and tone: Virginia immediately realises that she is not the Virginia Revel who wrote the letters but she decides to humour the blackmailer and pretend that she is! Why? For the lolz. For the gagz. To see what it feels like to be blackmailed.

Exactly like Anthony Cade, this Virginia Revel is so confident of her place in English society and the English class system (cousin of George Lomax, daughter of a peer, society beauty and widow of an ambassador) that she treats everything that happens in her life with droll, upper-class confidence, as endless sources of potential amusement. Later, it is said of her that:

Her position was so assured and unassailable that anyone for whom she vouched was accepted as a matter of course. (Chapter 13)

To use the modern phrase, both Virginia and Anthony positively reek of upper class privilege, and it is their cheerful, indomitable, ironic handling of all the aspects of a traditional murder mystery (international intrigue, disguises, dead bodies) which make the book such fun to read.

So on this frivolous impulse Virginia plays the part of a blackmail victim, hands over the petty cash she has in the house and promises to pay him more tomorrow at 6 o’clock. But when she arrives home the next day, after playing tennis (one of the new 1920s sporting fads, along with golf – see The Murder on the Links) she finds this same blackmailer shot dead in her house.

Virginia has a maid, Élise, who she tells to go out on a chore while she ponders what to do next, just as who turns up on her doorstep? The tall confident hero of the book, Anthony Wade. At this point he hasn’t revealed his name and is posing as a member of the unemployed because he’s still sussing out whether Virginia is the Virginia. But she pulls him inside and says she’s got a job for him. Immediately they hit it off with a shared sense of upper class savoir faire and a certain amount of physical attraction, too.

‘This isn’t regular work you’re offering me, I hope?’
A smile hovered for a moment on her lips.
‘It’s very irregular.’
‘Good,’ said the young man in a tone of satisfaction.
(Chapter 8)

Virginia tells him about the body which they both treat with upper-class confidence.

‘There’s a dead man in the next room,’ said Virginia. ‘He’s been murdered, and I don’t know what to do about it.’
She blurted out the words as simply as a child might have done. The young man went up enormously in her estimation by the way he accepted her statement. He might have been used to hearing a similar announcement made every day of his life.
‘Excellent,’ he said, with a trace of enthusiasm. ‘I’ve always wanted to do a bit of amateur detective work.’
(Chapter 8)

When he inspects the corpse, Anthony realises it’s the same waiter who broke into his room at the Blitz and stole the letters. He promises to get rid of the corpse. After all, he’s never disposed of a dead body before and is quite thrilled at the idea, just as Virginia had never been blackmailed before and was up for the lolz.

‘I’ve always wanted to see if I couldn’t conceal a crime with the necessary cunning, but have had a squeamish objection to shedding blood.’
(Chapter 9)

And:

Virginia: ‘It’s really dreadful of me saddling a perfect stranger with a dead body like this.’
‘I like it,’ returned Anthony nonchalantly. ‘If one of my friends, Jimmy McGrath, were here, he’d tell you that anything of this kind suits me down to the ground.’
(Chapter 9)

So Anthony puts the body into one of Virginia’s trunk, then there’s a lot of fol-de-rol about her taking it to a train station and leaving it in left luggage, Anthony collecting it, putting it in his car and driving out of London. Way out in the sticks he dumps the body along a stretch of empty road (on ‘the long stretch of road mid-way between Hounslow and Staines’, not so quiet and unfrequented now!).

Oh yes, there’s an aspect of the murder which puzzled our two posh amateur sleuths which is that the gun which shot the blackmailer was left by his body. Why? And a bigger question: the little gun was engraved with the name of ‘Virginia’!! Had she seen it before? No, she insists. Then what? Why? And of course the bigger question, Who shot him in the first place, and why?

Something else I haven’t mentioned yet, which is that when Virginia first got home from tennis, she discovered that all her servants including the devoted butler, all except Élise the maid, had gone down to Datchet (a small town outside Windsor). What? Turns out she owns a little country place there and from time to time asks her servants to go there and prepare it for her. But not today. Someone else sent the household a telegram to be out, someone who knows all about her household arrangements and habits. But who? And why?

And I also haven’t had space to explain yet, but all this happens on the very afternoon of the day she’s due to go down to Chimneys, for what she thinks, at this stage, will be a jolly country house party. Now when Anthony read the blackmail letters back in Africa, one of the few clues in them was mention of this same country house, Chimneys. And when Anthony rifled through the dead man’s pockets, in the lining of his coat he found a scrap of paper with a fragment of text on it, reading ‘Chimneys 11.45 Thursday.’

The letters mention Chimneys. This scrap of paper mentions Chimneys. Virginia has been invited to Chimneys. So as the pair confer they become increasingly certain that something is going to happen at this place, Chimneys, and during this supposed country house party. But what?

So after disposing of the corpse, as described, Anthony gets back in his ‘battered second-hand Morris Cowley’ and drives north till he comes to the wall surrounding the Chimneys estate. A wall isn’t going to stop out hero, so he climbs over it, walks across the wet grounds, and is just approaching the house itself when he hears a short ring out!

Oh no! Is he too late? Has someone been murdered? Who? And Why? Is Virginia safe? Will Anthony find himself suspected of the murder?

I’ve summarised about the first third of the story. At this point I think that, in the spirit of the thing, I’ll stop my summary. If you want to enjoy the further complications, red herrings and improbable explanations which Christie cooks up in profusion, the entire novel is freely available to read online. Clue:

‘How frightfully exciting,’ commented Bundle. ‘You don’t usually get a murder and a burglary crowded into one week-end.’

The only thing I will say is that, when there is trouble at Chimneys on the fateful weekend (as the reader, by now, strongly expects there will be) it triggers the introduction of the bluff, imperturbable Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard:

… a squarely built middle-aged man with a face so singularly devoid of expression as to be quite remarkable.
(Chapter 11)

who was to go on and become a recurring character in Christie’s work, appearing in a further four novels. Everyone realises how canny he is in his quiet unassuming way:

But at that moment, the moment when Battle apparently admitted Anthony’s complete absence of complicity in the crime, Anthony felt more than ever the need of being upon his guard. Superintendent Battle was a very astute officer. It would not do to make any slip with Superintendent Battle about.
(Chapter 12)

Antisemitism

I’ve noticed the presence of antisemitic animus on a number of authors of this period, including Saki, D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. In this novel the antisemitic tropes gather around the figure of the Jewish financier, Mr Herman Isaacstein.

There was one other person in the room, a big man sitting in a chair by the fireplace. He was dressed in very correct English shooting clothes which nevertheless sat strangely upon him. He had a fat yellow face, and black eyes, as impenetrable as those of a cobra. There was a generous curve to the big nose and power in the square lines of the vast jaw.

Earlier Lord Caterham, otherwise a genial old cove, refers to Isaacstein as ‘Mr Ikey Hermanstein’ and then as ‘Nosystein’ (with reference to his big hooked pantomime Jew’s nose) and later to ‘Fat Iky’.

The cobra simile stated in the passage above is repeated later:

His [Isaacstein’s] black eyes were bent upon the detective. More than ever, he reminded Battle of a hooded cobra.

Later:

VIRGINIA: ‘Isaacstein looks foreign enough, Heaven knows.’

The lazy antisemitic tropes surrounding him are unpleasant.

Black

If we’re pointing out slurs, there’s a race-related moment right at the novel’s conclusion when, for a moment, his friends panic that Anthony might have married a black woman!

The Baron retreated a step or two. Dismay overspread his countenance. ‘Something wrong I knew there would be,’ he boomed. ‘Merciful God in Heaven! He has married a black woman in Africa!’
‘Come, come, it’s not so bad as all that,’ said Anthony, laughing. ‘She’s white enough—white all through, bless her.’

The more you reflect on this little exchange, the worse it becomes.

Balkans business

To a very large extent the text is made up of clichés, I think Christie’s claim to novelty at the time must surely have been not so much the subject matter or behaviour of the characters so much as the extraordinary complexity of the twists and turns of the narrative, the laying of countless false clues, and then the dazzling revelations at the end which come as a complete surprise (as they do in this novel).

History of Ruritania

The fictional country of Ruritania is first mentioned in The Prisoner of Zenda. According to the Wikipedia article ‘Nowadays, the term connotes a quaint minor European country’ associated with kings and princes with preposterous names, colourful costumes, in a state of permanent political unrest. The same idea – of the Balkans as the home of a particular type of comic political intrigue – is found all over early 20th century fiction, in various Sherlock Holmes stories, Arnold Bennett’s preposterous comedy thriller the Grand Hotel Babylon, in John Buchan thrillers, through to Tintin whose 1938 adventure ‘King Ottokar’s Sceptre’ is set in the fictional Balkan (i.e. Ruritanian) country of Syldavia, complete with fragile kings and plotting courtiers etc etc.

My point is that The Secret of Chimneys can be added to the list of fictions which use the clichés and tropes of the embattled royal family of a fictional Balkan state to manufacture a popular thriller narrative.

Christie’s bookishness

Not literary references, the opposite: I’m referring to her compulsive need to have the narrator or characters make regular comparisons to the clichés and stereotypes of the cheap thrillers and thousands of other detective novels which clearly infested the world, even by the early 1920s.

About the same height as Mr. Cade, but thickset and not nearly so good-looking. The sort of man one read about in books, who probably kept a saloon.
(Narrator)

‘As they say in books. Guile, George, lots of guile.’
(Virginia)

‘First a blackmailer, and then George in diplomatic difficulties. Will he tell all to the beautiful woman who asks for his confidence so pathetically? No, he will reveal nothing until the last chapter.’
(Virginia)

‘Good heavens!’ cried Virginia. ‘Is this Sherlock Holmes?’
‘No,’ said Anthony regretfully. ‘I’m afraid it’s just plain or garden cheating.’

‘And whatever you may imagine from reading detective stories, doctors aren’t such magicians that they can tell you exactly how many hours a man has been dead.’
(Anthony)

‘I take it that you didn’t meet the murdered man?’
‘No. To put it like a book, he “retired to his own apartments immediately on arrival.”‘
(Anthony and Virginia)

‘Why did you seem so surprised when I mentioned the name of Jimmy McGrath to you yesterday at Pont Street? Had you heard it before?’
‘I had, Sherlock Holmes.’
(Anthony and Virginia, chapter 15)

‘I suspected the French governess, Battle. A: Upon the grounds of her being the most unlikely person, according to the canons of the best fiction…
(Anthony, chapter 18)

‘Do you really think this Arsène Lupin fellow is actually among the household now?’ asked Bill, his eyes sparkling. [a reference to the fictional gentleman thief and master of disguise created in 1905 by French writer Maurice Leblanc.] (Chapter 18)

And Christie has Battle deliver a little lecture on the subject.

‘In the meantime,’ said Anthony, ‘I am still the amateur assistant?’
‘That’s it, Mr. Cade.’
‘Watson to your Sherlock, in fact?’
‘Detective stories are mostly bunkum,’ said Battle unemotionally. ‘But they amuse people,’ he added, as an afterthought. ‘And they’re useful sometimes.’
‘In what way?’ asked Anthony curiously.
‘They encourage the universal idea that the police are stupid. When we get an amateur crime, such as a murder, that’s very useful indeed.’

As I’ve said elsewhere, keeping on mentioning how your story is different from cheap thrillers doesn’t really differentiate it, but only signposts the similarities.

That said, maybe I’m missing the point and all these references are in fact just a type of joke – it’s a comedy stopgap to have the characters constantly referring to the clichés of crime novels and detective movies, self consciously mocking their own bravery or actions.

