Publication date: 1958
Summary: When Arthur Calgary confesses to the Argyle family that he was the missing alibi for accused son Jacko in the murder of his foster mother, Rachel, he opens old wounds. If Jacko didn't do it, then someone else in the family did do it. Now Calgary must help the police find the killer to remove the shadow of suspicion from the rest of the family members. This is a somber, moody offering from Christie. We get some great characterization, loads of bitterness and a very unhappy family. You get a strong impression that Rachel's love for her children was frighteningly intense. Her tombstone reads, not without some sarcasm, "Her children shall rise up and call her blessed."
Some of Christie's best themes make an appearance here: fragmented post-war families, the effect of suspicion upon the innocent, parent-child relationships, and marriage.
Body count: Rachel gets clubbed, Philip gets stabbed and another family member is nearly killed.
Detective/Sleuth: Superintendent Huish, but Arthur Calgary is really the detective-type character. Philip Durrant does some sleuthing on his own as well.
Rating: 4.5 foster children out of 5
Commentary:
Thursday, April 22, 2010
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Where, where? Where to begin? First, I guess, with a SPOILER ALERT! :-) I had forgotten that Donald Sutherland didn't have amnesia in that ultra-violent movie. Of course, one of the more interesting things about this novel is that Calgary's sense of guilt is so palpable that he can easily identify with the suffering of the Argyles. So here I say, novel - 1, movie - 0!
ReplyDeleteI really think this novel reveals a lot about Christie's sense of justice: it's really conventional and brimming with Christian spritualism. And it shows that Christie was really a softie about letting her characters suffer. (Ten Little Indians is an exception!!!!) Calgary's circumstances make it look like an innocent man was convicted of killing a saintly woman. Of COURSE the truth must come out. But ultimately, we find that the "innocent man" was really the instigator of the crime after all. The family was RIGHT to blame Jacko for Rachel's murder. In fact, he's more awful in his true role than if he had simply coshed her in the heat of the moment.
Christie goes even further here by eventually sullying the reputation of the victim. How awful it seems that most of the kids resented and hated her and that Leo turned to the affections of another woman.....until we learn how warped Rachel's mother love really was. After we realize that, the characters with the "obvious" motives become heroic, battling the stigma Rachel left behind and coming out whole (Hester marries Arthur, Leo married Gwenda, Mickey marries Tina), and the characters who had "loved" Rachel - docile Mary, loyal Kirstie - turn out to be just as warped as the victim was. So, unlike some of the more modern authors who emotionally decimate a group of people for good during a murder investigation, Christie manages, even in one of her richest character studies, to make all right with the world by book's end. Yes, Phillip is dead, but he wasn't a very nice person and the polio DID make him a cripple, and he resented his marriage, so.....why not?!?
Well, that's a start...... your turn!
This comment will also most likely contain SPOILERS.
ReplyDeleteWow. Fantastic insights - you're absolutely right about the way Christie intentionally misleads us about the victim and the instigator - Rachel's personality and Jacko's culpability. I wish I'd been able to read this without knowing the solution. Yet knowing the solution and reading it (or re-reading her novels) allows me to stagger back in awe of her audacity. You become aware of how many clues she gives you. In this one, Huish more than once talks about the possibility of Kirstin being the murderer. The novel also mentions a few times that Jacko could charm older women. And then we have Kirstin even telling Hester not to trust her. And that's what's so great about Christie. First you read a novel without having read it and are surprised by the ending. Then you re-read the novel and are amazed that you couldn't figure it out because once you know the solution, all the clues seem so glaring.
I really love Calgary in this one for the reasons you state. We rarely get to see a character like this in her novels - one who must really grapple with the fact that in an attempt to remove a personal feeling of guilt and responsibility, he's placed guilt and suspicion on the heads of seven others.
Aside: I have to say one more thing about the film version - although most of it was horribly miscast, I loved Diana Quick who played Gwenda Vaughn. She was fantastic. I've loved her ever since I saw her in a BBC version of The Woman in White back in the early 80s. (Please tell me you have read this novel by Collins. It's got to be one of my favorite suspense novels). She was also good in Brideshead Revisited and Sad Cypress.
Rachel Argyle - well, what is there to say about that woman? I kept finding myself feeling sorry for Leo and then each of the kids. But perhaps especially Mickey as he seems the most hurt by the uprooting. (It makes me wonder if Angelina Jolie's posse of kids will rise up and call her blessed).
I keep wondering if Christie was a visitor of psychoanalysts throughout her life. I believe she was sent to a psychologist shortly after her disappearance but other than that don't know. Her novels are so full of Freudian ideas - the mother love in this case - that I wonder.
Poirot often talks about how if you want to get to know something about the murderer, find out everything you can about the victim. That dictum holds true in this case. Rachel tells us so much about her murderers.
But tell me, Brad. What is your opinion of Hester and Christina? They both to me carry a lot of the emotional weight of the novel, but I find myself much more interested in Tina. She to me has more depth - her relationship with Mickey, the suspicion cast on her, the attempt on her life, her outsider status. I like Hester because she asks the question about the innocent, but I want her to do more. In the movie they do a HORRIBLE job with Hester - they make her 14 or 15 and her alibi for the time of the murder is that she is at the picture show watching a pornographic film (Jacko's wife sees her there). Now there's some bad scripting where the psychology just doesn't fit.
Phillip - he's interesting because he shocks us by kissing Hester, but even this is more interesting because we get to see how Mary reacts. There's not too much to say about him except the only reason I can think of for his being so damned interested in sleuthing is his crippling Polio.
I've downloaded Cat Among the Pigeons and will start that this weekend in Greece.
You know, there are so many different kinds of Christie mysteries, but the two that contrast so interestingly are the ones with the "splashy" endings and the ones where she spreads the guilt around. The splashy solutions are more in evidence, and I confess that these are what initially attracted me to AC. These comprise all those "shock" endings, like ORIENT EXPRESS and ROGER ACKROYD. As a kid, I would jump up and down when I'd get to the end and cry, "But the policeman CAN'T be the killer!!" or "You mean, the intended VICTIM actually did it?" or "But wait....that was the one person whose alibi was INTACT!" or "Not...the CHILD?!?!?"
ReplyDeleteThe problem with a few of these mysteries is that Christie spends so much time establishing the "false" character and alibi and credence of innocence of this character that many or most of the other suspects get short shrift. Example: in 3 Act Tragedy, we don't really get to know ANYBODY quite as well as we get to know Charles Cartwright (except, maybe, for Egg and Satterthwaite.) This isn't always the problem, but Christie spends so much time setting up her trick that she can't afford the space for characterization. It's usually all right because the trick is so spectacular that we don't miss the rest. And even in small strokes, Christie creates fun, interesting types.
(OOPS...my comment is too long. I will send in two parts! :-)
Brad
PART II:
ReplyDeleteBut now that I'm all grown up, I appreciate more deeply those mysteries where character reigns supreme, where suspicion is evenly spread, and where the tricks - which can still be amazing - are never allowed to take away from the drama of the situation. I think of Five Little Pigs and Sad Cypress....and of course, this one. In Sad Cypress, there's still a big trick in that the killer is deeply masked in a role seemingly subservient to the plot and is in disguise as someone else. But 5LP and OBI allow all the characters to share suspicion...and delves into the very nature of how people react to this extraordinary circumstance. Kirstie is no more nor less suspected than anyone else. We might cross her off our list because so many of the family members wish she WERE the killer, not one of their own. She is described throughout as "intensely afraid," natural emotion for an amateur killer. Everything she says at the end, when she is exposed,, are things she said earlier in the novel. It's not her identity as the killer that is surprising; it's, as you said, her identity as Jacko's lover/victim and the train of circumstances Christie weaves that explain how someone in cahoots with Jacko could then betray him that makes this so satisfying as a mystery. I think it's a really good novel because it delves into character as much as it creates a puzzle. In fact, the stuff with Huish and his associates is the weakest part of the book to me. It feels like a long rehash of facts, when all I really want to do is sit in on the Argyles and see how the family is falling apart. I feel that Calgary and Phillip were detectives enough for this book and could have done with less of that traditional police banter about the case.
I really like Hester. She's in the thick of things, a moody, unhappy girl at the start because she is perhaps more sensitive about being a suspect than any of them. And also she seems to me to represent Christie's hesitation about these big adopted families. It's the same feeling she shares about the changes in village life in A Murder is Announced: who are all these new people? Without a shared history and long time connections, can we really trust the people who live side by side with us anymore? Christie had a sort of archaic belief that evil was inherent in our DNA; she doesn't take into a lot of account that Jacko may have been a bad boy because he was taught by his environment how to survive. She seems to suggest that he was born a sociopath. Maybe that's true; I don't know enough about it.
But you'll have to convince me about the "half caste" child. I feel like Tina is underdeveloped. Most of her story happens in the last fifty pages, and it's interesting. But I wish we had that same development throughout the novel. She seems to me the least developed of the characters, although she is a welcome relief from all those kids who hated Rachel. I mean, someone HAD to be grateful for her "good works!"
Okay, Brad. Here's my defense of Tina. But I must first say that I do like Hester as well - Tina just sticks out a bit more to me. I think I admire Tina's straightforward, conscientious manner. When she first meets Calgary, she has the foresight to choose a mediocre tea shop, knowing they'd have more privacy (and I love this description of the tea: "The waitress brought their tea. The bread and butter was stale, the jam a curious jellified substance, the cakes garish and unappetizing. The tea was weak." - it's such a depressing description of the tea but its a nice bit of imagery). She also is quite frank about Jacko. With Tina, what you see is what you get. But what I really like is her exchange with Calgary in the tea shop because she shows great perceptivity with him:
ReplyDelete"I am sorry. I am really sorry."
"Why are you sorry, Dr. Calgary?"
"I hate to be the cause of bringing fresh trouble upon you."
"But would you have been satisfied to remain silent?"
"You were thinking in terms of justice?"
"Yes. Weren't you?"
"Of course. Justice seemed to me to be very important. Now - I am beginning to wonder whether there are things that are more important."
"Such as?"
His thoughts flew to Hester.
"Such as - innocence, perhaps."
The opaqueness of her eyes increased.
"What do you feel, Miss Argyle?"
She was silent for a moment or two, then she said: "I am thinking of those words in the Magna Carta. 'To no man will we refuse justice.'"
I just really like her for things like this. I also like her belief in Mickey.
I also like the fact that Hester's failed attempts at acting really explain this family in a nutshell - they can't act, they are in a sort of stagnant state, an impotent family - Leo hesitates about marrying Gwenda (yes, we're told that they can't because of the suspicion it would cast but why didn't they marry before Calgary dropped his bombshell?), Jacko always has money troubles, Mickey is emotionally stunted, Tina is a "half caste" maiden working in a library, and Philip and Mary are stuck in many ways because of Philip's crippling polio (the move he makes on Hester is pathetic at best). They are really a family of losers in many ways and it all seems to hinge on Rachel's character. She was anything but passive, but that seems to have had this stifling effect on everyone around her.
I had a moment this weekend that really reflects on your description of a stagnant family at the mercy of a dynamic leader. This dad is designing and leading the build of my latest set, and it's a doozy: a two story representation of a row house in upstate New York in 1937 (for Brighton Beach Memoirs). The set is going up, and it will probably be pretty spectacular, but it's happening at the expense of the morale and happiness of all the other people working on it, due to the control freakism of this dad. His goal is great, but his methods are toxic to all those around him!
ReplyDeleteRachel wants her children to be happy, but I think only insofar as it reflects on her abilities and status as a parent. I love when Hester when she says she hated her mother BECAUSE she was always right about every mistake her children made.
You also bring up an interesting question about Leo. I mean, things couldn't have turned out better for him! His unloved wife was killed by the one child it was easy to be rid of, leaving Leo with a loving girlfriend and four relatively happy children. Why not marry? Chances are, Gwenda would have helped the family heal from Rachel's chilling perfectionism.
Which reminds me: did you see the odd remake of the story casting Miss Marple as the detective? In that one, Gwenda is a more central figure, as she is the old friend of Miss M.'s who brings the old lady in. And they KILL Gwenda, for no reason I suppose than to give Geraldine McEwan something dramatic to play.
I have to admit that I have trouble watching the new Marple series. I just don't like them at all. First, I kind of wanted to see them move the Marple novels out of the 50s - I mean, they weren't all written in that decade. It's kind of like how Poirot not moving out of the 30s is getting a little tiresome in the Suchet series. Everything around him is still 30s and he's aging. To me, Christie (while, yes, being about nostalgia) is also what happens with the passage of time. Even the wonderful Hickson Marple adaptations are firmly rooted in the 50s. Also, and this may seem a bit presumptuous, I don't always think the directors understand the tone of some of her novels - some get it dead-on: 5 Little Pigs, Sad Cypress, and even The Hollow. But others seem to miss the mark and lack a soul (even with the great acting of Suchet).
ReplyDeleteSPOILER AHEAD
I do like Gwenda in this novel; she's a nice contrast to the heaviness of Kirstin. Kirstin belongs to that old-school idea of the stoic Scandinavian immigrant. She's not at all easy to deal with on a human level. But Christie was okay with doing this, even with her killers. Wargrave is such a loathsome character that it disarms him for us a bit. We dismiss him as too obvious a suspect if he's unlikable.
I definitely agree with you about Hester's hatred for Rachel. And now that I put my thinking hat on, I'm realizing the obvious biblical link with Rachel. The Rachel of the Bible married Jacob but remained barren for a long time while her sister Leah bore several children to Jacob. I like how Christie puts stuff in like this.
I know what you mean about the times not changing, although I imagine that the nostalgia is what keeps the producers interested. What makes Foyle's War such a great series isn't the mysteries themselves but how the characters and community change as the war goes on. People would criticize Christie for her characters not undergoing personal changes, but they DO, depending on the times.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think the Poirots don't succeed nearly as well as the Marples in showing a community in flux. All that happens with Poirot is that he gets more arthritic and young people don't know who he is. And Christie's view of "modern" society of the 1960's isn't sharp, probably because SHE was becoming more vague.
I thought Third Girl worked better in the period, but it's still a lousy mystery. I'm just flummoxed by some of the changes for the sake of moderning up the era, having the killer pair in Body in the Library be lesbians or switching around the killer's identity in Murder at Hazelmoor and Appointment with Death or giving the killers in Why Didn't They Ask Evans a strange incestuous relationship!!!
You're right. And of course, Tommy and Tuppence seem to most closely mirror Agatha Christie's own age throughout the various decades. Unfortunately, the first three T&T books are the best and the others seem to be more reflective of her decline as a writer. Marple is wonderful at noting change - I always think of Murder is Announced as a kind of post-war shift in the the social order in her novels. Gone are the days of butlers, maids and rich titled families, and they get replaced by economic struggle, refugees and displacement.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about A Murder is Announced. And Tommy and Tuppence are interesting in that there are five books about them, spanning Christie's entire career, and in each one their relationship and age are advanced. (Yet neither of them really changes in any significant way, except to become more and more dithering!) There is no novel where that happens with Poirot. What's fascinating to me about him is that his most marked change is in Curtain...and that was written during Christie's early middle age when Hastings was still important; so, in a way, it's Christie's vision of what MIGHT have happened to Poirot, but it doesn't necessarily gibe with Poirot's development in subsequent books.
ReplyDeleteYes. I'm looking forward to Curtain. I've never read it before and know really nothing about the plot. It will be interesting to see Hastings again. To me it is interesting that Christie makes this shift from using Hastings at the beginning and into her strongest period, moving into a series of books where he has no sidekick, and then finally onto her later period, where Ariadne Oliver plays a larger role. To me, Hastings seems to have been invented as a kind of Watson to Poirot's Holmes, but the idea ceased to interest her so she sent him off to Argentina. With Oliver, she seems to be working out something to do with her own identity as a writer. She parodies herself, but seems to enjoy the parody enough to maintain it in many of her later novels. Although this last period of Christie is pretty lacking in many ways, I am interested in studying the decline itself and seeing if I can make any sense of it beyond the fact that she's aging.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how much to say about Curtain since you haven't read it. (Except of course to tell you how jealous I am that there is a major Christie still awaiting you when I've read them all!!!! :-( ) I will say that I think it's an odd novel in that she's trying to go for more character development but she seems less certain of how to do that in this stage of her writing. She also gives Hastings a huge part to play - far from his typical "Watson" persona - and I'm not sure he's interesting enough to warrant that. (I'm not sure any of the characters is interesting enough.) And the setting is VERY purposeful, but I'm not sure how well Christie uses it. But the conceit of the crimes is rather fun, and the ending can't help but be somewhat poignant.
ReplyDeleteWe still have a little ways to go before that one, though!!!