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I Try to Solve an Agatha Christie Mystery | Cat Among the Pigeons (Hercule Poirot)

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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***

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I Try to Solve an Agatha Christie Mystery | The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (Miss Marple)

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Trying to solve The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side is a bit of a bittersweet experience. It’s the final Miss Marple novel I haven’t yet read or tried to solve. After a staunch almost life-long preference for Poirot, I’ve grown to prefer Miss Marple in recent years. I mean, really, how awesome is it for a little old lady with white hair and pink cheeks to be the most brilliant crime-solving mind around? And while Agatha Christie mysteries are always a pleasure to re-read, I admit I’ll miss matching wits with dear old Aunt Jane, and trying to solve the mystery before she does.

Still, as the very pragmatic Jane Marple herself would say, the end will have to come at some time, and all one can do is face it when it does. (Except of course, she would say it much more eloquently. Because my goodness, Agatha Christie, the writer you are!)

Mirror features one of my favourite elements in a murder mystery: the glamour of a movie being made! A famous film star, Marina Gregg, moves to St Mary Mead (Gossington Hall, to be exact, where Mrs. Bantry from The Body in the Library used to live!). She and her husband, Jason Rudd, throw a fete for the neighbourhood, and invite a select group of 30 or 40 local luminaries into their home for drinks.

Among the guests is Heather Badcock, a kindly, if rather thoughtless and self-centred, woman, who is totally starstruck by Marina. At the party, she excitedly tells Marina about how kind the actress was when they first met years ago. Marina is super polite and gracious until something over Heather’s shoulder catches her attention, and she gets a terrible look on her face that reminds Mrs. Bantry of The Lady of Shalott (where the book’s title comes from).

Later in the party, Heather dies from a poisoned daiquiri. Except it turns out that, due to a spilled drink, it was actually Marina’s daiquiri she drank. We also learn that Marina has received threatening letters, and that there are many people in her life with reasons to hold grudges. Whodunnit? Why? And can Miss Marple solve the case before the killer strikes again?

I have a really strong gut feel about the answer to this mystery, and I’m going to go ahead and lock it in.

Did I Solve It?

I did! I actually did!

Also, my goodness, those last couple of chapters were filled with other twists I DID NOT see coming. So, brava, Dame Agatha Christie! The title Queen of Crime is very much well-earned.

That’s it for me and Miss Marple on this blog then. Fortunately, I believe I still have quite a few Poirot mysteries as well as non-series mysteries that I can try to solve!

***SPOILERS BELOW***

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I Try to Solve an Agatha Christie Mystery | Towards Zero (Superintendent Battle)

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The detective with her book-inspired makeup look
Much needed detective fuel:
British-themed tea in an Agatha Christie mug!

Okay, I admit it, I’m completely lost. I decided to try solving this mystery because the BBC adaptation was coming to Canada via Britbox this month, and I wanted to try my hand at it before watching the show. I also haven’t written a blog post in a while, and figured that going head-to-head with the Queen of Crime was the perfect way to kick off my blogging year.

Now here I am, 87% in and right before the chapter with the big reveal, and I’m absolutely at a loss. So I’m afraid my 2025 series of Agatha Christie challenges will very much likely kick off with a loss, but on the bright side, I’ve really been enjoying this book, and highly recommend it to any fan of Christie or mysteries in general.

First, it has the elements I love most in Christie’s mysteries: it features a fairly small cast of characters, all of whom have complex relationships with each other, and enough drama amongst them to fuel whatever the motive for murder will turn out to be. At its heart is tennis player Neville Strange, his ex-wife Audrey, and his current, younger wife Kay. From the start, it seems clear that Neville isn’t fully happy with the divorce; he speaks highly of Audrey’s character, expresses guilt over causing her heartbreak, and seems impatient whenever Kay complains about something. The love triangle comes to a head when Neville decides that he and Kay will visit his elderly relative Lady Tressilian (Anjelica Huston in the adaptation!), at the same time as Audrey visits her every year. Instant drama!

Added to the mix are two other men who turn the love triangle into a much more complex polygon: Thomas Royde, a childhood friend of Audrey’s who has been secretly in love with her for years, and Ted Latimer, a dashing young man who is friendly and rather flirty with Kay. Then there’s Mary Aldin, companion and distant cousin to Lady Tressilian, and of course, Lady Tressilian herself, a formidable woman (Anjelica Huston!) who stays in her bed full-time and uses a rope bell to call her maid.

One evening, a visitor, Mr Treves, tells the story about a child he knows who got away with murder (literal, cold-blooded murder) many years ago. That child would now be an adult, and Mr. Treves said they had such a distinctive physical feature that he would surely recognize them even now. Mr. Treves later returns to his hotel, finds a sign saying the lift is broken, and so climbs the stairs to his top floor room. He dies of a heart attack from the climb.

Fast forward a few days (?), and Lady Tressilian is also found dead in her bed, struck in the head with an unknown blunt object. All the evidence points to one of the characters, but of course, the case is never that simple.

I had a vague suspicion of one of the characters from the beginning, honestly for no good reason other than they made the most sense to me for the big reveal. But then they later did something that made me realize they’re actually likely innocent. And then came a flurry of new clues and mini-reveals that seem to make everything clearer to Superintendent Battle, but honestly only made me even more confused than ever. I don’t think that re-reading past chapters, or even my notes and highlights will make anything any clearer for me, mostly because I already did that and I’m still confused, LOL! So, without further ado, I’m going to lock in my answer, and see how I do!

Was I right?

Ahahahaha! No, absolutely not, not even close. I named my choice of murderer below, and a bunch of other suspects I’d discarded as suspects for various reasons. Then I make a joke about how, at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was this one character I never suspected, and of course, that’s who it turned out to be. And of course, their motive makes total sense; I just didn’t see it at all.

So, well played, Dame Agatha Christie. The Queen of Crime has fooled me again. My ego would like to give myself partial credit for at least guessing the motive; I’d just assigned it to the wrong person. But, ultimately, no, I did not figure out whodunnit. So 2025 begins with Agatha Christie 1, Literary Treats 0, and a fun little mystery to kick off spring.

*** SPOILERS BELOW ***

My Verdict

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