Peril at End House by Agatha Christie.
Title: Peril at End House.
Author: Agatha Christie.
Genre: Fiction, detective fiction, mystery, crime.
Country: England, U.K..
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1932.
Summary: Hercule Poirot's relaxing holiday on the Cornish coast takes an unexpected turn when he meets young and pretty Nick Buckley. For it seems to Poirot that too many accidents have been happening to Nick and he, with the help of Captain Hastings, is determined to prevent another accident becoming a tragedy. But even hiding her away in a nursing home does not prevent another attempt on Nick's life, and Poirot has to resort to subterfuge and cunning to solve this tricky case.
My rating: 8/10.
My review:
♥ "Tell me, Poirot," I said. "Are you never tempted to renew your activities? This passive life-"
"Suits me admirably, my friend. To sit in the sun-what could be more charming? To step from your pedestal at the zenith of your fame-what could be a grander gesture? They say of me: "That is Hercule Poirot!-The great-the unique!-There was never any one like him, there never will be!" Eh bien-I am satisfied. I ask no more. I am modest."
I should not myself have used the word modest. It seemed to me that my little friend's egotism had certainly not declined with his years. He leaned back in his chair, caressing his moustache and almost purring with self-satisfaction.
♥ "Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking."
"An admirable exercise, my friend. Continue it."
♥ "I forget-you are only a child-you would not have heard. So quickly does fame pass. My friend there-he will tell you."
Nick looked at me. I cleared my throat, somewhat embarrassed. "Monsieur Poirot is-er-was-a great detective," I explained.
"Ah! my friend," cried Poirot. "Is that all you can find to say? Mais dis donc! Say then to Mademoiselle that I am a detective unique, unsurpassed, the greatest that ever lived!"
"That is now unnecessary," I said coldly. "You have told her yourself."
"Ah, yes, but it is more agreeable to have been able to preserve the modesty. One should not sing one's own praises."
"One should not keep a dog and have to bark oneself," agreed Nick, with mock sympathy. "Who is the dog, by the way? Dr Watson, I presume."
"My name is Hastings," I said coldly.
♥ It was from that moment that the conversation took on a different tone. Up to now, Poirot and the girl had been at cross-purposes. They were separated by a gulf of years. His fame and reputation meant nothing to her-she was of the generation that knows only the great names of the immediate moment. She was, therefore, unimpressed by his warnings. He was to her only a rather comic elderly foreigner with an amusingly melodramatic mind.
And this attitude baffled Poirot. To begin with, his vanity suffered. It was his constant dictum that all the world knew Hercule Poirot. Here was someone who did not. Very good for him, I could not but feel-but not precisely helpful to the object in view!
With the discovery of the missing pistol, however, the affair took on a new phase. Nick ceased to treat it as a mildly amusing joke. She still treated the matter lightly, because it was her habit and her creed to treat all occurrences lightly, but there was a distinct difference in her manner.
♥ "It must have been some madman."
"Possibly. It is an interesting subject of after-dinner conversation-are all criminals really madmen? There may be a malformation in their little grey cells-yes, it is very likely. That, it is the affair of the doctor. For me-I have different work to perform. I have the innocent to think of, not the guilty-the victim, not the criminal. It is you I am considering now, Mademoiselle, not your unknown assailant. You are young and beautiful, and the sun shines and the world is pleasant, and there is life and love ahead of you. It is all that of which I think, Mademoiselle."
♥ "That is curious. Yes, that is curious. The little facts that are curious, I like to see them appear. They are significant. They point the way."
"The way-where?"
"You put your finger on the weak spot, my excellent Hastings. Where? Where indeed! Alas, we shall not know till we get there."
♥ "Consider," he cried. "Consider for one little moment, Hastings. How are we handicapped! How are our hands tied! To hunt down a murderer after a crime has been committed-c'est tout simple! Or at least it is simple to one of my ability. The murderer has, so to speak, signed his name by committing the crime. But here there is no crime-and what is more, we do not want a crime. To detect a crime before it has been committed-that is indeed or a rare difficulty."
♥ Poirot looked at me meditatively.
"You have an extraordinary effect on me, Hastings. You have so strongly the flair in the wrong direction that I am almost tempted to go by it! You are that wholly admirably type of man, honest, credulous, honorable, who is invariably taken in by any scoundrel. You are the type of man who invests in doubtful oil fields, and non-existent gold mines. From hundreds like you, the swindler makes his daily bread. Ah well-I shall study this Commander Challenger. You have awakened my doubts."
"My dear Poirot," I cried angrily. "You are perfectly absurd. A man who has knocked about the world like I have-"
"Never learns," said Poirot sadly. "It is amazing-but there it is."
