‘If that draft treaty turns up—we’re done. England will be plunged in anarchy!’
(Mr Carter, not stinting on the melodrama)

‘Neither of you will leave this room alive!’
(Mwah ha ha, laughed the fiendish baddie, twirling his moustaches)

Certainly Mr Brown’s organization was a far-reaching concern. The common criminal, the well-bred Irish gentleman, the pale Russian, and the efficient German master of the ceremonies! Truly a strange and sinister gathering!
(Yes, it’s the cosmopolitan members of a secret international organisation devoted to sowing anarchy and revolution!)

‘We’ve tried all the orthodox ways, yes. But suppose we try the unorthodox. Tommy – let’s be adventurers!’
(Tuppence coming up with the starting premise of the story)

Christie’s second novel

Published in 1922, ‘The Secret Adversary’ was Agatha Christie’s second novel. Her husband, Archie Christie, playfully encouraged her to write another one after the first one had been published to moderate success in 1920. That debut, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, had been a straightforward detective story and introduced what nobody yet suspected would become the phenomenally successful figure of Hercule Poirot.

By contrast, Christie’s publisher, John Lane, weren’t at all keen on the new one and the way it represented such a drastic switch of genres. Because ‘The Secret Adversary’ is a full-on, John Buchanesque thriller, a spy story, all about a sinister international organisation planning to overthrow the government and spread anarchy on the streets of England, complete with secret meetings, kidnap, fake identities, frantic car chases and shoot-outs. To call it melodrama is to understate the preposterousness of the plot. But it is also very funny.

Setup

Prologue aboard a doomed ship

It was 2pm on the afternoon of May 7, 1915. The American ocean liner Lusitania had been struck by two German torpedoes in succession and was sinking rapidly. A young woman stands by the lifeboats when she is approached by a man who gets talking to her then asks a desperate favour. He hands her a bundle of papers and says they are vital to the safety of Britain. If he doesn’t make it, she must hand it in to the American embassy. She gets into a lifeboat. The ship sinks. The mysterious prologue ends…

Enter Tommy and Tuppence

The scene cuts to a London tea rooms and a completely different tone, as we are introduced to two spiffing young people, Tommy Beresford and Prudence ‘Tuppence‘ Cowley. They knew each other before the War and have now made an arrangement to lunch together.

Here’s Tuppence:

They were an essentially modern-looking couple as they sat there. Tuppence had no claim to beauty, but there was character and charm in the elfin lines of her little face, with its determined chin and large, wide-apart grey eyes that looked mistily out from under straight, black brows. She wore a small bright green toque over her black bobbed hair, and her extremely short and rather shabby skirt revealed a pair of uncommonly dainty ankles.

Later on:

‘Where’s this young lady I’ve been hearing such a lot about?’
Tommy introduced Tuppence.
‘Ha!’ said Sir William, eyeing her. ‘Girls aren’t what they used to be in my young days.’
‘Yes, they are,’ said Tuppence. ‘Their clothes are different, perhaps, but they themselves are just the same.’
‘Well, perhaps you’re right. Minxes then—minxes now!’
‘That’s it,’ said Tuppence. ‘I’m a frightful minx myself.’
‘I believe you,’ said the old gentleman, chuckling, and pinched her ear in high good-humour. Most young women were terrified of the ‘old bear’, as they termed him. Tuppence’s pertness delighted the old misogynist.
(Chapter 27)

Here’s Tommy:

His bared head revealed a shock of exquisitely slicked-back red hair. His face was pleasantly ugly—nondescript, yet unmistakably the face of a gentleman and a sportsman. His brown suit was well cut, but perilously near the end of its tether.

And later on, Mr Carter describes Tommy to no less a personage than the Prime Minister, who is (impressively) kept informed of their investigations:

‘Outwardly, he’s an ordinary clean-limbed, rather block-headed young Englishman. Slow in his mental processes. On the other hand, it’s quite impossible to lead him astray through his imagination. He hasn’t got any—so he’s difficult to deceive. He worries things out slowly, and once he’s got hold of anything he doesn’t let go. The little lady’s quite different. More intuition and less common sense. They make a pretty pair working together. Pace and stamina.’

Let’s be adventurers!

So here Tommy and Tuppence are together in this tea room and they quickly discover that neither of them can get a job and so they are both broke. Tommy had hopes of inheriting from his rich uncle but they’ve had a falling out and he can’t get a job no matter how hard he tries.

There was a silence, and then Tuppence burst out:
‘Money, money, money! I think about money morning, noon and night! I dare say it’s mercenary of me, but there it is!’
‘Same here,’ agreed Tommy with feeling.

Bantering conversation leads them to cook up the idea of forming a company – The Young Adventurers, Ltd – offering to hire themselves out, so they put an ad in The Times.

‘Two young adventurers for hire. Willing to do anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good. No unreasonable offer refused.’

High-speed summary

Whittington The plot is full of yawning holes from the beginning. Their first client, a Mr Whittington, approaches after overhearing them. He gives them his card and Tuppence goes to see him in his office at The Esthonia Glassware Co. Whittington offers her a large sum to impersonate someone in Paris but when he asks her name, on a whim she replies with the name ‘Jane Finn’, a name Tommy causally mentions having heard someone mention in the street on the way to his tea with Tuppence. She repeats it now as a lark and is astonished at the result, for it completely startles Whittington. It’s the first inkling we have that this Jane Finn is at the centre of the plot.

Advertising for leads Clearly perturbed, Whittington offers Tuppence £50. She realises that he thinks she’s blackmailing him. He asks her to return the next day for details of the job, but when she goes back, his office has been closed. Clearly there’s something in this woman’s name so Tommy and Tuppence advertise for information about Jane Finn and receive two replies, from a Mr Carter and a Mr Julius Hersheimmer.

Carter’s briefing When they go to meet Carter Tommy recognizes him from his wartime service in British Intelligence and also that it isn’t his real name. ‘Carter’ describes the story of the Lusitania, confirming our suspicion that in the scene in the Prologue, the girl who received the vital documents was this Jane Finn and the man who gave it to her, a British agent.

The secret treaty Carter explains that the document is a top secret diplomatic treaty and, if its terms were revealed, it would trigger widespread protests, a general strike and the fall of the government. As such, it is gold dust to enemies of Britain and any secret organisations devoted to sowing chaos and revolution! In fact, he goes on to explain, there is exactly such a secret organisation in operation, led by a fiendish mastermind known only by the name… Mr Brown! (Shame Christie couldn’t think up something more operatic, more James Bondish.)

‘Here is a certain man, a man whose real name is unknown to us, who is working in the dark for his own ends. The Bolshevists are behind the Labour unrest—but this man is behind the Bolshevists. Who is he? We do not know. He is always spoken of by the unassuming title of ‘Mr Brown.’ But one thing is certain, he is the master criminal of this age. He controls a marvellous organization. Most of the Peace propaganda during the war was originated and financed by him. His spies are everywhere. (Chapter 4)

Having explained all this, Carter hires Tommy and Tuppence to find her and, if possible, reveal the identity of the mysterious Mr Brown. But they must beware!

Those people are absolutely desperate and incapable of either mercy or pity. I feel that you probably underestimate the danger, and therefore warn you again that I can promise you no protection. (Chapter 9)

The first thing Tuppence does with the advance Carter gives them, is check into the Ritz Hotel and treat herself to a blowout meal.

Hersheimmer They then get in touch with the second replier, Julius Hersheimmer. He turns out to be a rangy, confident American multimillionaire, the kind of guy you want on your team. He replied to their ad because he’s none other than Jane Finn’s cousin.

If you think about it the Lusitania sank in 1915 and it is 1920…. hmmm… Where has Jane got to in the intervening years?

Rita Vandemeyer Tommy and Tuppence’s investigating leads them to the home of Mrs Marguerite ‘Rita’ Vandemeyer. She is a smooth, classy woman.

