Total Christie + After the Funeral + 2500 blogposts

 

I’d read all the books – how many had I blogged on?

I began blogging in January 2012, and this is, astonishingly to me, my 2,500^th post.

By far the most-featured author on the blog is Agatha Christie, who was one of the first authors to appear back then.  A while back I wondered what proportion of her works I had featured – it was around two thirds, so I made the decision to try to complete the set. I should stress: I had read all the crime books and stories long before I started the blog, some of them many times. This was a matter of rereading to create a blogpost. Which I did, with great pleasure.

And here we are: 

After the Funeral 

(which has already featured in one of the Spoiler Warning podcasts I did with Jim Noy and Brad Friedman) gets its own CiB post, and I think that’s the last one. I have updated the tab above – the one marked Agatha that would be – with I hope the full list of posts on the Great Dame. There are probably errors and gaps – if you see any, please tell me. Under the tab the books are divided into Poirot, Marple, Tommy & Tuppence, Standalones, and (non-series) Short Story Collections. Within those headings they are in chronological order.

In other tabs (Crime, and Authors A-D) Christie’s works are listed in the order in which they appeared on the blog.

I aim to have covered all the crime novels, and at least one story (often more) from each of the major short story collections. Roughly speaking, that means the collections that appeared in the UK before her death in 1976 – there are many subsequent volumes, which occasionally feature a previously uncollected story, and US listings can be quite different: I have stuck to what was available, in the UK, before she died.

There are extras also: I have done posts on two of the Mary Westmacotts, and both her volumes of autobiography. There are theme posts, Christie on holiday, tropes in Christie, book recommendations, podcasts, talks I have given… In more general posts on themes eg on Motives and Impersonation, on Secretaries and Mourning, she often looms large.

By my reckoning, I have done around 160 posts on, or featuring, Agatha Christie.

Later, I will celebrate some of the other 2000 books….But now:

 

After the Funeral by Agatha Christie

published  1953

 

Before we start: the butler Lanscombe says to Poirot:

‘We’ve always welcomed the unfortunate in this country, sir, it’s been our pride. We shall continue so to do.’

He is talking about refugees, and although we would phrase it differently today, it is always important to emphasise this, right now more than ever.

After the Funeral is always a good sharp read – I wouldn’t put it in my top 5, but up there in the top 10. 

Christie doesn’t often go north (Dumb Witness and Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, but not much else) but this setting is a solid dark old house, plainly in the top half of England, based on the house where her sister and brother-in-law lived (which was in Cheshire). The head of the family has just died: it’s a complicated family tree because he isn’t the father of anyone who appears in the book: his own son has died (he had been engaged to be married but his fiancée – who might have been a promising character in another plot – never appears nor is mentioned after the first time.) So the querulous relations gather for the titular funeral, and there is a family tree to help you along. (Jim Noy of Invisible Event takes issue with this illo – you’d have to listen to our podcast to find out why).

One of the dead man’s sisters is described thus:

Miss Cora had always been a bit – well simple like you’d call it if she’d lived in a village. Always one of them in a family

And it is she who says the fatal words:

‘But he was murdered wasn’t he?’

Everyone puts it down as just an embarrassing gaffe. Everyone goes home.

Meanwhile, in the buffet at Swindon, a lady in wispy mourning and festoons of jet was eating bath buns and drinking tea and looking forward to the future. She had no premonitions of disaster.

But the next day Cora’s dead body is found in her cottage – she has been murdered.

You can’t fault Christie for getting things going – even if a murder is late in her books, she doesn’t do dreamy openings with no action.

The motive might be considered sub-par, but it has always been one of my favourites – see my Motives post here. And the plot is ludicrous: there must have been easier methods available. And yet somehow you feel the guilty party might just have enjoyed this ridiculous challenge…

I do have a question as to how the murderer avoided being covered in blood? And of course this person could not possibly have known how others’ alibis, or lack of, would play into the plan.

Reading a book where you know the plot exactly, you can admire some of the Christie details. No, not clever clues, but this kind of thing:

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Susan. ‘I believe if you knew definitely who committed a crime you could always get the evidence.’

‘I wonder now.’ Mr Entwhistle sounded thoughtful. ‘I very much wonder . . .’

