Book : Murder On The Links by Agatha Christie
Krishna
This is the second Hercule Poirot book in the chronological order. The first one, Mysterious Affair at Styles was reviewed earlier.
The narrator is Dr Hastings, the Watson to Poirot’s Sherlock Holmes and always the narrator. He travels in a train where a young lady tells him, out of the blue, that she has lost her sister. She is young – he judges seventeen years old. He has Hercule Poirot as his room mate but is returning home from Paris on a train, where he meets her.
Poirot is called urgently to France for assistance by Monsieur Renauld who is a businessman with vast interests in South America. But by the time they reach his castle, they hear that he has been murdered. The investigating officer (“Commissary”) is Monsieur Bex, the Commissioner of Police who was well known to Poirot. So he gains entry to the house and finds an investigating magistrate, Monsieur Hautet, there already.
We learn that the night before he was murdered Monsieur Renauld was visited late at night by Madam Daubreuil who was a neighbour and, in the words of the maid Francoise, may have had designs on the Monsieur due to his money. That lady was very pretty but poor. Madam Renauld did not suspect anything, again according to the maid.
In the morning, the door was found ajar, to the surprise of the maid and Renauld was found dead outside. But two masked men had entered the house and gagged and bound Madam Renauld (the wife) and the servants found and freed her in the morning.
The investigators, in the meanwhile discover that Madame Debreuil was in the habit of visiting Monsieur Renauld at odd hours and had the habit of putting in large amounts of money regularly into her bank account. Surely Renauld had a roving eye, concludes the magistrate and the commissar.
The gardener, when interviewed, says that he put ten new plants last night in each of the flower beds. In addition Poirot cleverly gets his footprints by asking him to show the plants and having him step on soft part of the ground!
Denise, another servant swore that it was not Madam Daubreuil who visited but a similar looking, younger woman who spoke with a French accent. As that lady was leaving, Denise overheard her say, in English something to Renaud and Renaud replied ‘Yes, yes, but for God’s sake, go now!’
One of the facts that comes out during the conversations is that Monsieur Renaud had business interests in South America, especially Santiago in Chile.
Poirot goes to the study and finds a bit of a cheque made out to someone called Duval by Renauld.
He goes to view the body but is curious when he found a crystal watch that had stopped at the time of murder but was showing about two hours ahead. The clock was known to gain time.
Poirot strongly suspects the wife but when she faints at the sight of the body of her husband, and when he finds that the wife was bound tightly by the masked intruders he chides himself for the wrong conclusion.
He then points out the disturbances in a flower bed outside the house, still puzzled as to why the intruders tried the (unlatched) door to enter instead of sneaking in through a window in the house.
Hastings now is unimpressed : While the famous French detective Monsieur Giraud is energetically sleuthing, Poirot seems interested in inconsequential things like a tiny pieve of lead piping.
He meets the train girl and stupidly takes her around to see the body. She falls in a faint and he leaves her there to get water and she recovers and tries to leave immediately.
Meanwhile Poirot is on his own trip. He taunts Giraud with ‘why are there no footprints in the flowerbed outside the window?’ while Giraud has found several clues – an unusual match stick and the butt of a foreign cigarette.
Meanwhile a new man, large, grave and impressive, arrives. He introduces himself as xxx. He was the secretary to Monsieur Renauld. He says he knows about the money being sent regularly to Madam Daubreil and claims that it was due to blackmail. He does not know what she knew but claims to have known about the fleecing of Renauld by that lady.
He knows about the old will where Renauld split his wealth equally between his wife and his no-good son, but is surprised to hear that the will was changed subsequently, bequeathing all of Renauld’s wealth to his wife alone.
The wife, however, admits that there could have been a romantic relationship with Madam Dabrauel.
The son, Jack Dabreil, comes home and it is revealed that before he went abroad, he had a heated quarrel with his father – it was about the fact that he was in love with the pretty daughter of Madam Dabreil, and his father would not hear of the son’s marrying her. Jack’s mother, too was opposed due to her contempt for Madam Daubreil.
The murder weapon is now found missing. Hastings realizes that the pretty girl “Cinderella” has stolen it due to his stupidity. Or has she? He had left the door open in a hurry for another thirty minutes and anyone could have taken it.
Poirot goes off saying he is going to Paris to continue to investigate and when Hastings is alone, next day, there is a murder of another identified man, with the same knife that went missing!
Giraud, energetically, has discovered a long hair on the knife this time, similar to the long hair found by Poirot earlier on the chair in the story. He confronts Madam Daubreil with the hair.
When Poirot comes back he astonishes Hastings with a prediction – when he heard of the other murder – that the person was dead earlier. And then goes to see the body and points out that the man had died earlier of epilepsy and the ‘stabbing’ was entirely staged. He also shows a newspaper clipping of how Madam Dabruel, many years earlier had lost her husband to a stabbing accident.
Jack arrives back and is immediately arrested for the murder of his father by Giraud.
Poirot reasons out the murder using only his famous phrase ‘little grey cells’. He realizes correctly what Madam Debreuil was talking to Renauld about. He correctly surmises who murdered Renauld and also the mystery behind Renauld’s past. It is all very satisfying, as only Agatha Christie, the consummate queen of plotting, can make it.
One difference, though, with Sherlock Holmes, the other famous detective. Sherlock derives much of his intuitions by reasoning based on small clues that he sees. Poirot, though, tries to rearrange all known facts to fit a logical reasoning. He does not crawl around looking for minute clues (and mocks the famous detective Giraud for doing exactly the same thing!
A diametrically opposite approach to a later great fictional detective Lincoln Rhymes, to whom every minute evidence is a goldmine.
Enough of digressions. Let us move on with the story. He now puzzles about the second murder and then goes to England to find Bella Duval. (The Duval in the cheque makes Hautet remember a name called Bella Duval he had come across). Poirot manages to find her – she is a performing artist in a show. When they see the show, Poirot stays behind but Hastings comes there. Only to be confronted by Duval, who is in a tizzy. Hastings assures her that she loves her and will protect, and as proof, when Poirot returns holds him tight to have Bella escape. Poirot is more amused than annoyed.
Hastings now is sure that he has no more the trust of Poirot but Poirot is unperturbed. He says that his ‘mission’ to England is accomplished and invites Hastings to join him in his return journey. Hastings is at a loss, and is very suspicious, as to why Poirot has retained his calm manner throughout, despite Hastings’ treachery.
Later, when it looks like it is all over for Jack, the girl Bella Duval comes and confesses to the murder. And Hastings discovers that his beloved Cinderella is not Bella Duval, as he thought.
There is a lot more to the story, of course. In order not to spoil the ending, it turns out that the murderer of Renauld was a cold blooded act by a completely different person.
Poirot, of course, suspects that person as one of the people and then arranges a drama to make that person panic – a chance of losing a vast fortune. In desperation, that person tries to set things right by yet another murder but is caught in the act. The real killer also dies at the end, escaping the hands of justice.
Sorry to be so cryptic but the denouement is a stunning twist and all laid out logically (I said logically, not realistically as in real life) by one of the best fictional detective, the great Hercule Poirot.
Highly satisfying!
8/10
— Krishna