There is a positive riot of Agatha Christie on UK TV over the holiday period; it is becoming a Christmas tradition. A Christie for Christmas? Just slightly! It is almost impossible to list everything which is on, but here are some highlights to give a flavour of it, with two obvious stand-outs. 

SUNDAY, 23rd DECEMBER
CHANNEL 5  
9:00 pm Agatha and the Truth of Murder
This is a new drama related to Agatha Christie’s infamous eleven-day disappearance in 1926. The story imagines that she faked her own disappearance to investigate a true-life murder: that of Florence Nightingale’s god-daughter … Sounds intriguing!

ITV3
Agatha Christie’s Poirot
4:25pm Dumb Witness
6:45pm Hercule Poirot’s Christmas – in which Poirot rescues Japp from his family Christmas
9:00pm Murder on the Orient Express 

MONDAY 24th DECEMBER 
ITV3 
Agatha Christie’s Poirot
3:00pm The Theft of the Royal Ruby 
 … in which Poirot displays his talent for peeling a mango (which David Suchet had learned from the Duke of Edinburgh)
4:00pm Dead Man’s Folly
… filmed at Greenway, Agatha Christie’s holiday home
6:00pm The Big 4  

BOXING DAY, 26th DECEMBER
BBC 1 
9:00 pm ABC Murders part one
The big event swigatha-wise over Christmas. Some purists have already slammed it without seeing it – and understandably so, given previous adaptations by the same team. Like those, this one has a strong cast and is a must-see, even though the verdict might be ‘never again.’ Parts two and three are at the same time, on the 27th and 28th December.

ITV3
Agatha Christie’s Poirot
4:45 pm The Affair at the Victory Ball
5:55 pm The ABC Murders 
… helpfully scheduled so that viewers can go from this old version (1992) to the new one and still have time to have supper in between. If there is a scene on BBC that lives up to the one below then we are in for a treat:  

FRIDAY, 28th DECEMBER
CHANNEL 5
6:00 pm Crooked House 
A repeat of last year’s Christmas offering. It was tucked away on Channel 5, so many may have missed it. Worth a re-look. 

Also on this day, and on subsequent days, ABC Murders continues on BBC1 and ITV3 goes in for an orgy of  Suchet’s Poirot, with at least three films each afternoon, including  Curtain (28th December) and Evil Under The Sun (29th).  There are eight hours of it on New Year’s Eve alone. Neither the BBC Radio Times nor the ITV3 website lists all these episodes. 

NEW YEAR’S DAY
ITV3 
8:25 am Murder on the Orient Express
The first, and in my opinion, best adaptation of this brilliant story; made in 1974, it features Albert Finney and his (to Agatha) disappointingly unflamboyant moustaches. I find it amusing that, 45 years later, Agatha’s fans still respond to the appointment of a new Poirot, most recently Kenneth Branagh and John Malkovich, based on the evidence of his upper lip. I suspect she would have hated Suchet’s plastic monstrosity and quietly admired the chutzpah of Branagh’s. 
2:50 pm Agatha Christie’s Marple: At Bertram’s Hotel
4:55 pm Agatha Christie’s Marple: Ordeal by Innocence
A somewhat misleading series title. Agatha Christie’s actual Marple never appeared in this book
7:00 pm Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Adventure of the Clapham Cook 
One last outing for Suchet’s Poirot before he collapses on the sofa with exhaustion. 

 

 

 

Four months after the death of Hercule Poirot, his friend and associate Captain Hastings is contacted by Poirot’s solicitors and given a letter from the dead man*. When Hastings  has recovered from the shock of its contents, they ask if he will help them, for a fee, to tidy up some of Poirot’s business affairs. Hastings, at something of a loose end, agrees, and travels to the flat in Whitehaven Mansions for a meeting with Miss Felicity Lemon, Poirot’s one-time secretary.

In order to help Hastings set Poirot’s papers in order, Miss Lemon realises that she will have to explain to him her filing system, which had finally reached the state of perfection of which she had always dreamed. This explanation might take some time…

  

The filing system contained and cross-referenced all the information about every case that Poirot had solved – each clue, each motive, each suspect, each alibi and each murderer.

Also filed away were all of Poirot’s notes for his unpublished masterwork, ‘The Criminal Psychology‘.  Hastings decides that he will put these notes into some kind of order and get them published as a tribute to his old friend. He realises that that will also take some time, and so he decides to rent the flat while he works on it.

Miss Lemon then shows Hastings a pile of unanswered correspondence from people wishing to consult Poirot, unaware of his recent demise. Now, Miss Lemon has been out of a job for four months, and Hastings has a brain-wave: he invites her to become his own personal secretary, and she agrees.

His first instruction to Miss Lemon is to contact the landlord of the flat and enquire about a lease. His second is that she should reply to each of the letters, informing the correspondents that Poirot is dead, but that his long-time associate Captain Hastings is available should they wish to consult him instead.

As Miss Lemon types away furiously, there is a tap on the door.  It is Inspector Japp….

NOTE
* See the final chapter of Curtain, by Agatha Christie

 

ITV’s Poirot series ran from 1989 to 2013, and by its conclusion had covered just about every novel or short story featuring the Belgian detective that Agatha Christie wrote. The series was, and continues to be, hugely popular, and the face of David Suchet as Hercule Poirot is one of the most instantly-recognised faces anywhere in the world.

When the series began, it concentrated on the early short stories featuring Poirot as a consulting detective based at Whitehaven Mansions in London, with his associate Captain Hastings, secretary Miss Lemon and Inspector Japp, an old sparring partner from Scotland Yard. These programmes were each just under an hour long, and perfect light-hearted fare for Sunday nights. When the producers turned their attention to the full-length Poirot novels,  where possible they would try to shoe-horn Japp, Hastings and Lemon into the story whether they had appeared in the original or not.

