The house on the dune
The house on the dune (original title Peril at End House ) is the twelfth detective novel by Agatha Christie . It first appeared in the United States in February 1932 with Dodd, Mead and Company and in March of the same year in the United Kingdom with the Collins Crime Club . The German first edition was published in 1933 by Goldmann Verlag Leipzig in a translation by Otto Albrecht van Bebber. In 2003 the Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag (Frankfurt am Main) published the new translation by Monika Gripenberg, which is still used today.
Hercule Poirot , Arthur Hastings and Chief Inspector Japp are investigating on the Cornwall coast .
action
Poirot and Hastings are spending a week's vacation at the Majestic Hotel in St Looe on the Cornish coast. They are having breakfast on the hotel terrace when Hastings reads from the newspaper that Captain Seton was missing on his flight around the world near the Solomon Islands . You get to know the local “Nick” Buckley (her real first name is Magdala), who lives in End House , a slightly dilapidated large house at the end of the bay. She casually recounts that she narrowly escaped death three times in the past three days and describes the incidents as accidents. Suddenly a wasp flies past her head. Nick is picked up by Commander George Challenger, a friend, says goodbye to Poirot and Hastings, leaving her felt hat lying around. Poirot examines the hat and discovers a bullet hole and also finds a pistol bullet. He decides to protect Nick's life.
To learn more about the accidents so far, Poirot agrees to meet Nick at End House . He makes her the seriousness of the situation clear and asks her about her living conditions. As an orphan, she is in precarious financial circumstances, and her brother died in a car accident three years earlier. Her greatest concern is keeping the old house she loves. Her next of kin is her cousin, attorney Charles Vyse, who has already obtained several mortgages for her house. She has no other relatives besides a few distant Yorkshire cousins . Her household consists of Ellen, the housekeeper, her husband and child. The summer house is rented to an Australian couple, Milly and Bert Croft. Other friends are temporarily in the house: Freddie Rice, who is about to be persuaded to divorce, and Jim Lazarus, a young man who has fallen in love with Freddie. George Challenger is also in the house, as impoverished as Nick and a few years older than her, he has half-heartedly asked for her hand a few times. Half a year earlier Nick made her will in which she left the house to Charles Vyse and the rest to Freddie. Another guest is expected for the weekend - one of her Yorkshire cousins, Maggie Buckley.
Nick invites Poirot and Hastings, all house guests, and Charles to dinner because End House is the best place to see the harbor festival fireworks. George Challenger is late after a trip to Plymouth . The conversation revolves around the missing aviator Michael Seton, and it turns out that Nick and Freddie met him at Le Touquet last year and again later in Scarborough . They are interrupted by a call that Nick picks up in another room, as well as the arrival of other guests who want to see the fireworks. Everyone goes to the terrace, Nick runs back one more time to get coats for Maggie, Freddie and himself. The fireworks begin.
A few minutes later, Poirot sees a lifeless body lying on the lawn - Maggie, wearing Nick's scarf, shot. The police are called. Nick is taken to a sanatorium - also to protect her.
Poirot is desperate because he could not prevent the murder. Another attack on Nick takes place in the sanatorium, but she survived: She had eaten from chocolate pralines that had been sent to her anonymously and that, it turns out, were poisoned with cocaine .
The plot is further complicated by the appearance of Freddie's cocaine addicted husband who tries to blackmail her. This dies from an overdose. Further extortion and forgery of documents relating to the will of Nick's late father are uncovered. The Crofts are exposed as professional fraudsters and forgery of documents.
In the end, the investigations give the following picture:
When Nick met Michael Seton in Le Touquet, she hoped for the opportunity to marry him and thus finally get some money, as there is a high mortgage on her house. She arranged a second meeting in Scarborough. Michael met Maggie Buckley, fell in love with her and secretly became engaged to her on the spot. Nick was the only person who knew about this secret, and she also knew that he bequeathed all of his fortune to "Magdala". However, Seton didn't know that that was Nick's real name.
After the death of Michael's uncle, who was disapproving of women, and later after Michael's disappearance, Nick developed the plan to murder Maggie and impersonate Michael's bride. This is how she would have gotten Seton's legacy. She had cleverly orchestrated the alleged assassination attempts on her. Challenger turns out to be a cocaine dealer who had provided the now no longer dependent Freddie and her addicted husband with substance. Poirot warns Challenger to leave quickly, otherwise he would have him arrested. The warned cannot be said twice. When Nick is arrested, she asks Freddie for her wristwatch, an heirloom, as a souvenir. Freddie gives it to her. She later tells Poirot that there is a hiding place in the clock with a deadly dose of cocaine: Nick will use it to kill himself to avoid her execution . Frederica Rice and Jim Lazarus become engaged. Poirot and Hastings leave Cornwall.
