“The memory of the public is short. Already the intense interest and excitement roused by the murder of George Alfred St. Vincent Marsh, fourth of Edgware, is a thing past and forgotten. Newer sensations have taken its place” (opening line).
In the 1930s, Dame Agatha Christie joined her husband Max Mallowan on various archaeological expeditions around the Middle East. These trips were, by all accounts, extraordinary adventures which often provided potent inspiration for her novels (such as Murder on the Orient Express). One such venture was a trip to Iraq, in which the group uncovered a variety of ancient artifacts dating back to 4,000 BC, and they also met a fiery Nazi couple who were most pleasant and cultured, but also spoke vehemently of the need to exterminate German Jews (a fact which shocked and appalled Christie). It was here at Nineveh in 1931, on a table Christie purchased at the Mosul bazaar, where she wrote Lord Edgware Dies. It was also published in the United States as “Thirteen at Dinner” –which was a reference to the popular superstition that sitting down for a dinner with thirteen people is a sign of bad luck, particularly for the person who first leaves the table (this plays a role in the novel, as well).
In my view, Lord Edgware Dies is another wholly delightful murder mystery in the Hercule Poirot canon. It is uniquely a West End, London mystery (unlike the globe-trotting events of The Big Four or The Mystery of the Blue Train, or even the South England holiday setting of Peril at End House). Lord Edgware Dies sees Poirot and Hastings reunited once again in a somewhat more mature partnership as Captain Hastings thoroughly narrates the ins and out of the case in order to “fulfill the wishes of a lady.” Of whom might he be speaking? He notes that, by the end of this case, Hercule Poirot claimed he never wanted to be associated with the case “even though it was his genius that discovered the truth of the affair” –Poirot ultimately came to regard it as one of his failures. Thus, the scene is set for us to explore this most extraordinary case which Poirot will consider a personal failure.
It begins in June of last year when Poirot and Hastings attended a London theatre and witnessed a performance by American sketch impressionist, Carlotta Adams. Note that Agatha Christie’s inspiration for the character of Carlotta came from a performance she once attended of the famous American entertainer Ruth Draper (Draper was also the inspiration for another Christie character in the short story “The Dead Harlequin,” published in The Mysterious Mr. Quin). Also in the audience of Carlotta’s performance is the famous actress Jane Wilkinson (otherwise known as Lady Edgware) who left the stage only to return a few years later after she had married the wealthy but slightly eccentric Lord Edgware. The rumor is that she has now left Lord Edgware and has begun acting in films and the London theatre again. Tonight, she attends the theatre with a tall, handsome actor (likened to a Greek god) named Bryan Martin. And tonight, Carlotta just happens to be performing an amusing impression of Jane Wilkinson. Will her satire anger Jane? Will the performance be too biting? Poirot and Hastings are relieved when they notice the show only seems to delight Jane Wilkinson, even if it was a slightly malicious impression.
After the show, Poirot and Hastings happen upon Jane Wilkinson and Bryan Martin at dinner, along with Carlotta Adams and her escort, Captain Ronald Marsh. At one point, Jane Wilkinson approaches Poirot and proposes a shocking suggestion: “M. Poirot, somehow or other I’ve just got to get rid of my husband!” She explains that she desperately wants a divorce, while half-jokingly suggesting that she would like to kill her husband – she darkly mentions the job would be easier in a place like “lawless Chicago” where it would be a simple transaction to hire a gunman to take care of the job (there are several references to the United States being a fearful, violent place throughout the novel). Poirot takes note that Jane is somewhat amoral and an egoist, he pities her because she is only interested in herself, “such people go through life in great danger,” he says. But Lord Edgware is no angel either. His first wife apparently ran away from him, leaving behind a baby of three months. He never divorced her and she died miserably abroad somewhere. He then married Jane Wilkinson, the Lady Edgware, but she fled to the states in fear of his “queer” demeanor, and now she wants to marry the Duke of Merton, “a young man of monkish tendencies, a violent Anglo-Catholic, he was reported to be under the thumb of his mother, the redoubtable dowager duchess. His life was austere in the extreme. He collected Chinese porcelain and was reputed to be of aesthetic tastes.”
