The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie.
Title: The ABC Murders.
Author: Agatha Christie.
Genre: Fiction, mystery, detective fiction, crime.
Country: England, UK.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1936.
Summary: There is a serial killer on the loose, working his way through the alphabet and the whole country is in a state of panic. A is for Mrs. Ascher in Andover, B is for Betty Barnard in Bexhill, C is for Sir Carmichael Clarke in Churston. With each murder, the killer is getting more confident-but leaving a trail of deliberate clues to taunt the proud Hercule Poirot might just prove to be the first, and fatal, mistake.
My rating: 7.5/10.
My review:
♥ In conclusion, I will say that if I have described at too great length some of the secondary personal relationships which arose as a consequence of this strange series of crimes, it is because the human and personal elements can never be ignored. Hercule Poirot once taught me in a very dramatic manner that romance can be a by-product of crime.
♥ "I suppose next time I come home I shall find you wearing false moustaches-or are you doing so now?"
Poirot winced. His moustaches had always been his sensitive point. He was inordinately proud of them. My words touched him on the raw.
"No, no, indeed, mon ami. That day I pray the good God, is still far off. The false moustache! Quel horreur!"
He tugged at them vigorously to assure me of their genuine character.
"Well, they are very luxuriant still," I said.
"N'est ce pas? Never, in the whole of London, have I seen a pair of moustaches to equal mine."
A good job too, I thought privately. But I would not for the world have hurt Poirot's feelings by saying so.
Instead I asked if he still practised his profession on occasion.
"I know," I said, "that you actually retired years ago-"
"C'est vrai. To grow the venerable marrows! And immediately a murder occurs-and I send the vegetable marrows to promenade themselves to the devil. And since then-I know very well what you will say-I am like the prima donna who makes positively the farewell performance! That farewell performance, it repeats itself an indefinite number of times!"
♥ "You know, Hastings, in many ways I regard you as my mascot."
"Indeed?" I said. "In what ways?"
Poirot did not answer my question directly. He went on:
"As soon as I heard you were coming over I said to myself: something will arise. As in former days we will hunt together, we two. But if so it must be no common affair. It must be something"-he waved his hands excitedly-"something recherche"-delicate-fine..." He gave the last untranslatable word its full flavour.
"Upon my word, Poirot," I said. "Anyone would think you were ordering a dinner at the Ritz."
"Whereas one cannot command a crime to order? Very true." He sighed. "But I believe in luck-in destiny, if you will. It is your destiny to stand beside me and prevent me from committing the unforgivable error."
"What do you call the unforgivable error?"
"Overlooking the obvious."
♥ "Some madman or other, I suppose."
"That is all you have to say?"
"Well-doesn't it sound like a madman to you?"
"Yes, my friend, it does."
His tone was grave. I looked at him curiously.
"You take this very seriously, Poirot."
"A madman, mon ami, is to be taken seriously. A madman is a very dangerous thing."
♥ "You're looking well, too. Just a little bit thin on top, eh? Well, that's what we're all coming to. I'm the same."
I winced slightly. I was under the impression that owing to the careful way I brushed my hair across the top of my head the thinness referred to by Japp was quite unnoticeable. However, Japp had never been remarkable for tact where I was concerned, so I put a good face upon it and agreed that we were none of us getting any younger.
"Except Monsieur Poirot here," said Japp. "Quite a good advertisement for a hair tonic, he'd be. Face fungus sprouting finer than ever. Coming out into the limelight, too, in his old age. Mixed up in all the celebrated cases of the day. Train mysteries, air mysteries, high society death-oh, he's here, there and everywhere. Never been so celebrated as since he retired."
"I have already told Hastings that I am like the prima donna who makes always one more appearance," said Poirot, smiling.
"I shouldn't wonder if you ended by detecting your own death," said Japp, laughing heartily. "That's an idea, that is. Ought to be put in a book."
"It will be Hastings who will have to do that," said Poirot, twinkling at me.
