The Setup
Gwenda Halliday, born in India to English parents but now an orphan, is traveling to England for the first time to set up a house for her wealthy fiance who has remained behind in India. She is met at the dock by Hugh Hornbeam, an employee of her fiance's company, who accompanies her throughout the story. Gwenda, guided by "instinct," travels to Dillmouth and buys a house there, Hillside, to begin renovations. During the process she becomes convinced that she has been in the house before, despite never having traveled to England, and that she witnessed someone being murdered. Hugh calls in Mrs Marple, and they begin to investigate.
In researching the prior owners of Hillside, Gwenda and Hugh discover that the house was once owned by Kelvin Halliday, Gwenda's father. For her part, Marple was able to locate Mrs Pagett, the housekeeper at Hillside in 1934, who immediately recognizes "darling Gwynnie" from when she was a little girl. From there, the details of her father's residence in Dillmouth begin to come out. Kelvin was involved with a performing troupe called the Funnybones, and fell in love with one of the cast, Helen Marsden.
The two made arrangements to be married, but when the day came, Helen was absent, apparently having run away to London and sent a postcard not to look for her. Gwenda's father died shortly after, and she was sent back to India to be raised by an aunt, while the rest of the cast, along with Helen's brother, Dr Kennedy were left to get on with their lives. However, Gwenda's resurfaced memory of the murder has called into question the official recounting of events. Miss Marple and the team decide to investigate further.
The team advertised for the housemaid, Lily, who had been present along with Mrs Pagett at Hillside. She answered the advertisement and was coming to town to tell all she could remember. She missed the meeting, however, and it was soon discovered that she had been murdered walking along the pathway from the train station. Clearly, the murderer from all those years ago was still present and active, desperate that nothing more from those events be revealed.
What Really Happened
The bombshell revelation concerns Gwenda's mother, Claire, who was supposed to have died in a car crash in India, with her devastated father dying only a few years later. However, we learn that the crash was staged, and her mother was not injured at all. Instead, she faked her death and immigrated to England with the intention of meeting up with Kelvin Halliday, her husband. While in England, she changed her name to Helen Marsden and joined the Funnybones cast. Helen and Claire, Gwenda's mother, were the same person.
With this level of planning and commitment underway, it is unthinkable that Claire would leave Halliday with nothing more than a postcard. However, the police handwriting expert examined the card and a note thought to be written by Helen on the back of a photograph given to Dr James Kennedy, her brother. The expert confirmed that the two writing samples were written by the same hand.
Further, we learn that Claire/Helen was worried about someone finding out about her. We all thought it was the strange Indian man seen in town but in reality she was worried about her brother, Dr Kennedy, from whose inappropriate and jealous attentions she had fled years earlier, seeking refuge in India. Now that she was back in England, Kennedy had tracked her down and was outraged to find that she was soon to be married and pass permanently beyond his control.
It was Dr. Kennedy who strangled Helen at Hillside, while little Gwynnie watched through the banister railing. Later, he pushed Kelvin Halliday off the cliff to his death. Lily was supposed to be out of the house, it being the maid's day off, but she returned early and observed James around the house that evening. While she didn't see the actual murder, she would have remembered Kennedy being present and therefore needed to be silenced.
What then of the postcard, confirmed by the police expert to be written by Helen? In actuality, both the postcard, and the reference sample on the photograph were written by James Kennedy, deliberately to mislead.
The Cast of Characters
1. The Doctor. Doctor Kennedy, the brother of Helen Marsden and the murderer.
2. The Energetic Young Woman. Gwenda Halliday, our protagonist. Undaunted in the face of coming to England for the first time, after having lived all her life in India. Facing the task of traveling, buying a house and setting it up, and then solving the murder of her own parents.
Interestingly, the same role is played by Gwenda's mother, Claire Halliday, who took much the same trip as her daughter, preceding her husband to England from India.
3. The Batty Eccentric. Many of the Funnybones cast are presented as picturesque, but in particular Evie Ballentyne, with her tap-dancing xylophone performance and drug habit is an example.
