Agatha Christie Reread 55 - A Caribbean Mystery

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hey everyone it's Bea 007 here at vattel of Kings grave for the 55th episode of our Agatha Christie reread today we're covering the missm murder mystery a Caribbean mystery originally published in November 1964 and to discuss this novel I have today Hannah with me hey it's Hannah Wing shadow on the Discord a so lovely to have you back Hannah for this I think a little gem of a late late age AG the Christi so listeners this one comes before sorry after the clocks the UL parro mystery from 1963 and before another mismar at Bertram's hotel which will come next as always we're going to be spoiler-free to the end credits music and then have spoilers the clues the solution thereafter and the hook for this story is as follows it takes place at a Lovely Hotel on the Caribbean island fictional island of sant onore but based in Barbados and Miss marpel is very old and frail now and her lovely novelist nephew has paid for her to have a long holiday there and while while on holiday she meets the resident boore major Paul grave and he's got lots of stories about his life as a policeman to tell and he basically tells a story about a man who has gotten away with murder more than once and he's even got a photo in his wallet to prove it but when he goes to take the wallet the photo out of the wallet he kind of looks in a certain direction and suddenly changes the subject puts away the photo and doesn't say anything more about it and then the next day Victoria the maid finds major Paul grave dead in his room Miss marel is convinced he's murdered and on a ruse she asks the doctor to see if the photo is still in his wallet and it is not so that's the setup of the murder mystery so Hannah my first question is is this the first time you've read or listened to this mystery and if so how did you find it mid to Christie like a lot of the latter ones aren't as good or did you enjoy it so this is my first time reading this one and it's actually this was my first Miss marel ever oh wow yeah so find Miss Mel uh you know I'm still the jury's out so I think and I realized this pretty right away but I didn't really have another format to do it with this one suffered a little bit from me because of the audio book it it's one of the few times where the audio book was not doing it for me I think because because of the setting being in the Caribbean and don't get me wrong am so Amelia Fox is the narrator of this one and she she does her best but some of the accents are I mean the American accents of the dysons are like really bad and then oh no um and then some of the you know accents of the persons of color are a bit problematic to be honest well I think the people of color in this level are problematic in many ways but yes correct so it's like this other layer of just like icky kind of um so I I do think I would have enjoyed it more had I been able to find a true like radio Play version of it and I do believe that there it it occurred to me like in the last two chapters there probably are BBC ones out there that are the Miss Marble's finest cases like they have the proo series so you know stupidly I hadn't thought of that in time and I just I saw I sought it out but yeah um Amelia Fox fine actress you know but you know think of like georgana from the 95 BBC Pride and Prejudice doing like you know Spanish and you know a Barbados accent it's and then not only that but oh God I can't remember his name now it's it's like the uh inspector the Doctor Who is native to the area so it's like a man and and it's a black man and it's you know this and it's just too much so the writing though I do like doing the full audio book because you you do get the actual all the writing whereas in the radio plays they just do it through fulley Artistry the filler you know descriptions and things so I do think oh sorry like her writing on this one it's a it was kind of a two a double-sided thing for me where you could see a lot of growth that she has had as a novelist and devices that she's developed in her style but then but then simultaneously there'd be bits where I also found it to be oh you know a little paint by numbers as well so it was a very mixed bag for me all in all but not terrible yeah I think that's nization you can throw a lot of the later books that we see a of the plot mechanics and the tropes a little bit reused and reworked so the painton by numbers accusation I think is valid for me this is one of the better later ones I think maybe partly because I love the Caribbean I love the setting I do like the central plot of it and the motivation I find very realistic and I love the character of Mr Raphael this cantankerous old old that relationship that they develop was one of the more enjoyable parts for me and I also found it to be very reminiscent of one of my favorite proos is uh gosh now I can't think of the name murder at end house yeah Peril at end house yeah we love that one don't we you know yeah Peril at end house so just the you know the looking out over the sea and the the vacation part of it and the hotel owners being involved and things like that it was you know obviously not the same or anything but it it just had a lot of the same Aesthetics going on it and so I I did enjoy those bits like you said the setting is is great yeah it is lovely all right well let's as always approach this through the lens of social change we'll then get into the events that led up to the writing of this book and see how Agatha now in her 73rd or 74th year it's kind of amazing um was responding to the events of her time we'll get into the characters and adaptations so to start with social change um there is a lot of sex in this novel a lot of people there's a sex quadrangle in a way which I think is really hilarious anyway so this is a little passage I will quote from she thought on the whole that he was fond of her he always had been in a slightly exasperated and contemptuous way this is Miss marel um thinking about her nephew Raymond to continue the quotation always trying to bring her up to date sending her books to read modern novels so difficult all about such unpleasant people doing very odd things and not apparently even enjoying them sex as a word had not been mentioned in Miss marple's Young days but there had been plenty of it not talked about so much but enjoyed far more than nowadays or so it seemed to her though usually labeled sin she couldn't help feeling that that was preferable to what it seem to be nowadays a kind of Duty so I thought that was really funny as like Agatha Christie I think has often express this kind of thing that you modern people just talk about sex all the time and we just got on and did it yeah this um the the first you know bit the intro in the first chapter was very much like in my head it kept ringing the song from the Hairspray the musical hey Mom it's the 60s like we are very we have arrived and we have Stripped Away EXA some of the prudishness here yeah beat ni and Alex seas and and for sure here's another little one that uh about Miss marel but it wasn't really scandals Miss marle wanted nothing to get your teeth into in scandals nowadays just men and women Changing Partners and calling attention to it instead of trying decently to hush it up and be properly ashamed of themselves so I feel sorry for Miss marel there's no more twitching curles and Scandals when everyone's just so open and unashamed like it's sort of you know the whole point is defeated um but she does as we will discover have a love quadrangle and then just a few notes on class I think so there's something really interesting I think in sort of Esther Walters the secretary to the rich Mr Raphael and then he's got Jackson who's his masseuse um and this is how Miss marel wants to get to know about that relationship do she and Jackson get on asked miss marpel Mr Raphael shot a quick glance at her noticed something have you he said I think Jackson's done a bit of Tom catting around with an eye in her Direction especially lately he's a good-looking chap of course but he hasn't cut any ice in that direction for one thing there's a class distinction she's A Cut Above him not very much if she really was A Cut Above him it wouldn't matter but the lower middle class they're very particular her mother was a school teacher and her father a bank clerk no she wouldn't make a fool of herself about Jackson dare say he's after her little next steg but he won't get it which I mean that's quite that's one of the most straightforward discussions of class in these books actually I thought I mean there's there's usually some sprinkled in but it's it tends to come from a character who you know you just accept that oh that's them you know not really that same kind of musing it usually comes from someone who's like pontificating about it and I definitely think there's a lot of awkwardness in this book when it comes to the the tears of socio and economic status you know between these people all lumped together in this tiny place and anything else jump out at you from a point of view of social change in this St um Yes actually I get I mean not so much social change but one of the things that I was sort of ruminating on is the there's a lot of cutting edge and also simultaneously representation of the limit ations of forensic science and criminal psychology so this book is written about 8 10 years before the FBI began to actually interview and study sequence killing yeah I'm not I'm not sure like what MI5 or interpool or like the je were doing at the same time but if we kind of look at the FBI's research as this big model that would be throughout the world of observing serial murders what she has written here in the in the bit where she's saying you know oh you murder once and you get a taste for it and but the crime is always the same so I know modus operandi had been in the Victorian ER sort of that idea had come around but what struck me as sort of amazing was how as a writer and a student of this kind of thing Agatha Christie had pic picked up on it and then transferred that knowledge to her character you know yeah yeah and it's not it's not because she's some I don't know neuro neurod Divergent I guess is the term we'd use for Hercule you know like he's just a genius and he's neurotic Miss marle seems like she's a pretty regular you know woman who's just observant and shrewd and doesn't have sort of superpowers whereas Hercule poo I always sort of have that tinge of he he's almost superhuman and in his computations and calculations and stuff so it's kind of interesting how some of it is oh my gosh we would look at it now and say that's so outdated but then some of it had a lot of wow you know that's that's pretty on point for the time and and really groundbreaking for the time I agree I agree I think in some respects this whole concept that she had I guess more with parro but even with marel of it's all about motivation and it's all about the psychology and the little gry cells and not looking for physical Clues but trying to figure out relationships is really ahead not ahead of its time because I guess like the FBI would be doing this but the idea that she wants to look at the psychology of the thing rather than like Sherlock Holmes trying to find all the clues I think is makes it stand up right I think very right and we and we know that that is sort of the approach now that model like if you watch mind Hunter her and it's based on true things of why did this crime happen and why in this way is the the way you look at it and then you find evidence to support that yeah you know yeah so pretty interesting um stuff I feel like it the book as a whole was not my favorite by any means but there were these little steady beats that would grab my attention in that way throughout it you know I think that's a really yeah a really good way of putting it I agree definitely worth the read you know and I think I will go and try to find a radio play or a physical copy of it and give it another go AG greated okay well we've done the social change now let's get into the events that were taking place in the world as Agatha Christie was writing this and you know as context for when Reed has got their Christie for Christmas in 1964 so after the last book was published in December 1963 Kenya gained independence from the United Kingdom very Monumental moment for my family because they moved from Kenya to England as a result um in January 1964 the United States Surgeon General reports that Smoking may be hazardous to one's Health which is the first official statement from the US government and I think huge in Monumental it's kind of amazing now in Britain we have a new government that's going to try and effectively B smoking in all public places including Outdoors which is I think going to be you know the last sort of step after this report came out to really eradicate smoking kind of end of an eror February 1964 Cashes Clay later Muhammad Ali beat Sunny Liston in Miami Beach Florida and has crowned the heavyweight champion of the world April 1964 at the 36th academy awards ceremony Sydney poier becomes the first African-American to win an Academy Award for his leading role in lies of the field rightly so rightly so I mean I think he's probably one of the most handsome men that's ever existed and also one of the best actors indeed you know but this is all black Excellence right Muhammad Ali Sydney potier and then also in April 1964 Nelson Mandela makes his I am prepared to die speech at the opening of the rivonia trial a key event for the anti-ar movement so civil rights anti-apartheid independence from colonialism these are the themes and yet Agatha Christie chooses to set her play a Caribbean Island and it's very tween old school in May 1964 we have the first computer program written in basic um which will eventually be included on many computers I think the first ever PC that I got was a BBC model B this ages me in the 80s and that had basic as its programming language so it's kind of shocking that that was invented in May 64 um and in Far Far unhappier news and again speaking of civil Strife 12 young men in New York City publicly burn their draft cards to protest against the Vietnam War the first such Act of resistance but certainly not the last in June 1964 Nelson Mandela and seven others are sentenced to life in prisonment in Robin Island prison so his his solitary well largely solitary but confinement begins August 1964 in pop cultural news Walt Disney's Mary Poppins had its world's premere in Los Angeles is this a film that you love it's a film that I love I have to say indeed yeah I think it's one of the best of the kids musicals of that era September 1964 in Jacksonville Florida during a tour of the United States John lenen announces that the Beatles will not play to a segregated audience good for you John Lennon um indeed indeed right I mean and then triggering there a wave of FBI LED persecution of the poor man but good for him uh the Warren Commission the first official investigation of the assassination of President John F Kennedy submits its written report and I think you can go on to the psychoo serial killer thread on Discord to see exactly what we at vassels of kingsb think of the warrant commission but you know Monumental moment there and last but not least in October 1964 the Shen Canen highspeed rail system the world's first such system is inaugurated in Japan and the first sector is between Tokyo and Osaka and yet we still can't get a high-speed train between Sacramento and San Francisco um so many examples in in the United States but hey uh the Japanese far and ahead away in the high-speed trained technology I don't know anything that jumps out of you from those or any other events they didn't didn't mention in that area um so yeah there there is one pretty big one um in October of 1964 the great Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr checked himself into a hospital in Atlanta for exhaustion and uh was awakened um in the Night by a phone call from his wife ketta Scott King to tell him that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize wow that's awesome so a lot of big moments in uh and victories for the civil rights movement that year absolutely it's just it's amazing when you get into the 60s how it feels like everything's rightfully being relitigated right so you know what is nationhood who has the right to rule how are we going to conduct ourselves the relationships between the races it's just it's quite something um it must have been quite a time to be alive especially for a woman in her like early 7s to have to Grapple with all this social change I think it's quite fascinating um and it doesn't come through as much in this book it came through a lot more in the clocks and certainly in Pale Horse um there was a lot of you know social change in there here I think I think maybe because it's on this sort of Caribbean island it feels a little bit distant from all of the volatility at home and maybe that's why it was or maybe that's why it ages well in a way because it is it's sort of in its own bubble as a book um perh okay well let's get into the characters we have already discussed a little bit Miss marel in your first impressions of her um sent to the Caribbean by her nephew but she's very frail in this book and again we see a little bit like PR in the clocks like they have to detect by using Sidekicks to help them and in this case having an ally in Mr Raphael is important because he then brings with him Jackson who's very physically able and he can supplement Miss Mel's investigative Powers I guess anything else you want to say about Miss marel yeah you know I so I was a little I was getting a little annoyed because she's written in places as this sh shrinking violet and you know oh I'm just a little old lady and I don't I don't know I can't be sure you know and I like come on woman you do know um but then I I thought of you know if you think about Agatha Christie at this time in her life in her earlier novels um there's this I don't know sort of more I'm going to prove myself that comes through her characters and I wonder if some of this trend in these later books of having her characters age with her and need to rely on Sidekicks is a reflection of her actual real life and perhaps using you know um staff to help research and treat things up or is it just that she's more secure in her place in her career but feeling the effects of you know geriatric status and that is what's coming through in the or is it maybe a combo of both yeah I think so I think definitely in the way that the elderly are perhaps overlooked and underestimated and can play into that can exploit that you know that underestimation but yes they are riant on others physically and you see that that vulnerability I think in Miss marel but also in parro that they're they're now going to have to use others bodies to help them detect and I think Agatha Christie must have father that I mean this is a woman who was traveling around the world with her first husband and surfing in Hawaii and after a horrible divorce just solo traveling on trains to Iraq and adventuring going to just being so physically adventurous and it must have been quite the cown to be sort of I don't know yeah just stuck I think really I guess I don't know and the way that it it comes out through the writing you know it's a big change from something like uh death on the Nile or murder on the oron express you know per is um he's always got these little complaints because he's very picky and he likes what he likes and he doesn't like what he's doesn't like but it's not even though he's quote unquote retired you you don't get the sense that he's tired I just feel like yeah it's a it's a mirror into into her and the this yeah the physical stamina of Adventure so they I think that that this one Falls mid tier maybe a little bit because some of that excitement and that energy isn't there yeah maybe but it's also better in a way because it does open the world up more for what did you see and what do you think towards these Sidekicks and these other characters and I so I think in that way it ends up being more real you know and more more tangible in that way yeah I think so but I think it shows the aging process right I think maybe there's something unreal about porro because he starts off old and just get like stays there I think with miss marel you get more Frailty she goes on relative to the earlier novels and I think that's good I think that's kind of I think that's good because like when do you get like old people do you know in this way yeah you know they're not really romantic and I think when we want to take a break from reality we tend to want romance and we want to self-identify in the lead characters that's I think we just always tend to gravitate towards that sort of like the concept of residual self-image and how you always Envision yourself in your prime or what you think of as your Prime like so for me for example I don't necessarily think of myself as a very young person I'll see myself sort of at the age that I am but I will see my thinner self yeah you know because I'm always shocked to discover I'm I'm the age I am kind unreality and then like you get your knees twinged or something and you just think oh [ __ ] yeah I suppose I am I am right so I think it's really bold of her as a woman to have characters that are not just these beautiful you know goodlooking romantic lead I think it's really again Cutting Edge of her to take Grandma and Grandpa and turn them into massive Heroes you know yeah I agree and I think it's kind of amazing because she's always had these really feisty young characters in her younger days you know these go-ahead get ahead women and they were so cool when she was young and then it as she's old I guess maybe there's more sympathy with the old woman who still has value and can still kind of do good stuff and detect I think there's something very yeah kind of cool about that I think you see the rise of that with the introduction of AR Adney Oliver in her Universe you know um and again and again it's just very mature writing and I think that you know Christy is not Mana from heaven when it comes to being an author you know necessarily but she really is one of the greatest writers in history when you think of the time that she began all of the challenges that she faced in her career and her personal life and how you can track this growth as an author but also from the very first novel I mean she had a style that was all her own not like anything else and extremely groundbreaking and remarkable I agree completely um okay well I think that's a really cool conversation about Agatha Christie and Miss marel and their interactions um she is I think there's a reason why the character has survived even as Jessica Fletcher and Murder She Wrote like there's