The prince of Ramat, a fictional Middle Eastern country, dies in a revolution. Before he does, he asks his English pilot to find a way to get his jewels, worth three quarters of a million pounds, out of the country and safely out of his enemy’s hands. The pilot spends a mysterious twenty minutes alone in the hotel room of his sister and teenage niece, and when his and the king’s bodies are later found, the jewels aren’t with them.

The story then moves to an exclusive all-girls boarding school in England, Meadowbank. Among its pupils are the pilot’s niece Jennifer, her best friend and the daughter of a former intelligence agent, Julia, and the dead king’s cousin, Princess Shaista. The faculty and staff include school co-founder and formidable headmistress, Miss Bulstrode; her co-founder and reliable right-hand, Miss Chadwick; her presumed successor, Miss Vansittart; the new secretary, Ann Shapland; an unlikeable games mistress with a history of uncovering people’s secrets, Miss Springer; a smart English and Geography teacher, Miss Rich; a snobby French teacher, Mademoiselle Blanche; and a handsome young gardener, Adam, who’s actually a British intelligence officer undercover to ferret out anyone who may be after the king’s jewels. All lovely and idyllic, until one late night when Miss Springer is found dead in the new Sports Pavilion.

Cat Among the Pigeons is a bit of a mixed bag for me. I LOVE boarding school mysteries, and as someone who grew up in an all-girls Catholic school, stories that take place in that kind of environment are among my favourite kinds. But I’m also not fond of mysteries involving international espionage. Nothing against them, they’re just not my thing. And even though, at its heart, this mystery is about missing diamonds, there’s a lot of international intrigue flavouring the crimes.

As a mystery I’m trying to solve, this case unfortunately falls a bit flat for me. The location of the diamonds is obvious really early on. They’re clearly at the centre of the whole thing, so the motive behind the murders also seems easy enough to guess. The methods are also fairly straightforward: Miss Springer is shot from four feet away, and the blunt object used to kill the second murder victim is mentioned within the same chapter. All that’s left to figure out is whodunnit.

This isn’t to say that the murderer’s identity is easy to suss out. I’m actually at the point right before the big reveal, and I don’t know who the murderer is. I have my suspicions, of course, but I don’t feel particularly strongly about them. The trouble is, what I usually LOVE in Agatha Christie mysteries is the psychology aspect. Give me ALL the drama! Give me ALL the overwhelming emotions and personality clashes! If money is involved, then let the suspects be all shady and scheming and trying to appear perfectly innocent. With the whole espionage angle and GBP750,000 at stake, there’s a bit of professional detachment to this crime, and that in turn makes it not quite as gripping for me as her other works.

That being said, this is still a good book, and an enjoyable read. I loved reading about the school and all the personalities in it. There’s a chapter composed of characters’ letters to home that I found really interesting. I also really enjoyed the subplots about characters’ lives, like Miss Bulstrode choosing her successor, Miss Chadwick worried about upcoming changes to her beloved school, Ann Shapland being a restless sort with a series of different jobs and not wanting to settle down and marry her nice but dull boyfriend, and so on.

It’s just as a mystery where I’m trying to piece together the clues that this case isn’t quite as much fun for me as some of Christie’s others. I may have enjoyed it more if I’d simply read it as a story rather than tried to solve it, but even then, I wish there had been a lot more focus on the boarding school intrigue and personality clashes amongst students and staff, and a lot less on the whole hidden diamonds thing.

Did I Get It Right?

30% yes? Which in this case is pretty much a no, LOL. I did figure out one of the murders, and I actually did suss out quite a number of details about other characters. I even guessed the ultimate big reveal at one point. Unfortunately, I then dismissed that guess as a red herring, and deemed the actual big reveal villain to be innocent. Oops.

The epilogue, about the ultimate recipient of the prince’s diamonds, was a surprise to me, and also really sweet.