A woman was standing by the fireplace. She was no longer in her first youth, and the beauty she undeniably possessed was hardened and coarsened. In her youth she must have been dazzling. Her pale gold hair, owing a slight assistance to art, was coiled low on her neck, her eyes, of a piercing electric blue, seemed to possess a faculty of boring into the very soul of the person she was looking at. Her exquisite figure was enhanced by a wonderful gown of indigo charmeuse. And yet, despite her swaying grace, and the almost ethereal beauty of her face, you felt instinctively the presence of something hard and menacing, a kind of metallic strength that found expression in the tones of her voice and in that gimlet-like quality of her eyes.

Vandemeyer has powerful connections, including Whittington and Sir James Peel Edgerton, the famous King’s Counsellor i.e. lawyer.

Convinced she’s something to do with the missing girl, Tuppence (improbably enough) gets a job as Mrs Vandemeyer’s maid. She discovers a young lad hanging round Vandemeyer’s block of flats who earns money as a runner and fetcher, and persuades him to help her out, something he’s eager to do once he realises it’s all like something from the movies.

‘Lumme!’ came ecstatically from Albert. ‘It sounds more like the pictures every minute.’
(Chapter 9)

Edgerton is a frequent visitor to Mrs Vandemeyer’s apartment and realises Tuppence is more than she seems. He cryptically suggests that Tuppence might be better off working for someone else, which none of us understand but leads T&T to visit Edgerton at his office for a longer talk.

Found out But when Tuppence goes back to work at Vandemeyer’s apartment, the latter discovers she’s a fake and pulls a gun on her, until Tuppence, plucky gal that she is, wrests the gun away.

Locked up but murdered Tuppence offers Vandemeyer a large bribe to spill the whereabouts of Jane Finn, but when Hersheimmer and Edgerton arrive at the apartment, she screams and faints. They leave her in her bedroom but lock her in, because of their fear of Mr Brown. But when they return in the morning, Vandemeyer is dead! Someone got to her somehow, through a locked door!

Hersheimmer and Tuppence? In the middle of this mayhem, Hersheimmer is attracted to Tuppence and even makes a proposal of sorts, which throws her into confusion.

‘What about marriage?’ inquired Julius. ‘Got any views on the subject?’
‘I intend to marry, of course,’ replied Tuppence. ‘That is, if’—she paused, knew a momentary longing to draw back, and then stuck to her guns bravely—’I can find some one rich enough to make it worth my while. That’s frank, isn’t it? I dare say you despise me for it.’
‘I never despise business instinct,’ said Julius. ‘What particular figure have you in mind?’
‘Figure?’ asked Tuppence, puzzled. ‘Do you mean tall or short?’
‘No. Sum—income.’
‘Oh, I—I haven’t quite worked that out.’ (Chapter 15)

Boris The pair had learned that another of Mrs Vendemeyer’s contacts is a man named Boris Ivanovitch. Tommy tails Boris to a house in Soho but here the tables are turned. He smuggles himself in past the guard on the door, then hides himself so as to listen in on a meeting of the famous secret organisation, learning that the members assembled amount to ‘the Inner Ring’! Tommy overhears just enough to hint at large plans for chaos and disruption, when someone from behind coshes him and knocks him out. When he comes to, he’s in a windowless room like a cell. He’s been taken prisoner!

Annette helps Tommy Tommy’s incarceration in this windowless, lightless cell goes on for a surprising amount for time, for several days. Periodically he is served a meal by a French serving girl who he eventually discovers is called Annette. As you might expect, she develops a soft spot for handsome Tommy until, in a convoluted scene, she helps him to escape but, as they get to the door out into the London street, her nerve fails her and she refuses to leave. She’s obviously petrified of the gang. She’ll go back into the house and tell them that he (Tommy) overpowered her.

Tommy at liberty Surreally Tommy emerges from the incarceration which had become to feel genuinely claustrophobic to the reader into the cool night air of Soho. He walks back to the Ritz hoping to share everything he overheard in the Soho house, only to find that Tuppence has just left in a hurry.

Off to Yorkshire Tommy and Hersheimmer find the telegram that caused Tuppence to leave so hastily. It’s a note claiming to have been written by Tommy, although he’s never seen it before.

‘Come at once, Moat House, Ebury, Yorkshire, great developments—TOMMY.’

So she’s gone to get the first train to Yorkshire, so Tommy and Hersheimmer take a taxi to King’s Cross and catch the next train. From this point onwards they are on the trail of Tuppence, trying to find her. The boys get off at Ebury station and trudge out to the address in the message Tuppence was acting on only to find it a spooky, old abandoned house. The locals haven’t seen hide nor hair of Tuppence, despite the boys ransacking the locality. They waste a week looking. Obviously it was a decoy.

Jane discovered Back in London after all this, it is Edgerton who discovers Jane Finn, who is in hospital, recovering from losing her memory after an accident. So that’s how the five years since the Lusitania incident passed – Jane had an accident which gave her amnesia! Convenient.

Now she tells Edgerton, Tommy and Julius where she hid the treaty – in a picture frame back at the Soho house – but when they go there they find instead an ironic message from Mr Brown.

Earlier, While, searching for writing paper in Julius’s drawer, Tommy had found a photograph of Annette. Tommy concluded that Annette is the real Jane Finn and the Jane Finn they met was a plant to stop their investigation. He gets an original copy of the telegram which was sent to Tuppence and sees that her destination was altered on the copy he read, to the place in Yorkshire. Originally it read ‘Astley Priors, Gatehouse, Kent’. So, without Julius, Tommy and Albert proceed to the correct destination.

Comrade Kramenin Meanwhile Hersheimmer had pursued his own leads and discovered the arrival in London of a Russian conspirator, Kramenin who they know is associated with the secret organisation. Hersheimmer inveigles his way into Kramenin’s suite of rooms at Claridge’s (another grand London hotel) then pulls a revolver in the best American style (a gun, he later tells the girls, that he calls ‘Little Willy’ – paging Dr Freud!).

She’s in Kent So Hersheimmer terrifies Kramenin into revealing that Jane is being held at this place in Kent, Astley Priors, Gatehouse, Kent. It is a rest home or sanatorium. Jane is being housed there because she has severe amnesia. He forces Kramenin at gunpoint down through the hotel and into his car which he gets his chauffeur, George, to drive down to Gatehouse in Kent. So both Tommy and Julius are heading to Kent, separately.

At Gatehouse Julius forces Kramenin to knock on the door of the house in Kent, which is opened by none other than Whittington. Kramenin tells him there’s a big panic on and he needs both the young women he’s holding i.e. Finn and Tuppence. Whittington demands to know whether these are ‘his’ orders, before sending an orderly to fetch the two girls who emerge wrapped in cloaks. As Julius comes forward to help them some of Whittington’s gang suddenly recognise him. He pushes the girls into the car and tells George to floor it as one of the goons draws a gun and fire as the car screeches down the drive, with Julius standing up in the back and firing off shots at the baddies. All very cinematic!

Car chase The drive back to London is hairy, with the baddies’ car trying to head them off and a shootout, with shots only missing out heroes by a hair’s breadth, one of them nicking Julius – ‘Shucks, ladies, it’s only a scratch’ etc. When the car slows down at a crossroads, to everyone’s amazement, Tommy climbs in over the back. He had been hiding in the bushes at Astley wondering what to do when Julius’s car drew up. He watched the girls being brought out and, as the car pulled away, jumped on the back. He’s been clinging on for dear life for the last half an hour!

So the goodies are all reunited: Tommy and Tuppence and Julius and Jane, and you don’t need to be clairvoyant to see them pairing off very nicely. But things take an odd turn when Tommy forces the girls out of the car at gunpoint, tells them to go to the nearest train station and catch a train to London and make their way to Sir James’s house. He has a bone to pick with Hersheimmer, namely confronting him with the accusation that he is a fake and Mr Brown…

Jane’s story The girls’ journey to London is quite exciting as they become convinced someone on the train is tailing them, then that someone has spotted them at Charing Cross station, and then that the taxi they’re in is deliberately rammed, and then that a supposed drunk is in fact following them as they arrive at Sir James’s.