He wriggled into a lurid silk dressing-gown, and picked up a poker. ‘The orthodox weapon,’ he observed. (Bill Eversleigh, chapter 17)

And:

‘What’s this I hear about Virginia bolting off in the middle of the night? She’s not been kidnapped, has she?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Bundle. ‘She left a note pinned to the pincushion in the orthodox fashion.’ (Chapter 27)

And:

‘And don’t scream or faint or anything. I won’t let anyone hurt you.’
‘My hero!’ murmured Virginia.

And:

‘The plot thickens,’ said Anthony lightly.

Comedy

Or just jokes:

‘There’s an extraordinary lot of character in ears, Mr. Cade.’
‘Don’t look so hard at mine, Battle,’ complained Anthony. ‘You make me quite nervous.’

The book is stuffed with comic repartee:

‘I say, Virginia, I do love you so awfully—’
‘Not this morning, Bill. I’m not strong enough. Anyway, I’ve always told you the best people don’t propose before lunch.’

Or:

‘I can’t think,’ said Lord Caterham, ‘why nobody nowadays ever sits still after a meal. It’s a lost art.’

Agatha Christie is by far a more comic writer than Noel Coward ever was. Coward’s plays overflow with rancorous bickering but contain pitifully few really funny bits of repartee. Whereas Christie’s novels overflow with good-humoured comedy everywhere.

‘Half a second,’ said Anthony. “I’ve got a confession to make to you, Virginia. Something that everyone else knows, but that I haven’t yet told you.’
‘I don’t mind how many strange women you’ve loved so long as you don’t tell me about them.’
‘Women!’ said Anthony, with a virtuous air. ‘Women indeed? You ask James here what kind of women I was going about with last time he saw me.’
‘Frumps,’ said Jimmy solemnly. ‘Utter frumps. Not one a day under forty-five.’
‘Thank you, Jimmy,’ said Anthony, ‘you’re a true friend.’

‘I’m taking the Panhard up to town after lunch,’ she remarked. ‘Anyone want a lift? Wouldn’t you like to come, Mr. Cade? We’ll be back by dinner-time.’
‘No, thanks,’ said Anthony. ‘I’m quite happy and busy down here.’
‘The man fears me,’ said Bundle. ‘Either my driving or my fatal fascination! Which is it?’
‘The latter,’ said Anthony. ‘Every time.’

Women’s roles

Besides beauty, she possessed courage and brains.

Noel Coward gets credit for the unabashed modernity of his women characters, who have short hair, wear short skirts, smoke and drink and openly talk about shocking subjects – yet I find exactly the same behaviour in Christie’s young 1920s women. Both Virginia and Bundle are no-nonsense, go-for-it young women who regard old chauvinist attitudes of the fuddy-duddy men around them as ludicrous.

‘Listen to me, Virginia,’ said Bill. ‘This is man’s work—’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Bill.’

They have to put up with no end of sexist generalisations which justify Virginia Woolf’s accusations in her feminist masterpiece Three Guineas.

MCGRATH: ‘Like all women, she’d put no date and no address on most of the letters.’
LOMAX: ‘Not that I approve of women in politics—St. Stephen’s is ruined, absolutely ruined, nowadays. But woman in her own sphere can do wonders…’

Even that nice Mr Anthony:

‘You’re a very unusual woman,’ said Anthony suddenly, turning and looking at her.
‘Why?’
‘You can refrain from asking questions.’

And are aware that the world they operate in, the culture they move in, is drenched with sexist put-downs:

VIRGINIA: ‘We women are usually supposed to be cats, but at any rate I’d done another woman a good turn this afternoon.’

‘I know,’ said Virginia. ‘Women are so indiscreet! I’ve often heard George say so.’

And Virginia is asked by Lomax to ‘Delilah’ the memoirs out of this man McGrath i.e. to sweet-talk or seduce them out of him – a suggestion she rejects with disgust.

Thus Christie depicts the world of sexist assumptions which her independent women have to operate in. And yet they not only reject sexist generalisations or suggestions to the speaker’s face, more importantly they act with a fearlessness and freedom which completely contradicts the sexist slurs. And they drive like demons, witness Bundle’s crazy driving which sometimes hits the reckless speed of fifty miles an hour!