"Do you suppose I'd have made a success of my ranch out in the Argentine if I was the kind of credulous fool you make out?"
"Do not enrage yourself, mon ami. You have made a great success of it-you and your wife."
"Bella," I said, "always goes by my judgment."
"She is as wise as she is charming," said Poirot. "Let us not quarrel, my friend."
♥ "What do we do now?"
"We visit the post office and send off a telegram if it is not too late."
"A telegram?" I said hopefully.
"Yes," said Poirot thoughtfully. "A telegram."
The post office was still open. Poirot wrote out his telegram and dispatched it. He vouchsafed me no information as to its contents. Feeling that he wanted me to ask him, I carefully refrained from doing so.
♥ "She is very beautiful," said Poirot suddenly.
"Who? Our Nick?"
"No-the other. Is she evil? Is she good? Is she merely unhappy? One cannot tell. She is a mystery. She is, perhaps, nothing at all. But I tell you, my friend, she is an allumeuse."
♥ "He is clever, that one. Note the shape of his head. Ah! I wish I knew-"
"What?" I asked as he came to a stop.
"What I shall know on Monday," he returned and ambiguously.
I looked at him but said nothing. He sighed.
"You have no longer the curiosity, my friend. In the old days-"
"There are some pleasures, I said coldly, "that it is good for you to do without."
"You mean-?"
"The pleasure of refusing to answer questions."
"Ah, c'est malin."
"Quite so."
"Ah, well, well," murmured Poirot. "The strong silent man beloved of novelists in the Edwardian age."
♥ She detached herself from her partner and swooped down on us like a gaily colored bird.
"Dancing on the edge of death," she said lightly.
"It is a new sensation, Mademoiselle?"
"Yes. Rather fun."
♥ "What a suspicious old devil you are!"
"You are right, mon ami. I am suspicious of everyone-of everything. I am afraid, Hastings-afraid."
♥ I held out my hand for it. Poirot looked at me and sighed.
"If only-if only, Hastings, you would part your hair in the middle instead of at the side! What a difference it would make to the symmetry of your appearance. And your mustache. If you must have a mustache, let it be a real mustache-a thing of beauty such as mine."
Repressing a shudder at the thought, I took the note firmly from Poirot's hand and left the room.
♥ When she spoke, it was in a different tone of voice, a dream faraway voice.
"Do you know a queer wish I've always had? I love End House. I've always wanted to produce a play there. It's got an-an atmosphere of drama about it. I've seen all sorts of plays staged there in my mind. And now it's as though a dream were being acted there. Only I'm not producing it... I'm in it! I'm right in it! I am, perhaps, the person who-dies in the first act."
♥ "Your cousin is behaving with great bravery," I said. "She's determined to carry on as usual."
"It's the only way, isn't it?" said Maggie. "I mean-whatever one's inward feelings are-it is no good making a fuss about them. That's only uncomfortable for everyone else."
♥ "A chill? On a lovely night like this?"
"A lovely night! A lovely night! You say that, because the rain it does not pour down in sheets! Always when the rain does not fall, it is a lovely night. But I tell you, my friend, if there were a little thermometer to consult you would see."
♥ Poirot lifted first one, then the other foot from the ground with a catlike motion.
"It is the dampness of the feet I fear. Would it, think you, be possible to lay the hands on a pair of galoshes?"
I repressed a smile.
"Not a hope," I said. "You understand, Poirot, that it is no longer done."
"Then I shall sit in the house," he declared. "Just for the Guy Fawkes show, shall I wantonly enrhumer myself? And catch, perhaps, a fluxion de poitrine?"
♥ "We are all children at heart," said Poirot thoughtfully. "Les Feux d'Artifices, the Party, the games with balls-yes, and even the conjuror, the man who deceives the eye, however carefully it watches-mais qu'est-ce que vous avez?"
♥ "I had warned the murderer-"
"Warned the murderer?
"Mais oui. I had drawn attention to myself. I had let him see that I suspected-someone. I had made it, or so I thought, too dangerous for him to dare to repeat his attempts at murder. I had drawn a cordon round Mademoiselle. And he slips through it! Boldly-under our very eyes almost, he slips through it! In spite of us all-of everyone being on the alert, he achieves his object."
"Only he doesn't," I reminded him.
"That is the chance only! From my point of view, it is the same. A human life has been taken, Hastings-whose life is nonessential?"
"Of course," I said, "I didn't mean that."
"But on the other hand, what you say is true. And that makes it worse-ten times worse. For the murderer is still as far as ever from achieving his object. Do you understand, my friend? The position is changed-for the worse. It may mean that not one life-but two will be sacrificed."
