Death on the Nile

Once I finish this, I’ll have read every novel by Christie that features Hercule Poirot.

It’s a long book with a large cast and much stage-setting. After almost two hundred pages, no one has been murdered.

But it’s an interesting book. I like it when Christie goes biblical. Overt sermonizing in literature is unfashionable, but Christie can’t help herself, and it’s refreshing.

“You are of the Church of England, I presume?”

“Yes.” Linnet looked slightly bewildered.

“Then you have heard portions of the Bible read aloud in church. You have heard of King David and of the rich man who had many flocks and herds and the poor man who had one ewe lamb – and of how the rich man took the poor man’s one ewe lamb. That was something that happened, Madame.”

Linnet sat up. Her eyes flashed angrily.

“I see perfectly what you are driving at, Monsieur Poirot! You think, to put it vulgarly, that I stole my friend’s young man. Looking at the matter sentimentally – which is, I suppose, the way people of your generation cannot help looking at things – that is possibly true. But the real hard truth is different. I don’t deny that Jackie was passionately in love with Simon, but I don’t think you take into account that he may not have been equally devoted to her. … What is he to do? Be heroically noble and marry a woman he does not care for – and thereby probably ruin three lives – for it is doubtful whether he could make Jackie happy under those circumstances? If he were actually married to her when he met me I agree that it might be his duty to stick to her – though I’m not really sure of that. If one person is unhappy the other suffers too. But an engagement is not really binding. If a mistake has been made, then surely it is better to face the fact before it is too late. I admit that it was very hard on Jackie, and I’m very sorry about it – but there it is. It was inevitable.”

“I wonder.”

She stared at him.

“What do you mean?”

“It is very sensible, very logical – all that you say! But it does not explain one thing.”

“What is that?”

“Your own attitude, Madame. … To you this persecution [by Jackie] is intolerable – and why? It can be for one reason only – that you feel a sense of guilt.”

Linnet sprang to her feet.

“How dare you? Really, Monsieur Poirot, this is going too far.”

“But I do dare, Madame! I am going to speak to you quite frankly. I suggest to you that, although you may have endeavoured to gloss over the fact to yourself, you did deliberately set about taking your husband from your friend. … You are beautiful, Madame; you are rich; you are clever; intelligent – and you have charm. You could have exercised that charm or you could have restrained it. You had everything, Madame, that life can offer. Your friend’s life was bound up in one person. You knew that, but, though you hesitated, you did not hold your hand. You stretched it out and, like the rich man in the Bible, you took the poor man’s one ewe lamb.” …

“She threatened to – well – kill us both. Jackie can be rather – Latin sometimes.”

“I see.” Poirot’s tone was grave.

Linnet turned to him appealingly.

“You will act for me?”

“No, Madame.” His tone was firm. “I will not accept a commission from you. I will do what I can in the interests of humanity. That, yes. There is here a situation that is full of difficulty and danger. I will do what I can to clear it up – but I am not very sanguine as to my chance of success.”

Linnet Doyle said slowly: “But you will not act for me?”

“No, Madame,” said Hercule Poirot.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 94: Poirot: Dumb witness

[Preliminary rant]

I don’t believe in David Suchet’s Poirot.

“Who are you, and what have you done with Hercule?” (I keep wondering).

POIROT

I say all are capable of murder, mon ami.

Perhaps he says this somewhere in the corpus, but not in the novel Dumb Witness. Poirot seldom generalizes about murder. He is interested in particular murders.

Indeed, Poirot in this book rules out various suspects because he deems them incapable of the murder in question.

This is more than a difference of detail; it’s what the story turns on.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

More lines from the adaptation:

HASTINGS

Quite a list of suspects, Poirot.

POIROT

Which is not complete. You forget the sisters Tripp [local spiritualists].

HASTINGS

Oh, those two? They’re batty, yes, but not killers, surely.

POIROT

But what is murder but a kind of madness, mon ami?

No seasoned Poirot reader would impute to him the view that murder is doable only under the influence of madness.

