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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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I Try to Solve an Agatha Christie Mystery | The Clocks (Hercule Poirot)

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I admit, I didn’t enjoy The Clocks as much as I did Dumb Witness. Nothing against Dame Agatha’s writing; it’s just that this one has elements of espionage in it, and I much prefer domestic crimes rooted in family dramas.

I’m also afraid that my eagerness to try another Agatha Christie over the holidays, I may break my victorious end to the year. I honestly didn’t expect to get through it so quickly, and that may be because, unlike with Dumb Witness, I figured this one had a spy-related solution and so didn’t really bother trying to solve it. At least until just pages before the big reveal, when I realized that, spy elements or no, I simply can’t resist trying to outsmart the Queen of Crime at every turn.

Here’s the set-up: freelance typist Sheila Webb is called to No. 19 Wilbraham Crescent, the home of Miss Pebmarsh, for a last-minute job. The door is unlatched, so even if Miss Pebmarsh isn’t home when Sheila arrives, she should just let herself into the sitting room to the right of the entrance. Sheila does so, and stumbles onto a dead body. As she’s processing the fact, Miss Pebmarsh arrives home. It turns out Miss Pebmarsh is blind, so Sheila warns her about the dead body, and runs out of the house screaming into the arms of Colin Lamb, who happens to be passing by. Colin is “officially” a marine biologist, but is really a spy. He’s friends with Hercule Poirot, who’s retired and kinda depressed, so Colin takes him the case to cheer him up.

Some elements of curiosity:

  • Sheila’s boss says that Miss Pebmarsh asked for her specifically, but Sheila doesn’t know why as she hasn’t ever done work with Miss Pebmarsh before. More oddly, Miss Pebmarsh denies making the call in the first place.
  • Sheila enters the house at around.3 pm; Miss Pebmarsh’s cuckoo clock chimes the hour. But there are four clocks in the room that are turned to the time 4:13. Miss Pebmarsh denies having those clocks at all. Later, as Inspector Hardcastle is about to take the clocks into evidence, he finds only three.
  • Inspector Hardcastle finds a business card on the dead man, but when he investigates, both the man’s name and his company don’t seem to exist.
  • During the inquest, Sheila’s co-worker Edna says that something couldn’t have happened the way one of the witnesses says it did. Shortly after, she turns up dead.

Somewhat ancillary to this, but possibly related, Colin is in the area because he’s investigating a person of interest. His only clue is the number 61, the letter W, and a drawing of a crescent. Living at No. 61 Wilbraham Crescent is an engineer who seems shady in that he’s bad at his job, but not necessarily the kind of shady that Colin is looking for.

Through both Colin and Inspector Hardcastle’s investigations, we meet a whole cast of characters in the neighbourhood, including an overworked mom whose husband is away for long stretches of time, a woman with 14 or 19 cats (different characters have different counts), and a few more. Poirot plays armchair detective in this one, literally, relying on Colin to share all possible clues while Poirot’s little grey cells do their work.

And while I didn’t quite put as much effort into solving this case as I usually do with other Agatha Christie cases, I’m somewhat (arrogantly) confident I know what happened. So I’m locking in my guess, with equal confidence that I will be wrong and my lack of interest in spy fiction kept me from picking up most of the relevant clues.

Did I Solve It?

LOL, no not at all. And even when I thought through a significant clue with a 50/50 chance of getting it right, I chose the wrong answer. Ironically, my proposed solution did somewhat touch on the answer to the espionage case Colin was working on, so I guess in this particular story, I turned out to be a better spy than detective!

*** SPOILERS BELOW ***

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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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