But they make it to Sir James’s door, knock and are admitted by the suave old lawyer and it’s here that Jane tells her story: after receiving the packet, she became suspicious. Mrs Vandemeyer had been on the Lusitania and took a suspiciously close interest in Jane in the lifeboats and then on the ship which took them to Ireland. So she placed blank sheets in the original packet which the spy had given her, and hid  the treaty inside a magazine. Travelling from Ireland, Jane was mugged and taken to the house in Soho. To fool her captors, Jane faked amnesia and took to speaking only in French. She hid the treaty in the frame of a picture in her room, a scene from Faust, and has maintained her role as ‘Annette’ ever since.

Is Hersheimmer the baddy? The photo of Annette in Hersheimmer’s drawer and some deliberately suspicious behaviour Christie gives him, persuade Tuppence that maybe the nice, friendly American is the mysterious Mr Brown. When she runs her suspicious past the impeccably trustworthy Sir James, the latter agrees, adding the revelation that the real Hersheimmer was killed back in America, that they’ve been taken in by an imposter, and it was this imposter who killed Mrs Vandemeyer before she could spill the beans about the Secret Organisation.

So the narrative is pushing us with all its might towards suspecting Hersheimmer.

Mr Brown revealed! Tuppence and Sir James rush to the Soho house where they find the treaty where Jane said it would be, in the frame of the picture depicting a scene from Faust. But it is here, in the cell where Tommy was incarcerated, that Sir James identifies himself as the true Mr Brown! He had befriended them and lulled them into a complete sense of security.

Threats and suicide Now Sir James announces his plan to kill them, wound himself, and then blame it on the elusive Mr Brown. But unbeknown to him, Julius and Tommy are hiding in the room (!) and they now jump out and overpower Sir James! The big talking they had on the drive back from Kent had confirmed for Tommy that Hersheimmer was not Mr Brown and is who he claims to be. Hooray.

Thus caught in the act and condemned by his own confession, before they can stop him, Sir James commits suicide using poison concealed in his ring. Carter arrives shortly afterwards on the scene of the suicide and is saddened to learn that his old friend was also his bitterest foe.

He had entered the squalid room to find that great man, the friend of a lifetime, dead—betrayed out of his own mouth. From the dead man’s pocket-book he had retrieved the ill-omened draft treaty, and then and there, in the presence of the other three, it had been reduced to ashes…. England was saved! (Chapter 27)

The revolution that never happened A week or so later, Labour Day, which the conspirators had intended to be a day of revolution and chaos triggered by the publication of the incriminating treaty, passes off peacefully. And the papers are full of obituaries for the great lawyer and potential political leader, Sir James Peel Edgerton. As so often in thrillers, the real truth is carefully concealed from a credulous public.

Wedding bells The novel ends with a slap-up dinner at the Savoy Hotel, both Hersheimmer and Jane, and Tommy and Tuppence, engaged to be married. Carter arrives for the dinner accompanied by Tommy’s uncle who has been informed what a patriotic deed he has performed, and who heals their breach, announcing he is formally making Tommy heir to his country estate and fortune. Which is nice.

Money Remember how they were both stony broke when the novel ended. Well, after their sterling work for king and country, Mr Carter informs them they’ll both received very nice cheques. Plus Tommy being made heir apparent to his rich uncle. And as to work, Tuppence asks him:

‘What are you going to do, accept Mr Carter’s offer of a Government job, or accept Julius’s invitation and take a richly remunerated post in America on his ranch?’

To which Tommy replies, Neither. He’s going to stay in London and marry Tuppence!

Summary

What a ridiculous farrago. It makes Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books look like War and Peace.

I can’t help thinking that the best part of these early comic espionage novels is the first chapter while the characters are full of brio and humour and you feel anything could happen, before the long, convoluted plots get going.