so many versions of that because I think I think it is compelling now let's get into another oldie who's treated with far more disdain that's major pulg grave and I think it's fascinating that in the 1920s and 30s novels particularly in the 1920s novels Agatha Christie loves a British colonial military man she thinks they're dashing and brown and and tanned and fit and hunky and you know have lots and lots of sex and um as she gets older maybe meets more of them like already a little bit in colonel albot in Murder on the orent express they're becoming a little bit pompers and a little bit of a ball and then by the time you get to 1964 and major Paul grave these ex Colonial people who were now retired are just seen as utterly pompous and full of nonsense stories about the British Raj and the good old days and Agatha Christie while she has sympathy for Miss marel as an old woman she has no sympathy for major FG grave and this is the description of miss marel inclining her head and listening to Major paulg grave whilst M major paulg grave proceeded with a somewhat uninteresting Recollections of a lifetime Miss marel peacefully pursued her own thoughts it was a routine with which she was well acquainted the local varied in the past it had been predominantly India Majors colonels Generals in a familiar series of words Shimla beers Tigers chah haazri tiffen kit mgas and so on with major pgri the terms were slightly different Safari cuuu elephants Swahili but the pattern was essentially the same an elderly man who needed a listener so that he could in memory relive days in which he had been happy days when his back had been straight his eyesight keen and his hearing acute so I find poor major Paul grave I just find it really sad that you know as much as Agatha Christy she has no like she has no no not Nostalgia is the wrong word what is the word I mean she just doesn't like to dwell in the past she's like it's almost like she's like there's no point thinking about your Glory Days in the past that's nonsense just make the best of what you have now but nonetheless Miss marel condescends to indulge major Paul grave what did you think about this interaction yeah I mean as you said it's like she doesn't have a lot of patience for it but again I wonder if that's just a reflection of her you know she does seem like the type of person who just flies by the seat of her pants in her personal life and I mean it you know her disappearance for example being sort of indicative of that uh to me anyway um you know it's it's funny I I really would love to hear from her more in her own words like the character strategy here you know like how do you develop the the minations of these people and and how much is you you know you or the way your brain works and how much is the way you think other people's brain works or brains work and um yeah I will say with major Paul grave so the like in that first chapter I'm like uh oh major Paul grave it reminds me of Justice hard grave and like get away from him and then he died so I'm like okay never mind he's cool um so that was one thing that kind of distracted me for p before he died um I was looking in the wrong direction um yeah I I kind of feel I feel for him in a way especially later in the novel they are talking about him and how you know he wouldn't get to the point so I just tune out I'm like well that I kind of do that too don't tune me out I'll get there okay so let's move on to the Kendall who own the hotel they're new owners they're making a go of it there's Tim Kendall who's in his 30s he's meant to be I think quite goodlook he's a good host and he's married to Molly Kendall um and actually she's the one who had the money to allow them to buy the hotel she's very pretty but she looks anxious um and this is a little passage to describe that Mrs kendle is a warrior she always seems so Carefree I think a lot of that is put on said Esther slowly actually I think she's one of those anxious sort of people who can't help worrying all the time that things may go wrong I should have thought he worried more than she did no I don't think so I think she's the worrier and he worries because she worries if you know what I mean hm that is interesting said Miss marle I think Molly wants desperately to try and appear very gay and to be enjoying herself she works at it very hard but the effort exhausts her then she has these odd fits of depression she's not well not really well balanced poor child said Miss marel there certainly are people like that and very often Outsiders don't suspect it and I think that's kind of very believable I know for myself I'm one of these introvert extroverts so I can go to a big business conference and be on and gregarious and the life of the party and it just take I love doing it and it takes so much out of it out of me that I then go and collapse in the room I don't want to see anyone for a week so um I kind of like this description of the kind of the gayness that is actually a lot of us I think that felt very true to life um any comments on Tim and Molly the hosts of the hotel yeah you know I I completely agree with you uh with that analysis of Molly and I I identify the same way people often confuse me as being extremely extroverted and very open which I am but it's um a defense mechanism that I developed when I was pretty young for my shyness I'm very private person and I am actually very introverted and I I was bullied a lot when I was young so I developed this way of being extroverted as a way to control information and what could and couldn't be used against me I think that's so true for lots of people right who have that I always think that whenever I see someone really extrovert I always wonder wonder if it's real or not for that reason and I know people who are who are genuinely bubbly and extrovert and that's just their default setting it doesn't take anything out of them that's just just as they are but I as I get older the more and more I think more people are in our category than in that for former category um but anyway you know really interesting young couple very good-looking and let's just finish up the staff at the hotel the other named person is Victoria she's a Sant hore native who is the one to discover major Paul gr's death I think she comes across as quite bright I think there are we'll get to it in stuck in its time some depictions particularly of her husbandboyfriend that are a bit problematic but she for herself I think is as being quite clever yeah she's a very interesting character I almost would have loved to um I was kind of rooting for her and thinking she'd be great to to come and be sort of the lead in another novel yeah you know so it was a little you know uh frustrating to read kind of the way she's dismissed and again that goes back to like socio economic status and and things um she on the point you know yeah she's I'm like you could be my chambermaid anytime but you know she's a Watch Dog and um I just think um yeah really strong character um unfortunately who isn't treated that way but yeah by other characters necessarily you know well here's here's a character who gets the opposite treatment so Jason rafhael I think at the start of Agatha's writing career these like old super rich people are seen as controlling leveling and they're always kind of bumped off so the family can be liberated but as she gets older and richer herself she has a new fan respect for like the entrepreneurs who can create these big fortunes and the shrewdness with which it takes to keep them going and maybe she herself feels she's the subject of sponging family members and loafers in the tax M I don't