Absolutely one of the best, for how they wrote both the story and the characters, this is one of the most faithfuls. I liked it ^_^
It’s set in June 1917, lieutenant Hastings meets old friend John Cavendish and accepts his invitation home. There he meets again John’s mother Emily and his brother Lawrence. Mary is John’s wife. Plus there’s Evie the personal maid, and Cynthia. Emily took her in and she lives there now. There’s also the old servant Dorcas and Emily’s new husband Alfred, that nobody likes. So much that Evie quarrells with Emily about him and then decides to leave the house.
Hastings tells them all that his great aspiration is to become an investigator, that he once met a funny man, a real investigator, a real dandy, and he uses the same investigative methods, only improved…
Hastings and Poirot meet in the village to both their surprises. Poirot came here with a few other Belgians thanks to Ms Emily who helped them and gave them a place to stay, He says that Belgium is no safe place to stay, with the war.
It’s easy to see then that when Emily dies, Hastings immediately thinks of him and asks John’s permission to contact him and have him look into it.
How it went: at night, they hear distressed yelling, John tries to open the door but it’s locked; Mary is in Cynthia’s room and says that the little door joining the two rooms is closed.
John and Hastings shouldered the door open and found Emily clearly hurting, yelling and thrashing in the bed, until she dies. Lawrence comes and doesn’t say anything about seeing the door to Cynthia’s room open. Everyone is in shock and nobody knows where Alfred is.
Evie comes back of course, and immediately starts telling everyone that for sure Alfred did it, and what is everybody waiting for, just arrest him!
Poirot accepts to help, of course, and promises confidentiality. Alfred offers no alibis whatsoever, but he was seen going to buy the poison (I think it was strichnine, I’m not sure I remember right, but it’s a good guess, it was a favourite of Agatha’s :D ). He denies it, of course, but won’t say anything more.
Hastings doesn’t know Japp yet, but Poirot does, and approaches him as soon as he sees him. Japp has total confidence in Poirot’s ability, but his boss doesn’t know him and is more inclined to go on with what they have and know. Poirot insists they should not arrest Alfred, and when it looks like they’re going to do it anyway, he reveals Alfred’s alibi, or something like that, and that he did not buy the strichnine.
Then they try another route and arrest John… so Poirot hurries to find the missing piece to the whole thing, and he gets it through a comment made by Hastings: Poirot was making a cards castle, but he doesn’t go far this time because he’s not totally calm, and Hastings says that the only other time he saw his hands tremble was when he was arranging the things on the fireplace in Emily’s room (he likes everything in order, symmetrical, tidy…)
The solution is as it should be: Alfred did it, with Evie’s help, because they’re in love and planned it from the start to get Emily’s money. Evie bought the strichnine wearing a false beard to implicate Alfred and insisted he get arrested right away so that they could easily free him revealing he could not have bought it, and by the English law he could never be retried later for the same crime… had the police arrested him before Poirot had a chance to intervene , he would have been free forever.
Lawrence insisted Emily must have died of natural causes because he saw the door to Cynthia’s room was open, and he also remembered that the last person to see Emily alive had been Cynthia when she brought her a coffee, and he wanted to protect her, that’s why he smashed the coffee cup into dust.
John had nothing to do with the murder, and also I don’t think he cheated on his wife, he was just helping a woman in town, he gave her some money, officially as a loan, not sure if he really expected her to pay him back… but thinking about it now, I’m really not sure about the cheating part… well, let me keep on thinking he didn’t… so,the fight Dorcas had overheard had not been between Emily and her husband, it was with John, because Emily found out about the money and was angry about it, about his behaviour (not unreasonably, he was not behaving nicely). Mary was insanely jealous of him, sure that he was cheating on her, but she still lied to the police to protect him because she still loves him. That night, she had entered Emily’s room at night searching the room for what she believed would have been the proof of John’s infidelity, but it wasn’t. When the whole trouble started, she bolted for Cynthia’s room, who kept on sleeping having taken a pill to sleep.
The definite proof is a letter. Alfred started writing it to his dear Evelyn, meaning Evie, but didn’t finish it, probably someone came into the room, so he locked it inside his writing desk. Later on, after her fight with John, Emily wrote a new will leaving all the money to Alfred, but she didn’t have any more stamps so she unlocked Alfred’s desk to search for one, and instead she found that letter… in which Alfred talked about planning to kill her. That night, Emily asked for her fireplace to be lighted: it had been a very hot day but she needed the fire to burn the new will. Later on, after her death, someone entered the room (well, it had to be Alfred because Evie didn’t know about the letter) and forced oped the little safe box that Emily used to lock away all the important documents, and took the letter… but then Poirot and John arrived and there was little time to think of what to do, and so he teared the letter into three stripes and put them over the fireplace, among the other pieces used to light it.
Poirot realized that someone had touched those objects because he remembered having straightened them again. He had already done it the first time he entered that room, after the death, and then again when they found out that the little box had been forced open. So he went in there (this time the room was kept locked at all times) and found the pieces of paper that made up the letter, so he could read it and prove it all.
How they did it: they add something to her usual medicine, like blomuro or something, because her medicine already contained strichnine in acceptable doses, but with what they added, the strichnine remained all on the bottom, so that she finally ingested all of it all at once.
I think I covered everything.
But the funny parts: Hasitngs thinking he’s some great detective (lol, he thought that in the books too, but he could never be an investigator of any kind, he thinks all the nice ones are innocent and the unpleasant ones are guilty… well, this one actually is on circumstance where that is correct, but normally it’s not)
— when Cynthia cries that Emily forgot to take care of her in her will, so her fuure in unknown, and she’s cared and she also thinks that in that house nobody likes her… and so Hastings propooses to her! Just like that, he turns, takes her hand and asks her to become his wife, and he’s a bit offended when she tells him to not be silly, and very put out when she starts laughing at the idea, she thinks he only did it to guarantee her a safe future, and she thanks him but also warns him to be careful, that someone else might accept him next time…
And then at the end he’s totally surprised when he learns that she got engaged to Lawrence, and he tells Poirot that he really can’t understand women… and Poirot promises that one day, he’ll teach him all about it… :-)
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