There’s a BBC adaptation of Murder Is Easy coming to BritBox in March that looks pretty good, so I wanted to try my hand at solving the case myself before checking it out. The ebook was fortuitously available at the library, and its cover just as fortuitously matched with my recently-purchased ube keso Selecta ice cream. 

The set-up is fantastic: retired detective Luke Fitzwilliam meets fluffy elderly lady Miss Pinkerton on a train to London. Miss Pinkerton is from a sleepy little village, and she’s headed to Scotland Yard because she’s convinced one of her neighbours is a murderer. And not just any murderer, but one who has already killed several people, and seems to be on course to kill their next victim. 

Luke gives Miss Pinkerton a kindly smile, wishes her luck, and thinks nothing more of it, until he reads in the paper that shortly after their encounter, she is killed in a hit and run. He also learns of a death in her village: Dr Humbleby, the very person she’d identified as the murderer’s next victim. His curiosity piqued, Luke heads to the village himself, posing as the visiting cousin of a young woman his friend knows, and sets out to find the identity of the killer.

It’s a fantastic setup, and the puzzle aspect of the story is pretty well-constructed. Luke is a methodical investigator, and we meet each suspect and learn about each victim in turn. Yet for some reason, the story isn’t quite gripping me like Christie’s books usually do. I’ve enjoyed some Christie stand-alones, so it can’t just be the absence of my beloved Marple or Poirot. Possibly, it’s just my mood, and if I were to re-read this again another time, I may enjoy it more. As it is, I do really want to watch the BBC adaptation (Miss Pinkerton is played by the Dowager Countess’s best frenemy in Downtown Abbey!), so I’ve kept going on to figure out whodunnit.

There’s also a romantic subplot, which should come as no surprise to any long-time Christie fan the minute we meet Luke’s host Bridget. She is young, more arresting than beautiful, clever enough to see through Luke’s cover story almost immediately, and engaged to her wealthy and much older employer for purely pragmatic reasons. In a mystery by another writer, she would’ve been my immediate prime suspect, but I’d already made the mistake of forgetting Christie’s romantic streak in The Moving Finger, so I’m going to guess she’s innocent.

Since Bridget is not on my suspect list, there’s honestly only one person I think it can be. A case could be made for a secondary suspect, and more than likely, the murderer turns out to be one of the many other suspects I don’t think did it. But I feel pretty strongly about my first choice, so I’m going to lock it in at the 81% mark, and see how I do.

As an aside, I’m almost done with the book, and Superintendent Battle still has not appeared? Perhaps he’ll show up in the final chapter for the big reveal? And perhaps we’ll learn that Miss Pinkerton did manage to share her suspicions with him after all before she died. Perhaps the case would have been solved even without Luke’s involvement, but with a couple or so extra victims, because Battle had to deal with more pressing matters before getting to this one.

Did I Solve It?

Yes I did. I figured out whodunnit, and I kinda figured out the motive, even though I saw it all sideways. (I figured out the driving force behind the killings, but I got the emotions behind it all wrong.)

This isn’t quite as exciting for me as other Christies I’ve read. It was fine, and I’m not used to Christie’s books being just “fine.”

I do appreciate Christie’s commentary here about the importance of paying attention to women’s instincts. Other than Miss Pinkerton, there were two other women characters who had an inkling whodunnit, but because they lacked proof beyond a vague feeling, they kept quiet and doubted themselves. For at least one of the women, Luke’s certainty about a particular aspect of the killings made her decide her suspicions were totally off the mark. But as it turns out, as methodical as Luke’s investigative methods are, and as logical as his reasoning may be, he ultimately is a bit of a bumbler.

So, to learn from Dame Agatha: trust your gut, ladies. You do know things you don’t even realize you know.

***SPOILERS BELOW***

My Verdict

I think Miss Waynflete did it. I think she still cares for Gordon Whitfield. Some of the murders were to help him out, and the others were to punish people for being ungrateful to him. In Chapter 5, she says, “Lord Whitfield has been a great benefactor to Wychwood. It grieves me that there are people who are sadly ungrateful.” He saved her beloved childhood home from a developer, and gave her a volunteer job there as librarian. They also used to be engaged; she says she broke it off after he killed her beloved canary, but I think she could have lied about that, and he could have been the one to break it off.

Lord Whitfield is a petty, mean, and childish man. He gets pouty when things don’t go his way, and when Bridget was engaged to him, she learned to manage his moods. For example, she lost a friendly tennis game on purpose when it was clear he was getting grouchy about losing. Lord Whitfield is also highly moralistic, and intolerant of any sin. This attitude makes him a strong secondary suspect because of motive, but he seems too inept to actually be the killer, so my money is on Miss Waynflete killing people for his benefit:

• Amy Gibbs – used to work as a housemaid to Lord Whitfield, until he fired her for “immoral behaviour” (staying out late with her boyfriend). She then moved to Miss Waynflete’s household, which gave Miss Waynflete easy access to swap out her cough syrup with hat paint. Bridget says hat paint is no longer in fashion, which makes sense since Miss Waynflete is older, and even though Bridget points out that the hat paint colour is all wrong for Amy (red paint for a redhead’s hat), the paint could have been Miss Waynflete’s own, and not intended as a red herring at all.
• Mr Carter – a drunkard who abused his wife and daughter. In Chapter 17, we learn he said mean things to Lord Whitfield, but even before that, I can imagine Lord Whitfield disapproving of his drinking. (I don’t think Lord Whitfield would care about the domestic abuse; that doesn’t seem to be the kind of morality he concerns himself with.) Mr Carter fell into the river while drunk, so that was an easy enough kill.
• Tommy Pierce – a bratty boy, who fell while cleaning the second floor windows at the library where Miss Waynflete volunteered. She had means and opportunity, and plenty of options for motive. In Chapter 17, Lord Whitfield says that Tommy made fun of him by imitating him, which I can imagine Miss Waynflete considered a form of ingratitude. But even before that, he was an unpleasant boy who likely caused Lord Whitfield, if not Miss Waynflete herself, a lot of stress. He also accidentally saw a letter from a lady at the local solicitor’s office, and it’s possible that letter has to do with something Miss Waynflete wanted to keep secret. Possibly to do with Mrs Horton’s will, since the solicitor went to see her before she died?
• Dr Humbleby – he clashed with Lord Whitfield over an issue to do with a water scheme. Possibly, Miss Waynflete wanted to remove an obstacle from Lord Whitfield’s plans, or also possibly, that water scheme issue impacted Miss Waynflete herself, possibly by causing some kind of structural risk to her beloved Hall library + museum?
• Miss Pinkerton – pretty obvious, she was on her way to Scotland Yard to report the murderer. I don’t know if she suspected Miss Waynflete or Lord Whitfield. She and Miss Waynflete were friends, so I don’t think she’d be so eager to run to Scotland Yard if that was her suspect. Whereas if she suspected Lord Whitfield, I can imagine her confiding in Miss Waynflete, and thereby sealing her doom. But then again, she never actually told Luke Fitzwilliam that the murderer was a man (he assumed so, but I re-read that scene and she never even used pronouns), so it’s possible she did suspect MIss Waynflete from the start. That fit with her saying that no one would ever suspect the killer, since no one tends to suspect fluffy elderly ladies of murder. Miss Pinkerton was killed by a car with Lord Whitfield’s license plate, but it’s possible Miss Waynflete took it without arousing suspicion (again because fluffy old lady).
• Mrs Horton – in chapter 17, Lord Whitfield says she was rude to him. She was also generally unpleasant to many people, so it’s likely this happened more than once, and Miss Waynflete noticed.
• Rivers the chauffeur – pretty self-evident. Lord Whitfield fired him for using his car to give a girl a ride (he considered it immoral behaviour). Rivers threatened to punch him, but in a goofy twist, Lord Whitfield trips and falls on his butt instead. Miss Waynflete witnesses the whole thing. 

Miss Pinkerton also asked about Bridget. Again, in a book by a different author, I might say that was a ruse to make us think Bridget is in danger, but really Miss Pinkerton suspected her all the while. But in a Christie book, since I think Bridget is set up as a romantic happily ever after for the young male lead, I think instead that Miss Pinkerton worried that Miss Waynflete may be jealous of Bridget for being engaged to Lord Whitfield. And possibly that if the relationship doesn’t work out, Miss Waynflete may be angry at Bridget for being “ungrateful.”

Where I left off, Bridget has just broken off her engagement with Lord Whitfield to be with Luke, and Miss Waynflete has invited her to her home so she would be safe. My guess is that Miss Waynflete will try to kill her, and this is how Luke will solve the mystery. Also, to be honest, if Bridget hadn’t broken off her engagement to Lord Whitfield, I still think she’s a strong suspect. Similar to Miss Waynflete, I can see her doing the killings for Lord Whitfield’s benefit, but unlike Miss Waynflete, it won’t be love that motivates her but a pragmatic desire to protect her source of lasting financial security. But since she broke up with Lord Whitfield, she clearly does have a romantic streak after all.

The Actual Reveal

Yep, it was Miss Waynflete, all right! I got the motive wrong though; she didn’t care for Lord Whitfield, rather, she wanted to get revenge on him.

I did get confused when she was so eager to tell Luke she suspected Lord Whitfield of the crimes, and seemed to support him telling the police about his suspicions, but I chalked it up to there really being no evidence against Lord Whitfield, so maybe she was confident he wouldn’t get convicted. 

Except it turns out that she hated Lord Whitfield all along. Hated that he had to save her beloved childhood home. Hated that he dared to break off their engagement when, at the time, he was poor and she was wealthy. (I was right that she lied about that; also it turns out that she killed the poor canary, not him.) So she decided to kill off anyone she saw that troubled him for whatever reason. A bit of a wild way to get revenge, but hey, it almost worked. 

Other loose ends: Turns out Mrs Horton pissed Miss Waynflete off directly by calling her a spinster. And Miss Waynflete didn’t actually need Lord Whitfield’s car to run over Miss Pinkerton; she just pushed Miss Pinkerton in front of a random car. Then, she told a nearby woman that she witnessed the whole thing and saw the license plate, and it was Lord Whitfield’s plate number. And it turns out Miss Pinkerton shared her suspicions with Mrs Humbleby, but because all Mrs Humbleby really had was a feeling that Miss Waynflete was “wicked,” she didn’t think it enough to tell anyone.

Also, Superintendent Battle showed up in maybe one or two of the final three chapters. He didn’t get to meet Miss Pinkerton, and only learned about the crimes from Luke. He also didn’t suddenly solve the case for Luke. So really, this is much more a standalone mystery with a Battle cameo than an actual Battle mystery.