know I love Jason rafhael I'm pleased to tell you that he he crops up again um as a yeah and I love action I think it's just excellent so he is you know he doesn't have to he doesn't have to be nice to anyone because he's Rich um but he's he's unexpectedly kind he's got a soft heart I think and um yeah and and he's smart yeah he's smart whenever you see TV adaptations it's always one of those parts we think who are they going to get to play him because it's a part that I think actors can have a lot of fun with just being disreputable but also brilliant so he travels with his secretary Esther Walters who is the Widow um with a child at school in England and she I think is meant to be very efficient you know maybe in her 40s I guess I mean a bit older than I think the kendles maybe but you know um very very efficient as a secretary a character we've seen a lot of in a the Christie and then we have rounding them up Jackson Mr Raphael's Valley M attendant um who yes worked at a Cosmetics company and is basically the kind of the physicality that helps Mrs helps Miss marel in her investigations any comments on the three of them uh just with with Raphael I will say this this male vocal performance from M fox was one of her better ones oh good and the the flavor in the character came out really strong so that I I definitely connected with with him obviously he can be kind of a dick but he reminds me of like we had this hat and as he got older he was just the most cranky really just kind of a nasty personality but it was because he was in a lot of pain all the time and I sort of you know and he just didn't have patience and it it really reminded me of of that cat when I was reading this you know just kind of you know to hell with them all attitude but he was that c was also like he wouldn't not be on you or sleeping with you you know he was sweet and he he did love us he just was so cranky and in a lot of pain with his joints and things so that's how I I pictured uh and that cat was Mr Raphael's spirit animal here 100% it's also like another reaction to being old so you can have major Paul grave who's stuck in the past in His Glory Days you've got Miss marel who is frail but very practical about it she refuses to sort of you know it is what it is and now she's old so there we are and then you got Mr Raphael he kind of rages against the dying of the light and is cranky cuz he's in pain and just he's he like you know where Miss marel nods and tilts her head to the side and is very polite Mr rafhael is the opposite he's like I I'm old I'm old enough not to give a [ __ ] what people think so I like I think I'm going to of the three choices I really hope I go to the third category I aspire to not give a [ __ ] in the way that Mr rafhael doesn't give a [ __ ] yeah for me it like already on the Horizon of 40 I'm like well I go through all three of those several times a depending on the weather I can be any one of those three I agree but I certainly think there's a courage like like Mr rapael and miss marel not to always be in the back in the Glory Days I think there's a there's a real courage not to not to fall for that um okay so let's go oh sorry that they develop um you know we don't have to love each other but we can like each other we can work together we can respect each other you know I just think that's also really telling of that particular age group I think you know as you get well I guess it's just human nature you always have a little more patience and a little more wherewithal for people in your generation to a certain extent you know what I mean and and the older I get you know the the less I want to spend time with people in their 20s you know because they're obnoxious and they won't listen and they're stupid I mean just like I was when I was that age this podcast in their 20 yeah yeah no offense to anyone in their 20s but um give it time you'll understand what I'm saying if you the purpose our 20 is to get to our 30s and 40s I mean like all the stup I'm so pleased of all the stupid [ __ ] I did in my 20s and indeed my teenage years because I look back on it so funly and I'm glad I got it all out my system but sometimes I'm just amazed I was alive like the amount of Ste my 20 had I love being in your 30s because you're still young enough to go out and do wild stuff but you're smart enough to do it in a SM way and you have money in your 20s you don't have any money so um awesome yeah I I do love that the the to me it is probably my favorite thing about this novel all the way around is the relationship that develops between Miss Mar marpel and him and then by by proxy with Esther Walters and uh oh my God why I'm like brain fog really bad Jackson yes soet yeah the Dynamics between all of them the situation uh the descriptions of the dynamic of the three to Mrs marpel how she interprets that those relationships I I think that is it's this beautiful sort of Odd Couple thing that's really the the novel and then the murder mystery is kind of like a side to that almost for me I agree I agree okay well let's get into our wonderful quadrangle of lust as I'm going to call it so we've got two married couples who hang out together um there's Greg and lucky Dyson and Edward and Evelyn hillington so Greg Dyson is a nature lover who is married to Lucky who's his second wife he does make drunken passes at Molly so red flag there um and he interestingly takes serenite which is a tablet that is found in the room of major Paul grave and it's thought that he had heart trouble because of it but um apparently per Victoria he didn't take it so there's an interesting little factoid about Greg and he's married to Lucky who's a very attractive American woman older than um Molly but maybe looks a bit like her um and this is what Miss marel has to say about lucky Dyson 40 if she's a day and looks it this morning thought Miss Marple pity invaded her pity for the lies of this world who were so vulnerable to time so this idea that those of us who are very very pretty in our younger years and more vulnerable to the loss of those looks as we age um but anyway that's Greg and lucky zeison then Edward hillington is the husband of evand who I mean eing can be a boy name and a girl name but in this case it's a girl name also an avid nature Lover he has children at a boarding school and is having an affair with lucky and then Evelyn his jilted wife is a woman who does not love her husband Edward but stays with him both for their Public Image and for their children so a very unhappy group of four people any thoughts on those characters the thing it reminded me of a little bit was um oh what's the name of that book I know what you're talking about andil Under the Sun even Under the Sun where there's a very glamorous woman in the adaptation played by Diana rig who's gorgeous at the time we all think that you're meant to think at the start that she's superficial and a bit of a gold digger and not very nice but actually by the end you realized that an aging fading Beauty like that is very vulnerable and vulnerable to flattery and vulnerable to because there's something very very tragic about losing your looks when you've been that's kind of been your defining trait so she reminded me a little bit lucky of of that character and Evil Under the Sun um any thoughts onle yeah you know um little reminiscent uh goings on and Death on the Nile yes yes for sure you know obviously um this one is actually in a lot of ways a little more messy for me it is messy because there's so many people involved and so many motivations and it's it's not a straightforward I mean christe's on a lot of love triangles that are very