‘I shouldn’t recommend driving with you as a tonic for nervous old ladies, but personally I’ve enjoyed it. The last time I was in equal danger was when I was charged by a herd of wild elephants.’

‘Tim Revel was bowled over by Virginia—he was Irish, you know, and most attractive, with a genius for expressing himself well. Virginia was quite young—eighteen. She couldn’t go anywhere without seeing Tim in a state of picturesque misery, vowing he’d shoot himself or take to drink if she didn’t marry him. Girls believe these things—or used to—we’ve advanced a lot in the last eight years.’

Class

Of course the fearlessness of the two posh young women, Virginia and Bundle, stems in large part because of their upper-class provenance. Their superb confidence derives from their fearless upbringing. At one point Christie has Superintendent Battle give this definitive formulation:

‘Well, you see, Mr. Cade, most of my work has lain amongst these people. What they call the upper classes, I mean. You see, the majority of people are always wondering what the neighbours will think. But tramps and aristocrats don’t—they just do the first thing that comes into their heads, and they don’t bother to think what anyone thinks of them. I’m not meaning just the idle rich, the people who give big parties, and so on, I mean those that have had it born and bred in them for generations that nobody else’s opinion counts but their own. I’ve always found the upper classes the same—fearless, truthful and sometimes extraordinarily foolish.’

Battle’s methods

Battle’s procedure:

‘It’s rather too soon to have ideas, Mr Isaacstein. I’ve not got beyond asking myself the first question.’
‘What is that?’
‘Oh, it’s always the same. Motive. Who benefits by the death of Prince Michael?’
(Chapter 15)

And:

‘I’m glad of that,’ said Anthony. ‘I’ve a feeling that ever since I met you you’ve been laying little traps for me. On the whole I’ve managed to avoid falling into them, but the strain has been acute.’
Battle smiled grimly.
‘That’s how you get a crook in the end, sir. Keep him on the run, to and fro, turning and twisting. Sooner or later, his nerve goes, and you’ve got him.’

And humour:

‘You’ve got a plan, eh?’
‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’ve got a plan. But I’ve got an idea. It’s a very useful thing sometimes, an idea.’

Heightism

A symptom of the pulpy, silly, tongue-in-cheek feel of the whole thing is how many people are commandingly tall:

The hero:

They all admired Mr Cade so much, his tall lean figure, his sun-tanned face, the light-hearted manner with which he settled disputes and cajoled them all into good temper.

And the heroine:

Virginia Revel was just twenty-seven. She was tall and of an exquisite slimness—indeed, a poem might have been written to her slimness, it was so exquisitely proportioned.

And the other heroine:

The door opened and a girl came into the room. She was tall, slim and dark, with an attractive boyish face, and a very determined manner. This was Lady Eileen Brent, commonly known as Bundle, Lord Caterham’s eldest daughter.

The blackmailer:

Anthony observed him more closely. He was a tall man, supple like all waiters, with a clean-shaven, mobile face. An Italian, Anthony thought, not a Frenchman.

The police inspector:

A tall portly man, Inspector Badgworthy, with a heavy regulation tread. Inclined to breathe hard in moments of professional strain.

The American:

On the threshold stood a tall man with black hair neatly parted in the middle, china blue eyes with a particularly innocent expression, and a large placid face.

The dead prince’s aide-de-camp:

He returned shortly accompanied by a tall fair man with high cheek-bones, and very deep-set blue eyes, and an impassivity of countenance which almost rivalled Battle’s.

It is a Photoshopped world of fine physical specimens.

Phrases

revenons à nos moutons = French for ‘Let’s get back to the subject at hand’

A ‘cat’ is, from the context, a gossipy bitch.

Even women like her because she isn’t a bit of a cat.

I think characters in Coward use the word in the same sense and, as we will see, Christie uses it freely in virtually all her early novels.

Marrows

When Anthony talks about retiring the first image that comes into his mind is retiring to a nice place in the country and ‘growing vegetable marrows’. Now this was precisely Poirot’s activity in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd where he threw one of his marrows over the fence of his rented cottage and accidentally hit his neighbour, Dr Sheppard, the extremely unreliable narrator of that story.