It’s the sloppiness of impostor-Poirot’s aphorism that strikes such a false note.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Suchet’s body language is wrong, too. Poirot is famously dapper. Suchet puts on dapper clothes but not a dapper manner.

He is repitilian: he hunches down into his shoulders, scans the horizon, seems almost to taste the air with a forked tongue.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Worst of all, this Poirot’s eyes don’t twinkle. (For a more mirthful Poirot, see Evil under the Sun, with Peter Ustinov.)

A dearth of mirth betrays excessive self-seriousness, which betrays a deficiency of wisdom. But wisdom is the little Belgian detective’s outstanding, if seldom remarked upon, quality.

I might hire Suchet’s Poirot to solve a murder. I wouldn’t go to him for life advice. But that is precisely what the novels so richly provide.

I would stake my intellectual and moral reputation on the profundity of Christie’s hero. But I’d stake nothing on Suchet’s Poirot’s having more depth than a can of tuna.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Suchet has his champions. He certainly looks the part.

Those who turn to this production for its window-dressing will be satisfied.

It’s the window-dressing that I commend in what follows.

[End of rant]

This adaptation of the 1937 novel glamorizes the setting by moving it from the Home Counties (and London) to the Lake District.

An early sequence shows an attempt to set a speedboat-racing record.

[Digression]

Nothing like this occurs in the book. The sequence’s purpose is entirely sensory-nostalgic. This isn’t a damning quality, but it does encourage the thought that Christie was in the business of supplying comfort literature.

She was, and she wasn’t.

It’s comforting that justice – or, on occasion, enlightened vigilantism – triumphs in her books.

But as I never tire of asserting, the closest cinematic approximation to Christie, tonally speaking, isn’t based on her work at all. I have in mind Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake, which hardly produces a yearning for the time and place it depicts. Christie’s work is grittier than Suchet’s Poirot would lead one to think.

[End of digression]

The speedboat catches fire; the racer barely escapes alive. Afterward, there is a gathering at the house of the racer’s rich Aunt Emily. Present with the hostess and the racer – the rakish Charles (whose boat’s repairs Emily refuses to fund) – are Charles’s fashionable twin, Theresa; their dowdy cousin, Bella (another niece of Emily’s); Bella’s foreign husband, Jacob, and their children; Poirot and his friend, Captain Arthur Hastings; Miss Wilhelmina, Emily’s paid companion; Doctor Grainger, Emily’s physician and Miss Wilhelmina’s beau; the Misses Tripp, forecasters of doom and gloom; and Bob, Emily’s fox terrier.

The portrait of The General, Emily’s ancestor, hangs over the proceedings. These are hijacked by the Misses Tripp, who elicit from The General’s spirit a foretelling of Emily’s demise.

That night, Emily falls down the stairs. She survives – badly shaken. Did she slip on Bob’s ball (found on the landing)? No, thinks Poirot, who observes that Bob never leaves his toys haphazardly lying about. Emily was tripped. Poirot advises her to change her will.

Not long afterward, Emily is murdered, and then there is a second murder. These are spectacular scenes. Emily, before collapsing, is enveloped in a green haze. (“It’s her spirit passing!” gleefully exclaim the Misses Tripp.) The second victim is gassed with carbon monoxide. Instead of quietly losing consciousness, he jumps out of bed, gasps terribly, and flops over – not carbon monoxide’s usual effect, I understand. Nor is this murder included in the novel. Never mind. It’s window-dressing we want, and that’s what the adaptation gives us.

Poirot and Hastings remain nearby for all of this, at the Motor Boat Racing Club. Poirot is tolerated although he is not a member (and is a foreigner). For he is famous. Jacob, the foreign husband of Bella, Emily’s niece, is not allowed inside the building. Poirot is indignant but remains at the club. He and Hastings observe the waiter refill the salt shakers (“cellars”), exquisite artifacts justifiably incorporated into the story. (How careless of Christie to have left them out.)

Two masked, black-clad figures paddle up to a dock under glorious twilight and break into Emily’s house. Fortunately, The General’s portrait falls off its hook, crashes, and rouses the household. The burglars flee. I don’t quite recall, but I believe they paddle away in the dark. Poirot will reveal their identities when he gathers the household together to announce the identity of the murderer.

There is a final injustice, in the disposal of Emily’s property. Everyone wants Emily’s money, but no one wants Bob, her dashing, intelligent fox terrier. The Misses Tripp go so far as to hold a séance to accuse Bob of the crime. Poirot must hatch a deceitful scheme to secure a home for Bob. One admires the cuteness but doubts the wisdom of this scheme.

And that, in a nutshell, is how I feel about the adaptation.

Postmen vs. dogs, pt. 2

(Cf. “Dumb Witness,” the entry before last.)

From the second “Adrian Mole” book (The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole):

Monday June 14th
Moon’s Last Quarter

Our usual postman has been replaced by another one called Courtney Elliot. We know his name because he knocked on the door and introduced himself. He is certainly no run-of-the-mill postman, he wears a ruffled shirt and a red-spotted bow tie with his grey uniform.

He invited himself into the kitchen and asked to be introduced to the dog. When the dog had been brought in from the back garden Courtney looked it in the eye and said, “Hail fellow, well met.” Don’t ask me what it means; all I know is that our dog rolled over and let Courtney tickle its belly. Courtney refused a cup of instant coffee, saying that he only drank fresh-ground Brazilian, then he gave my father the letters saying, “One from the Inland Revenue I fear, Mr Mole,” tipped his hat to my mother and left. The letter was from the tax office. It was to tell my father that they had “received information” that during the previous tax year he had been running a spice rack construction company … from his premises, but that they had no record of such a business and so could he fill in the enclosed form? My father said, “Some rotten sod’s shopped me to the tax!” I went off to school. On the way I saw Courtney coming out of the Singhs’ eating a chapati.

Did you know that the first two books made Sue Townsend “the bestselling novelist of the 1980s?” (according to the author bio). (Would that be YA novelist, British novelist, or novelist full stop? No idea.)

Dumb witness

I may have mentioned that this year, I’ve been finishing the dozen Agatha Christie novels I hadn’t previously read from beginning to end.

My current read is Dumb Witness (1937), a.k.a. Poirot Loses a Client. The hero – apart from Poirot – is a little Scottish terrier named Bob. (Hastings narrates.)

“I don’t know why dogs always go for postmen, I’m sure,” continued our guide [Hastings and Poirot are touring a house].

“It’s a matter of reasoning,” said Poirot. “The dog, he argues from reason. He is intelligent; he makes his deductions according to his point of view. There are people who may enter a house and there are people who may not – that a dog soon learns. Eh bien, who is the person who most persistently tries to gain admission, rattling on the door twice or three times a day – and who is never by any chance admitted? The postman. Clearly, then, an undesirable guest from the point of view of the master of the house. He is always sent about his business, but he persistently returns and tries again. Then a dog’s duty is clear, to aid in driving this undesirable man away, and to bite him if possible. A most reasonable proceeding.”

He beamed on Bob.

“A most intelligent person, I fancy.”

Sometimes, I want to hug Poirot.

The meeting of needs

I thank (a) Mary & Martin for reading the previous entry and, this evening, bringing us a new coffee pot (and some footlong sandwiches from Subway); and (b) Nora, Karin’s friend, who already had donated a used coffee pot. Our pots overfloweth. Indeed, dozens of people have shown generosity to us upon hearing that Samuel would be born. What we expected to be one of our leanest periods has been a quite comfortable one.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’m rereading Agatha Christie’s Third Girl (1966), one of her least celebrated books. It’s notable for its disparagement of the Sixties’ youth. I find it raucously entertaining. Poirot’s friend, the detection novelist Ariadne Oliver, Dame Agatha’s alter ego, is made to surveil suspects across London and even receives a blow upon the head. Agatha was in her “old lady” phase when she wrote this, but she hadn’t yet gone into steep decline: her next book, Endless Night, would be one of her most acclaimed.