Now truly this is quite meaningless – he has no idea who committed the crime, and what he says has no implications about the case. It’s just a simple way to create atmosphere, and my view is that Christie makes it work: Poirot is forever making secretive hinting statements early on, which if you look back from the ending cannot have meant anything.

And here again: Rosamund is asked who she thinks killed Richard and Cora. She says ‘You know as well as I do. But it’s much, much better never to mention it. So we won’t.’ But there is no justification or reality in this – she can’t possibly know. But this portentous remark is a dramatic chapter ending.

This Mr Entwhistle is the family solicitor, and it is he who brings in Poirot, and he is good value. I like his response when someone quotes the story/rhyme about Lizzie Borden (‘gave her father 50 whacks’): ‘The rhyme is quite definitely libellous.’

There’s the description of the terrible paintings by Cora’s  dead artist  husband Pierre: [they] made Mr Entwhistle flinch – they were mostly nudes executed with a singular lack of draughtsmanship but with much fidelity to detail.

And he is as surprised as we are when the cousin Susan enquires about the companion, Miss Gilchrist, asking:

‘Did she – were she and Aunt Cora – on intimate terms –?’

Mr Entwhistle looked at her rather curiously, wondering just what exactly was in her mind.

Susan then proceeds to find Miss Gilcrhist another job without even consulting her: ‘I’ll arrange for her to get off to you as soon as possible.’ To be fair, Miss G is grateful, but really – she is disposed with along with Cora’s other possessions.

Miss Gilchrist pulled her black hat down firmly on her head and tucked in a wisp of grey hair

Mr Entwhistle is not taking to Susan:

‘she lacks some of the kindliness and the warmth of my old friend.’

‘Women are never kind,’ remarked Poirot. ‘Though they can sometimes be tender.’

This seems a remarkably stupid generalisation, and, incidentally, the person she is being compared with so unfavourably – dead Richard - is not reported as showing the slightest sign of any warmth or kindliness. (He also is described as ‘a sick man. He was suffering from a disease that would have proved fatal within, I should say, at the earliest, two years.’ Context suggests that this should have been ‘at the latest’)

Then we get this – a doctor explaining why you needn’t listen to older women:

‘My dear fellow. I shouldn’t pay any attention! The explanation is quite simple. The woman’s at a certain time of life – craving for sensation, unbalanced, unreliable – might say anything. They do, you know!’

Mr Entwhistle resented the doctor’s easy assumption.

Aha, you think, Agatha is going to give the other side of this new sweeping generalisation. But no, Mr E is just annoyed because he already knows this ‘He himself had had to deal with plenty of sensation-hunting and hysterical women.’

I defend AC a lot about these kind of moments (‘just reflecting attitudes, just for plot’s sake’), but sometimes even I have to give up.

Another complaint: Poirot takes on a false identity here, which I think is quite unusual, and a fake name. He pretends to be a buyer for the white elephant of a house, and it seems to me that he quite unjustifiably raises the hopes of many innocent people – particularly the butler, who is about to be turned out from his residence: Poirot implies he might get the lodge he’d been long promised, but this is plainly never going to happen. Tchah.

But all these comments are just the pernickety views of someone who has read Too Much Christie.

And while any sensible murderer could've found another way, Agatha Christie surely wouldn't've cared if you pointed out those issues. Her books are not meant to be realistic, and her job is to fool us and entertain us.

When I write about a book here, the amount I have to say will vary a lot. Coming to the end of Christie with this one, I thought about how people are dismissive of her – cardboard characters, one-dimensional plots – and how far that is from the truth. These are short books, but they are so full of interest and comment-worthy moments, and wonderful sociological detail.

The cheery nieces, not in mourning

I don’t have room today to mention other aspects – the fact that Susan has eight friends called Joan (see my post on names and their eras, Joan is so right for 1953) and old-fashioned mourning ‘dressed in wispy artistic black with festoons of jet beads’ – theme posts on this topic start here. Nuns, wedding-cake, polio. The scene where Rosamund apparently has on no underwear. The class implications of men who work in different shops – ‘a chemist’s shop is much better than a haberdasher’s’. the fact that Cora reminds me of Unity Mitford.

I love Agatha Christie and I love the books, always have,

 always will, and she is the backbone of this blog

 

Veiled woman from LSE library.

Woman in black hat from Library of Congress

Fashion drawing from a clothes catalogue