"Ha ha! That would be a joke, that would," laughed Japp.
I failed to see why the idea was so extremely amusing, and in any case I thought the joke was in poor taste. Poirot, poor old chap, is getting on. Jokes about his approaching demise can hardly be agreeable to him.
♥ "I'm sorry that anonymous letter business came to nothing."
"I have indeed been in the wrong over that. About that letter, there was, I thought, the odour of the fish. Instead a mere stupidity. Alas, I grow old and suspicious like the blind watchdog who growls when there is nothing there."
♥ "Who shall the victim be-man or woman? Man, I think. Some bigwig. American millionaire. Prime Minister. Newspaper proprietor. Scene of the crime-well, what's wrong with the good old library? Nothing like it for atmosphere. And for the weapon-well, it might be a curiously twisted dagger-or some blunt instrument-a carved stone idol-"
Poirot sighed.
"Or, of course," I said, "there's poison- but that's always so technical. Or a revolver shot echoing in the night. Then there must be a beautiful girl or two-"
"With auburn hair," murmured my friend.
"You your same old joke. One of the beautiful girls, of course, must be unjustly suspected-and there's some misunderstanding between her and the young man. And then, of course, there must be some other suspects-an older woman-dark, dangerous type-and some friend or rival of the dead man's-and a quiet secretary-dark horse-and a hearty man with a bluff manner-and a couple of discharged servants or gamekeepers or somethings-and a damn fool of a detective rather like Japp-and well-that's about all."
"That is your idea of the cream, eh?"
"I gather you don't agree."
Poirot looked at me sadly.
"You have made there a very pretty résumé of nearly all the detective stories that have ever been written."
♥ "Regard, Hastings, did I not tell you that she had been a beautiful woman?"
He was right. Disfigured by old-fashioned hairdressing and weird clothes, there was no disguising the handsomeness of the girl in the picture with her clear-cut features and spirited bearing. I looked closely at the second figure. It was almost impossible to recognize the seedy Ascher in this smart young man with the military bearing.
I recalled the leering drunken old man, and the toil-worn face of the dead woman-and I shivered a little at the remorselessness of time...
♥ "Couldn't you simply have asked-without all that tissue of lies?"
"No, mon ami. If I had 'simply asked,' as you put it, I should have got no answer at all my my questions. You yourself are English and yet you do not seem to appreciate the quality of the English reaction to a direct question. It is invariably one of suspicion and the natural result is reticence. If I had asked those people for information they would have shut up like oysters. But by making a statement (and a somewhat out of the way and preposterous one) and by your contradiction of it, tongues are immediately loosened. We know also that that particular time was a 'busy time'-that is, that everyone would be intent on their own concerns and that there would be a fair number of people passing along the pavements. Our murderer chose his time well, Hastings."
He paused and then added on a deep note of reproach:
"Is it that you have not in any degree the common sense, Hastings? I say to you: 'Make a purchase quelconque'-and you deliberately choose the strawberries! Already they commence to creep through their bag and endanger your good suit."
With some dismay, I perceived that this was indeed the case.
I hastily presented the strawberries to a small boy who seemed highly astonished and faintly suspicious.
Poirot added the lettuce, thus setting the seal on the child's bewilderment.
♥ Hastily Poirot reassured her. No labour on her part was required. He would elicit the facts from her and the interview would be written up.
Thus encouraged, Mrs. Fowler plunged willingly into reminiscence, conjecture and hearsay.
♥ "'A man in drink can be like a ravening wolf,' I said, 'and in my opinion a wild beast is neither more nor less than what that old devil of a husband of hers is. I've warned her,' I said, 'many times and now my words have come true. He'll do for you,' I said. And he has done for her! You can't rightly estimate what a man will do when he's in drink and this murders a proof of it."
♥ "The crime," said Poirot, "was committed by a man of medium height with red hair and a cast in the left eye. He limps slightly on the right foot ans has a mole just below the shoulder blade."
