I love it. It's good, isn't it? My book ends at page 237, and I got to the right solution at page 183... before, I had no clue at all. Not too bad after all, isn't it? It could have been worse.
A bit of plot:
It starts with the funeral of a rich man, and after the funeral, when all the heirs are together one of them, a well-know-space-out-woman lets out that he was killed. No one really believes that, but they are all bothered in some way by this. Then, she's found murdered, so a friend of the recently-dead man calls in for Hercule Poirot to investigate.
SPOILERS ahead, so you be warned.
I had no idea until that point, it could have been anyone, then like it often happens Poirot got them all chatting, and listening carefully I noticed that Miss Gilchrist said that it was so beautiful that table with the wax flowers under the glass bell, and I thought: the glass bell got broken before she arrived! Later Poirot says that she couldn't have seen the flowers that are now in the cupboard, but it's the same thing, they had been put in the cupboard after the glass bell got broken in fact. That's the detail that tells you everything, because one thing leads to another. How could she know there were wax flowers under a glass bell? She must have seen them before. When? We have no more doubts when Helen is attacked because she was thinking of what was wrong that day after the funeral, she thought of aunt Cora turning her head in her usual way, while at the same time watching herself in the mirror, and I got it. She turned the head the wrong way.
Before that page she was as much a suspect as many of them, which of course means nothing. When the art critic came to her house I had asked myself, is he really a critic and a friend, or maybe he came here to say a painting was worth nothing and maybe try to take him away, but he didn't do anything strange. With my bad memory I had forgot about the nuns, forgot the smell of painting, and had no idea how much it would cost to open a teashop from scratch, and I think it's not so very perfect to say that while Miss Gilchrist was at the funeral the real Cora was at home asleep because of sedative that had been put in her tea. I mean, how could she be sure she would not wake up before she went back? It looked perfectly okay for them, but I would have thought that a bit risky. Still, I'm not an expert on sedatives, I've never taken one, so I don't know how strong they are.
Anyway it was fascinating this finale, because there was a young man who had lost his client's money and was in trouble, there were two young women desperately in love with their husbands who wanted money for them, just like the two husbands seemed suspicious. There was an older man who was not as ill as he liked to say, and that wanted so much the power money can give you, and his wife who also would have done anything for him. They all inherited a lot of money, but the murderer was not one of them. The murderer was a woman who would not get a lot of money out of her scheme, but just enough to start a new life and make her dream come true, because often money depends on how much you've got.
Ask around, and people who have 800 a month will tell you "if I had 1200 it would be more comfortable", but if they had 1500 they would say "if I had 2000 I could make that trip I want so much", but if they had 2000 they'd say... you get the idea. It turned out she could make 5000 out of it, and to her it was a lot.
ITA: Dopo le esequie
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento