Tag Archives: Agatha Christie

I Try to Solve an Agatha Christie Mystery | Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot)

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I began 2024 by trying to solve an Agatha Christie mystery (After the Funeral), and so fittingly, the year comes to a close with another attempt to outsmart the Queen of Crime. Best part: this story has a dog!

First and foremost: I’m having an absolute ball (pun intended) reading Dumb Witness! The set-up is fantastic: Miss Emily Arundell’s family comes to her home for Easter weekend. All of them have their reasons for needing money, and make valiant attempts to charm her into giving them some. But Miss Emily is a sharp woman, and has little patience for her nieces’ and nephew’s obvious sucking up.

Late one night, she trips at the top of the staircase, and only barely escapes serious injury. Her family members are quick to pin the blame on her dog Bob, a little terrier who loves to play by rolling his ball down the stairs and having someone toss it back up, but Miss Emily has her doubts. Sure, Bob’s ball was found at the spot where she tripped, but something about the scene doesn’t sit right with her, and she pens Hercule Poirot a letter asking for help.

Except Poirot doesn’t get the letter till a few weeks later, and by that point, Miss Emily is dead, and seemingly from natural causes. Even more puzzling, sometime between Easter weekend and her death, Miss Emily changed her will and left everything to her companion, Miss Wilhelmina Lawson, instead of the family members previously named in it.

Did Miss Emily truly die of natural causes, or was she murdered? Was her fall down the stairs another murder attempt, and did that culprit succeed in their second attempt? And if so, who killed her?

I admit, this was a head scratcher for me. I spent most of the book fixated on a single suspect, and was almost 100% confident in my suspicions. The one snag is that this person just seemed too obvious to be the killer, but then maybe Christie was just being extra devious in trying to make me second guess myself.

Fortunately (or maybe not?), later on in the book, another suspect emerged as being possibly a better fit for the killer. And again, I was almost completely confident I’d gotten it this time, with the only snag being that perhaps Christie was just being extra, extra devious and making me look at this new suspect when my original guess was right all along.

Either way, armed with hot coffee and plenty of holiday spirit, I’m at Chapter 25 and believe I’m ready to lock in my answer, and make my accusation. Typing it below the spoiler tag…

Update: Chapter 28, and I doubt myself. Could I be wrong? I’ll make my edits to the below, and then lock in my guess again.

Did I Solve It?

I did!!! I actually got most of the details right, with only minor gaps in terms of specifics and some minor errors in my theories about the details. But I totally got the killer’s identity, and the broad strokes of their motive and method. I’m especially proud of myself for not falling for the big red herring Christie dropped into the mix. Hah!

Best of all, the book ends with Hastings adopting Bob the dog! He and Bob had lots of fun playing together during the investigation, so this is the happiest of all happy endings indeed!

*** SPOILERS BELOW ***

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I Try to Solve an Agatha Christie Mystery | Murder is Easy (Superindentent Battle)

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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***

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I Try to Solve an Agatha Christie Mystery | After the Funeral (Hercule Poirot)

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AfterTheFuneral

New year, new Christie! For my first case in 2024, I’ve decided to try to solve After the Funeral. My sister and I had lunch together to celebrate New Year’s Eve’s Eve, and then treated ourselves to a bit of book shopping afterwards, and this was my year-end treat.

I usually prefer Poirot’s earlier cases, but this turned out to be really good! Wealthy patriarch Richard dies suddenly, and his relatives all gather in his mansion after the funeral for the reading of his will. At the reading, Richard’s sister Cora carelessly comments, “He was murdered, wasn’t he?” The next day, Cora herself is murdered, and the family solicitor turns to Hercule Poirot for help.

I’m having an absolute blast with this story. There’s lots of family drama, and it’s all filtered wonderfully through Christie’s sly wit. There’s a whole cast of suspects — all of them have strong motives, and none of them have a solid alibi. There’s a great moment where a private investigator tells Poirot all he’s found about each of the suspects, and their respective motives and alibis. When they get to the final name, Poirot says, “And it was quite impossible for her to have left Enderby that day without the servants knowing? Say that is so, I implore you!” Alas, that particular suspect also had her whereabouts unaccounted for at the time of Cora’s death.

“Il ne manquait ça!” said Poirot with strong feeling. [p. 154]

I pretty much suspected every character at one point or another. In fact, I’d just settled on one suspect, simply because they seemed the least suspicious, only for them to be almost killed themselves. For another suspect, I decided on their innocence based on something I now fear is a red herring.

Still, Poirot is gathering the characters for his big reveal, and so it’s time to make my final accusation. Am I confident? Oddly, yes, but also, this is the kind of confidence that, from experience, often comes before the fall. So I’m locking in my answer and looking forward to learning how much I’ve gotten it wrong.

Did I Solve It?

YES I DID! YES I DID! AHHHHH!!! There was a delightful detail I did not at all guess, and a couple of clues I didn’t pick up on, but the whodunnit, as well as their motive and method, I totally did figure out!

Literary Treats 1, Agatha Christie 0. Fantastic victory to start the new year!

***SPOILERS BELOW***

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