"Not while you're about," I said stoutly.
"Merci, mon ami! Merci! You still have confidence in the old one-you still have the faith. You put new courage into me. Hercule Poirot will not fail again. No second life shall be taken. I will rectify my error-for, see you, there must have been an error! Somewhere there has been a lack of order and method in my usually so well-arranged ideas. I will start again. Yes, I will start at the beginning. And this time-I will not fail."
♥ "Do you know, Poirot," I said. "I call that rather a bright idea. There may be something in it."
Poirot groaned.
"You would say that! It would appeal, I knew, to your romantic but slightly mediocre mind. Buried treasure-yes, you would enjoy the idea."
"Well-I don't see why not-"
"Because, my friend, the more prosaic explanation is nearly always the more probable."
♥ "Is he rich? Appearances are not everything. Even an old established firm with palatial showrooms and every appearance of prosperity may rest on a rotten basis. And what does one do then? Does one turn about crying out that times are hard? No, one buys a new and luxurious car. One spends a little more money than usual. One lives a little more ostentatiously. For credit, see you, is everything! But sometimes a monumental business has crashed-for no more than a few thousand pounds-of ready money.
"Oh! I know," he continued, forestalling my protests. "It is farfetched-but it is not so bad as revengeful priests or buried treasure. It bears, at any rate, some relationship to things as they happened. And we can neglect nothing-nothing that might bring us nearer the truth."
♥ "Now, if Charles Vyse felt that he was supplanted, would he be so powerfully affected that he would kill his cousin rather than let her become the wife of another man?"
"It sounds vert melodramatic," I said doubtfully.
"It sounds, you would say, un-English. I agree. But even the English have emotions. And a type such as Charles Vyse is the most likely to have them. He is a repressed young man. One who does not show his feelings easily. Such often have the most violent feelings."
♥ "Another motive for crime-Jealousy. I separate it from the last, because Jealousy may not, necessarily, be a sexual emotion. There is envy-envy of possession-of supremacy. Such a jealousy as drove the Iago of your great Shakespeare to one of the cleverest crimes (speaking from the professional point of view) that has ever been committed."
"Why was it so clever?" I asked, momentarily diverted.
"Parbleu-because he got others to execute it. Imagine a criminal nowadays on whom one was unable to put the handcuffs because he had never done anything himself."
♥ "You really think that is possible?"
"It is a hypothesis. I am driven to it by the difficulty of finding a reasonable theory elsewhere. When you have eliminated other possibilities you turn to the one that is left and say-since the other is not-this must be so..."
♥ "He is certainly the most likely suspect."
"You have a tendency, Hastings, to prefer the least likely. That, no doubt, is from reading too many detective stories. In real life, nine times out of ten, it is the most likely and the most obvious person who commits the crime."
"But you don't really think that is so this time?"
"There is only one thing that is against it. The boldness of the crime! That has stood out from the first. Because of that, as I say, the motive cannot be obvious."
"Yes, that is what you said at first."
"And that is what I say again."
With a sudden brusque gesture he crumbled the sheets of paper and threw them on the floor.
"No," he said as I uttered an exclamation of protest. "That list has been in vain. Still, it has cleared my mind. Order and method! That is the first stage. To arrange the facts with neatness and precision. The next stage-"
"Yes?"
"The next stage is that of the psychology. The correct employment of the little grey cells! I advise you, Hastings, to go to bed,."
"No," I said. "Not unless you do. I'm not going to leave you."
"Most faithful of dogs! But see you, Hastings, you cannot assist me to think. That is all I am going to do-think."
♥ "May I be impertinent, Madame?"
"Is there such a thing-in these days?"
"Perhaps you are right, Madame. How long have you and M. Lazarus been friends?"
"I met him six months ago."
"And you-care for him, Madame?"
Frederica shrugged her shoulders.
"He is-rich."
"Oh! là, là," cried Poirot. "That is an ugly thing to say."
She seemed faintly amused.
"Isn't it better to say it myself-than to have you say it for me?"
"Well-there is always that, of course. May I repeat, Madame, that you are very intelligent."
♥ Poirot smiled at him in a very kindly fashion. Indeed, I have always observed that Poirot has a kindly feeling for a lover.
♥ "I don't want to be alive. I don't want to live, I tell you!" she cried rebelliously.
"I know-I know. To all of us, Mademoiselle, there comes a time when death is preferable to life. But it passes-sorrow passes and grief. You cannot believe that now, I know. It is useless for an old man like me to talk. Idle words-that's what you think-idle words."