"Poirot?" I cried.
For the moment I was completely taken in. Then the twinkle in my friend's eye undeceived me.
"Poirot!" I said again, this time in reproach.
"Mon ami, what will you? You fix upon me a look of dog-like devotion and demand of me a pronouncement à la Sherlock Homes! Now for the truth-I do not know what the murderer looks like, nor where he lives, nor how to set hands upon him."
"If only he had left some clue," I muttered.
"Yes, the clue-it is always the clue that attracts you. Alas that he did not smoke the cigarette and leave the ash, and then step in it with a shoe that has nails of a curious pattern. No-he is not so obliging."
♥ "We are confronted here by an unknown personage. He is in the dark and seeks to remain the dark. But in the very nature of things he cannot help throwing light upon himself. In one sense we know nothing about him-in another sense we know already a good deal. I see his figure dimly taking shape-a man who prints clearly and well-who buys good-quality paper-who is at great needs to express his personality. I see him as a child possibly ignored and passed over-I see him growing up with an inward sense of inferiority-warring with a sense of injustice... I see that inner urge-to assert himself-to focus attention on himself ever becoming stronger, and events, circumstances-crushing it down-heaping, perhaps, more humiliations on him. And inwardly the match is set to the powder train...."
♥ "Poirot," I said as we walked along by the river. "Surely this crime can be prevented?"
He turned a haggard face to me.
"The sanity of a city full of men against the insanity of one man? I fear, Hastings-I very much fear. Remember the long-continued successes of Jack the Ripper."
"It's horrible," I said.
"Madness, Hastings, is a terrible thing... I am afraid... I am very much afraid...."
♥ "Somehow, I don't see what M. Hercule Poirot is doing in our humble little crime."
"Mademoiselle," said Poirot. "What you do not see and what I do not see would probably fill a volume. But all that is of no practical importance. What is of practical importance is something that will not be easy to find."
"What's that?"
"Death, mademoiselle, unfortunately creates a prejudice. A prejudice in favour of the deceased. I heard what you said just now to my friend Hastings. 'A nice bright girl with no men friends.' You said that in mockery of the newspapers. And it is very true-when a young girl is dead, that is the kind of thing that is said. She was bright. She was happy. She was sweet-tempered. She had not a care in the world. She had no undesirable acquaintances. There is a great charity always to the dead. Do you know what I should like this minute? I should like to find someone who knew Elizabeth Barnard and who does not know she is dead! Then, perhaps, I should hear what is useful to me-the truth."
Megan Barnard looked at him for a few minutes in silence whilst she smiled. Then, at last, she spoke. Her words made me jump.
"Betty!" she said, "was an unmitigated little ass!"
♥ Donald Fraser looked suspiciously at Poirot.
"Who are you? You don't belong to the police?"
"I am better than the police," said Poirot. He said it without conscious arrogance. It was, to him, a simple statement of fact.
♥ Conferences!
Much of my memories of the A B C case seem to be of conferences.
Conferences at Scotland Yard. At Poirot's rooms. Official conferences. Unofficial conferences.
♥ I put a few things together in a suitcase while Poirot once more rang up Scotland Yard.
A few minutes later he came into the bedroom and demanded:
"Mais qu'est ce que vous faites là?"
"I was packing for you. I thought it would save time."
"Vous éprouvez trop d'émotion, Hastings. It affects your hands and your wits. Is that a way to fold a coat? And regard what you have dome to my pyjamas. If the hairwash breaks what will befall them?"
"Good heavens, Poirot," I cried, "this is a matter of life and death. What does it matter what happens to our clothes?"
"You have no sense of proportion, Hastings. We cannot catch a train earlier than the time that it leaves, and to ruin one's clothes will not be the least helpful in preventing a murder."
Taking his suitcase from me firmly, he took the packing into his own hands.
♥ "How odd all this is, Poirot," I exclaimed, struck suddenly by an idea. "Do you know, this is the first crime of this kind that you and I have worked on together? All our murders have been-well, private murders, so to speak."
