“Monsieur Renauld was murdered this morning” (17).
Initially published as “The Girl with the Anxious Eyes” in a four-part serialization inside Grand Magazine (1922-1923), The Murder on the Links is the second of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels. In it, once again we are treated to the crime-solving partnership of the “neat and dandified” Hercule Poirot who is flanked by his amusing but painfully stultified Captain Arthur Hastings. In some ways, Poirot represents Christie’s slightly satirical but praiseworthy archetype of bourgeois enlightenment rationalism. Poirot is a quirky, eccentric little man with a flair for Socratic irony and a penchant for secrecy (“’Order’ and ‘Method’ were his gods”); whereas Hastings is a clumsy, simplistic character who is easily swayed by the wayward whims of the moment –he serves as the Sancho Panza to Poirot’s Don Quixote. And as was previously established in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, we are reminded that Hastings was invalided after the Battle of the Somme and that Poirot is a Belgian ex-detective. Now, Hastings is working as a private secretary for an MP and Poirot is working as a private detective. At the start of The Murder on the Links, Hastings has finished conducting business in Paris and he is returning to England where he shares a room with Poirot. In an introductory chapter of sorts, Hastings rides the Calais Express where he meets a striking, quirky, flirtatious young woman with black curly hair, perhaps aged 17. She playfully calls herself “Cinderella” and proudly displays a powdered face, scarlet lips, and a red hat –“a curious mixture of child and woman.” She is an American by birth but she has spent most her life in England as a child acrobat and has recently lost her sister… when the train arrives, they part ways.
When he returns to England, Hastings learns that Poirot has received an urgent message from a mysterious South American millionaire residing in France named Monsieur Paul T. Renauld. He claims to be in daily fear for his life and requests the help of Poirot. With haste, Poirot and his “mon ami” travel to Merlinville in Villa Genevieve (a town situated along the Channel coast halfway between Boulogne and Calais), but they arrive too late only to discover that Monsieur Renauld has been murdered! He was stabbed in the back, and his body was found in a shallow grave alongside a nearby golf course (i.e. “on the links”). He was found at 9am though he likely died around 2am. As Poirot says, “No one who knew would bury a body there –unless they wanted it to be discovered. And that is clearly absurd, is it not?” Notably, Renauld’s body was found near a small section of lead piping alongside a nearby match and cigarette. Also, there is a torn-up check addressed to someone named “Bella Duveen” and a dashed wristwatch which has been set two hours late, as well as a door left ajar, and curiously no footprints in the garden. Also of note, Monsieur Renauld had just completed updating his will a fortnight ago to exclude inheritance of his son, Jack, in order to entirely benefit his spouse, Madame Eloise Renauld.
Along with Poirot, a gaggle of experts soon arrive on the scene to investigate the murder: Dr. Durand, a medical doctor; Monsieur Lucien Bex, the commissary of police who hasn’t seen Poirot since 1909 in Ostend; Monsieur Hautet, the examining magistrate; and last but not least, Monsieur Giraud, “the human foxhound” from the Paris Sûreté, and an amusing rival detective for Poirot throughout the novel. He is tall, perhaps thirty years old, with auburn hair and a mustache, and his antipathy for Poirot creates a nice competitive dynamic throughout the mystery. Who will solve the mystery first –Giraud or Poirot? “’You may know all about cigarettes and match ends, Monsieur Giraud, but I, Hercule Poirot, know the mind of man’” (81). Of course, Hastings and others present are easily impressed by Giraud, while Poirot remains skeptical as he remains one step ahead of Giraud.
With the mis en scène set, who could have killed Monsieur Renauld? And why? If the objective of the murder was revenge, who not simply kill Renauld in his sleep? Why would he be murdered so near to the house on the links? And why did the servants not hear anything with the creaky stairs in the house? Were they drugged? The list of suspects and clues grows quite convoluted but below is a terse summary of the key figures:
- Francoise Arrichet: an old housekeeper who lived for many years with the former owners of Villa Genevieve, eleven years with Madame la Viscomtesse. Francoise found the door open to the home.
- Leonie Oulard: a young maid in Merlinville who comes from a respectable family along with her sister Denise.
- Auguste: an old gardener who recently planted new greenery.
- Masters: the Chauffer brought over from England while away on holiday. He has been employed for over a year.