clearly delineated but this feels more real life this feels more messy and how real life would be like two couples who travel a lot together and then there's weird Dianes either way I often wonder if she knew a set of two couples like this it just feels so messy and real um yeah yeah I wonder sometimes with her first husband like if this kind of thing wasn't obviously going on you know and and and this is sort of um catharsis of getting it out as she writes in the 1920s when none of us talked about sex but everyone had loads of it um very when we final sort of couple is not actually a married couple but um brother and sister and we see this a lot in Christie as well right the brother and sister who bicker like a married couple and we have Joan Prescott who's an elderly woman who enjoys gossiping and she's on holiday with her brother the Canon Jeremy Prescott he's a member of the clergy and is always admonishing his sister for gossiping um any thoughts on the prescotts um you know honestly they felt like filler to me um I think I think in a lot of ways there wasn't a lot of yeah recycle plot recycle characters I think they definitely fall into that c now one thing I did want to ask you what exactly is a Canon I'm I'm not familiar with that term and I actually know a lot about like C of and stuff yeah I mean I'm probably the wrong person to ask because I am normally a Roman Catholic so a cannon I think is probably I don't know is that like a is that like a church of England type title that's what I was assuming um maybe Presbyterian I could have looked it up but I thought maybe I would ask you and get your wonderful yeah I couldn't tell if it comes from like the Latin for uh like truth and rhetoric or like singing more here we go what rank is canon in the Church of England Kora has all the answers given in the Anglican or the Episcopal Church is not a rank it is given to one who is on the staff of a cathedral and is thus on its official or canonical roster so basically you're on the staff of the bishop in a dasis so you may or may not be actually an ordained priest so he might not even be a priest apparently there you go took kind of kind of like a deacon then that makes sense okay yeah I mean I'll take your word for it not a subject on which I am an expert but listeners if you know the answer feel free to write a comment on our YouTube or jump on the Discord and let us know this comes down to an old Trope from vessels of King's grave and our forebears a podcast of Ice and Fire which is a shocking lack of knowledge and then last but not least let us get to Senora de casiero um a South American woman on holiday who is opposed to All Things ugly is very oh my God if you want to get to things that have not aged well I think the depiction of the black people on the island and the depiction of the South American women are where we get those kind of racist tropes that we've seen in earlier novels um she is however the one who remarks that major Paul grave has a glass eye and she calls it the evil eye and she's depicted as being wildly superstitious and melodramatic in classic CH Christy way yeah it's like um racism times two almost yes it is indeed in fact that's probably a nice Bridge into we always have a little discussion don't we about is something Progressive or regressive like how does it hold up to the modern read reader um and there's some racism there's some casual misogyny and there's some not nice description of mental illness so racism definitely the way in which she is portrayed but also the way in which Victoria is portrayed and her um partner and this is what Dr graah says Dr graah is the man who um basically has to handle the dead body well the senton people are very excitable you know emotional work M themselves up easily are you thinking that she knows a little more than she has said and you know that is that classic racist Trope isn't it of black people being almost like infants excitable emotional not rational not logical and therefore not fit to govern themselves and be in charge of themselves not whole people so quite a regressive again it's not necessarily Agatha Christie thinking this but certainly that's how the kind of the professional person the doctor is referring to the people of the island which is horrible yeah it's it shades of like phenology um but also almost the Trope of you know people who live in uh regions that tend to be warmer being cot blooded you know kind of thing which is just not true um but even like Miss marel goes on a tangent at one point about um you know in the old days we we would call this or that like bad humor or you know a nervous condition or or things so I think I think even Christy is recognizing that we've got some outdated ideas here and I I really want to believe that she herself might have been raised in an environment where she was led to believe these ideas and if you follow the writing and you look at it the the way I see it is that this is her having a change of heart and mind herself maybe gradually maybe maybe more abruptly but through her writing and sort of the absurdest quality of some of these characters and these presentations of these ideas through them she's doing her part to mitigate them that's how and and again perhaps I'm being naive but I really want to believe that and I I think that there's a lot of basis for my argument that you can find in the text yeah I think so I think so I think she does improve she puts herself as at a distance from some of the worst stuff like she'll put it in the in the mouths of characters to make a comment on them and their small winess rather than like in the early novels like in the 20s and the early 30s even late 30s there was so much objectionable stuff and it we're now in the 60s and there's far less and it's far more used to describe a character than than her own inherent beliefs I mean this is a good line from from Mr Raphael I must say though that nobody would think you had any brains in your head to hear your usual line of talk actually you've got quite a logical mind very few women have um yeah but that's just to show you how contaner as Mr Raphael is and therefore all the more how much he does truly admire Miss marel right I mean it's not that's not Agatha herself the the treatment of the mental health stuff I think again is a good example of how people men in particular might dismiss a hysterical woman or an anxious Woman and and AKA Christie who herself was treated um for mental illness and had to go to court and prove she was fit enough to be a mother and have her child I think would have had a lot of sympathy with the Molly kendles of this world who were sort of written off as being unstable and not fit to sort of govern themselves so I think that's well again like I don't want to do spoilers necessarily but by by the end of the book there is a resolution that you know it's like women who are struggling with something are not just hysterical you know you need to find a cause you need to look deeper you need to treat the patient not the symptoms not the test results you know that kind of thing and I think again that's a very cuttingedge idea and fight that she's putting out especially when you think that the term hysteria was not removed from uh Anatomy textbooks and the DSM until like 1995 yeah absolutely so in that respect I think this is very much a novel from from a writer who herself had gone through bad marriages and and quote unquote hyeran having to prove that she was a competent woman um and you know good for AG in doing that okay well let's get into the adaptations before we get into the solution in the spoiler section so there are