6. The Housekeeper. Mrs Pagett is the obvious choice, not only housekeeper and cook for Kelvin Hallady in the earlier time, but also for Gwenda, 18 years later
6.5. The Maid. Lily, the house maid who saw more than she should, even though she didn't know it, and was murdered for her troubles.
7. The Industrialist. Gwenda's prospective husband is only tangentially referenced, but he is the classic money bags that is funding her trip to England, paying for the house she buys and arranging for her assistant
8. The Legal Mind. The local solicitor, Dickie Fane, steps in to provide the history of the house, Hillside.
10. The Rake. Kelvin Halliday sweeps into Dillmouth and commands the presence of the public beauty, Helen Marsden. In this case, it is carefully subverted because Halliday is already married to Helen.
In the same vein, the members of the performing cast are described as a complicated web of overlapping relationships, with dubious parentage. Dickie Fane was having a relationship with Janet Erskine and fathered a son, despite her being married to Richard Erskine.
11. The Rival. The aforementioned Richard Erskine
12. The Daughter. Gwynnie. Gwenda when she was a little girl and whom Mrs Pagett remembered. The early part of the story is full of Gwenda's memories of the house when she was young. It was Gwynnie who lived in the nursery, saw the cornflower wallpaper, went through the boarded up door, and observed the murder through the banister railing and not over it.
15. The Dubious Man from India - The Overseas Connection. The man from India is seen in town the night Helen Marsden is murdered. True to form, Claire is running from an unfortunate past. He has come to track her down as a potential thief of certain jewels that Helen had stolen.
20. The Shopkeeper. Miss Marple begins her investigation in the crafting shop where she buys wool for knitting and inquires about the "girls in service" at the old Hillside manor. This shopkeeper remembered that time and Mrs Pagett, who was the former housekeeper. As usual, the shopkeeper is an invaluable source of information about the people of the town.
21. The Mirror Helen Marsden and Claire Halliday are mirrors of each other, until it is revealed that they are the same person. Similarly, Gwenda Halliday and Claire Halliday are mirrors of each other having similarly adventurous lives, orphaned and independent pasts, pioneer trips to England from India, preceding their husbands
22. The Policeman. Miss Marple finds the protection of Chief Inspector Arthur Primer who is in charge of the actual investigation.
Tropes
A. The Time Gap. A classic time gap of 18 years divided between when Gwenda was a little girl, and now a mature young woman
B. The Ominous Event. The time when Helen was murdered, Kelvin Halliday was murdered, and Gwynnie sent away. The Funnybones also had its last performance and was broken up, with each going their separate ways.
C. The Obscure Relationship. The obscure relationship is discovered when Helen and Claire are revealed to be the same person. Therefore, Gwenda is not only the daughter of Claire, but also the daughter of Helen. What's interesting here is that all the stories that Gwenda learned about Helen Marsden were as someone who was simply another woman that her father admired, an uninterested third party. With the new revelation, Gwenda realizes that all those stories were about her own mother. Here was an entirely new group of people who knew her mother much better than she did.
E. The House. In this case, Hillside plays a key role in bringing the murder out into the light, prompting Helen's memories with its renovation.
Commentary
This is one of the classic Christie mysteries, with nearly all the components present. This includes the vital Time Gap and the India Connection.
The story is really told in two modes. The first includes Gwenda and uncovering her past using clues provided by the house and starting us on the long investigation. The second is when we spend a lot of time on the Funnybones and the weird eccentricities and romantic connections among the cast; what they all did that night, how absurd they were in their performances, their ambitions and enthusiasms.
Of the two, I found the shift of focus to the Funnybones to be by far the least interesting. I didn't care at all about their lives and their struggles. And in the end, their comings and goings didn't materially contribute to the unfolding of the plot in any way. It was all an elaborate red herring. The only thing that really mattered was Helen and Kelvin Halliday and the brother James. Everything else was set dressing.
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