Tag Archives: I try to solve a Golden Age mystery

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 a Dorothy L Sayers Mystery | The Nine Tailors

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Hoping Sherlock Holmes tea will help me solve this case!

Ahh… I tried solving this for my blog, but gave up halfway through.

The Nine Tailors is beautifully written. The “tailors” in the title refers not to suit-makers, but rather to the nine bells in a small village church. The story begins with Lord Peter and his trusty valet Bunter getting stranded at a small village on New Year’s Eve, and taken in by the local priest. The church has planned an overnight performance of its bells to ring in the New Year, one of the bellringers has called in sick, and Lord Peter gets a chance to join in the bellringing himself. As the hours pass, he also gets to know more about the people in the village, and all the little bits of local gossip.

Fast forward a few months, and Lord Peter receives a call from the parish: a body has just been discovered in another person’s grave. Could he come over and help them figure out who it is, and how it got there? Lord Peter of course agrees immediately, and I was equally intrigued.

I also have a soft spot for my copy: I found it in a thrift shop, and there’s a lovely handwritten line pencilled in cursive, “from my mother, 2010”, plus an embossed snowflake name, “Natalie Neill.” So I like thinking about Natalie Neill, and her mother, and how they may have shared a love for old British mysteries and maybe even Dorothy Sayers in particular.

But as a mystery for me to solve, it was a bit too dense for me to really sink my teeth into. Who was the dead body in the churchyard? How did they die? Why were they tied up, and why were their hands taken? Parallel to this, and somewhat linked, is the mystery around a jewelry theft at a wealthy woman’s home years ago. How were the jewels actually stolen? Were the right persons charged with the crime? Where did the jewels go? Added to the mix is a whole cast of characters who may or may not be involved, a stranger who visited during New Years and also may or may not be involved, and a potentially coded message whose key may lie amongst the parish bells.

Lord Peter Wimsey does his best to solve the case, in his methodical way, but it seems each new answer only gives rise to more questions. There are also too many characters for me to keep straight, and as much as I tried to stay interested in the whole history behind the jewel theft, I just ended up making my head hurt. Probably around the halfway point, I decided to stop trying to figure things out, and just enjoy the ride.

My enjoyment of the story did increase after that, because then I could just enjoy how wonderfully Sayers crafts the atmosphere for her story. I loved imagining myself in this small village, and hearing the beautiful church bells for myself. Sayers describes the bells’ songs beautifully; I honestly had no idea how much music and harmony were involved in bellringing.

It turns out that letting go of the need to solve the mystery did in fact actually lead me to solving a key component of the case. I managed to guess the cause of death, and I honestly think I was only able to do so because I’d stopped worrying so much about tracking all the little details involved.

The rest of the big reveals were a surprise to me. I thought the story of how the victim ended up dead made sense, and I thought Sayers did such a great job at humanizing the people involved, so that the reveal evoked more of an emotional response beyond just an “aha!” moment. I actually felt for those involved in the death, and for how things turned out in the end.

Overall, a beautifully told story, and like I said, the mother-daughter connection gave me a soft spot for my copy. As a mystery, it wasn’t among my successes, nor, quite frankly, was it all that much fun to try. Possibly others will have more luck / enjoy the attempt more, but for me, I recommend simply sitting back with this, and letting yourself enjoy seeing the story unfold.

I Try to Solve a Golden Age Mystery | An English Murder, by Cyril Hare

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I looked up Cyril Hare’s An English Murder at my local library after seeing it listed in The Guardian as one of the Top 10 Golden Age Detective Novels. I’m always eager to expand my grey cells’ repertoire beyond Agatha Christie (and perhaps even give my inner detective a fighting chance every now and then!), so I decided to give this a go.

First, I’ll say I was almost turned off by the cover design. Having never read this author before, I was too cheap to purchase a copy with a better one, but just for my own satisfaction, here’s the gorgeous cover of the original 1951 mass market paperback edition:

EnglishMurderClassicCover

The set-up is one of my favourites: it’s Christmas at Warbeck Hall, a beautiful and old English country estate, and family and friends have gathered to celebrate the season. On the guest list are: a socialist politician, the leader of a fascist group, an earl’s daughter nursing unrequited love for the fascist, the ambitious wife of a mid-level government worker, and a Jewish history professor and concentration camp survivor who is researching the family’s history. In the servant’s hall are: the family butler, his daughter, and the police officer acting as the politician’s bodyguard. Add in a winter snow storm, a rather juicy secret, and a dying patriarch, and to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, murder is certainly afoot.

I love how this story touches on the politics and economic realities of post-WWII Britain. Briggs the butler comments on the challenges of putting on a party with such a small household staff. He and his daughter Susan also represent two generations’ approaches to generational wealth, with Briggs being bound by social order and Susan wanting to do away with it. Sir Julius and Robert Warbeck lock horns over competing politics: Sir Julius thinks Robert’s fascism is reprehensible; Robert views Sir Julius’ socialism as being a traitor to their class.

Dr Bottwink’s experiences at a concentration camp are mentioned only in passing, but he isn’t shy to tell Briggs he’d prefer not to eat with Robert. And when Sgt Rogers later comments at how much Dr Bottwink has moved around, the professor corrects him that it’s more accurate to say he was moved, and that this circumstance has turned him leftist — not quite communist, but “anti.” There’s a great moment after the first murder where Dr Bottwink is first to breakfast, and he asks Briggs not to leave the dining room till the next guest arrives. Life experiences have taught him to be cautious: on the off-chance someone dies at this meal, he can’t afford to have been left alone with the food at any time. Neither Briggs, nor Sir Julius who arrives next, both of whom are Englishmen, even realize why that could be a risk.

The mystery itself unfolds at a quick and entertaining pace. Events occur, information is revealed, and tea and champagne are served. I have a feeling that when the big reveal finally unfolds, the killer’s identity and motive will turn out to be so utterly obvious that I’ll hang my head in shame that I didn’t guess it at all.

The thing is, the first murder is easy enough to predict. The victim is someone whom pretty much everyone else at the estate had reason to hate, so when they declare they have a big announcement to make, and then promptly drink a glass of champagne, it’s no big loss when they drop dead. Figuring out whodunnit is trickier, because so many people had motive to.

But then two more deaths follow, and the third death in particular doesn’t fit the pattern at all. Who could have wanted that third person dead? How does their death fit in with the other two? 

I have my theories, and none of them make sense. Alas, I’m reaching the 90% mark of the ebook, and things are beginning to wind down. So I’m going to give this a go, and see how I do!

UPDATE: Some significant new clues in the penultimate chapter! I may need to revise my verdict… Now at the start of the final chapter, and it’s now or never to lock my verdict in!

Did I Solve It?

Ahahahahaha! Absolutely not! Not even close! In my defence, the reveal hinged on a bit of history and law that I knew absolutely nothing about, so despite all my research, all my careful note-taking, and all the workings of my poor little grey cells, there is absolutely no way I would have guessed that motive. Honestly, I had to read the final chapter twice over just to make sense of the key information that formed the motive, and by the second time, I was laughing out loud, because never was any of that even on the horizon of my knowledge.

Would British readers be better equipped to solve this case? Would history buffs? Possibly. I’m sure there are many, much smarter readers out there who could try their hand at this and find the solution super obvious. I didn’t, and in a rare occurrence amongst my many detecting failures, I don’t actually feel like I should have been able to put the clues together. Man, this case was wild! And a lot of fun to try and solve, failure or no!

*** SPOILERS BELOW ***

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