actually three adaptations televisual ones of This Book of which I have seen two the first one was actually a US TV adaptation from 1983 starring Helen Hayes's Miss marel I do like Helen ha and Bernard Hees Mr Raphael I have not seen it but apparently it's rather good if anyone's seen it then please do jump on the Discord or comment on the YouTube and let us know I really tried hard to sort of hunt this one down but I couldn't get it in England unfortunately the second is a BBC TV adaptation starring Joan Hixon so part of that original series it came out in 1989 it's really worth watching they actually set it in Barbados in the place where the hotel that inspired um AA Christie Donald Pleasants the late great Donald Pleasants plays Mr Raphael which is absolutely fantastic um I think it's it's just a really good faithful um yeah just a really really good faithful location version of the of the of the story and the fact that it is in the hotel which by the way you can still stay in today it's still a hotel I think is really exciting and and just gives it real auth ticity so I like this version and I like Joan Hixon as as Miss marel I think this is one of the better ones have you seen either of those two first ones no um I I didn't have time to catch any of them after I'd finished the book I just didn't want to um like carry on talking if you had seen them and then last but not least uh we have the 2013 adaptation which was part of the ITV AG the Christie marpel series and this one starred Julia McKenzie as Miss marpel Anthony Sher plays Jason Raphael and he's really really good um it's actually got a really nice cast and I think a lot of it is quite good but as with all of this series um there are things that have changed I'm not really going to get into it because I think that will give away the spoiler as in terms of uh what was changed but I think that of the three if you only want to watch one then I would 100% just watch the um Joane Hixon version but you know even the 20 13 version I think is is really nice I think it's shot in Cape Town so it's not shot in the Caribbean either but it does have that sort of lovely what Lush Sunny feel to it for sure whereas I've got a feeling the Helen Hayes one was shot um in California and it was really wet weather and it's kind of like they're trying to fake it being Sunny apparently and it's not too convincing but yeah and if you and if you do find a good radio play let us know in a later episode and we can point our listeners to that absolutely will I uh so fact Amelia Fox the actress who uh uh narrated the full audio book on Audible uh she was in an episode of itv's Agatha Christie's marel in 2006 yes she was she played Joanna Burton in the finger yeah the moving finger yeah she's very good in that I really like as an actress yeah um okay well that brings us to the spoiler free part of today's episode stay tuned after the end credits music for the solution the clues and how far we thought it was a credible plot and a satisfying plot otherwise you can tune in next time for at Bertram's Hotel another Miss marel Mystery set in a posh Western Hotel published in 1965 so thank you all for listening and hopefully you'll bear with us for the the spoilers after the music bye bye-bye [Music] okay folks so from now on you're going to be full of spoilers so I really hope you've read the novel so here are some of the clues and the solutions to what's really going on I think first of all we've got to clear away sort of some of the red herrings that are here so the quadrangle of Love is that actually a distraction although crime has been committed so Greg Dyson inherited money from his Rich first wife and then married lucky um and there is maybe some question about how that first wife was killed and this is the suggestion that lucky got Edward to forge a prescription for poison um and that's how the first wife was got rid of so basically there there are Shenanigans in that quadrangle that may be murderous of wives which is a theme that will go on here however the real real plot is as follows Jackson is a snoop and has read Mr Raphael's will and knows that Raphael lied about not leaving Esther his secretary anything he basically knows that Esther is going to inherit a fair amount of money when Mr rafhael dies and he boasts about that to Tim Kendall now Tim Kendall is the one that major Paul grave was looking at when he was telling his story about someone who'd gotten away with murder it's not one of the Quad Wrangle cuz it also could have applied to the quad Wrangle it was actually about him he knows that Tim has um got rid of First Wives before and he um therefore quickly puts away the photograph and the big misdirect is that he's seeing through his glass ey so where we think he's looking is not where he's actually looking because with the glass eye it looks you know it's looking at a different direction um so what is the motive of Tim Tim of course has married the young Molly and taken her money and open the hotel so she's kind of served her purpose he's gaslighting her he is poisoning her and making her think that she's unstable and can't trust herself which is going to set Tim up for Molly eventually committing suicide or fake suicide at which point he's going to marry Esther Walters who is going to come into her inheritance for Mr Raphael so really it's Jackson snooping that sets that whole lot into motion and then once we know that you know everything is about gaslighting then we also realize that major Paul Grave's blood pressure pills were not really there I mean he didn't have blood pressure the serenite was put there just to kind of you know implicate or sort of put them off the scent um and that's basically the plot of the the thing that it was all done by The Dashing Tim Kendall to get rid of his current wife and marry another rich woman and unfortunately lucky gets killed and she well Victoria gets killed to shut her up shut her up because she's blackmailing the person that she suspects of planting the serin knite so she has to be offed and then poor lucky gets killed because in the Moonlight she looks a little bit like Molly Kendall and so someone murders her thinking they're really murdering Molly which is very unfortunate and actually as we're waiting for Hannah to get over some background noise it is worth noticing and um listen away now if you haven't read the mysterious Affair at Styles because there is a very serious plot Point here um and I want to read a read a couple of footnotes from The Amazing Julian gills book on aath Christi so footnote number 15 for the student of agath Christie's fiction it is fascinating that she introduces the visual almost cinematic clue in her very first novel this is the clue of looking over someone's shoulder the same device will turn up again more prominent ly much later in the mirror cracked 1962 and a Caribbean mystery 1964 in each of which Miss marle will guess the identity of a murderer by deducing what a character saw behind and over the shoulder of someone else this idea of where people are looking being a misdirect this is like the third no yeah the third time it's being used by Agatha Christi I think this is a really good clue though and a really ingenious one and this is what is said in um another footnote when Styles was written in 19 19 17 Agatha Christie was a young married woman of limited means her treatment of the elderly victim Mrs Emily Cavendish inglethorp is perfunctory if showing a prophetic interest in the possibilities of marriage between an old woman and a younger man which is what Agatha would go on to do in the post World War II period Christie is herself