Cast

Goodies

• Lieutenant Thomas ‘Tommy’ Beresford – early 20s – young redheaded Englishman who fought in the Great War, wounded twice – slow but steady type
• Prudence L. Cowley – known as ‘Tuppence’ – young woman with black bobbed hair, fifth daughter of Archdeacon Cowley of Little Missendell, Suffolk – like Christie, served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) during the War – clever, quick and funny – ‘And as I’ve said before, and shall doubtless say again, little Tuppence can look after herself, thank you!’
• Julius P. Hersheimmer, 35 – millionaire from America, seeking his first cousin Jane Finn, a girl he never met in America due to a family quarrel – ‘He was of middle height, and squarely built to match his jaw. His face was pugnacious but pleasant. No one could have mistaken him for anything but an American’
• Jane Finn – 18, American woman we meet on the Lusitania being handed the packet of vital papers
• Mr Carter – Englishman high up in the intelligence service and connected with the highest political powers – Carter is an alias
• Sir James Peel Edgerton – MP and prominent London defence lawyer – socially and politically well connected, touted as a future prime minister – ”just a shade over average height, he nevertheless conveyed the impression of a big man. His face, clean-shaven and exquisitely mobile, was stamped with an expression of power and force far beyond the ordinary. Magnetism seemed to radiate from him’
• Albert – lift boy at the building where Rita Vandemeyer lives, becomes helper to Tuppence (when she’s working undercover as a maid), then to Tommy (on his journey down to Kent)

Baddies

• Mr Edward Whittington of the Esthonia Glassware Company – member of the conspirators who first encounters Tommy and Tuppence as they plan their joint venture over lunch in a restaurant – ‘a big man, clean shaven, with a heavy jowl. His eyes were small and cunning, and shifted their glance under her direct gaze’
• ‘Mr Brown’ – the anonymous leader of the conspirators
• Mr Kramenin – Russian Bolshevik agent in London, one of the conspirators, called Number One
• Boris Ivanovitch, Count Stepanov – leading member of ‘the conspiracy’, who keeps in touch with Whittington and Rita
• Mrs Marguerite Vandemeyer – a beautiful woman in society who followed Danvers on the Lusitania – the ‘Ruth’ referred to in a conversation between Winterton and Boris – takes her orders direct from ‘Mr Brown’
• Dr Hall – runs the nursing home in Bournemouth where he took in the amnesia patient claimed to be a niece of Rita Vandemeyer, under the name Janet, for several years, where Hersheimmer goes to investigate and falls out of a tree (in a scene I haven’t included in my summary – of which there are many)
• Conrad – the evil-faced doorkeeper of the house in Soho

Americans

Christie’s father was American – a wealthy stockbroker from New York – so she had a whole American side to her family and this explains why so many of her stories feature Americans, or have American connections. So it is here, where the imperilled heroine Jane Finn, and her handsome rescuer Hersheimmer, are true-blue Americans.

‘We’ll ask Miss Jane Finn to tell us the story that only Miss Tuppence has heard so far—but before we do so we’ll drink her health. The health of one of the bravest of America’s daughters, to whom is due the thanks and gratitude of two great countries!’

‘I love you now, Julius,’ said Jane Finn. ‘I loved you that first moment in the car when the bullet grazed your cheek…’

Bookishness

As I unfailingly point out, all Christie’s novels contain numerous ‘meta’ moments where the characters stop and comment that events, or thoughts or conversations are just the kind of thing that happen or are said in detective novels (or movies).

