On a double track
On a double track (original title The Clocks ) is the 54th detective novel by Agatha Christie . It first appeared in the UK on November 7, 1963 at the Collins Crime Club and the following year in the US at Dodd, Mead and Company . The Scherz Verlag (Bern, Munich, Vienna) published the German edition in 1965 to the one used to date translation of Gretel Spitzer.
It ascertains Hercule Poirot in his 29th novel.
The novel is notable for the fact that Poirot does not visit any of the crime scenes and does not speak to any witness or suspect because he wants to prove that the crime can be solved solely by the performance of his intelligence.
In a long time in the series of Poirot novels, this novel is the first to be told at least partially from a first-person perspective. A technique that Agatha Christie had previously used again after many years in the novel with Ariadne Oliver The Pale Horse .
introduction
Sheila Webb works in an office that, in addition to the usual office work, also does paperwork directly for the customer. So she is ordered to a customer one afternoon. What she finds, however, is a corpse surrounded by six clocks, four of which stopped at 4:13 p.m. When the blind inhabitant of the house returns, Sheila runs screaming out of the house into the arms of a young man who will play a leading role in the investigation that follows.
action
When he is about to pay a visit to the settlement on Wilbraham Crescent , secret service agent Colin Lamb suddenly holds a young woman in his arms. She came screaming from number 19. Lamb was down the street to follow up on a trail another agent had left before he was murdered. He had drawn an M, a 61 and a crescent moon.
In the jacket pocket of the corpse Sheila discovered is an insurance agent's business card called "RH Curry". This quickly turns out to be wrong because neither the insurance company nor an agent with this name exist. Miss Martindale, Sheila's boss, says that the appointment at the blind lady's house, Miss Pebmarsh, was made by phone and that Miss Pebmarsh asked specifically for Sheila. Miss Pebmarsh, however, denies having ordered Sheila.
Inspector Hardcastle and Lamb learn everything about the neighborhood from Miss Waterhouse in house number 18. A colorful mix of different ages and social backgrounds. Mrs. Hemming lives in house number 20 in a house full of cats. At number 61, just past number 19, Mr. and Mrs. Bland have just inherited a lot of money from an overseas relative. Mrs. Ramsay lives in house number 62 with her two boys, who cause her constant trouble. Her husband, an engineer, often works abroad.
Sheila is now suspected. Her aunt is interrogated and says that Sheila's first name is Rosemary. The name was on the case of a travel alarm clock that was found at the crime scene and has now suddenly disappeared. Lamb is frustrated with the development and decides to contact Poirot, an old friend of his father's. He visits Poirot, who now wants to clear up the case from his armchair. Lamb describes the facts and leaves Poirot with a list of how to proceed.
Edna Brent, a colleague of Sheila, is completely confused because she thought of something important. She tries to contact Hardcastle, but he has no time. She is later found dead in a phone booth in Wilbraham Crescent, strangled with her own scarf.
A woman, Merlina Rival, enters the scene and identifies the body of "Mr. Curry ”as her alleged husband, whom she has not seen for 15 years. The man had met her as Harry Castleton and had made it his business to rob women of their savings. To confirm her identification, she says that her husband has a scar behind his ear. But Hardcastle quickly realizes that the scar is not yet 15 years old, so she could not have known anything about it. After he confronts her, she secretly calls the person who commissioned her to misidentify her, threatening to tell the truth. She becomes the third victim.
The investigation takes off when Colin meets ten-year-old Geraldine Brown. Because she had broken her leg, she had watched what was going on at Wilbraham Crescent from her room through opera glasses. She reports that a new laundry service delivered a heavy bag of laundry on the day of the murder.
He also discovers that Mrs. Ramsay's husband defected behind the Iron Curtain . Otherwise she is not involved in the event.
Poirot's idea is that this apparently complicated murder should divert attention from a very simple one. So the watches turn out to be Red Herring . The appearance of Sheila and the confusion about the identity of the corpse are also just a distraction. Edna had noticed, because she had come back to the office early from dinner because of a broken heel, that Miss Martindale hadn't made a call. And so it turns out that Miss Martindale is Mrs. Bland's sister. Mrs. Bland is Mr. Bland's second wife, but the overseas heiress was his first wife. Suddenly Quentin Duguesclin appeared, who knew the first Mrs. Bland from Canada. So he was murdered and put in Miss Pebmarsh's house. Miss Martindale had all of her diversions from a previously unpublished novel they'd copied in the office.
Poirot also gives a clue to the other agent's mysterious note. It was always held the wrong way round and so there is now an M (crescent moon) and a 19 - Miss Pebmarshs house. He can convict her as an agent, but he now also knows that she is Sheila's mother. Because Colin wants to marry Sheila, he offers her to escape. However, she does not accept his offer.
people
- Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective
- Inspector Richard "Dick" Hardcastle, the investigating officer
- Sergeant Cray, a cop
- Colin Lamb, a secret agent (possibly the son of Superintendent Battle)
- Miss Martindale, owner of Cavendish Office Services
- Sheila Webb, a typist in this office
- Edna Brent, another typist in this office
- Miss Pebmarsh, a blind teacher and resident of Wilbraham Crescent 19th
- James Waterhouse, resident of Wilbraham Crescent 18th century
- Edith Waterhouse, sister of James
- Mrs. Hemming, resident of Wilbraham Crescent 20
- Josiah Bland, an architect, resident of Wilbraham Crescent 61
- Valerie Bland, Josiah's wife
- Mrs. Ramsay, resident of Wilbraham Crescent 62
- Bill Ramsay, Mrs. Ramsay's young son
- Ted Ramsay, Mrs. Ramsay's young son
- Angus McNaughton, a retired professor, resident of Wilbraham Crescent 63
- Mrs. McNaughton, his wife
- Gretel, Danish maid for the McNaughtons
- Merlina Rival, a woman with a dubious reputation
- Colonel Beck, Colin's chief of intelligence
- Geraldine Brown, a ten year old girl
References to other works
- In chapter 15, Poirot talks about one of his best cases again - it's the Nemean Lion , the first story from The Labor of Hercules .
- Chapter 24 recalls the role of Poirot in reunion with Mrs. Oliver .
- In chapter 25, Lamb meets the girl with the leg in plaster who watches the people in the street. A motif that is very reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's Das Fenster zum Hof .
Film adaptations
The novel was filmed for the twelfth season of the English television series Agatha Christie's Poirot with David Suchet as Poirot, see On a double track (film) .
Audio books
- 2009 On a double track: Unabridged edition: Martin Maria Schwarz; Directed by Hans Eckardt: Verlag Hörbuchproduktionen (Marburg)
Important English and German language editions
- 1963 Collins Crime Club (London), November 7th, 1963
- 1964 Dodd Mead and Company (New York)
- 1965 German first edition by Scherz Verlag in the translation by Gretel Spitzer
- 2018 new translation by Giovanni and Ditte Bandini by Atlantik Verlag
Web links
- The Clocks on the official Agatha Christie website
- The Clocks (2010) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club - A checklist of First Editions . Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15)
- ↑ John Cooper and BA Pyke. Detective Fiction - the collector's guide : Second Edition (Pages 82 and 87) Scholar Press. 1994. ISBN 0-85967-991-8 .
- ↑ American Tribute to Agatha Christie
- ↑ a b German first edition in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ Audiobook (complete) in the catalog of the German National Library