- Madame Eloise Renauld: the widow of the late Paul Renauld. She is a “tall, striking-looking woman” or une maitresse femme. Her story for the evening of the murder is that masked men broke into her house and bound and gagged her while forcing her husband to open his safe before they dragged him out of the room. One of the masked assailants is tall with black beard, the other is short and stout with a reddish beard (likely both were donning false beards). They wore hats pulled down over their eyes. She claims they spoke a bastardized form of Spanish from South America. Of note, when she first witnesses the body of her deceased husband, Madame Renauld cries out and faints.
- Jack Renauld: the son of Mr. and Mrs. Renauld who served in the English Flying Corps during the war. He has currently been sent away to South America following a heated argument with his father (he has been sent to Buenos Aires en route to Santiago on urgent business). The dagger found in Monsieur Renauld’s back is discovered to be a souvenir gift from his son Jack during the war.
- Madame Daubreuil: a mysterious woman who lives nearby and has been regularly coming to visit Monsieur Renauld from Villa Marguerite just down the road. Was she Renauld’s mistress?
- Marthe Daubreuil: A beautiful young woman whom Poirot dubs “the girl with anxious eyes.” She is the daughter of Madame Daubreuil and Jack’s lover, though the late Monsieur Renauld actually disapproved of their union (in fact, she was the topic of the argument between Jack and his father). She is compared to a modern-day Atalanta in her beauty and Hastings seems to think she is flirting with him at one point.
- Gabriel Stonoy: Monsieur Renauld’s secretary who arrives from England. He became Renauld’s secretary two years ago when Renauld first arrived from South America. Stonoy claims that Renauld is a fascinating man who has traveled all over the world: he shot game in Africa, travelled in Korea, ranched in California, and traded in the South Sea islands. However, Monsieur Renauld’s early life still remains a mystery (though we learn he was French-Canadian by birth).
- Bella Duveen: a mysterious woman whose name appears on a torn-up check. Who could she be?
- “Cinderella”: Hastings accidentally bumps into her again on the links. Why would the coy woman from the train be in Melvinville during a murder investigation?
The Murder on the Links toys with various English stereotypes of women and culture. It confronts readers with the fabled allure of the strong, seductive women of France, a country with a storied history and a fraught relationship with England. It is also an experimental moral novel of manners in which English prejudices come to the fore and they are scrutinized at a distance on French soil. Frequently in the story, women are treated delicately with a distant sense of dignified English chivalry –the men investigating the murder regularly give female characters an unwarranted pass simply because they are women– though Poirot seems to be the only person who is unafraid of seeing women for what they are in the novel: “Some of the greatest criminals I have known had the faces of angels… A malformation of the grey cells may coincide quite easily with the face of a Madonna” (64). However, old-fashioned simpletons like Hastings are easily ensnared by feminine charms –whether it be the enticements of women like Marthe Daubreuil or even “Cinderella.” Thankfully this case has a self-controlled enlightened rationalist like Poirot who embraces his “little gray cells” which are up to the task of solving the crime, regardless of unspoken traditions or cultural mores. With The Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie reminds us of a psychological tension people face between their outward presentation of themselves and their hidden inner secrets. People are not always as they seem in this mystery. Never underestimate the lies a person may tell for either love or money.
“Do not cling to theories where facts no longer support them” (165) -Poirot.
Solution (Spoilers Ahead)
CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS
Why do people commit murder? Poirot and Giraud discuss the motives for a typical murder including: money, crime passionel, mental derangement, mania, or religious fanaticism. After speaking with all of the suspects, including Jack Renauld, Giraud makes the rash decision to wrap-up the case by arresting Jack who refuses to provide an alibi. However, Poirot is unsatisfied. He travels to Paris and returns with a breakthrough in the case: he recalls a woman from an infamous past case in Belgium that bears striking resemblance to this case, as well. With a photograph, Poirot reveals Madame Daubreuil’s true identity –she used to be the notorious Madame Beroldy who gained notoriety in “The Beroldy Case.” About twenty years ago, monsieur Arnold Beroldy –a native of Lyons– arrived in Paris with his wife Jeanne Beroldy and baby daughter. He was a junior partner in a small wine merchant firm, a stout middle-aged man, his wife was rumored to be an aristocrat (gossip she spread about herself). According to the rumors, she was the illegitimate daughter of a Russian grand duke or an Austrian archduke. As such, Beroldy fell victim to her charms, but he began expressing worries about her husband, a political secret. Then one day, their maid returned and found the apartment door open with Monsieur Beroldy lying in a pool of his own blood in his bed, a knife driven through his heart. With a story about two masked Russian men, Mrs. Beroldy was arrested and charged, and her trial became a cause célèbre. Her parents were then revealed to be nothing more than a respectable prosaic couple, fruit merchants living on the outskirts of Lyons. The motive for Mrs. Beroldy’s presumed murder was found in a love triangle with Mr. Hiram P. Trapp who grew angry when he discovered that she had already taken another lover named Georges Conneau (note that Agatha Christie’s inspiration for The Murder on the Links, her third published novel, came from newspaper stories of a murder in France in which masked men broke into a house, killed the owner, and left his wife bound and gagged). At any rate, before the start of the trial of Mrs. Beroldy could take place, Monsieur Conneau disappeared but he sent a cryptic letter to the judge confessing to the crime because he loved Mrs. Beroldy and claimed she was mistreated by her husband, thus it was he who struck the fatal blow at Madame Beroldy’s instigation. But when he learned of Hiram P. Trapp he fled. Mrs. Beroldy managed to escape prosecution by using her conniving womanly guile (a recurring subtext in the novel):
“It was a touch-and-go affair. Madame Beroldy’s story was hardly credible. But her address to the jury was a masterpiece. The tears streaming down her face, she spoke of her child, of her woman’s honour –of her desire to keep her reputation untarnished for the child’s sake. She admitted that, Georges Conneau having been her lover, she might perhaps be held morally responsible for the crime—but, before God, nothing more! She knew that she had committed a grave fault in not denouncing Conneau to the law, but she declared in a broken voice that that was a thing no woman could have done. She had loved him!” (137).
Meanwhile, another murder victim turns up (he has been dead about forty-eight hours) and the plot thickens while Poirot discovers that Georges Conneau has actually been living under the alias of Monsieur Paul Renauld in France and he just so happened to be living next to the one woman who was aware of his true identity, Madame Jeanne Beroldy a.k.a. Madame Daubreuil. In exchange for protecting his identity, Madame Daubreuil had been blackmailing and extorting him. Georges Conneau initially fled to Canada, married under an assumed name, acquired a vast fortune in South America. Twenty years passed and gradually “The Beroldy Case” was forgotten and his appearance changed such that no one would connect him with being a fugitive from justice. But then a complication arose in their arrangement –their children, Jack and Marthe, eventually fell in love, unaware of their parents’ secret history.
No thanks to Giraud and Hastings, Poirot pieces together this grand puzzle. To avoid being bled dry by Madame Daubreuil, Monsieur Renauld developed an elaborate plot to fake his own death so he could escape to another country and live under an assumed name, and he revised his will such that all of his wealth would pass to his wife and avoid further blackmail or wealth being confiscated by Marthe Daubreuil in a potential marriage to Jack. Then an epileptic tramp wandered into the garden and died from an epileptic fit after a squabble with Monsieur Renauld, giving them the opportunity to bury the tramp and for Monsieur Renauld to swap clothes with the tramp and sneak out after leaving the door ajar, smoothing over his footprints the flower bed, but while digging an obvious grave alongside the golf course with the lead piping used to disfigure the tramp’s face, Monsieur Renauld was suddenly stabbed in the back –hence the authentic fainting shock upon actually seeing him dead. The tramp later became the second dead body.
“It seems strange to you, mona mi, that a man should plan his own death? So strange, that you prefer to reject the truth as fantastic, and to revert to a story that is in reality ten times more impossible. Yes, Monsieur Renauld planned his own death, but there is one detail that perhaps eludes you –he did not intend to die” (167).
Following a trail of clues, Poirot and Hastings travel back to England in the hopes of discovering the identity of Bella Duveen based on a photo in one of Jack’s drawers. However, the face of Bella Duveen turns out to be none other than “Cinderella” –the very woman on the train Hastings met at the start of the novel. They meet with Joseph Aarons, a theatrical agent whom Poirot previously assisted in a “little matter of a Japanese wrestler.” This leads them to the Dulcibella Kids, a traveling troupe of sisters who are acrobats, dancers, and singers. Bella/Cinderella is one of the sisters. Following a performance at the palace in Coventry, Hastings departs early and a concerned Bella/Cinderella follows him to a bar wherein Hastings professes his love for her and he vows to protect her. Hastings then concocts an alibi and he shockingly turns on Poirot in order to protect his paramour. Like many others in the book, he has been ensnared by romantic affection over commitment to the truth.