Lady Edgware thus convinces Poirot to pay a visit to her husband in order to convince him to agree to a divorce. But when Poirot and Hastings visit Lord Edgware’s home in Regent Gate, he surprisingly claims to have already changed his mind about the divorce months ago at which time he wrote a letter acquiescing to a divorce. But what happened to the letter? Was it re-routed in a clerical error? Or could Jane or Lord Edgware be lying about it? Or did some mysterious third person suppress the letter? As Poirot and Hastings prepare to depart Regent Park, Hastings spots a deathly look on Lord Edgware’s face.
Lord Edgware said he was preparing to travel to Paris the following day, but that morning (June 30), the familiar face of Inspector Japp enters the scene and informs Poirot of some grave news –“Lord Edgware was killed in his house in Regent Gate last night. Stabbed in the neck by his wife” (46). Jane had apparently visited him via taxi around ten o’clock, closed herself in the library with him (ten minutes later the butler heard the front door close), but then the maid found Edgware stabbed in the back of the neck in the library just at the roots of his hair (the penknife that was apparently used wasn’t left in the wound). Additionally, Lord Edgware’s key to his front door is now missing, and somehow he cashed a cheque a hundred pounds (presumably for his upcoming trip to Paris) that has also gone missing. To make matters worse, his butler has also suddenly disappeared.
Who killed Lord Edgware? And why? Lord Edgware apparently earned himself many enemies in his lifetime. He reportedly often took morbid joy in seeing people afraid of him, he was interested in “queer” and “macabre” things, with “many curious vices” along with a “deep-rooted instinct for cruelty,” and he was a mostly absent father. He was also believed to be somewhat morally depraved –“Not the usual thing. Something a great deal more recherché and nasty.” Could the killer be his wife? Apparently not since the morning paper has provided Jane Wilkinson an alibi, showing that she attended a party of thirteen people at Sir Montagu Corner’s home on the river at Chiswick (despite having a headache, she changed her mind at the last minute and decided to attend the party), but midway through dinner, she received a strange phone call by a woman with a voice on the other end which simply laughed before hanging up. Is Jane Wilkinson being framed? The inquiries lead Poirot and Hastings to question the sketch impressionist Carlotta Adams –but upon arrival at her flat, they discover that she too has died, only unlike Lord Edgware, she suffered an apparent overdose of veronal during the night. And curiously, on her veronal gold box is a ruby-encrusted inscription: “C.A. from D. Paris, Nov. 10. Sweet Dreams.” What could this mean? Was she murdered? We later learn than C.A. apparently stands for a mysterious woman named Lady Constance Ackerly and the gold box was a rushed order that was completed the day before the murder. It was picked up by a short, middle-aged woman wearing pince-nez glasses.
During an inspection of Carlotta’s flat, as well as conversations with her friend Jenny, we learn that Carlotta had a little sister named Lucie to whom she was very devoted and a torn letter is found referencing an unnamed “he” who implored Carlotta to perform some mysterious act. Then Poirot happens to spot Carlotta’s handbag which is filled with the wig for her Jane Wilkinson costume (presumably for her stand-up sketch performance), as well as a curious pair of pince-nez glasses which are often used by short-sighted people.
“It is a very pretty faith that you have in me, Hastings. It touches me. Do you not know, my friend, that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desires and attitudes? Mais oui, c’est vrai. One makes one’s little judgments –but nine times out of ten one is wrong” (6-7).
Poirot boils the case down to five essential questions: Why did lord Edgware change his mind on divorcing his wife and what happened to the letter he claimed to have sent her? What are we to make of Lord Edgware’s deathly expression Hastings noticed in his library shortly before his death? What of the pince-nez glasses found in Carlotta’s costume bag? Why did someone telephone Jane Wilkinson while she was at the party at Chiswick? And who was it? This whole case reminds Inspector Japp of the infamous Elizabeth Canning case (a notorious London kidnapping case from 1753 in which the suspect was allegedly seen in two places at the same time –the publicity of the case involved may of the famous figures of the day, including Henry Fielding, though Elizabeth Canning was later found guilty of perjury).
Our suspects in the murder of Lord Edgware include:
- Jane Wilkinson: an “extremely beautiful woman and very ambitious” but nevertheless a somewhat amoral and narcissistic American actress. She has a well-known husky voice and lovely golden hair. She is estranged from her husband Lord Edgware and openly seeking a divorce from him. She was half-joking about killing him the night before his death.
- Donald Ross: a young actor who attended the dinner party with Jane Wilkinson the night of Lord Edgware’s murder. Perhaps forebodingly, he was the first to get up at the dinner party (according to the old popular superstition).
- Geraldine Marsh: Lord Edgware’s daughter from his first marriage. Interviews reveal that she actually hated her father. Geraldine is addressed by her cousin, Captain Ronald Marsh, as “Dina.”
- Captain Ronald Marsh: Lord Edgware’s nephew and heir to his uncle’s title. He was Carlotta’s escort on the night of the supper party following Carlotta’s performance. He was previously kicked out by his uncle three years earlier, but had called his uncle on the very morning before his death to ask for money. Captain Marsh’s alibi during the time of the murder is that he was invited to join a family of wealthy Jews named the Dortheimers in their box at Covent Garden Box that evening (note: as in past Christie novels, there is just a touch of unfortunate antisemitism littered throughout the novel).
- Genevieve “Jenny” Driver: Carlotta Adams’s friend in London.
- Bryan Martin: A successful actor who worked with Jane Wilkinson and was recently in love with her. He tells Poirot about a recent encounter he had with a mysterious man in America who had a gold tooth and who followed him from New York to Los Angeles, to Seattle, and Chicago, all the while in various disguises, like a beard and moustaches. After this, Bryan grew worried he was being “shadowed.”
- Miss Carroll: Lord Edgware’s housekeeper. She claims to have clearly seen Jane arrive at Lord Edgware’s house from an upper landing, but Poirot later demonstrates that she could not have seen Jane’s face from that particularly angle due to the fact that Jane was wearing a low-angled hat.
- Alton: Lord Edgware’s slightly effeminate butler who mysteriously disappears midway through the novel (Hastings notes he is an incredibly handsome, well-sculpted man who looks somewhat like the actor Bryan Martin).
- Ellis: Jane Wilkinson’s personal maid who encouraged her to attend the party the night of Lord Edgware’s murder. Notably, the pince-nez glasses that Poirot found in Carlotta’s handbag don’t belong to Miss Carroll but they do match Ellis’s glasses.
- Duke of Merton: a 27-year-old “thin and weakly” devout Anglo-Catholic, whom Jane Wilkinson plans to marry. However, he is opposed on principle to the idea of divorce. “He was a strictly conservative and somewhat reactionary young man –the kind of character that seemed to have stepped out of the Middle Ages by some regrettable mistake. His infatuation for the extremely modern Jane Wilkinson was one of those anachronistic jokes that Nature so loves to play” (218).
- Dowager Duchess of Merton: the young Duke’s mother who is vehemently opposed to his planned marriage to Jane Wilkinson.
Could the killer be Ronald Marsh, Lord Edgware’s heir? He certainly had the motive to kill and has been arrested by the police. But as we piece together the clues to this befuddling mystery, we are led all over London –at one point suspecting each different character as a potential suspect until the truth is finally revealed by Poirot and the murderer is shown to have been hiding right under our noses the whole time.
In this altogether marvelous psychological murder mystery, Christie includes a handful of allusions to her other novels, including a brief reference by Poirot to The Murder on the Links, and also a moment in which Poirot is called away to solve the mystery as featured in the short story “The Ambassador’s Boots” (though this was actually a Tommy and Tuppence mystery, perhaps Christie confused the different series in this circumstance). Additionally, there are several instances of hilarious banter back-and-forth between Poirot and Hastings –for example, in a scene in which Poirot is proudly boasting of his moustaches, he mocks Hastings for his meager “toothbrush” moustache, which he dubs a “horror,” an “atrocity,” and a “willful stunting of the bounties of nature.” Poor Hastings!
With themes exploring the psychology of a killer, the emerging acceptance of divorce as a social phenomenon, and a panoply of self-aware characters who continually lament the fact that reality doesn’t often match the perfectly intelligible order of a detective novel, Lord Edgware Dies is another triumph for Agatha Christie.
“Ah, mona mi –I have been blind, deaf, insensible. Now I see the answers to all of those questions –yes, all five of them. Yes –I see it all… So simple, so childishly simple…” (240).
Solution (Spoilers Ahead)
CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS
In yet another dramatic twist in the story, at a subsequent dinner party with Poirot and Hastings in attendance “Paris of Troy” is mentioned by Jane Wilkinson but her response leads to an awkward silence. In the previous dinner at Chiswick, Jane spoke freely of Paris from Greek mythology, but now she referred only to the city of Paris. What happened here? This makes Donald Ross recall something; he says he will call upon Poirot. He later phones up Poirot but just as he is about to speak he is interrupted and the receiver is left dead. When Poirot and Hastings race over to Ross’s Kensington home, they find him lying dead –stabbed at the base of the skull just like Lord Edgware. Who could have committed such a heinous crime?
Poirot summons Bryan Martin and Ellis in order to expose a few untruths they told and show how they might have been framed for the murder due to their lack of candor. Poirot reveals that Bryan Martin was in love with Jane Wilkinson and wanted to suppress the letter from Lord Edgware agreeing to a divorce, then he fabricated a fantastical story about a man with a gold tooth in order to paint Edgware in as poor a light as possible in the hopes that he and Jane might still have a chance. And Ellis might have been easily framed as the killer of Carlotta with the pince-nez glasses, the veronal box, and the phone call to Chiswick during the dinner party.
However, the true killer of Lord Edgware (and also Carlotta Adams and Donald Ross) is shown to be none other than… Jane Wilkinson! Knowing that the Duke of Merton could not accept a divorced woman (being a devout Catholic), she would have to be a widow in order to marry the duke. Thus, Jane set about to concoct an elaborate scheme in order to win him over and also ensnare Poirot at the same time –and it almost worked. “If you speak the truth in a rather silly way nobody believes you.” She created an amusing arrangement with Carlotta, a friendly bet wherein Carlotta attended the party at Chiswick in her stead, seeing if she could fool the attendees in the low candlelight, while Jane conducted the killing of her husband, wearing a low hat to obscure her face (and using one of Ellis’s corn knives). A doctor in San Francisco once taught her exactly where to stick the knife for a clean execution (once again, the American influence continues to have a lawless effect on the characters). Jane then gave Carlotta a lethal dose of veronal while they were switching back clothes afterward, but her one mistake amidst all the wig-switching and elaborate framing was leaving Ellis’s pince-nez glasses in Carlotta’s handbag. She also deliberately left behind Carlotta’s letter to her sister, but tore off a corner making it seem as if a man had put Carlotta up to the task (“she” becomes “he” when the “s” is torn off). Jane’s final mistake was in confusing “Paris” at the dinner party –Carlotta, being a far more cosmopolitan, educated lady, could speak more freely about Greek mythology, whereas Jane, being a fairly superficial, self-absorbed lady, thought the reference was to the city of Paris.
Thus, let us attempt to answer each of Poirot’s five questions.
- Why did lord Edgware change his mind on divorcing his wife and what happened to his letter he claimed to have sent her? Lord Edgware changed his mind about granting a divorce to Jane because he was being blackmailed and threatened with a public scandal if he did not do so. The subtle implication is that he was a homosexual or at least some other form of sexual deviant according to early 20th century English standards (though this is never explicitly stated). It is presumed that Jane did receive his letter granting a divorce but pretended not to.
- What are we to make of Lord Edgware’s deathly expression Hastings noticed in his library shortly before his death? Lord Edgware was a strange morose sort of man and he was being blackmailed into granting a divorce to his estranged wife.
- What of the pince-nez glasses found in Carlotta’s costume bag? As answered above, these were Ellis’s glasses mistakenly left behind by Jane.
- Why did someone telephone Jane Wilkinson while she was at the party at Chiswick? And who was it? The laughing phone call at the party at Chiswick was from Jane to Carlotta, who was impersonating Jane at the party.
Additionally, the money stolen from Lord Edgware was taken by his young butler Alton who then disappeared after finding his master’s dead body, though he was not involved in the murder.
A day or two after the mystery is solved, Hastings is recalled to the Argentine for unexplained reasons so he never sees Jane Wilkinson again, though he mentions that she continued to express no remorse in the papers (like a true sociopath). And in the final chapter of the book, Jane sends a letter to Poirot, hoping to gain publicity for her murders since she knows Poirot sometimes publishes his cases. She chillingly writes: “I’m sure there’s never been a murderess like me before” and “I wonder if you are ever sorry for what you did. After all, I only wanted to be happy in my own way” and even “They don’t hang you in public anymore, do they? I think that’s a pity.”
She closes her letter with a haunting post script: “Do you think they will put me in Madame Tussauds?” and thus ends the novel with Jane still wishing to be the center of attention, even to the bitter end.
Christie, Agatha. Lord Edgware Dies. William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, originally published in 1933. Also published as “Thirteen At Dinner.” Dedicated to Dr. and Mrs. Campbell Thompson, employers of Agatha Christie’s husband during his archaeological digs.