The Tube

Couldn’t help laughing out loud when Anthony has a little speech explaining why the single thing which undermined his lifelong belief in equality and democracy was getting on the London Tube.

‘You see, when I was very young, I had democratic ideas. Believed in the purity of ideals, and the equality of all men. I especially disbelieved in Kings and Princes.’
‘And since then?’ asked Battle shrewdly.
‘Oh, since then, I’ve travelled and seen the world. There’s damned little equality going about. Mind you, I still believe in democracy. But you’ve got to force it on people with a strong hand—ram it down their throats. Men don’t want to be brothers—they may some day, but they don’t now. My final belief in the Brotherhood of Man died the day I arrived in London last week, when I observed the people standing in a Tube train resolutely refuse to move up and make room for those who entered. You won’t turn people into angels by appealing to their better natures just yet awhile—but by judicious force you can coerce them into behaving more or less decently to one another to go on with. I still believe in the Brotherhood of Man, but it’s not coming yet awhile. Say another ten thousand years or so. It’s no good being impatient. Evolution is a slow process.’

Well, it’s a hundred years later and the situation is, if anything, worse. The company I work for are forcing us to come back to the office because they apparently think that spending an hour with your face in someone else’s armpit, in hundred degree heat on the Northern Line, twice a day, will miraculously increase their employees’ productivity and creativity.

Credit

‘The Secret of Chimneys’ by Agatha Christie was published in 1925 by William Collins and Son.

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by Simon on July 4, 2025 • Permalink

Posted in Detective stories, Novel

Tagged Africa, Agatha Christie, Anthony Cade, Antisemitism, Arnold Bennett, Arsène Lupin, Élise, Bill Eversleigh, Blitz Hotel, Bundle, Bundle Brent, Captain Andrassy, Cat, chauvinism, Chimneys, Clement Edward Alistair Brent, Comrades of the Red Hand, Constable Johnson, Count Stylptitch, detective novel, Dutch Pedro, Eton, Feminism, Foreign Office, George Lomax, Grand Hotel Babylon, Heightism, Herman Isaacstein, Herzoslovakia, Hiram P Fish, Inspector Badgworthy, international intrigue, James McGrath, John Buchan, King Nicholas IV, Lady Eileen Brent, Lord Caterham, Marrows, Maurice Leblanc, Messrs. Balderson and Hodgkins, Morris Cowley, Mr Holmes, murder, Murder Mystery, ninth Marquis of Caterham, Noel Coward, novel, Oxford, Paris, Politics, Prince Michael Obolovitch, Prince Michael Obolovitch of Herzoslovakia, revenons à nos moutons, Rhodesia, Ruritania, Scotland Yard, sexism, Sherlock Holmes, Superintendant Battle, Superintendent Battle, the Balkans, The Big Four, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Prisoner of Zenda, The Secret of Chimneys, The Seven Dials Mystery, Three Guineas, Tim Revel, Timothy Revel, Tintin, Tredwell, Uganda, Virginia Revel, Virginia Woolf, Wyvern, Wyvern Abbey

Posted by Simon on July 4, 2025

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2025/07/04/the-secret-of-chimneys-agatha-christie/

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One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie (1940)

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The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (1930)

Introducing Miss Marple

Leonard Clement

The murderee

The cast

Details

Maps

Miss Marple’s approach

Becoming Miss Marple

Triumph

Sexism

Summary of sexism

Cats

Shot

Bookish

Butlers

Last word

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The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie (1929)

Bookish

Contemporary reviews

Synopsis

The strain

Waster

Credit

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The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie (1925)

International conspiracies

Synopsis

Anthony Cade’s two tasks

International intrigue

In London

Virginia Revel

Antisemitism

Black

Balkans business

History of Ruritania

Christie’s bookishness

Comedy

Women’s roles

Class

Battle’s methods

Heightism

Phrases

Marrows

The Tube

Credit

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