This continued to be the case until 2003, by which time the producers realised that the series had become just a trifle tired and formulaic. A decision was made to concentrate on Poirot working on his own, as had been the case in most of the original books anyway.

A New Start

The first programme in this new format was an adaptation of Five Little Pigs, a story in which Poirot is commissioned by Lucy Lemarchant to investigate the murder of her father sixteen years (fourteen in the film) previously, a crime of which her (now-deceased) mother Caroline had been convicted. Lucy had only been a small child at the time, but Caroline had written a letter to her protesting her innocence – a letter withheld from Lucy until she reached the age of 21.

Poirot agrees to investigate the past, and talk to those also present at the time of Amyas’ death. They are Philip and Meredtith Blake, Elsa Greer, Miss Williams and Angela Warren – the five little pigs.

The resultant film proved to be a triumphant vindication of the producers change of direction.

True to the Original

Five Little Pigs is not the easiest novel to televise, consisting as it does of five characters reminiscing verbally, and then in writing, to Poirot about the events of many years before. During the course of the book nothing else happens, there are no fresh incidents or crimes to spice things up, there are no humorous interludes. This is a dark tale and  Poirot is almost a minor character.

There must have been a great temptation to add extra elements of drama or humour to the story, as the series had often done, but the producers resisted here, with one exception: Caroline Crale is hanged for murder, rather than quickly dying in prison. 

This addition meant that the production could concentrate on stressing the tragic nature of what had happened and describing the haunting impact it still had on those who were present at the time. It achieves this by using strong character actors to bring depth to each of the main protagonists, by the use of different styles of camerawork and lighting to depict the past and the present, and by the careful choice of music to illustrate the tragedy of the Crale family.

What is most unusual about this particular Poirot episode is that some elements of it are so subtle that they only become obvious on a second or third viewing.  Someone clearly took huge care with this production. Here are some examples from the screenplay, the music, the filmwork and the casting.

The Alice Blue Gown

Although Poirot’s novel career lasted from 1920 – 1969, the TV episodes were typically set in 1936. The events leading up to the murder of Amyas Crale would therefore have occurred in the early 1920s, and the costumes and sets reflect this.

The film begins with a seven-year-old Lucy winding up a record player and playing a new ’78 before dressing up in one her mother’s dresses and joining her parents on the terrace.

This is a scene from an apparently idyllic summer, but by the end of it both the parents are dead and Lucy herself sent to live with relatives abroad.

The record Lucy plays is “Alice Blue Gown”, recorded in 1920 by Edith Day. ‘Alice Blue’ was a particular colour favoured by Alice Roosevelt, daughter of the American President, and all the rage at the time; it is also the colour of her mother’s dress that Lucy tries on.

Fourteen years later, the same song is playing in the background as the Five Little Pigs make their way to a re-union at the scene of the crime. Lucy digs out the same dress from her mother’s old dressing-room to wear before she goes downstairs to confront them.

This level of attention to one small detail, introduced right at the start and then again at the end, surprised me. Not once in the film, even at the end, is any explicit mention of the dress made by anyone, nor is any indication of the song’s title given. It is only as a result of re-watching Five Little Pigs that I even noticed it.

The Music

The theme music for the Poirot series was composed by Christopher Gunning, and for most episodes cases all of the incidental music as well.

For Five Little Pigs, however, this was not the case. Apart from ‘Alice Blue Gown’, and an excerpt from the Love Duet from Tristan and Isolde, there is the haunting piano music of Erik Satie (‘Gnossienne No 1‘): ¹

I asked Chris about its inclusion:

“I didn’t choose the piece. It was chosen by the director because he liked it, but he only suggested it for one section. I then suggested we use it in various other sections so as to provide continuity and varied the orchestrations to be suitable for those additional sections. I was happy with this, because I also loved the piece. I thought the result made for a more interesting score overall than some other episodes – I also only used the “famous” theme right at the end.”

This is an inspired choice of music because, alongside the film-work, it manages to underline the feeling of loss of each of the main characters – whether the loss of innocence, or family, or the only person that they ever loved .

Chris composed two other main themes for the film – Amyas Crale’s Last Painting, and The Innocence of Caroline Crale, which is interlaced with the Satie piece throughout. ²

The Filming

The story encompasses three periods – the seemingly idyllic childhood summer holidays of the Crales and the Blakes prior to the First World War, the more obviously idyllic but ultimately fateful summer of the early 1920s, and the darker summer of the mid-1930s, during which the truth is allowed to reveal itself.  Each of these periods is filmed differently.

The childhood sequence is somewhat fuzzy, like a silent home movie. It is slightly disturbing, hinting at the conflicting emotions of the four young people even then. The fuzziness also has the effect of allowing the young ones to closely resemble their older counterparts.

As the five little pigs recollect their memories of the fateful events of the 1920s, the flashback filming is done by hand-held camera, giving the impression to the audience that they are also witness to events, or even filming it themselves.³ The atmosphere is light and airy throughout, almost hazy, including the sequence when Amyas is killed: maybe that is a reflection of the hazy nature of the little pigs’ memories.

By contrast, the later sequences featuring Poirot, his interviews and explanation, are all fully-focussed and sharp, and almost uniformly stark and colourless.  The little pigs have aged by fourteen years but no make-up is needed to illustrate the passage of time.

This bleakness underlines how much each character has been haunted by the events of that long, hazy summer fourteen years previously, and how each of them has lost something then that they can never hope to reclaim. There is no ‘closure’ in this film.

Liberties taken

You can never have an Agatha Christie adaptation without the producers thinking that somehow they are going to be able to improve on the original.

The main change to the original is shown right at the start – the hanging of Caroline Crale (in the book she dies in prison). The rest of the film takes place almost in the shadow of this event. Every time Caroline is remembered, often accompanied by her own theme music, it is more poignant because we already know what lies in store for her.