"You are quite right, my friend. Always, up to now, it has fallen to our lot to work from the inside. It has been the history of the victim that was important. The important points have been 'Who benefited by the death? What opportunities had those round him to commit the crime?' It has always been the 'crime intime.' Here, for the first time in our association, it is cold-blooded, impersonal murder. Murder from the outside."
I shivered.
"It's rather horrible..."
"Yes. I felt from the first, when I read the original letter, that there was something wrong-misshapen..."
He made ah impatient gesture.
"One must not give way to the nerves... This is no worse than any ordinary crime..."
"It is... It is..."
"Is it worse to take the life or lives of strangers than to take the life of someone near and dear to you-someone who trusts and believes in you, perhaps?"
"It's worse because it's mad..."
"No, Hastings. It is not worse. It is only more difficult."
"No, no, I do not agree with you. It's infinitely more frightening."
Hercule Poirot said thoughtfully:
"It should be easier to discover because it is mad. A crime committed by someone shrewd and sane would be far more complicated. Here, if one could but hit on the idea... This alphabetical business, it has discrepancies. If I could once see the idea-then everything would be clear and simple..."
He sighed and shook is head.
"These crimes must not go on. Soon, soon, I must see the truth..."
♥ "It's a fact. Sometimes it's the war that unhinged them-never been right since."
"I-I expect you're right."
"I don't hold with wars," said the young man.
His companion turned on him.
"I don't hold with plague and sleeping sickness and famine and cancer... but they happen all the same!"
"War is preventable," said the young man with assurance.
Mr. Cust laughed. He laughed for some time.
The young man was slightly alarmed.
"He's a bit batty himself," he thought.
Aloud he said:
"Sorry, sir, I expect you were in the war."
"I was," said Mr. Cust. "It-it-unsettled me. My head's never been right since. It aches, you know. Aches terribly.
♥ If Chrome and his colleagues were indefatigable, Poirot seemed to me strangely supine. We argued now and again.
"But what is it that you would have me do, my friend? The routine inquiries, the police make them better than I do. Always-always you want me to run about like the dog."
"Instead of which you sit at home like-like-"
"A sensible man! My force, Hastings, is in my brain, not in my feet! All the time, whilst I seem to you idle, I am reflecting."
"Reflecting?" I cried. "Is this a time for reflection?"
"Yes, a thousand times yes."
"But what can you possibly gain by reflection? You know the facts of the three cases by heart."
"It is not the facts I reflect upon-but the mind of the murderer."
"The mind of a madman!"
"Precisely. And therefore not to be arrived at in a minute. When I know what the murderer is like, I shall be able to find out who he is. And all the time I learn more. After the Andover crime, what did we know about the murderer? Next to nothing at all. After the Bexhill crime? A little more. After the Churston murder? More still. I begin to see-not what you would like to see-the outlines of a face and form but the outlines of a mind. A mind that moves and works in certain definite directions. After the next crime-"
"Poirot!"
My friend looked at me dispassionately.
"But, yes, Hastings, I think it is almost certain there will be another. A lot depends on la chance. So far our inconnu has been lucky. This time the luck may turn against him. But in any case, after another crime, we shall know infinitely more. Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions. There are confusing indications-sometimes it is as though there were two intelligences at work-but soon the outline will clear itself, I shall know."
"Who it is?"
"No, Hastings, I shall not know his name and address! I shall know what kind of a man he is..."
♥ "It rejoices me that there is here no shadow of guilt to distress the innocent."
"Isn't this worse?"
"No, no, a thousand times no! There is nothing so terrible as to live in an atmosphere of suspicion-to see eyes watching you and the love in them changing to fear-nothing so terrible as to suspect those near and dear to you--It is poisonous-a miasma. No, the poisoning of life for the innocent, that, at least, we cannot lay at A B C's door."