♥ "He disapproves of me, I think."
"Oh! Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle. And I hear that he has laid all his devotion at your feet!"
"Disapproving of a person doesn't keep you from having a pash for them. Charles thinks my mode of life is reprehensible and he disapproves of my cocktails, my complexion, my friends and my conversation. But he still feels my fatal fascination. He always hopes to reform me, I think."
♥ "I am old-fashioned and sentimental myself, Mademoiselle."
"Are you? I should have said that Captain Hastings was the sentimental one of you two."
I blushed indignantly.
"He is furious," said Poirot, eyeing my discomfiture with a good deal of pleasure. "But you are right, Mademoiselle. Yes, you are right."
"Not at all," I said angrily.
"Hastings has a singularly beautiful nature. It has been the great hindrance to me at times."
"Don't be absurd, Poirot."
He is, to begin with, reluctant to see evil anywhere, and when he does see it his righteous indignation is so great that he is incapable of dissembling. Altogether a rare and beautiful nature. No, mon ami, I will not permit you to contradict me. It is as I say."
♥ "Yes," I said. "A woman would jump top conclusions."
"Exactly. Ce que femme veut, Dieu veut. That is the attitude."
♥ "And I can take no credit to myself. Which is humiliating."
"Providence," I murmured.
"Ah! mon ami, I would not put on the shoulders of the good God the burden of men's wrongdoing. You say that in your Sunday morning voice of thankfulness-without reflecting that what you are really saying is that le bon Dieu has killed Miss Maggie Buckley."
"Really, Poirot!"
"Really, my friend! But I will not sit back and say 'le bon Dieu has arranged everything, I will not interfere.' Because I am convinced that le bon Dieu created Hercule Poirot for the express purpose of interfering. It is my métier."
♥ Poirot sighed in an exasperated fashion.
"The young girls-they are not properly trained nowadays. The order, the method, it is left out of their bringing up. She is charming, Mademoiselle Nick, but she is a featherhead. Decidedly she is a featherhead."
He was now going through the contents of a chest of drawers.
"Surely, Poirot," I said with some embarrassment, "those are underclothes."
He paused in surprise.
"And why not, my friend?"
"Don't you think-I mean-we can hardly-"
He broke into a roar of laughter.
"Decidedly, my poor Hastings, you belong to the Victorian era. Mademoiselle Nick would tell you so if she were here. In all probability she would say that you had the mind like the sink! Young ladies are not ashamed of their underclothes nowadays. The camisole, the cami-knicker, it is no longer a shameful secret. Every day, on the beach, all these garments will be discarded within a few feet of you. And why not?"
"I don't see any need for what you are doing."
"Ecoutez, my friend. Clearly, she does not lock up her treasures, Mademoiselle Nick. If she wished to hide anything from sight-where would she hide it? Underneath the stockings and the petticoats."
♥ "Complete and absolute surprise registered very convincingly," I remarked as we got outside.
"Yes. It really seemed genuine."
"Perhaps it was," I suggested.
"And that packet of letters reclining for months under the lingerie? No, mon ami."
"All very well," I thought to myself. "But we are not all Hercule Poirots. We do not all go nosing into what does not concern us."
But I said nothing.
♥ I detailed some of Poirot's minor peculiarities-toast that had to be made from a square loaf-eggs matching in size-his objection to golf as a game "shapeless and haphazard" whose only redeeming feature was the tee boxes! I ended by telling her the famous case which Poirot had solved by his habit of straightening ornaments on the mantelpiece.
♥ "He has the good poker face, M. Vyse, besides looking as though he had swallowed one."
♥ "Never had a failure, they say."
"That is not true," said Poirot. "I had a bad failure in Belgium in 1893. You recollect, Hastings? I recounted it to you. The affair of the box of chocolates."
"I remember," I said.
And I smiled, for at the time that Poirot told me that tale, he had instructed me to say "chocolate box" to him if ever I should fancy he was growing conceited! He was then bitterly offended when I used the magical words only a minute and a quarter later.
♥ She left the room abruptly. Challenger frowned.
"You never know what that woman's up to. Nick may have been fond of her, but I don't believe she was fond of Nick. But there you can't tell with women. It's darling-darling-darling-all the time-and 'damn you' would probably express it much better."
♥ "Evil cannot go unpunished."
"Evil never goes unpunished, Monsieur. But the punishment is sometimes secret."
♥ "Ah! But I reproach myself bitterly. I, Hercule Poirot, was on the spot and I did not prevent the crime!"
"Nobody could have prevented it."