I doubt whether Agatha Christie would have approved of the hanging, but I am sure she would have snorted somewhat at other,  somewhat petty changes: the events described taking place fourteen, rather than sixteen years previously; the child Carla’s name being changed to Lucy; Elsa’s age being reduced to 18, and Caroline’s failure to  seduce Philip, rather than the other way round.

The other major plot change occurs at the end, when Lucy pulls a gun on the criminal after Poirot has revealed all. This is unnecessary, and goes against the grain of the rest of the film, but even here the way had been paved: there is an earlier sequence that shows Lucy as a child playing Cowboys and Indians with her young aunt Angela, who is encouraging Lucy to shoot her (“That’s the whole point!”).

In neither case does Lucy pull the trigger.

And Finally…

Even the ending is haunting.

In the final sequence, after Poirot has explained all, Lucy, still wearing her mother’s Alice Blue gown, turns her back on everyone and wanders through the shroud-bedecked hall of her old home back into the past – onto a sunlit terrace and into the arms of her parents once more. In the background, Gunning’s orchestration of Satie plays; it is not until the credits begin rolling that his Poirot theme is quietly and seamlessly introduced.  Perfect.

In spite of a couple of needless ‘enhancements’, I think that this is the finest adaptation of any Poirot story that I have yet seen.

Selected Cast and Crew

AIMEE MULLINS  (Lucy Crale)
AIDEN GILLEN  (Amyas Crale)
RACHAEL STERLING  (Caroline Crale)
TALULAH REILLY  (Young Angela)
DAVID SUCHET  (Hercule Poirot)
TOBY STEPHENS  (Philip Blake)
JULIE COX  (Elsa Greer / Lady Dittisham)
MARC WARREN  (Meredith Blake)
GEMMA JONES  (Cecilia Williams)
SOPHIE WINKELMAN  (Angela Warren)

KEVIN ELYOT  Screenplay
MARTIN FUHRER  Cinematography
CHRISTOPHER GUNNING  Music
PAUL UNWIN  Director
MARGARET MITCHELL  Producer

NOTES

¹  This is the piece playing at the top of this review. Recorded for Swigatha by the pianist Chris Long   http://www.chrislongmusic.co.uk/  THANKS!

²  I had originally included (with Christopher Gunning’s blessing) a snatch of his incidental music for this film, for a nominal fee agreed with the publisher. Then extras were added that made this too complex and expensive, so the link has been removed (with great reluctance!).

³ There is an excellent interview with the producer Margaret Mitchell that accompanies the DVD edition of Five Little Pigs, included in the box set of all 9 of the ITV Poirot series.

2017
Kenneth Branagh’s film version of Murder on the Orient Express will go on general release in November 2017.  The previews have been available for a while. Branagh’s portrayal of Poirot, complete with luxurious moustaches, has already attracted a great deal of (not always complimentary) comment.

It is likely that he has chosen, deliberately, to distinguish himself as much as he could from previous manifestations of Poirot to make a role of his own. Having heard the voice he uses on the preview, I think he will succeed, as indeed did the two actors in the previous films of the book.

   

1974 and 2010
There have been two fine versions of the story already – one for the cinema, directed by Sidney Lumet in 1974, and one for ITV’s Poirot series (2010).

The film was was more or less faithful to the plot and the atmosphere of the book; it was a huge success (at the time the top-grossing British film ever) and is repeated often on TV. The ITV production team were keenly aware that their own efforts might be overshadowed by comparisons with it.

They set out to make a version that had a very different atmosphere, and in doing so created something that was more or less faithful to the original plot, but which questioned some of the attitudes and assumptions within it. It is very much a 2010 take on a book written in 1934.

What is interesting to me is that the actual story stands up incredibly well for itself in both cases. This blog will examine the differences between the two versions, and, in anticipation of the new film, speculate about what tricks it might have up its sleeve. But first, here is a resumé of the book’s plot and one aspect of the character of its main protagonist, Hercule Poirot.

Murder on the Orient Express – the original story
Hercule Poirot is recalled urgently to London from Istanbul and finds that the first-class carriage is fully booked. The director of the line, M Bouc, finds a bunk for him, to the consternation of most of the other passengers. One of them, named Ratchett, tries to hire his services en route, but Poirot turns him down because he (literally) doesn’t like the look of him.

During the night, the train is held up in a snow-drift as it makes its way to the Yugoslavian town of Brod. In the morning, Ratchett is found murdered in his cabin. It is clear that no-one could have entered or left the train, and that the killer must still be in the carriage. Ratchett had been stabbed twelve times.

Poirot is asked by Bouc to investigate and come up with a solution to present to the local police when they eventually get to Brod. He soon finds out that Ratchett’s real identity was that of the notorious gangster Cassetti, who had kidnapped and murdered the two-year-old Daisy Armstrong 5 years previously.  Casseti had escaped conviction on a technicality, having used his connections to bribe the legal authorities.

There are twelve other passengers in the carriage, as well as the conductor. It soon becomes clear that every one of them has a connection with the Armstrong family, and that they had plotted this bloody revenge, in effect acting as judge and jury to effect it. The conspirators had gone to great pains to leave clues that threw suspicion on a supposed gangster associate of Cassetti. Unfortunately for them, the extreme weather conditions had rendered this alternative solution implausible, because he could not have got on or off the train as they had planned it.

Poirot, however, presents this solution, and the actual one, to M Bouc, and allows him to choose which one to present to the Yugoslavian police. M Bouc, in the interests of ‘natual justice’, but also in the interest of his line’s reputation, decides to present them with the evidence that points to a fugitive gangster.

Poirot retires from the case, and goes to his cabin to wrestle with his conscience.

The Justice of Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot describes himself as ‘un bon catholique‘ who ‘does not approve of murder’.  He does not always seem to approve of the legal justice system either.

In many of his cases, he stops short of bringing the culprit to justice. He gives them instead the option of taking their own way out, presumably by committing suicide, although that word is never mentioned. He does so in order to spare them, or their loved ones, the horrors of what was inevitably to come: trial and the hangman’s rope. In one example, Poirot performs the execution himself.

The Murder on the Orient Express is the only example where he lets the killer(s) get away with it completely. This at odds with his often-expressed conviction that, once someone has allowed evil to enter into their heart, and committed murder – no matter what the provocation – they will probably do it again.

This possibility – that, having got away with it once, the conspirators might strike again – is ignored by the book and the 1974 film, but is very much present in the 2010 TV programme.

Murder on the Orient Express – the film
This film has an all-star cast, with many headlining actors seemingly content to play minor, almost stereotypical roles. The setting is luxurious, with the atrocious weather conditions outside seeming to have no effect on the comfort of the passengers and crew.

Albert Finney is a believable Poirot, even if a very young one (he was 38). He plays it for laughs quite a bit – in fact, most of the cast do. Jokes are added. Vanessa Redgrave, in the role of Mary Debenham, spends the whole film in a wry state of amusement at what is happening around her.

The star turn is undoubtedly Ingrid Bergman, as Greta Ohlsson, one-time nursemaid to the Armstrong household. She is only in one main scene, but absolutely fills the screen during it. It is a very moving performance of a simple woman who turned to religious devotion to help her cope with the aftermath of  Daisy’s murder. The film was nominated for 6 Oscars but she was the only winner (for Best Supporting Actress).

The film follows the plot very closely, and when Poirot presents his two solutions and Bouc selects the false one, no-one seems bothered, least of all Poirot. The champagne is brought out and the killers all toast each other. The message is loud and clear: justice has been done, and twelve murderers are free to make their way home.

Agatha Christie was pleasantly surprised by the film (her last public appearance was at the premiére) because so many adaptations of her books had produced dreadful results. Even so, she did not like Albert Finney’s moustache:  ‘I wrote that he had the finest moustache in England — and he didn’t in the film. I thought that a pity — why shouldn’t he?‘ Maybe that explains Branagh’s overblown affair…

Murder on the Orient Express – the TV programme
When I first saw the TV programme, I was disappointed. There was far too much emphasis on the supposed ethical dilemma that Poirot faced and religious elements obsessing both him and the other passengers on the train. Having re-watched it, I realise that I had missed the point.

Whilst not tampering with the books plot, the screenplay certainly tampered with its lenient attitude towards the conspiracy: it can never be justified that a group of people should elect themselves judge and jury and mete out their own version of justice.

To make that clear, Ratchett is transformed from a homicidal sadist to a God-fearing man hoping to atone for his crimes and seeking penance, and the righteous Colonel Arbuthnot has to be stopped from killing Poirot when it looks like he is about to betray them to the local police. In this version,  Arbuthnot has allowed evil to enter into his heart.…

To hammer the point home further, the programme begins with the stoning to death of a woman by a mob in Istanbul, witnessed by Poirot, Arbuthnot and Mary Debenham. The victim was pregnant with another man’s child. The horrified onlookers are powerless to intervene, and Poirot says that it is best not to: the woman knew the rules, she knew what she was doing and she knew what would happen to her.

Similarly, Ratchett had also known what he was doing and is now all too aware of what probably lay in store. While he is being executed he is all too conscious, as the poor woman had been, of the first blows that are struck by those pursuing mob justice.

The focus of the rest of the film is on whether Poirot will allow them to get away with it. He does, just, but his logical mind tells him that they are no better than those casting the stones. Whether Arbuthnot and Debenham, who alone have witnessed both deaths, come to the same conclusion is doubtful.

Overall, this is a much darker version of the story (literally). As the train is held up in the snowdrift, its facilities and comforts become unavailable to the passengers. There is no running water and they are forced to sit in semi-darkness to await their fate. This is all a splendid contrast to the fun and frolics of the film, and there is no hint of self-congratulation at the end.

Finally
The moral of the TV film reminds me of a wonderful passage from Tolkien:

There is no trace of pity for the victim in the book or the 1974 film (Agatha Christie would have been horrified if there was), but the audience might feel some when watching the TV film.

It will be interesting to see which version of the story Branagh’s will most resemble. Maybe he will produces something very different, with Poirot delivering the murderers to justice… My suspicion is that it will be a mix of the two – an all-star cast with an equivocal portrayal of the morality displayed by their characters.

Like many of Agatha Christie’s stories of the 1940s, A Murder is Announced is set firmly in the time that it was written (1947-9), with every character in it affected in one way or another by common features of the post-WW2 period in the UK: the rationing of everything, and the difficulties of finding one’s way and place in a hugely-changed world, whether as a refugee, demobbed soldier, ex-land girl or whoever.  

Underlying the story, however, there are also elements driven by the angels and demons of the author’s own childhood that add hugely to its quality.

A combination of the two creates a picture of a village way of life (in Chipping Cleghorn) that is unrecognisable from that described in her earlier stories.

Village Life in King’s Abbott

Dr James Sheppard, the narrator of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (published in 1926), includes a brief chapter “Who’s Who in King’s Abbott”. He describes it as very much like any other village where the hobbies and recreations can be summed up in one word, ‘gossip’. 

Everyone knows everyone else; Ackroyd has lived there all his life and is the heart and soul of our peaceful village, and everyone is very fond of his son Ralph. Houses have maids and under-gardeners, fishmongers and butchers have delivery boys, and the village grapevine is in full operation, enabling the doctor’s sister Caroline to know everyone’s business without leaving her home.

The First World War had come and gone but village life remained much the same.

Village Life in Chipping Cleghorn

Twenty-four years later, that picture would be unrecognisable.

The knock-on effects of the Second World War – troops returning after years away, deserters roaming the countryside, refugees, rationing, shortages and the shrinkage of empire – are pivotal to the plot and the background of almost every character in it.

During and following the War, most households had had to learn to manage without servants and butchers without boys. Straitened means meant that previously well-to-do people had had to sell up and leave, or downsize households that their families had lived in for generations, as Miss Marple explains:

If King’s Abbott’s Caroline Sheppard had wanted to know what was happening in Chipping Cleghorn, she would have had to get a copy of the North Benham News and the Chipping Cleghorn Gazette – the old grapevine had gone.

Such a village, where no-one really knows who other people are, provides a setting that allows Agatha Christie to explore in more detail one of her common themes : How do you really know who someone else is?

Refugees

The household at Little Paddocks, the scene of the crime, consists almost entirely of refugees of one sort or another who have settled there since the end of the War. Mitzi, the cook, is an actual refugee from the post-war horrors of Central Europe, whereas the others – Mrs Haymes, Dora Bunner, Patrick and Julia Simmons – could be classed as economic refugees scrounging off the householder, Miss Blacklock. Two of them are twins (‘Pip and Emma’) who do not even recognise each other.

Miss Blacklock herself is also in hiding: Dora Bunner is the only person who knows who she really is, but is happy to collude with her in concealing her identity.

Among the neighbours who drop in on the day for which the murder had been announced, four, the Swettenhams and the Easterbrooks, are themselves refugees of a kind – from a shrinking British Empire.

The one person that Miss Marple can be sure is who they say they are, is the vicar’s wife Bunch, but then Bunch is her god-daughter.

Open Doors and Shortages

Although no-one can be quite sure who anyone else is in Chipping Cleghorn, everyone is happy to leave their doors wide open when they go out. This might seem strange at first, and the police cannot understand it.

The houses, however, were left open not as a sign of mutual trust – no-one had anything worth taking anyway. Open doors enabled the village’s own version of the post-war black market to function, and it is the one thing that everyone in the village does know about.

Everyone was forced to collude with each other as they coped with the shortage of every essential, from food to fuel to clothing.

Strictly speaking, such a black market means that just about every person in the village is breaking the law, something it is difficult to imagine the redoubtable Mrs Price-Ridley, Miss Wetherby and Miss Hartnell doing in days gone by.

As Inspector Craddock realises, it is the Chipping Cleghorn ‘open door policy’ that allows the murderer to get hold of the weapon, and to smuggle Rudi Scherz into Little Paddocks to perform his comedy before he is shot with it.

One thing Craddock fails to grasp is the implication of the central heating being left on at Little Paddocks when it wasn’t really necessary. It is mentioned by every visitor because, at a time of coupons for every necessity, they clearly each found it worthy of comment that vital fuel was being squandered in such a way.

That proves to be the key to unlocking the mystery.

Agatha Christie and Identity

This book was Agatha Christie’s 50^th, and only one of many that has characters concealing their identity or stealing someone else’s, but that is a theme that runs right through this story.

The question is asked of every character: ‘How do we really know who this is?’ Agatha Christie’s interest in such a question, and its answer, goes back to her early childhood.

The Gunman

From the age of about 6, Agatha Christie had a recurring nightmare featuring someone she called The Gunman:

“The gun was part of his appearance … that of a Frenchman in grey-blue uniform, powdered hair in a queue and a kind of three-cornered hat, and the gun was some old-fashioned kind of musket.” ¹

In her dreams, this Gunman would appear at a normal tea-party at home, happily joining in the conversation; only Agatha knew who he really was. Sometimes she would look into the face of her sister or mother at the party and realise that it was actually the Gunman looking back at her.

The childhood Gunman nightmare left its traces in the adult. In 1926, Agatha Christie was alone and vulnerable after her mother’s death. She was also on the verge of a breakdown as she cleared her mother’s effects from Ashfield, her childhood home. One day, her then-husband Archie visited from London.

She describes recalling

… that old nightmare of mine – the horror of sitting at a tea table looking across at my best-loved friend, and suddenly realising that the person sitting there was a stranger.

In fact, Archie had come to tell her that he loved someone else, and this tips her over the edge. Agatha went into hiding, running away to a place where no-one would know her. There, for eleven days, she herself adopted a false identity, using the surname of Archie’s lover.

Her second husband, Max Mallowan, served in North Africa during WWII, and she had similar fears that she would not know him when he returned after a long period on duty. Thankfully, she did, and the Gunman was perhaps finally put away for good, but the possibility that people were not who they seemed to be continued to inform her plotting.

Old School – Hinchcliffe and Murgatroyd

Apart from the vicar and his wife, the only people in Chipping Cleghorn about whom there are no doubts as to their identity are Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd. These are two late middle-aged ladies who have long been living together in a loving relationship.

Hinchcliffe is the strong character, with ‘a short man-like crop and weather-beaten countenance’. She is fiercely protective of the ‘fat and amiable’ Murgatroyd. These two characters had been gestating in Agatha Christie’s mind for half a century.

She had not been to school as a young girl and had few friends of her own age, so she invented her own pretend-school for girls, known simple as The School. She populated it initially with young girls around her own age (6-11), and kept developing them in her imagination well into adulthood. Each had a specific character, and the first she invented were Ethel and Annie.

Ethel was … clever, good at games, had a deep voice and must have been rather masculine in appearance. Annie … was shy and nervous and easily reduced to tears… She clung to Ethel, who protected her on every occasion …

“Ethel never married but lived in a small cottage with the gentle Annie – very appropriate, I think now: it’s exactly what they would have done in real life.¹

Hinchcliffe and Murgatroyd are, unlike most of the other characters at Little Paddocks on the night of the murder, amusingly and sympathetically portrayed. Also, unlike everyone else, no-one seriously questions who they are.

That is because Agatha Christie knew exactly who they were – she had been carrying them around in her head since the age of 10, and she treats them with great care. Most of the characters populating her books were based on people she spotted on buses or in cafes, about later whom she could not care less. It is therefore rare in her books that genuine grief at the passing of another is depicted, but it is in this one:

Nobody offered Miss Hinchcliffe sympathy or mentioned Miss Murgatroyd’s death. The ravaged face of the tall vigorous woman told its own tale, and would have made any expression of sympathy an impertinence.  

The presence of these two genuine Agatha Christie characters, whom she loved and knew so well, helps lift this story up to a different level from most of the others.

Aftermath

After the murderer has been apprehended, two of the ex-suspects get engaged to be married, but even so there is little likelihood that everything in Chipping Cleghorn will be settling back to normal, as is usually the case with a swigatha.

For one thing, in the wake of the Second World War there was no ‘normal’ to settle back into, and in any case Hinchcliffe for one would forever be haunted by the ghost of her friend.

Notes

¹ All these quotes are taken directly from Agatha Christie, An Autobiography. She also relates how her sister Madge would play a game, pretending to be another, older sister who was mad and lived in a cave:

‘You know who I am, don’t you dear? I’m your sister Madge. You don’t think I’m anyone else, do you? You wouldn’t think that …’
I used to feel indescribable terror. Of course I really knew it was only Madge pretending – but was it? Wasn’t it perhaps true? That voice – those crafty sideways glancing eyes. It was the elder sister.

Burgh Island Books : a parlour game based on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs programme, only this time our castaway is sent in isolation to Burgh Island off the coast of Devon, the setting for And Then There Were None
Five Little Pigs – the finest Poirot adaptation yet : an in-depth look at the beautifully-made ITV production
Poirot’s Use of French in Death on the Nile : in most of the stories featuring Hercule Poirot, his French usage is limited to exclamations or curses, but in Death on the Nile some of his comments give away some of his thought processes as he investigates Linnet’s murder
Who’s Who in Chipping Cleghorn : look at the way that Agatha Christie’s portrayal of village life had changed by the 1950s based on the village featured in A Murder is Announced
Old Sins Have Long Shadows: Childhood and A Pocket Full of Rye : a look at the childhood of the characters involved in the events at Yewtree Lodge
 

Introduction
Every reader’s experience of a book is affected by various elements, including its presentation (cover illustration, the paper, the font used), its provenance (where it came from) and the age and circumstance of the reader when they first read it. Even so, the primary stuff of a book is the language used in it, the style and the words. Books featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot are written in two languages, English with a smattering of French; given that most of her readers are children or adults who don’t speak French, I thought it was time to examine how it is used and whether it adds to the experience of the books. In doing so I uncovered one novel in which the French used is crucial to the understanding of what is happening.

Poirot-french examples
In most of the Poirot stories, Agatha Christie uses a variety of simple French exclamations and expressions to establish the detective as a person who thinks in a different language to everyone else. A dictionary of “Poirot-french” would be limited in the main to a few hundred phrases, pleasantries and, especially,  exclamations. The latter are such as might have been used by ‘un bon catholique’ such as Poirot at the end of the 19^th Century (around the time when a very young Agatha Christie learned to speak French). Here are three very typical examples of ‘Poirot-french’:

Parbleu!
Nom d’un nom d’un nom!
Sapristi!

Interjections such as these are repeated throughout the 33 novels and 50-plus short stories that feature Hercule Poirot, writen between 1916-1969. They are toned-down versions of exhortations to le bon Dieu. English equivalents might be ‘Good Lord’, ‘Great Scott!’ and so on (in the Granada TV adaptations of these stories, these exclamations, in their English translations, are also routinely made by Captain Hastings, who never uses them in the books.)

Simple stuff
As readers work through the Poirot oeuvre, those with even the most limited understanding of French to start with will begin to recognise his French expressions as old friends. They may have to decide for themselves what they actually mean (and not just Anglophone readers – these books have been published in over 100 different languages).

Phrases in French are presented in italics to make them stand out (and easy to skip past). Most people would probably consider them to be simple embellishment, indications that Poirot is amazed / annoyed / pleased, as the case may be, rather than crucial to the stories.

In one book, however, there is a bit more to it than that: a reader skipping past the italics will miss a few elements that make it one of the better Christie novels.

Not so simple stuff 
That story is ‘Death on the Nile’.  Written in 1937, the Poirot-french used by Agatha Christie in it is a bit more varied than usual, especially when Poirot is muttering to himself. She includes an obscure proverb, an old Belgian poem and other utterances that give us a nudge as to Poirot’s thought-processes, and even pointers as to what is actually going on, that are not given elsewhere in the English text.

Rather than ‘skipping past the italics’, a reader hoping to solve this puzzle would be advised to try and work out what Poirot is saying. When I read the book for the first time, at the age of 11, I delighted in these French bits and memorised most of them, even if own translations were somewhat wide of the mark. It all seemed to add to the fun.

Death on the Nile
The story’s setting is a river cruise up the Nile, and, just as in the other transport-driven Poirot books from the 1930s (Murder on the Orient Express and Death in the Clouds), the SS Karnak has a wide range of nationalities on board: as well as the Egyptian crew, there are French, German, American, Italian, English and (of course!) Belgian passengers. With one notable exception, none of them are thrown when Poirot switches from one language to another, and that is a hint in itself.

The plot of Death on the Nile is a classic Christie love-triangle-with-a-twist: Simon Doyle dumps his fiancée Jacqueline de Bellefort and marries her (rich) best friend, Linnet; Jackie stalks and threatens them on their honeymoon; Linnet is killed and Simon and Jackie are reconciled. Apparently… Further murders ensue amongst a complicated tangle of side-plots, including stolen jewels, trustee fraud and even an on-board terrorist.

Follow the French and you will be following the single strand that untangles the mystery.

The Use of French
Agatha Christie’s use of French is subtle. I have chosen 7 examples from the text (there is a full lexicon of all the French used in this book at the bottom of this blog).

1 Empressement

Here is an example from  Chapter 1, when Poirot appears for the first time and is shown to his table at Chez Ma Tante (all the illustrations are taken from the 1977 Fontana edition). Although Poirot doesn’t say the word, he is clearly thinking it.

Empressement is not an easy word to guess. When I first came across it, aged 11, I thought of the nearest word to it in English, so my translation of empressement was ‘being impressed by someone’.   It actually means ‘alacrity, eagerness’, but, although they are not the same thing, the meaning of the sentence is not radically changed by inserting my version: Blondin clearly is impressed by Poirot and will always find a table for him.

Agatha Christie could have used “alacrity” but chose not to. Empressement is not a word that is in common use in English. By using this one word she creates an effect whereby the reader is watching the events of the whole of this pivotal scene through Poirot’s eyes, rather than observing him in action, as we do for the rest of the book.

2 Une qui aime…

We are still in the restaurant with Poirot as he sees Simon and Jackie for the first time, dancing, and hears them discussing their honeymoon in Egypt. He makes a crucial observation:

Whenever one is allowed access to Poirot’s inner thoughts, and it does not happen often, then one had better pay attention; his first impression of character is never shown later to be misplaced in any of the books in which he features.

The meaning of the phrase in italics here is not that difficult to work out, presuming you can guess what the verb aimer means and that une is the feminine form of ‘one’ and un the masculine. Nor do  you need to know the reflexive verb se laisser;  Poirot’s echoing of Jackie’s “I wonder…” tells you what it must more or less mean.

If you skip the italics, however, you will be missing a hint about the driving element of the relationship between Simon and Jackie, the two main protagonists: one who loves, and one who is content to be loved.

Tiens! C’est drôle

In Chapter 6, Poirot repeats the same phrase when he first actually meets Simon, on holiday in Egypt. By the time of that meeting, Simon has married Linnet instead, and they are on their honeymoon. They are being stalked by Jackie, and Simon has just declared that he would like to “wring the little devil’s neck”:

Now, Poirot had just spoken with Jackie, and she had used word-for-word the same simile as Simon does about the moon and the sun. So Poirot’s reaction when he hears these words again minutes later – loosely translated: “Hullo, that’s a bit funny!” – should make an alert reader sit up and store this hint away for later: Simon was supposed to be avoiding Jackie. The use of the word drôle, which has an almost exact English equivalent, makes the phrase quite easy to decipher. Even so, Simon does not understand it and Poirot avoids translating it for him.

It is Simon’s stupidity and simplicity that is also hinted at here: for a start, he is seemingly the only character in the book who hasn’t a clue what Poirot is saying when he lapses into French! Jackie had already told Poirot that Simon was “a very simple person”.

Later on, recalling these conversations, Poirot realises that Jackie had from the start been training Simon in exactly what to say and do, to avoid his giving the game away with his gormless comments. Unfortunately for her, she failed.

Nom d’un nom d’un nom!

Another hint at the presence of stupidity-in-action is given in Chapter 13, when Poirot and the doctor examine the crime scene.

“Nom d’un nom d’un nom!” is one of Poirot’s strongest exclamations, and he uses it on many occasions, usually when confronted by something that stretches his credulity to its limit (as here).

The usual French phrase would have been ‘nom d’un nom’: ‘in the name of God’, a euphemism for nom de Dieu. With three noms*, you could translate it as ‘What in the name of God and heaven is this nonsense-!’

*In the Granada TV version of Death on the Nile, David Suchet, clearly enjoying himself, is heard to stretch it to four…

C’est de l’enfantillage

This extract is taken from the same scene.

The stem enfant of the word enfantillage should make the meaning of Poirot’s comment pretty obvious: ‘This is sheer childishness’.

His suggestion of childishness, rather than ‘melodrama’, is a huge hint as to the identity of the perpetrator. There are many melodramatic characters on board the Karnak – Mrs Otterbourne, Richetti, Jackie herself – but the only one simple, or childish, enough to believe that it might be possible, for someone who has been shot point blank in the head, to dip her finger into the wound and write the accusatory letter J on the wall, is Simon.

On ne prends pas les mouches avec le vinaigre

In chapter 22, Poirot and Race make a further search of the same cabin.

Poirot is examining two bottles of nail varnish, one full and one empty. His reaction after sniffing them made little sense to me when first I read it: “You don’t put vinegar on your moustaches” was my ill-informed guess.  The actual translation is “You don’t catch flies with vinegar”, but even that does not tell us much.

What I think he is saying is that Linnet presumably used make-up to make herself look attractive to herself and others but she would hardly have been applying something that had should have such a bitter smell.

He has no intention of explaining himself to Race. The rest of his reply seems to indicate that there are no clues to be found. Poirot usually scorns the idea of crawling around looking for clues such as cigar ash, the absence of which here he appears to lament. His use of the French proverb indicates that he has found something far more significant – that there is a residue of something red and acrid-smelling in the bottle that was not there originally – and also that he wishes to keep it to himself.

La vie est vaine

In Chapter 24, Poirot is once again alone with Jackie.

They meet just after the discovery of Louise Bourget’s body. Poirot quotes to her the whole of a poem by the Belgian writer Leon de Montenaeken (d 1905). When I first read it I thought Poirot had made it up!

The French is very simple but not easy to render into English. Here is my attempt (the notes at the end use a more literal one):

Life is a play
We love and we hate …
And then it’s good-day

Life is so slight
We hope and we dream …
And then it’s good-night

It is not immediately obvious what the relevance of the poem is here. It is like a funeral oration, so it could be in reference to Linnet, who has lived and loved, but has died suddenly while still young. The context in which it is placed, however, prompts a different reading.

In the lead-up to the poem, Poirot once again recalls Jackie’s sun and moon simile, the thing that had first aroused his suspicion of her. He looks at Jackie “half-mockingly”, because by now he does not believe a word of what she says, and “half with some other sentiment” because he is genuinely sad about her likely fate.

Later, on the same page, Poirot tells Race that he knew for sure what had been happening when they found Louise Bourget. The words of the poem, recited just afterwards, could equally apply just as well to Jackie as Linnet, because Poirot by now suspects that she will also die young (by capital punishment). As it turns out, his sympathy for her allows her to take her own way out.

