Christie Catch-up: At Bertram’s Hotel

At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie

 published 1965

 

 

I have a very beatup copy of this book, old and secondhand, and I couldn’t have told you when and where I obtained it. But when I opened it for this re-read, I found inside the handwritten name of a family I used to babysit for, a very long time ago. I must have started reading it while in their house and then taken it home - with or without permission? - and never returned it. Dear me. (My babysitting adventures have featured in another post: the Friday Fright Night/Night of the Demon event). Too late to worry about this now…

Bertram did come up in my talk on clothes at the Agatha Christie Festival last year: because it features that favourite trope, the clothes that men cannot truly appreciate - the picture I used is above:

Her dress was of such simplicity that it puzzled most men. It looked like the coarsest kind of sacking, had no ornamentation of any kind, and no apparent fastening or seams. But women knew better. Even the provincial old dears in Bertram’s knew, quite certainly, that it had cost the earth.

It's rather a cliché of 20^th  century fiction, the uncomprehending man, and Christie featured it in Death on the Nile  ("It looks frightfully simple to me," said Tim. "Just a length of stuff with a kind of cord round the middle") and Taken at the Flood (the artificial simplicity of [her frock] had run into more money than Rowley could ever have imagined possible).

Appearances are very important in this book: it has a clever, original and intriguing setting: the hotel tucked away in central London, combining the best of Edwardian traditions and modern luxury. Is it too good to be true?

There’s a lot to enjoy, but it does seem to fall apart, and seems to lack some planning. To be fair to Christie at this stage her books always give the impression that they were planned out, that she knew where she was going. She can be quite careless on details – here, we don’t seem sure as to whether the airline company and matching bag is BEA or BOAC – but you feel she knew in her head who had done what and why, all the way through.

Here,

SLIGHT SPOILER

It was not clear to me at all why the murder happened.

And also – what about the attacks such as the poisoned chocolates – no explanation ever given? And as others have pointed out, it is not at all apparent how the central mother/daughter pair works out. Does everyone know? How does Miss Marple know?

And, finally, and was becoming an increasing problem – the years and ages don’t seem to work out. Although 1955 is mentioned on the first page, the action is obviously up to 10 years later – the Beatles are mentioned. If Elvira is 19, she was born in 1943/44 – while her mother was busily embedded with the French Resistance, rather than stuck in her marriage with Elvira’s father, Lord Coniston.

The impersonation plot – and I do love impersonation strands normally – seems to make no sense at all, it goes with the ludicrous drug plots I like to lay into.

But still – readable and interesting, a nice late example. The surrounding details, and the description of London life, are well worth the effort.

I found about Blind Earl china – an early Royal Worcester pattern which has an extra 3-dimensional aspect allegedly to please an aristo who lost his sight.

More clothes for Bess:

She was dressed ready to go out in a well cut dark suit and a shirt of bright emerald green. She looked gay and very much alive.

This is Elvira:

Tall, slim, very fair, Bess’s colouring but none of Bess’s vitality, with an old-fashioned air about her: though that was difficult to be sure of, since the fashion in dress happened at the moment to be ruffles and baby bodice.

(elsewhere she is described as being ‘simply but smartly dressed’ and later wears ‘a straight shift dress of pale blue’, so this doesn’t quite sound right.)

And for once an interesting reminiscence from Miss Marple:

“I remember being in Paris with my mother and my grandmother, and we went to have tea at the Elysee Hotel. And my grandmother looked round, and she said suddenly, ‘Clara, I do believe I am the only woman here in a bonnet!’ And she was too! When she got home she packed up all her bonnets, and her beaded mantles too – and sent them off… to a theatrical Repertory Company. They appreciated them very much.”

This has the air of something that happened to Agatha Christie and her mother and grandmother.

The distinction, by the way, is that a bonnet is a hat with strings or ribbons under the chin, one that frames the face and covers the ears. This from the NYPL shows bonnet and styles from 1890, the year of Agatha's birth.

 Overall  - there is a lot to nitpick in this book, BUT I think it's a book that Christie fans have a forgiving soft spot for. We like the whole idea of Bertram's Hotel.