After the Funeral. Agatha Christie
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tell great stories, however. Her true genius was to convey the story, once she’d come up with it, with palpable relish and irrepressible glee. When you read an Agatha Christie novel, you get a strong sense, all the way through, of how thrilled she is by the clues she’s strewn across your path for you to misinterpret or ignore. You can feel her presence behind the text, laughing and thinking, ‘Tee hee! You’re never going to get there before me—I’ve been too clever for you again!’
Christie’s tangible love of storytelling is not her only unique feature as a crime writer. She also manages to combine light and dark, without either of them ever detracting from the other, in a way that no other writer can. Her stories are in no way cosy or twee, though some of their village settings might be; she understands the depravity, ruthlessness and dangerous weakness of human beings. She knows all about warped minds, long grudges, agonising need; in each of her novels, a familiarity with the darkest parts of the human psyche underpins the narrative. Yet at the same time, on the surface of her stories there is fun, lightness, warmth, a puzzle to make readers say, ‘Ooh, this is a good challenge!’ The dark side of Christie’s work never undermines the feel-good effect in any way— reading an Agatha Christie novel is, above all else, great fun.
In September 2013, I was commissioned by Agatha Christie’s estate, family and publishers to write a new Hercule Poirot novel as a way of celebrating the character’s longevity on the printed page. As part of the publicity for the announcement, I was asked to name my favourite novel featuring Poirot. This was a tricky question to answer. I knew for certain that my favourite Miss Marple novel was Sleeping Murder—that was easy!—but with Poirot I wasn’t sure. I have a very soft spot for Murder on the Orient Express because I believe it has the best mystery-and-solution package of all detective fiction. However, when I thought about the Poirot stories as fullbodied novels and not simply as plot structures, I ended up deciding that After the Funeral was my favourite.
After the Funeral has a brilliant plot, meticulously planted clues, a memorably dysfunctional family at its centre, and a truly ingenious solution, but it also has something else that I prize highly: the non-transferable motive. Poirot is forever telling Hastings that motive is the most important feature of a crime, and I agree with him. A non-transferable motive is something that no other murderer in no other crime novel has ever had or would ever have—a motive that is unique to this character in this particular fictional situation. With a non-transferable motive, the reader should ideally think, ‘Well, although I would never commit murder for this reason, I can absolutely understand why this character did—it makes perfect sense because of their unique personality/predicament combination.’ On this score, After the Funeral works in the most superb way. It also does something else very clever on the motive front—it offers us a two-layer motive of the following sort: ‘X committed the murder(s) for reason Y. Ah, but why did X have reason Y as a motivation? Because of reason Z.’
I am being deliberately cryptic because I don’t want to give away any of the wonderful surprises this book contains. All I really want to say is read it! Read it now!
Chapter 1
Old Lanscombe moved totteringly from room to room, pulling up the blinds. Now and then he peered with screwed up rheumy eyes through the windows.
Soon they would be coming back from the funeral. He shuffled along a little faster. There were so many windows.
Enderby Hall was a vast Victorian house built in the Gothic style. In every room the curtains were of rich faded brocade or velvet. Some of the walls were still hung with faded silk. In the green drawing-room, the old butler glanced up at the portrait above the mantel-piece of old Cornelius Abernethie for whom Enderby Hall had been built. Cornelius Abernethie’s brown beard stuck forward aggressively, his hand rested on a terrestrial globe, whether by desire of the sitter, or as a symbolic conceit on the part of the artist, no one could tell.
A very forceful looking gentleman, so old Lanscombe had always thought, and was glad that he himself had never known him personally. Mr Richard had been his gentleman. A good master, Mr Richard. And taken very sudden, he’d been, though of course the doctor had been attending him for some little time. Ah, but the master had never recovered from the shock of young Mr Mortimer’s death. The old man shook his head as he hurried through a connecting door into the White Boudoir. Terrible, that had been, a real catastrophe. Such a fine upstanding young gentleman, so strong and healthy. You’d never have thought such a thing likely to happen to him. Pitiful, it had been, quite pitiful. And Mr Gordon killed in the war. One thing on top of another. That was the way things went nowadays. Too much for the master, it had been. And yet he’d seemed almost himself a week ago.
The third blind in the White Boudoir refused to go up as it should. It went up a little way and stuck. The springs were weak – that’s what it was – very old, these blinds were, like everything else in the house. And you couldn’t get these old things mended nowadays. Too old-fashioned, that’s what they’d say, shaking their heads in that silly superior way – as if the old things weren’t a great deal better than the new ones! He could tell them that! Gimcrack, half the new stuff was – came to pieces in your hands. The material wasn’t good, or the craftsmanship either. Oh yes, he could tell them.
Couldn’t do anything about this blind unless he got the steps. He didn’t like climbing up the steps much, these days, made him come over giddy. Anyway, he’d leave the blind for now. It didn’t matter, since the White Boudoir didn’t face the front of the house where it would be seen as the cars came back from the funeral – and it wasn’t as though the room was ever used nowadays. It was a lady’s room, this, and there hadn’t been a lady at Enderby for a long time now. A pity Mr Mortimer hadn’t married. Always going off to Norway for fishing and to Scotland for shooting and to Switzerland for those winter sports, instead of marrying some nice young lady and settling down at home with children running about the house. It was a long time since there had been any children in the house.
And Lanscombe’s mind went ranging back to a time that stood out clearly and distinctly – much more distinctly than the last twenty years or so, which were all blurred and confused and he couldn’t really remember who had come and gone or indeed what they looked like. But he could remember the old days well enough.
More like a father to those young brothers and sisters of his, Mr Richard had been. Twenty-four when his father had died, and he’d pitched in right away to the business, going off every day as punctual as clockwork, and keeping the house running and everything as lavish as it could be. A very happy household with all those young ladies and gentlemen growing up. Fights and quarrels now and again, of course, and those governesses had had a bad time of it! Poor-spirited creatures, governesses, Lanscombe had always despised them. Very spirited the young ladies had been. Miss Geraldine in particular. Miss Cora, too, although she was so much younger. And now Mr Leo was dead, and Miss Laura gone too. And Mr Timothy such a sad invalid. And Miss Geraldine dying somewhere abroad. And Mr Gordon killed in the war. Although he was the eldest, Mr Richard himself turned out the strongest of the lot. Outlived them all, he had – at least not quite because Mr Timothy was still alive and little Miss Cora who’d married that unpleasant artist chap. Twenty-five years since he’d seen her and she’d been a pretty young girl when she went off with that chap, and now he’d hardly have known her, grown so stout – and so arty-crafty in her dress! A Frenchman her husband had been, or nearly a Frenchman – and no good ever came of marrying one of them! But 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.
She’d remembered him all right. ‘Why, it’s Lanscombe!’ she’d said and seemed ever so pleased to see him. Ah, they’d all been fond of him in the old days and when there was a dinner party they’d crept down to the pantry and he’d given them jelly and Charlotte Russe when it came out of the dining-room. They’d all known old Lanscombe, and now there was hardly anyone who remembered. Just the younger lot whom he could never keep clear in his mind and who just thought of him as a butler who’d been there a long time. A lot of strangers, he had