people
- Hercule Poirot - the famous Belgian detective
- Arthur Hastings - his friend and companion
- Nick (Magdala) Buckley - a young woman who owns End House
- Maggie Buckley - her cousin
- Captain George Challenger - a friend of Nick
- Ellen - housekeeper Nick and since her childhood in End House hired
- Frederica (Freddie) Rice - a good friend of Nick
- Milly and Bert Croft - tenants at Nick's
- Jim Lazarus - admirer of Frederica and owner of an antique collection
- Charles Vyse - lawyer and Nick's cousin
dedication
The dedication of the book reads:
“For Eden Phillpotts . To whom I will always be grateful for his friendship and the encouragement he gave me many years ago. "
In 1908, Christie became bored while recovering from flu, and she began writing a story on the recommendation of her mother, Clara Miller (see dedication in The Missing Link ). That impetus marked the beginning of her career, although these early works were not published and are now lost. Most of them were short stories. But there was also a novel: Snow Upon the Desert . She sent it to various publishers, but kept getting it back. Her mother suggested that the manuscript be given to Phillpotts, a friend and neighbor of the family in Torquay and one of the most famous writers in Devon in his day. He sent it back with praise: “There are some great things about your work. You have a good feeling for the dialogue. ”Christie Phillpotts, whom she also held in high regard as a human being, never forgot this encouragement to carry on.
References to other works, places and people
References to other works
- Already in the first chapter Poirot and Hastings talk about events of the past winter, which are connected with Poirot's journey on the blue express to the French Riviera and which were described in this novel.
- At the beginning of Chapter 14, Hastings describes how Poirot's obsession with order and symmetry once helped him solve a case when he was straightening the pieces on a mantelpiece - an indirect reference to The Missing Link .
- In Chapter 15, Poirot recalls The Chocolates Case , when Commander tells Challenger that he has made mistakes in the past.
- In Chapter 16, Inspector asks Japp Poirot if he hasn't retired to grow pumpkins . This is an indirect reference to the failed attempt to retire from alibi when Poirot retired to the small village of King's Abbot, only to be immediately involved in a murder case.
Inspector Japp, who appears here for the third time in a Poirot novel after The Missing Link in the Chain and The Big Four , will investigate several times with the Belgian detective, the last time in The Secret of Buckle Shoes .
References to places and people
- The hotel described in the novel has its real model not in Cornwall, but in Devon . It's the Imperial Hotel in Torquay .
- In Chapter 7, the characters talk about a female aviator who flew to Australia. This refers to Amy Johnson , who made the first solo flight of a woman from England to Australia from May 5 to 24, 1930.
Major expenses
- 1932: First edition USA. Dodd Mead and Company, New York (February 1932).
- 1932: First edition United Kingdom. Collins Crime Club, London (March 1932).
- 1933: German first edition: The house on the dune. Translation by Otto Albrecht van Bebber. Goldmann Verlag, Leipzig.
- 2003: New translation by Monika Gripenberg. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.
The first publication of the novel was as a serial in the weekly magazine Liberty in eleven episodes from June 13 to August 22, 1931.
Audio books
- 2000: The house on the dune. Speaker: Martin Maria Schwarz. Director: Hans Eckardt. Publishing house and studio for audio book productions, Beltershausen.
- 2003: The house on the dune. Abridged version by Kati Nicholl. Translated from the English by Tanja Handels. Read by Wolf Frass. Director: Sven Stricker. The Hörverlag, Munich.
Adaptations
Play (1940)
The novel was adapted by Arnold Ridley for a play that premiered on May 1, 1940 in London's West End at the Vaudeville Theater. Poirot was played by Francis L. Sullivan.
Agatha Christie's Poirot
For the British television series Agatha Christie's Poirot , the novel was filmed in 1990 as part of the second season. The German dubbed version was titled Das Haus auf der Klippe .
computer game
On November 2, 2009, a computer game was published for the novel. Like Death on the Nile , it was adapted by Flood Light Games and published in collaboration with Oberon Games and Big Fish Games. The player takes on the role of Poirot, searching for clues in End House and other locations on the Cornish coast, and interrogating the suspects based on the information he finds.
Web links
- Peril at End House on the official Agatha Christie website.
- The house on the cliff in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ American Tribute to Agatha Christie
- ↑ Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club - A checklist of First Editions . Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 14)
- ↑ a b German first edition in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ a b New translation in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ Christie, Agatha. To Autobiography . (Page 195). Collins, 1977. ISBN 0-00-216012-9
- ^ BBC webpage on the Imperial Hotel and the Christie connection
- ↑ Audiobook (complete) in the catalog of the German National Library
- ^ Audiobook (licensed) in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ Agatha Christie - Peril at End House ( Memento of the original from September 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