“Mon ami! Vive l’amour! It can perform miracles” (182).
In the end, Poirot unveils the whole murder plot. Back in France, Poirot reveals that Jack had since taken a new lover aside from Marthe Daubreuil –now he is in love with a dancer in the Dulcibella Kids, much to Hastings’s dismay. Has he been played by Bella/Cinderella? During the trial of Jack, a woman appears and confesses to the whole crime, but even though she looks identical to Bella/Cinderella, she is different –a twin! Suddenly, it all makes sense to Hastings. And even though Bella’s sister claims to be the murderer, there is still one more twist. She was merely offering to take the fall for her lover, Jack, to save him from the guillotine. Poirot announces that the true murderer of Monsieur Renauld is Marthe Daubreuil, Jack’s former lover, “the girl with anxious eyes.” Why? Jack was going to lose his inheritance, and after she overheard conversations between the Renaulds, she was irate that Monsieur Renauld stood in the way of her marriage to Jack and his vast inheritance, so using the third souvenir dagger she killed Paul Renauld. In a climactic scene of confrontation at the end of the novel, Marthe Daubreuil attempts to kill Madame Eloise Renauld but “Cinderella” saves the day with her acrobatics by sneaking into the house. During the scuffle, Marthe Daubreuil is killed and Madame Renauld is spared.The Murder on the Links concludes with Poirot once again playing the role of matchmaker as he encourages Jack to pursue his love with Bella. And Hastings finds love with “Cinderella” whose real name is Dulcie. He alludes to his joining with the Renaulds at a ranch across the seas, and he recounts a past scene in which he and “Cinderella” shared a kiss in the garden of the Villa Genevieve. Presumably, Poirot has won a 500-franc bet he made against Giraud over who would solve the case.
The Murder on the Links is a great example of Agatha Christie’s art of misdirection as we are led on a wild trail of clues including an open door, lead piping, three souvenir paper knives, missing footprints in the garden, a long overcoat, numerous mistaken identities, and a trail of clues that would be entirely unpredictable for the lay reader. There are more than a few contrivances in this novel, such as Poirot conveniently remembering the “Beroldy Case” or his ability to quickly track down the Dulcibella Kids, and while it is not the best of Agatha Christie’s works, The Murder on the Links is still a great whodunnit murder mystery. One of the big questions that still lingers for me after reading this novel is: Why would a notorious murderer living in secret (Monsieur Renauld) solicit the help of a famous detective Poirot if he was planning to fake his own death? Wouldn’t hiring Poirot risk exposing Renauld’s secret identity? Why would he not simply flee France and take up residence in another country under an assumed name? The other frustrating aspect of this novel is just how foolish and dim-witted Hastings seems. He regularly confesses his frustrations with Poirot’s tactics, such as “Poirot’s incurable habit of making a mystery out of nothing never failed to irritate me” (102), or “I neither see nor comprehend. You make all these confounded mysteries, and it’s useless asking him to explain. You always like keeping something up your sleeve” (103-104).
Whether it is Monsieur Renauld being extorted out of his fortune by Madame Daubreuil, Jack being played by Marthe Daubreuil, or even Hastings letting his guard down and allowing for “Cinderella” to covertly assist her sister, The Murder on the Links shows us the frailties of British chivalry when faced with matters of life and death.
Years later, when assessing the book, Agatha Christie wrote: “I think Murder on the Links was moderately good example of its kind – though rather melodramatic. This time I provided a love affir for Hastings. If I had to to have a love interest in the book, I thought I might as well marry off Hastings. Truth to tell, I think was getting a little tired of him. I might be stuck with Poirot, but no need to be stuck with Hastings too.”
Christie, Agatha. The Murder on the Links. Vintage Books, A Division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, NY, April 2019 (originally published in 1923).
Agatha Christie dedicated this book to her husband, “a fellow enthusiast for detective stories and to whom I am indebted for much helpful advice and criticism.”
Click here to return to my reviews of Agatha Christie’s novels.