an elderly matriarch increasingly rich and famous and exerting that familial power acing to the person who has made the family one fortune and still seems capable of making another thus is it is not surprising that Conway Jefferson of 1942's the body in the library and even more the multi-millionaire Jason Raphael of a Caribbean mystery 1964 and Nemesis 1971 should emerge as interesting unusual and sympathetic people that they have a talent for making large sums of money even when old and sick Jason Raphael is on the surface a a stereotypical erasable millionaire with no time or energy for anything but making money nonetheless it is to the antisocial crippled Mr Raphael that Miss marel turns to in a Caribbean mystery when she's Desperately Seeking to prevent a murderer from striking again Raphael is essentially a cold man but also a just quick thinking courageous and reliable one and Miss marel recognizes in him the partner that she needs so I think this speaks to the discussion we had earlier about um how AG Chris's own perspective changed the way she wrote Rich characters but also I think gives a bit of color on yes agath chrisy reuses ideas but I think this is the book where that sort of looking the looking direction misdirect is most brilliantly developed Hannah are you free to talk again yes excellent so how did you find the solution was it credible to you was it satisfying did you think it made for a good solution I don't know I think my jury is still out in a in know a little bit of a way but I don't think it's the glass eye I don't think it plays fair you know like how how in the hell could we know that in the beginning um but there are the Senora does point out that he has a glass eye and that because she calls it the evil eye so that it's kind of weird when you go back and reread it more is made of it than you would think at first glance put it that way yeah I I guess I I just didn't again I was looking in the wrong direction when I first so I guess it's kind of funny in that way IED by the you know the name of him and and reminiscent of and then there were none and so maybe I just you know I didn't pick up on it and so but there were definitely other clues that I think to me if you just narrow down the suspects it's sort of obvious that it's Tim Kendall I think you can definitely find that fairly easily um not not so easily that it's boring necessarily but there's some of it that was a little paint by numbers for me again but it's I think that's true and I think that you're right you can narrow it down quite quickly because there are definitely characters like the Canon and his sister where you can tell their character sketches that are a little bit reused and reworked and so you get to the characters that are more interesting that she's taking time with yeah and you know it's one of them it's either the quadrangle or it's Molly and Tim isn't it I mean it's sort of those are your two groupings and you can pick from one or the other of them I think and actually both murder so but you'd be right on both counts in a way but by the time that you get to that exchange where you know what's her face is having that conversation of like yeah I know that that Affair was going on like it's fine and he's like no I want to get out of it I I I feel like there's such a sincerity there that you start to steer around that as as being a possibility for motive and so it is there are interesting Dynamics I yes when you start to read a lot of one author there's a little bit of fatigue or I guess that maybe that's not the right word lack of surprise does that make sense so unless they're going to do something completely like well that that person's just a psychopath and that would be something that you really couldn't follow you can pick up on where this is going fairly quickly because you just know her so well and then please cut this out but that's why I love endless night so much because you don't see it coming or at least I didn't yeah so I don't think I need to cut that out actually that reference to endless night maybe it will en entice The Listener to join us for that episode because I think we have been going through a lot of sort of um later year mid tier Christie and each one maybe has its merits like in this one I think Mr rafhael as a character is really you know Unforgettable and I do like some of the plot mechanics but I think it is like you say it's easy to deduce CU you kind of you quickly take away the minor characters and get to where the murders are going to be but endless light is really stands apart I think from some of these later ones in quality so hopefully that will entice The Listener to get into that one and I think this quality style qu it's it's very set it's all there isn't it so I think we can almost leave it there right I mean I think this is It's a solid mid tier chrisy um maybe we should end actually by reading what Pat said because I'd originally said to 2.0 Pat if he wanted to do this as a full pod or whether it should be a mini pod and he kind of bowed out he wasn't such a fan of this and he wrote quite a good summary let me see if it's I will say really quick fun fact you can actually Buy serenite tablets in the UK still um yes it it's a it's a plant-based derivative that's um supposed to have a lot of amino acids a lot of be vitamins and is used for sleep and relaxation so um apparently that is a real blood pressure drug huh I thought it was one of her madeup ones because she makes up a lot of ones that sound very plausible but there you go I mean she could have been making it up and maybe that's where they got the name for this uh but yeah you can buy it over the counter okay you don't need a prescription and serite is also a gemstone that is supposed to be like crystallized form and put with gyps him and be very healing as well yeah wow okay right so anyway this is what uh 2.0 said about Caribbean mystery working through Caribbean mystery at the moment not great so far plenty of old Agatha giving out about the state of the young people through Miss marel and then he carried on and I said you know full P mini then he made a a rude joke about beating me in the European fantasy football and he said marel just doesn't have Poo's Riz I mean is that just like the most Savage burn there I think he's fair I think it is a book that I love it in a sense not for the character that I guess I don't know I just I I just like Miss marel and Mr Raphael and I can see them like I can I can spend a lot of night time hanging out with them so I forgive this book maybe more than I should but on that note we leave you dear listener um hopefully we will reunite certainly for Endless Night I'm hoping to get um Pat back on for that we will be here hopefully sander the Lord Baron will make a late great appearance for that too if not before so you've got that to look forward to but the next book is one again that I have a bit of fondness for it's called at Bam's Hotel so if you're listening or reading along at home that's the one to go for next in the meantime thank you Hannah for joining yeah thank you so much it's uh it's always a fun ride and you know even even in Christie that it's like n didn't really grab me I'm not going to remember it in like you know I'll remember it forever I still have a lot of fun with it and that's just the beauty of her and also this Series has been a lot of fun and I'm glad to be back oh lovely for as we go into that final 10 books I think that's it's lovely to have again together a little bit um all righty well I'll speak to you soon and uh listener we hope you enjoyed this and stay tuned for the next episode bye n [Music]