Poirot is drawn to a case of the murder of a poor housekeeper who was apparently murdered by her lodger, and the young man was subsequently sentenced to death for it. However, even at the 11th hour, Poirot begins to investigate.
Summary
Mrs. McGinty is a cleaning woman, what Christie calls a "charwoman" where she cleans wealthy people's houses. She was fond of looking at the photos in the Sunday Comet newspaper and one week read a story commenting on two local women who ran into problems 30 years previously and had to leave the area because of the scandal.
Mrs. McGinty recognized one of the photos from one of her houses and began talking about it when she was doing her regular rounds. One of the people who overheard her was going to be implicated in the scandal if it was all brought up again, and so murdered Mrs. McGinty to keep her from talking.
There were two photos in the paper.
Lily Gamboll, as a young girl of 10, desperately poor and abandoned in a London slum, was given to be cared for by her aunt. In a fit of rage she hit her elderly relative in the head with an butcher knife, and she eventually died. The girl was sent to a reformatory boarding school.Eventually, Poirot decides that Lily is not involved in the present case.
Eva Kane was involved in a murder scandal. As a 19 year old, she falls in love with a married man, Alfred Craig. Somehow, Craig's current wife is murdered, Craig is convicted of it and Eva fled to Australia, pregnant with her first child. There is a strong suspicion that Eva herself was involved in the poisoning, and that she had a narrow escape from the gallows. She changes her name to Eva Hope, delivers her baby, a son, and names him Evelyn Hope after herself. The story is a little vague, at this point, but it is suggested that the young Eva cannot take care of her new son and gives it up for adoption at some point.
Later, this same son migrates back to England and takes to the stage as an actor and playwright. During this era, he finds a wealthy woman, Laura Upward, to be his patron on the stage. As he draws closer to her, he changes his name to match hers, Robin Upward, and adopts the role of her son. The Upwards come to live in Bellhinney, and Robin has a successful career with his theater company. The relationship is progressing and Robin is in line to be the sole heir in Mrs Upward's will
It is at this point that Mrs McGinty sees the photo in the paper of Eva Kane and recognizes it as one she came across while cleaning houses. She buys ink and paper and talks about writing to the newspaper about having more information. At this Robin Upward cannot risk that Laura Upward will find out about his scandalous past, and his mother who was suspected of being a murderess, because she is likely to terminate the relationship. No more sponsoring of plays, and no more inheritance. And so he kills Mrs McGinty.
Poirot breezes into town to investigate and stirs up the local upper crust. Each of them has minor secrets from their past but Poirot focuses on McGinty, and at a party of the Crust, he produces the two photos from the newspaper. Mrs Upward says she recognizes one of them, and Poirot urges her to tell him all that she knows, because she will now be in danger. She remains silent to Poirot.
However, Robin Upward (nee Evelyn Hope) is aware that she has learned something and fears the termination of their relationship. While Ariadne Oliver waits outside in the car, Robin kills Laura Upward and then drives away to establish his alibi. At the intermission of the play, he pretends to make a solitious phone call to his "mother" but really calls three of the women from the village asking, as Laura, if they would come over for coffee. Mrs Summerhays responds, and actually shows up at Laura's house but cannot get an answer to her knock, so she goes away again. While on the premises, however, she gets a glimpse of the retreating figure of a young woman.
At this stage, Poirot is back at his lodgings, now accompanied by Robin Upward, and comes across the original of the mysterious photo in the newspaper. Because it is found in a drawer that he had previously searched, he knew it must have been recently planted there, and the only possible source was Robin. Therefore, he knew that Robin must be the murderer, and once confronted, Robin confesses.
As James Bentley is released from jail, and from his execution sentence, Poirot is waiting outside with his companion, Maude Williams. He confronts her with the theory that Maude was the woman seen running away from the Upwards house on the night of the murder. She admits that it was, and confesses that she is the child of the woman that Eva Kane poisoned and whose father was hanged for it. She suspected that Laura Upward was actually Eva Kane, returned to the village, and she intended to kill her in revenge. However, when she arrived at the house, Laura had already been murdered and so she went away.
1. The Doctor. Dr. Rendell, who employs both a housekeeper and Mrs McGinty "for scrubbing floors." His wife, Shelagh, is presented as being of the right age to be the child of Eva Kane.
2. The Energetic Young Woman. Maude Williams is the friend of the accused young man, James Bentley. She works in a real estate office in a neighboring town.