"You'll soon be making excuses for the man!" I said bitterly.
"Why not? He may believe himself fully justified. We may, perhaps, end by having sympathy with his point of view."
♥ "Do you suspect them of keeping things back, then?"
"Not intentionally. But telling everything you know always implies selection. If I were to say to you, recount me your day yesterday, you would perhaps reply: 'I rose at nine, I breakfasted at half past, I had eggs and bacon and coffee, I went to my club, etc.' You would not include: 'I tore my nail and had to cut it. I rang for shaving water. I spilt a little coffee on the tablecloth. I brushed my hat and put it on.' One cannot tell everything. Therefore one selects. At the time of a murder people select what they think is important. But quite frequently they think wrong!"
"And how is one to get at the right things?"
"Simply, as I said just now, by conversation. By talking! By discussing a certain happening, or a certain person, or a certain day, over and over again, extra details are bound to arise."
"What kind of details?"
"Naturally that I do not know or I should not want to find out. But enough time has passed now for ordinary things to reassume their value. It is against all mathematical laws that in three cases of murder there is no single fact nor sentence with a bearing on the case. Some trivial happening, some trivial remark there must be which would be a pointer! It is looking for the needle in the haystack, I grant-but in the haystack there is a needle-of that I am convinced!"
It seemed to me extremely vague and hazy.
"You do not see it? Your wits are not so sharp as those of a mere servant girl."
♥ "Words!" said Megan Barnard.
"Eh?" Poirot looked at her inquiringly.
"What you've been saying. It's just words. It doesn't mean anything."
She spoke with that kind of desperate intensity that I had come to associate with her personality.
"Words, mademoiselle, are only the outer clothing of ideas."
♥ "In the midst of tragedy we start the comedy. It is so, is it not?"
"What do you mean?"
"The human drama, Hastings! Reflect a little minute. Here are three sets of human beings brought together by a common tragedy. Immediately a second drama commences-tout à fait à part. Do you remember my first case in England? Oh, so many years ago now. I brought together two people who loved one another-by the simple method of having one of them arrested for murder! Nothing less would have done it! In the midst of death we are in life, Hastings... Murder, I have often noticed, is a great matchmaker."
♥ " Certainly, but that tune told me your thoughts."
"Indeed?"
"Yes. To hum a tune is extremely dangerous. It reveals the subconscious mind. The tune you hummed dates, I think, from the days of the war. Comme ça," Poirot sang in an abominable falsetto voice:
"Some of the time I love a brunette,
Some of the time I love a blonde
(Who comes from Eden by way of Sweden).
♥ "She really is a lovely girl," I said.
"And wears very lovely clothes. That crêpe marocain and the silver fox collar-dernier cri."
"You're a man milliner, Poirot. I never notice what people have on."
"You should join a nudist colony."
♥ "I say, Lily"-his face crinkled up with amusement. "What price your old dugout being the murderer himself?"
"Poor Mr. Cust? He wouldn't hurt a fly," laughed Lily.
They danced on happily-in their conscious minds nothing but the pleasure of being together.
In their unconscious minds something stirred...
♥ "How do you know?"
"Oh, a great many reasons-for one, because the red succeeds the black."
"What do you mean, Poirot?" I cried.
"I speak the language of the tables. At roulette there may be a long run on the black-but in the end red must turn up. It is the mathematical laws of chance."
"You mean that luck turns?"
"Exactly, Hastings. And that is where the gambler (and the murderer, who is, after all, only a supreme kind of gambler since what he risks is not his money but his life) often lacks intelligent anticipation. Because he has won he thinks he will continue to win! He does not leave the tables in good time with his pocket full. So in crime the murderer who is successful cannot conceive the possibility of not being successful! He takes to himself all the credit for a successful performance-but I tell you, my friends, however carefully planned, no crime can be successful without luck!"
"Isn't that going rather far?" demurred Franklin Clarke.
Poirot waved his hands excitedly.