***SPOILERS BELOW***

My Suspects

• Ann Shapland – new staff, could have been placed in school to steal the diamonds. She’s also restless and looking for excitement, so a good candidate for secret agent work. But she had an alibi for Miss Vansittart’s murder. It’s possible the timing is fake but I think it’s more likely she’s innocent and the kind of progressive young woman Christie often likes to write about. She’ll likely dump her boring boyfriend and end up with hot secret agent Adam.
• Princess Shaista – Miss Bulstrode and the matron, Miss Johnston, both comment about her looking older than 15, especially with her push-up bra corset. They attribute it to her being Middle Eastern, which could be just Christie’s outdated attitudes towards BIPOC people, but I think it’s also possible she’s actually an adult undercover from Ramat’s new regime to try to find the diamonds. But then why arrange the kidnapping plot and why make it look so amateurish? If she just wanted to leave the school, there were simpler ways to do so, so the whole kidnapping thing seems more like a spoiled teen looking for attention than a professional thief.
• Miss Rich – Jennifer says she looks familiar, though the person she knew was much fatter. So it’s possible Jennifer knew her from Ramat. But then Jennifer proves herself to be terrible at noticing details and recognizing faces, so I’ll guess her suspicion will turn out to be irrelevant.
• Miss Chadwick – Jennifer’s mom reacted strongly to seeing something out of Miss Bulstrode’s window, and Miss Chadwick is the only major character mentioned as being present in that scene. But I can’t imagine her going after the jewels; she seems like she just wants a quiet life and for the school to do well. She also found both bodies, which just seems like a massive coincidence.
• Miss Bulstrode – why not? She has friends at the Home Office, so I can imagine her being involved with political stuff and lost diamonds.
• Mademoiselle Blanche – she seems connected with the kidnapping plot at least, and seems interested in a get-rich-quick scheme. But any case against her is thin.

My Verdict

I’m going to take a wild swing and accuse Miss Chadwick. I’m also going to take an even wilder swing and guess that the motive wasn’t to steal the diamonds, but rather to protect the school.

I think Miss Springer was the nosy woman in the hotel who saw the pilot hiding the diamonds. She joined the school to try to find them, and she was looking for them at the Sports Pavilion. I’m guessing she also uncovered something unsavoury about the school, or possibly about Miss Bulstrode’s past, and so Miss Chadwick killed her for that, then went back to bed hoping for the body to be discovered in the morning. Unfortunately for her, the school nurse saw the light left on and woke her up to investigate, so she ended up seeing the body.

Miss Chadwick also had motive to kill Miss Vansittart. She refused to call the cops when Princess Shaista disappeared, which shows she prioritized the school’s reputation over student welfare. As far as Miss Chadwick knew, Miss Vansittart was next in line to be headmistress after Miss Bulstrode retires, and her actions proved she would be a terrible one who may lead the school to ruin.

There are people indeed involved who are trying to steal the diamonds, so I think that danger is real enough. But I’ll take my wild swing and say there was actually more to the murders than the obvious.

The Actual Reveal

I was right that the Princess Shaista is an older woman (mid-20s) impostor. I missed that the real Shaista was actually kidnapped before the start of term (I thought maybe that Shaista was a made up relative altogether), and the present-day kidnapping was because the real princess’s uncle had come to town, so the fake Shaista had to get away without him seeing her. Both Shaistas are fine; the real one is in a nice estate in Switzerland, and the fake one just resumed her real identity as an actress. The goal of the impostor was to get the diamonds, since presumably, whoever the prince had sent it to would want it to go to her as his closest living relative.

I was also right that Ann Shapland was indeed a secret agent. She was in Ramat under a different identity, as a Spanish dancer with a different name, and she did come to the school to steal the diamonds. She also killed Miss Springer and Mademoiselle Blanche. Too bad I ultimately went the romantic route and labelled her innocent. Oops.

I did get right that Miss Chadwick killed Miss Vansittart, but I was wrong on the motive. It’s actually that she wanted to be headmistress after Miss Bulstrode retires, and so was jealous of Miss Vansittart.

Final piece of the puzzle is Jennifer recognizing Miss Rich, but saying she looked fatter then. Miss Rich was in Ramat to hide her pregnancy; the baby was stillborn.