3. The Batty Eccentric. Maureen Summerhays "It's the ministry of Agriculture form about the bloody pig." She is a poor cook, terribly disorganized, and generally not a very perceptive person. Geese fly in and out of her kitchen. She is also presented as drinking too much
3.5 The Cloud-headed Girl.
4. The Temptrix. Eve Carpenter used to be an exotic dancer at the Cactus Club in Soho while she was married to a common laborer in impoverished circumstance. But now is married to an aspiring politician. "And did you go to Mrs Upward? Eve: "Why in the hell should I? Damn dreary old woman"
5. The Young Specialist.
6. The Housekeeper.
6.5. The Maid. Mrs. McGinty herself. She was a "charwoman" and filled the same role, going in and out of many houses, all secrets reveal to her. No one questions her presence. And everyone reports that she was a hard worker.
7. The Industrialist.
8. The Legal Mind.
9. The Efficient Professional.
10. The Rake.
11. The Rival. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
12. The Daughter. In this story, the daughter is a son. "Robin is as good as a daughter to me," said Mrs Upward. The daughter in hiding is Evelyn Hope.
13. The Vicar.
14. The Politician. Guy Carpenter, running for Parliament. Looks down on all servants. "Who has a great sense of his own importance."
15. The Overseas Connection. Maureen and John Somerhays have been away for many years in India. Miss Sweetiman grew up "abroad, never you mind where." Mrs. Upward fled to Australia and then has returned more recently.
21. The Mirror Poirot points out that there are three women who are the right age to be the daughter Evelyn Crane. In the end, Evelyn turns out to be a man.
16. The Loving/Lonely Wife.
18. The Cantankerous Old Woman/ Cruel Old Man. Mrs Upward
19. The Social Outcast.
20. The Shopkeeper: Miss Sweetiman runs the local general store and post office.
21. The Mirror: Christie draws two overt parallels of her own accord. She contrasts the accused murderer, James Bentley with Robin Upward, both "tied to their mother's apron strings" and unable to cope on their own. The mother insulates them from real life.
Second, she says, through Poirot, that there are three women in the village of the right age to be Eva's daughter.
22. The Policeman. Poirot is called in by a Chief Superintendent Spence, a friend of his who is having second thoughts about the outcome of the case.
Tropes
A. The Ominous Event.
B. The Time Gap. Mrs McGinty read a newspaper article that showed photographs of women from the past who somehow met tragic ends. Because of someone or something that she saw in the photographs of that article, McGinty was murdered. Poirot has to track down the stories of each of these women and find how they relate to the current members of the village. So Poirot has to investigate now, a murder that took place a year ago, that referenced photographs from 20 (30?) years prior.
C. The Obscure Relationship. It appears that everyone in this story was given up for adoption. Everyone has obscure parentage that no one is really clear on and everyone is trying to hide.
D. The Convoluted Will. Christie makes a nod toward some kind of inheritance, but dismisses it as completely above board. Bessie Burch inherited the house from her aunt, Mrs. McGinty, when she was murdered.
Questions:
Near the beginning, Poirot says that the only person who could be Eva Kane is Mrs Upward, which would make Robin Upward the obvious suspect to save his mother's reputation. Poirot dismisses Robin Upward, saying that he would simply only use the publicity for one of his plays. And yet, it really was Robin Upward who was the murderer, and instead of welcoming the publicity, avoiding scandal was offered as the reason he wanted to keep things secret. The reason this is not fair is that we have come to rely on Poirot's judgement when it comes to human nature. Here, he was just completely wrong, with no explanation offered.
The timeline doesn't quite work out. Eva Kane was pregnant with the child when she fled to Australia. Therefore Poirot tells us, that child must be 30 years old now. Since Eva was 19 when she fled, she must now only be in her 50s, not an elderly lady who is wracked with arthritis, confined to a wheelchair, as was presented in the story. Poirot states that Eva Kane would be over 60, a simple error in the facts.
Similarly, Maude Williams is the child of the woman that Eva Kane was supposed to have poisoned in order to marry Arthur Craig. Since she was older than an infant at the time, she was probably 5 or 6. That puts her nearly in her 40s. At that time, her mother was murdered, her father was executed She now has a crush on the accused James Bentley, who is compared in age to Robin, and so about 30. Therefore we have a relatively young man who is being paired up with a woman 10 years older than he is, probably past the age for starting a family, and this is presented as a perfect romantic couple, a match made in heaven.
Poirot says that Shelagh Rendell, the doctor's wife, is afraid of something, but he cannot discover what. In fact, we go the entire show without discovering what it is. Similarly, Poirot is convinced that there are skeletons in Eve Carpenter's closet, but we never find out what they are, beyond the fact that she used to be a dancer at a Soho night club.
At the halfway point, we see Poirot almost pushed onto the tracks at the train station. He is pleased that someone tried to murder him, because it means that he is getting close to something. However, whatever the motive, it had nothing to do with the murder, and instead was done by Mrs Rendell. Poirot's elation that he was getting close is actually another error in judgement.
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