For the moment this paralysed the Young Adventurers, but Tuppence, recovering herself, plunged boldly into the breach with a reminiscence culled from detective fiction. (Chapter 5)

The sport was a new one to him. Though familiar with the technicalities from a course of novel reading, he had never before attempted to ‘follow’ anyone, and it appeared to him at once that, in actual practice, the proceeding was fraught with difficulties. Supposing, for instance, that they should suddenly hail a taxi? In books, you simply leapt into another, promised the driver a sovereign – or its modern equivalent – and there you were. In actual fact, Tommy foresaw that it was extremely likely there would be no second taxi. (Chapter 7)

But Tuppence had sharp eyes, and had noted the corner of a threepenny detective novel protruding from Albert’s pocket, and the immediate enlargement of his eyes told her that her tactics were good, and that the fish would rise to the bait. (Chapter 9)

Ten minutes later the lady was ensconced comfortably on her bed, smoking cigarettes and deep in the perusal of Garnaby Williams, the Boy Detective, which, with other threepenny works of lurid fiction, she had sent out to purchase. (Chapter 9)

Julius listened spellbound. Half the dishes that were placed before him he forgot to eat. At the end he heaved a long sigh. ‘Bully for you. Reads like a dime novel!’ (Chapter 18)

‘By the way, Julius,’ she remarked demurely, ‘I – haven’t given you my answer yet.’
‘Answer?’ said Julius. His face paled.
‘You know – when you asked me to – marry you,’ faltered Tuppence, her eyes downcast in the true manner of the early Victorian heroine. (Chapter 27)

Or the movies:

‘A crook?’ he queried eagerly.
‘A crook? I should say so. Ready Rita they call her in the States.’
‘Ready Rita,’ repeated Albert deliriously. ‘Oh, ain’t it just like the pictures!’
It was. Tuppence was a great frequenter of the cinema. (Chapter 9)

Dr Hall looked at Julius. Everything that he was for the moment incapable of saying was eloquent in that look.
‘No,’ said Julius, in answer to it, ‘I’m not crazy. The thing’s perfectly possible. It’s done every day in the States for the movies. Haven’t you seen trains in collision on the screen?’ (Chapter 14)

‘Because for the last two months I’ve been making a sentimental idiot of myself over Jane! First moment I clapped eyes on her photograph my heart did all the usual stunts you read about in novels.’ (Chapter 20)

You don’t mean as the crooks have got her?’
‘They have.’
‘In the Underworld?’
‘No, dash it all, in this world!’
‘It’s a h’expression, sir,’ explained Albert. ‘At the pictures the crooks always have a restoorant in the Underworld.’ (Chapter 23)

As well as at least one reference to the greatest fictional detective of them all:

‘Now, obviously this woman, whoever she was, was saved.’
‘How do you make that out?’
‘If she wasn’t, how would they have known Jane Finn had got the papers?’
‘Correct. Proceed, O Sherlock!’ (Chapter 6)

Two, in this case.

‘What have we for lunch? Stew? How did I know? Elementary, my dear Watson – the smell of onions is unmistakable.’ (Chapter 17)

Cunning stunts

Obviously ‘stunt’ was an active part of 1920s slang.

‘I did the usual stunt. Said: ‘What’s happened?’ And ‘Where am I?’
(Chapter 9)

‘I guess I’m a mutt,’ said Julius with unusual humility. ‘I ought to have thought of the false name stunt.’ (Chapter 13)

‘How about some high-class thought transference stunt? The way I reason is this: as a last chance they’ll let Jane Finn escape in the hope that she’s been shamming this memory stunt, and that once she thinks she’s free she’ll go right away to the cache.’ (Chapter 18)

As a last chance they’ll let Jane Finn escape in the hope that she’s been shamming this memory stunt. (Chapter 22)

I left a note for Julius, in case he was Mr Brown, saying I was off to the Argentine, and I dropped Sir James’s letter with the offer of the job by the desk so that he would see it was a genuine stunt. (Chapter 27)

Envoi

‘It has been fun, hasn’t it, Tommy? I do hope we shall have lots more adventures.’
‘You’re insatiable, Tuppence. I’ve had quite enough adventures for the present.’
‘Well, shopping is almost as good,’ said Tuppence dreamily.
(Chapter 28)

Credit

‘The Secret Adversary’ by Agatha Christie was published by the Bodley Head in January 1922.

Related links

• The Secret Adversary online (PDF)
• Agatha Christie website

Related reviews

• Agatha Christie reviews
• 1920s reviews