Mesdames et Messieurs

The French used by Poirot in Death on the Nile contains hints about the workings of his mind during the investigation which he does not express in English or make clear to the others until it has finished. For the rest of the book, he openly discusses (in English) all the other twists such as the stolen pearls, the Italian terrorist and the crooked trustee, but the reader who ‘skips past the italics’ might miss out on these hints:

• That Jackie is totally besotted by Simon and will do anything for him; he’s quite happy to be taken in hand (une qui aime et un qui se laisse aimer)
• That Jackie had trained Simon in what to say and do even though he was supposedly not speaking to her (tiens! c’est drôle, ça)
• That a child-like simpleton murdered Linnet in her cabin (c’est de l’enfantillage) – Jackie had already told him that Simon was “simple”…
• That the strange red substance in the nail varnish bottle (‘on ne prends pas les mouches avec le vinaigre’) is an important (if obscure) clue as to how the murder was contrived

Poirot’s use of French can be divided into three groups – exclamations, pleasantries and obscure commentary. It does not take a genius to understand most of the phrases that comprise the first two groups, but in Death on the Nile readers need to also attend to his murmurings if they are going to have a decent chance of working out whodunit.

Death on the Nile Dictionary

Here is a list of all the expressions in French used by Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile.

À merveille!: ‘Excellent’;  usually used by Poirot as an adverb (i.e. ‘we proceed à merveille’)
À votre santé: ‘Your good health’ (Poirot toasts the Otterbournes, one of whom is a dipsomaniac)
Ah, non!: ‘No way!’ Reaction to Bessner after the discovery of Linnet’s body
Ah, vraiment! ‘Indeed!’ Poirot is suspicious of Pennington’s motives
article de luxe: ‘Luxury article’ – in reference to Jackie’s pistol

Bien: ‘Ok, good, fine’ (variously)
bon Dieu!: ‘Good God’
Bonne nuit: ‘Goodnight’

Cache: ‘Hiding-place’ (for Mrs Otterbourne’s booze)
Ce cher Woolworth: ‘Dear old Woolworths’ – Poirot considers a cheap handkerchief
C’est de l’enfantillage!: ‘This is sheer childishness!’ Still musing on the letter J scrawled in blood on the cabin wall.
C’est vrai: ‘That is true’. To Race
Cette pauvre petite Rosalie: ‘That poor young girl.’ He also refers to ‘cette pauvre Madame Doyle’ but it is Rosalie Otterbourne that he feels sorry for.

Écoutez, madame: ‘Now listen, madame…’ The beginning of a long speech to Linnet.
Eh bien… : ‘Well….’
empressement: ‘Eagerness, alacrity.’  Poirot observes the maître d’ finding him the best table
en verité: ‘In truth’

femme de chambre: ‘chamber-maid’

jeune fille: ‘young girl’

la politesse: ‘politeness, courtesy’
le roi est mort – vive le roi!: ‘The king is dead, long live the king’: referring to Linnet. Joanne Southwood had previously (and more accurately) referred to her as “la Reine Linette”.
les chiffons d’aujourd’hui: ‘today’s chiffons’: the expression ‘causer chiffons’ used to mean to gossip about clothes; Rosalie and Jackie have been comparing lipsticks, which Poirot sees as its modern equivalent.

Ma foi!:  ‘Indeed!’ This is followed by “madame, that was close” when the boulder narrowly misses Linnet. The nearest literal translation to this would be the old-fashioned “i’ faith”
Mais oui, Madame: ‘Indeed it is, madame’ (to Mrs Allerton, when she proclaims the lovely night)
Mais c’est tout: ‘But that’s all’
Moi, qui vous parle: ‘I, I am telling you’ – Poirot being emphatic to Race.
mon ami: ‘my friend’ (to Race). An endearment often addressed to Hastings in other books
Mon cher Colonel: ‘My dear Colonel’ (Race again)
Mon Dieu!: ‘My God!’ When Simon complains that Jackie isn’t being reasonable
Mon enfant: ‘my child’ – addressed to Jackie (not Simon!) when he tries to give her advice

Nom d’un nom d’un nom!: ‘In the name of God and all the saints in heaven!’ Poirot sensibility is outraged by the J scrawled in blood on the cabin wall.

On ne prends pas les mouches avec le vinaigre:  ‘You don’t catch flies with vinegar’. Poirot finds something suspicious in the nail-varnish bottle. An English version of this is “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar”.

Parbleu!: ‘Heavens above’ – followed by “but I am not the diving seal!” To Mrs Allerton
Précisément: ‘Precisely, exactly’. Used by Poirot a great deal in all his stories
Peut-être: ‘Perhaps’. To Colonel Race

Quel pays sauvage: ‘What a wild country…’ to Race
Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?: ‘What is it?’ In response to an exclamation from Race.

Sacré: ‘Damn!’ Unusually strong language for Poirot. The French translator Marie-Josée Lacube changes it to “Enfin!” in her version of “Poirot Investigates”.

Tenez!: ‘Now look here!’ (to Rosalie Otterbourne, who has been fiercely criticising Linnet)
Tiens, c’est drôle, ça: ‘Hello, that’s a bit funny’… when Simon unwittingly lets a clue slip
Très bien, Madame: ‘Very well’ (to Mrs van Schuyler)

Une qui aime et un qui se laisse aimer: ‘One who loves and one who lets himself be loved’

Zut!: ‘Blast!’ Poirot fails to find the necklace

La vie est vaine

La vie est vaine                 La vie est brêve
Un peu d’amour               Un peu d’espoir
Un peu d’haine                 Un peu de rêve
Et puis bonjour                 Et puis bonsoir

Life is vain                        Life is short
A bit of love                      A bit of hope
A bit of hate                     A bit of dream
And then good-day         And then good-night