Krishna
We have reviewed many of Agatha Christie’s books earlier. Even one with the current detective, Superintendent Battle, in it. See The Secret of Chimneys for more on that book.
Jimmy Thesiger is staying in the Chimney. He is staying with Lady Coote.
They worry that Gerry Wade is not getting up and is making later and later every day.
They decide to play a prank and Pong places seven clocks under the bed to go off in the morning in series.
Still Gerry does not wake up but they hear that Gerry is dead – wonder if he was murdered.
Meanwhile Bundle (who was helping Superintendent Battle in The Secrets of Chimneys, also wants to investigate this. She goes to find Jim Thesiger, a friend of Gerry Wade and finds a man staggers into the path of her car. She tries and swerves, avoiding him as she thought but finds him immobile on the road. She does the right thing and takes him to a doctor, and learns that he is Ronny a friend of Gerry. He has had time to utter one word ‘Seven Dials, tell Jimmy’ before he loses consciousness.
The doctor assures Bundle that Ronny was not hit by her but died due to a gunshot wound. Now she is fully intrigued and decides to go meet Jimmy. She also finds Loraine, Gerry Wade’s sister there and Jimmy seems to take interest in the seven dials – an old pub where the mafia met which has now been demolished.
She decides to wangle an invitation through a friend and goes there. Does not find anything unusual. She meets Albert, an ex servant in her house.
But she goes back in the evening and learns that Albert was lured to work in The Seven Dials for thrice the money he was getting and for a starting bonus. He was replaced by a new servant in the house. Also, Bundle spies a room below which has a table and seven chairs and a cupboard which is really a disguised doorway to a secret passage. She convinces Albert, much to his reluctance, to let her hide in another (ordinary cupboard in which she makes a tiny peephole.
She sees seven folks each with a clock dial on the face as a mask with different times ‘ Number 7’, ‘Number 3’ etc. She notices a Slav girl being part of the group. Nothing major comes out of it.
Then she goes to the party. She is annoyed that James had revealed all her confidences to Bill, whom James trusts.
Meanwhile, at night, Jimmy Thesiger and Bill Oversley decide to stay vigil sequentially and then unknown to them, both Loraine and Bundle go snooping. A man comes down the ivy and grapples with Jimmy, shooting and wounding him. Sir Oswald brings back the revolver and is also covered in ivy, which makes Superintendent Battle murmur. Jimmy’s own gun is also found and kept on the table. When a package is thrown out Loraine takes it and hides and it turns out to have foiled the thief’s attempts to steal the secrets worth millions.
Now they find the Countess Radzky fainted behind a cupboard and she says that when she came to the library to borrow a book, she heard a scuffle in the dark and a gunfire and fainted!
When later Bundle notices the mole on her back, she realizes that she was one of those in the Secret Seven Dials place that she had seen (with the mask on).
Ultimately, Jimmy asks them to go to the Seven Dials and get Albert out as he has made a great discovery. Both Bundle and Wade, who is the sister of Gerlad, go there and then suddenly Bundle gets hit on the head and faints.
She comes to in the company of Bill Oversley, who also seems to have been taken prisoner. Then start the twists all the way through. What the seven dials club really was, who was the elusive kingpin No 1, and also who the master criminal was who had caused the death of both Gerald Wade and later, Ronny, is revealed by Superintendent Battle to a bewildered Bundle.
Nice!
7/10
— Krishna