Written in 1923.
This is one book in which I got it right away, because it was really easy, and those who didn’t get it that’s because they were thinking like Hastings and not like Poirot, if you know what I mean. Poirot suspects everyone, as he should, while Hastings lets his personal feelings dictate what to think, so he never suspectsthose he considers gentlemen or friends.
This is just like that. The guilty one is obvious from the start, unless you let yourself be led astray by the lead character’s thinking.
This all starts with the murder of Jesse Trasmere, a very rich man with a tough but not evil character. He spent his life in China, he can read and write Chinese perfectly. He has some business with Chinese restaurant owner Yeh Ling, he dislikes his nephew Rex Lander because he likes to do nothing, he is quite unpleasant with his servants and has a locked room in his house where he keeps documents and money.
He is found murdered in that room, locked and with the key on the table in front of him. A will is found leaving all his money to his only relative, Rex.
Tab Holland is Rex’s roommate and friend, and he is also a journalist, and the lead character in this book. Carver is the inspector in charge of the investigation.
When Trasmere is found, Carver and Tab saw the servant Walters running away, and Rex coming out of the house under shock. The day before they had received the visit of Wellington Brown, a man back from China who had some past with Trasmere, and that threatened his life.
Carver finds the murder very hard to understand, because unless they can explain how someone could do it, an arrest would lead to nothing. Trasmere had been shot from behind, therefore murder it was, but the only key to the room was in front of him, away from the door. Carver and Tab also found a pin on the floor, but they have no idea of its importance.
This is the story, now with the solution in details, because it is really really simple and obvious. It is a bit frustrating every time a couple of characters let us know that they know stuff, but they don’t want to say it. Anyway, it is really obvious. Another character I didn’t mention is Ursula Ardfern, an actress. Tab met her for an interview to ask if she was really getting married (no, she wasn’t), because Rex is in love with her after seeing her at the theatre and wanted to know.
After becoming rich, Rex says he wants to leave for a while, to leave this horror behind himself.
Tab falls in love with Ursula, of course.
Yeh Ling had Brown stay in a opium house, to keep him there likeTrasmere asked him to do because he didn’t want to see him, so Ling can tell Carver that brown did not kill him, for sure.
Walters lives in terror for a while, until Carver gets him, but he confesses to thievery, not murder. He swears he didn’t do it, and Carver tends to believe him, Tab too.
Ursula slowly reveals things to Tab, really slowly, and eventually we learn her story. She was an orphan, after her father killed her mother and was hanged for it (or so she believed, at the end we realise together with her that Brown was her father), and she was raised in a home with many many little girls. She soon got a job washing dishes or something, until Trasmere found her. He sent her to a school to get an education, and launched her acting career. It’s like Yeh Ling, Trasmere also helped him get his own restaurant. Now both were giving part of their money to Trasmere, and doing things for him.
Ursula went to his house every night, to work as a typist for him.
There’s also a connection between Yeh Ling and Ursula, because when she was young, she helped care for Ling’s son, maybe even saving his life, and Ling never forgot that.
Both Yeh Ling and Ursula know who did it. He knew from the start, she knew shortly after, from something Tab told her: he said that Rex got everything because they found a will naming his the only heir.
Tab never suspects anything, he is sure that his friend is abroad, and believes him when Rex comes back saying that he bears no grudge from Tab’s engagement with Ursula. Just because he’s a ‘friend’, he believes it all. But really, Rex was the only one in that house, he got all the money, he craved money to live the rich life, he was obsessed with famous actress Ursula… not only that, but Tab’s apartment was robbed twice by somehow moving in the dark, taking something from Rex’s trunk and tearing apart Tab’s pictures… a thing that Tab dismissed without thinking on it, quite the silly thing to do. There’s always a reason behing such an act. Rex was crazy jealous of Tab and Ursula.
Rex killed Trasmere for his money, then later he killed Brown because they had met by chance and now Brown knew that he was right there and not abroad. Ursula knew it was him when she heard about the will because Trasmere never learned to write in English. Yeh Ling knew from the start, and that’s why he was always around, protecting her, even appearing behind them when Rex surprised them at the restaurant.
At one point, Rex wants to kill Tab because he’s in a relationship with Ursula, he has kissed her, and Rex hates that. All Rex has to do is to call Tab on the phone, at home, to tell him that he finally realised how things actually happened, and wants to tell him everything. But only to him because Carver and Yeh Ling are involved! Tab is surprised but he also kinda believes him, so he tells nothing to anyone and runs to Trasmere’s house where Rex is waiting for him, and trustingly turns his back on him.
Rex knocks him out, ties him up, confesses everything in a moment of folly, and then locks him in that room, all tied up like that that Tab can’t even move. Tab at least can finally see how Rex used the pin and some thread to slide the eky back inside after he locked the room from the outside, until the key fell on the table.
Rex runs away, and Tab would have burned inside if neighbour Stott, quite drunk, hadn’t come to his rescue, saving his life. Quite remarkable for the old man : he was so scared before that he couldn’t even read a car’s license plate for fear someone might see him, but that night he drank a glass of pure whisky. He never drank usually, but that night he wanted his servant Eline to drink because she was keeping him awake with her tooth ache. When they saw the fire, he ran there and saved Tab’s life!!!
Now Rex is oviously directed towards Ursula’s house, he was quite obsessed with her, but when he entered the house, he never reached Ursula’s room. Her protector got him first. Rex had a gun, but before he could use it, Ling stabbed him to death, then he carried the body outside, and threw the body down a column he was building for his new house, the column of happy memories, or something, I think he wanted the house done for his son who was becoming an important figure, but I’m not sure on this.
Anyway, Tab is very much relieved to find her well and unaware of everything when he reaches her room, and Carver has Rex’s confession that Tab rescued from that house before running away from the fire.
Nobody but Ling will ever know what happened to Rex, but nobody really cared too much to find out, I think.
Yeh Ling will burn some paper near the column, and that’s more than Rex deserves, maybe.
ITA L’enigma dello spillo.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento