Krishna
Agatha Christie is one of the authors we review more frequently than some others. See The Man In The Brown Suit or The Secret Of The Chimneys for two examples.
This seems like a few short stories stung together to make it as if it is a single novel. There are no chapter breaks or story titles in between but the puzzles and the solution are different. One old man, Mr Satterthwaite who is a foil (like Watson) for Quinn, is the link among these mysteries. Unlike Holmes, Quinn has the ability to make others see the solution, rather than solving it explicitly for them a la Poirot for instance.
Old Mr Satterthwaite (who was sixty two) is glad to be rid of the youngsters who have gone to sleep. He had arrived at Royston, for a party. The host was Tom Evesham and his wife was Lady Laura Keene before she married him and was politically active. Sir Richard Conway, a guest, was a soldier. There was Alex Portal, from a family with Old Money. His wife was different : she was from Australia. She had dyed her hair - which was odd - but died it black, which was odder still. .
Now, Quinn drops in during a cold snowstorm and begs to be put up for a while. The talk turns to a friend of Evesham, Derek Capel who had killed himself about ten or so years ago in this very house, while five or six of his old friends were present. Satterthwaite has a feeling that this was all prearranged, including Quinn’s “accidental” visit.
The intent seems to be to get people to reminisce about the killing all those years ago. Derek Capel was happy and even ecstatic. He had earlier dated Marjorie Dilke. When he announced that day that by that time in a year he would be married. But they knew that Marjorie was not in close contact with him anymore. He said that he could not inform more before time so they wondered if it was a married girl going through a divorce. And yet, five minutes later, he had ‘killed himself’. Very uncharacteristic.
While they were talking, though, Derek left to ‘get the post’. He got the newspaper and a pile of posts as there was a snowstorm earlier and all post had been delayed. Then he went up and shot himself. None of the letters were opened. A constable was in the house at that time, as a dog of Derek’s was found in the snow and brought back to him by the police in a lucky coincidence. (The house had no phone then and it would have been difficult to inform the police without somebody driving down there).
Appleton’s young wife at the very same time was accused of killing him but exonerated in the trial. He was exhumed on suspicion (at that time) and found that he was poisoned with strychnine. He used to take one glass of port every night and the very next day after his death, his wife was seen to deliberately break the decanter containing the port. Yet, in the case, she was exonerated for lack of evidence. Alex Portal seems to be agitated whenever that case is mentioned.
In the meanwhile, Quinn says that Derek may have had something to do with the strychnine poisoning of Appleton and Appleton’s wife may have smashed the decanter to save the blame coming on Derek whom she secretly loved. Quinn also speculates that on the day Derek died, he may have seen an advertisement about exhuming the body of Appleton, which may have agitated him and when he saw the policeman come in, he may have jumped to the wrong conclusion and decided to take the honorable way out rather than get arrested.
As in Agatha Christie’s books, there are many other characters milling around, each with some shady behaviour so that you start suspecting each one in turn when something evil happens - as it does in this story too. Before that, let us set the stage with some background information.
There is Mr and Mrs Unkerton who invite a bunch of people - including Mr Satterthwaite. They have also invited Mr and Mrs Richard Scott, Major Porter, Mrs Iris Staverton, Captain Allenson. Major Porter and Richard Scott are lifelong friends but Porter always overshadowed Scott in achievements. They went to a trip together where they seem to have met Iris and Scott seems to have had a ‘thing’ with her.
The Unkertons themselves took the castle even after someone was killed in the upstairs room. However the windows were boarded up because the windows seemed to have stain exactly in the form of a face peering out of the windows - when looked at from the outside. What’s more, no matter how many times the panes were replaced, the face managed to reappear (or form) on the window pane!
Scott himself married Moira O’Connell, who became Moira Scott. In addition to all these folks, there is a Lady Cynthia Drage. Porter fears that Iris and the Scotts being in the same party is a recipe for disaster! In the meanwhile - again in the usual pattern that Agatha Christie drops subtle clues - they overhear a conversation snippet. Iris shouting at Richard that he will be sorry for “this” and that jealousy will drive one to murder.
Satterthwaite also overhears Iris telling Porter that she wouldn’t have come if she had known that the Scott couple were invited as well. But after another of those strolls, as Satterthwaite is coming back with Porter, he hears gunshots and finds Jimmy Allenson and Moira dead with Iris holding the (“smoking”) gun in her hands and looking numb.
She claims that she just ‘picked it up’ when she came in and found the bodies. When Richard makes what looks like an attempt to attack Iris, Porter stops him.
The police are called and Inspector Winkfield starts the investigation. However, Quinn solves the problem by deduction. The boarded up room had a spring lock that let someone enter the room and look out. Since the look out seemed like the image on the window pane, no one suspected. Scott looked out the window and saw his wife Moira in the arms of Allensen! He shot them and then threw the gun from the room into the garden. Saw Iris going in and followed her and saw her pick up the gun. He did not defend Iris when she was accused because, while he wooed her in South Africa, she fell in love with Porter and not him!
The next case starts when Satterthwaite was stranded in an inn called Kirtlington Mallet. By pure coincidence, Quinn happens to be staying there. The innkeeper mentions that a cheerful young man Captain Harwell had stayed there after marrying a French Canadian lady, very beautiful, called Miss Le Couteau. She brought some heirlooms from Montreal and tastefully decorated the house but in a day or two, Harwell simply disappeared. Was never found.
They talk about the case and again Quinn prompts him to not view this from the point of view of the man who disappeared but the woman who remained. It turns out that the gardner who came with her has rheumatism and was bedridden every time the husband Harwell was home! He reveals that Le Couteau may not be who she seemed to be - not French Canadian but French with an assumed name. The heirlooms she decorated the house with and ‘heartbroken when her husband disappeared’ sold it to an American at an attractive price and moved to a far off land to mend her broken heart.
Again, there is a young man who is accused of shooting his lover, a rich man’s wife. Sathertwaite is not convinced. Long story short, they realize that the husband, Sir George, tampered with all the clocks one Friday (as he normally winds them up on Fridays) and then pretended to go for bridge. He came back and shot his wife from behind - out of rage - and then left.
Since the clocks were showing ten minutes early, everyone was fooled by his ironclad alibi. (He was told that his wife was shot as he was returning from the club). However, the maid heard the train just before and saw the cloud made by the train smoke (which was ‘in the shape of a giant hand’. This, if it fell on other ears, would be devastating and kill George’s alibi. So he sent her away on a lucrative job to Canada. Also, he had tampered with the telephone to prevent the police being informed by anyone other than himself - as the police automatically record the ‘real’ time the complaint came in.
Then comes the story where Satterthwaite is vacationing in the luxurious Rivera. He sees Countess Czarina in the company of the latest toyboy, a young American called Franklin Rudge. A young American girl, Elizabeth Martin, is annoyed and wonders what Franklin sees in the Countess. We get a clue that the Countess is really short of money when she grabs Satterthwaite’s winnings at the gambling table. Satterthwaite, ever the gentleman, allows the theft, pretending it was all her winning. In addition, the croupier who conducted the game (he comes to a party later) narrates how he was a jeweler before and a girl whom he married and saved him from penury left him for worldly riches. We infer that it is the Countess. She returns his charity and leaves, having him run behind her. This brings Franklin out of his ‘stupor’ and he starts noticing Elizabeth. All is well (?).
The next story is stupidity itself. In a Spanish island in a segregated villa on the top (near a cliff) lives a reclusive woman. Her son has grown up and her abusive husband died - by a real accident - down the cliff and died. Feeling relieved, she lives there happily until loneliness overcomes her. She has an affair with an English man (yes, they are all English in that Spanish stretch of island - go figure) and pretending to be a Spanish maid, beds him. He goes away and she has a son (who was mentioned just now). Long story short, she yearns for the man and the man turns up to the selfsame promontory intending to commit suicide. He longs for stability after leading a playboy lifestyle and years for a son. Due to Satterthwaite’s subtle efforts they meet and recognize each other. The man claims he has a short span to live and the woman vows to cure his ‘incurable disease’. Utter drivel, coming from an author of this caliber!
The next story is about an inheritance and it is too trivial to narrate. Satterthwaite manages to solve it just in time remembering that the maid who lives with the young girl could not have been the maid he knew all those years ago. As always Quinn is no help but the talk seems to have invigorated Sattherthwaite’s brain.
The rest of the stories are in the same vein. I am not going to spend time describing because, as I suspect, you have a sense of what this book is all about. In one of the stories, (relating to a uke played by an enchanting girl) you even have to think hard about why a murderer murdered!
That apart, there are some quaint anachronisms that seem interesting when you read such an old book today. For one, they complain about the ‘lack of colour’ appearing in a photograph of a room in one of the stories.
And then there are things that today would cause a furore if published, which were quite the norm them. For instance, the main character, Satterthwaite is snobbish and fond of bohemian comforts ‘though he is unfailingly polite and considerate to others’. Yeah, that makes up for it. Even more significantly, this conversation :
‘Who’s that nice looking man, rather yellow, who drove up… just before lunch?’
‘I expect you mean Mr Tomlinson. He is a retired Indian judge’
‘That accounts for the yellowness… I was afraid it might be jaundice’
Can’t say I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed most other books of Agatha Christie, let alone her best works.
Let us say 2/10
= = Krishna