"You speak without reflection, Hastings. No ordinary person could have prevented it-but of what good is it to be Hercule Poirot with grey cells of a finer quality than other people's, if you do not manage to do what ordinary people cannot?"
"Well, of course," I said. "If you are going to put it like that-"
"Yes, indeed. I am abashed, downhearted-completely abashed."
I reflected that Poirot's abasement was strangely like other people's conceit, but I prudently forbore making any remark.
♥ "We all of us get stale as the years go by. Got to give the young 'uns a chance, you know."
"And yet the old dog is the one who knows the tricks," murmured Poirot. "He is cunning. He does not leave the scent."
"Oh! well-we're talking about human beings, not dogs."
"Is there so much difference?"
"Well, it depends how you look at things. But you're a caution, isn't he, Captain Hastings? Always was. Looks much the same-hair a bit thinner on top but the face fungus fuller than ever."
"Eh?" said Poirot. "What is that?"
"He's congratulating you on your mustaches," I said soothingly.
"They are luxuriant, yes," said Poirot, complacently caressing them.
Japp went off into a roar of laughter.
♥ "Mon ami," said Poirot, "I like to inquire into everything. Hercule Poirot is a good dog. The dog follows the scent, and if, there is no scent to follow, he noses around-seeking always something that is not very nice. So also does Hercule Poirot. And often-oh! so often-does he find it!"
"It's not a nice profession, ours," said Japp.
♥ "Diable!" said Poirot as we walked away. "Is no one ever quite sure? In detective books-yes. But life-real life-is always full of middle. Am I sure, myself, about anything at all? No, no-a thousand times, no."
♥ The events of the next day are completely hazy in my memory. I was unfortunate enough to awake with fever on me. I have been liable to these bouts of fever at inconvenient times ever since I once contracted malaria.
In consequence, the events of that day take on in my memory the semblance of a nightmare-with Poirot coming and going as a kind of fantastic clown, making a periodic appearance in a circus.
He was, I fancy, enjoying himself to the full. His pose of baffled despair was admirable. How he achieved the end he had in view and which he had disclosed to me in the early hours of the morning, I cannot say. But achieve it, he did.
♥ "What a pig-headed old devil you are. He'd keep the secret all right."
"I am not so sure."
"He's the soul of honor. I'm certain of it."
"That makes it all the more difficult to keep a secret. Keeping a secret is an art that requires many lies magnificently told, and a great aptitude for playing the comedy and enjoying it. Could he dissemble, the Commander Challenger? If he is what you say he is, he certainly could not."
"Then you won't tell him?"
"I certainly refuse to imperil my little idea for the sake of the sentiment. It is life and death we play with, mon cher. Anyway, the suffering, it is good for the character. Many of our famous clergymen have said so-even a bishop if I am not mistaken."
♥ It was the man I had seen looking in on us the previous evening. I recognized him at once. I realized that when I had said he was hardly human I had exaggerated as Poirot had accused me of doing.
Yet there was something about his face that justified my impression. It was a lost face-the face of one removed from ordinary humanity.
White, weak, depraved, it seemed a mere mask-as though the spirit within had fled long ago.
♥ "Seven to one. Only M. Vyse holds out-on the side of law and order! You know, M. Vyse, you are a man of character!"
Vyse shrugged his shoulders.
"The position is quite clear. There is only one thing to do."
"Yes-you are an honest man. Eh bien-I, too, range myself on the side of the minority. I, too, am for the truth."
"M. Poirot!" cried Nick.
"Mademoiselle-you dragged me into the case. I came into it at your wish. You cannot silence me now."
♥ "She must have hated me," murmured Frederica.
"Yes, Madame. You had what she had not-the knack of winning love, and keeping it."
♥ I stared after him open-mouthed.
Poirot laughed.
"I told you so, mon ami. Your instincts are always wrong. C'est épatant!"
♥ Then, with a sudden gesture, he drew Lazarus aside.
"I ask your pardon, but, of all my questions, there is one still unanswered. Tell me, why did you offer fifty pounds for that picture? It would give me much pleasure to know-so as, you comprehend, to leave nothing unanswered."
Lazarus looked at him with an impassive face for a minute or two. Then he smiled.
"You see, M. Poirot," he said, "I am a dealer."
"Exactly."
"That picture is not worth a penny more than twenty pounds. I knew that if I offered Nick fifty, she would immediately suspect it was worth more and would get it valued elsewhere. Then she would find that I had offered her far more than it was worth. The next time I offered to buy a picture she would not have got it valued."
"Yes, and then?"
"The picture on the far wall is worth at least five thousand pounds," said Lazarus dryly.
"Ah!" Poirot drew a long breath.
"Now I know everything," he said happily.