"No, no. It is an even chance, if you like, but it must be in your favour. Consider! It might have happened that someone enters Mrs. Ascher's shop just as the murderer is leaving. That person might have thought of looking behind the counter, have seen the dead woman-and either laid hands on the murderer straight away or else been able to give such an accurate description of him to the police that he would have been arrested forthwith."
"Yes, of course, that's possible," admitted Clarke. "What it comes to is that a murderer's got to take a chance."
"Precisely. A murderer is always a gambler. And, like many gamblers, a murderer often does not know when to stop. With each crime his opinion of his own abilities is strengthened. His sense of proportion is warped. He does not say 'I have been clever and lucky!' No, he says only 'I have been clever!' And his opinion of his cleverness grows and then, mes amis, the ball spins, and the run of colour is over-it drops into a new number and the croupier calls out 'Rouge.'"
"You think that will happen in this case?" asked Megan, drawing her brows together in a frown.
"It must happen sooner or later! So far the luck has been with the criminal-sooner or later it must turn and be with us. I believe that it has turned! The clue of the stockings is the beginning. Now, instead of everything going right for him, everything will go wrong for him! And he, too, will begin to make mistakes..."
♥ "All the same, I thought I'd show you this. I don't want you to get a false impression of Thora from anything Lady Clarke may have said."
Poirot returned the letter.
"I can assure you," he said, smiling, "that I never permit myself to get false impressions from anything anyone tells me. I form my own judgments."
♥ "H'm," said the AC. "That's the jargon that's talked nowadays. In my day if a man was mad he was mad and we didn't look about for scientific terms to soften it down. I suppose a thoroughly up-to-date doctor would suggest putting a man like A B C in a nursing home, telling him what a fine fellow he was for forty-five days on end and then letting him out as a responsible member of society."
♥ "But if so-"
He was silent for some time. I did not like to interrupt him.
As a matter of fact, I believe I fell asleep.
I woke to find Poirot's hand on my shoulder.
"Mon cher Hastings," he said affectionately. "My good genius."
I was quite confused by this sudden mark of esteem.
"It is true," Poirot insisted. "Always-always-you help me-you bring me luck. You inspire me."
♥ "We will be face to face at last-A B C and Hercule Poirot-the adversaries."
"And then?" I asked.
"And then," said Poirot. "We will talk! Je vous assure, Hastings-there is nothing so dangerous for anyone who has something to hide as conversation! Speech, so a wise old Frenchman said to me once, is an invention of man's to prevent him from thinking. It is also an infallible means of discovering that which he wishes to hide. A human being, Hastings, cannot resist the opportunity to reveal himself and express his personality which conversation gives him. Every time he will give himself away."
"What do you expect Cust to tell you?"
Hercule Poirot smiled.
"A lie," he said. "And by it, I shall know the truth!"
♥ "It is no answer to say that the man was mentally unhinged. To say a man does mad things because he is mad is merely unintelligent and stupid. A madman is as logical and reasoned in his actions as a sane man-given his peculiar biased point of view. For example, if a man insists on going out and squatting about in nothing but a loin cloth his conduct seems eccentric in the extreme. But once you know that the man himself is firmly convinced that he is Mahatma Gandhi, then his conduct becomes perfectly reasonable and logical."
♥ "But there, at the very start, I made a grave error. I permitted my feeling-my very strong feeling about the letter-to remain a mere impression. I treated it as though it had been an intuition. In a well-balanced, reasoning mind there is no such thing as an intuition-an inspired guess! You can guess, of course-and a guess is either right or wrong. If it is right you call it an intuition. If it is wrong you usually do not speak of it again. But what is often called an intuition is really an impression based on logical deduction or experience. When an expert feels that there is something wrong about a picture or a piece of furniture or the signature on a cheque he is really basing that feeling on a host of small signs and details. He has no need to go into them minutely-his experience obviates that-the net result is the definite impression that something is wrong. But it is not a guess, it is an impression based on experience."