A step into the void

A step into the void is the 15th mystery novel by Agatha Christie . It first appeared in the United Kingdom in September 1934 under the title Why Didn't They Ask Evans? in the Collins Crime Club and in 1935 in the USA with Dodd, Mead and Company under the title The Boomerang Clue . The German first edition was published in 1935 by Goldmann Verlag (Leipzig) with the translation by Otto Albrecht van Bebber, which is still used today.

action

Bobby Jones, the son of the pastor of the Welsh seaside town of Marchbolt, plays golf with a friend . He shoots his ball over the edge of the cliff and as he looks for the ball he sees a man lying on the slope. While Bobby takes care of the seriously injured man, his friend rushes into the village to get help. Bobby holds the injured man in his arms, who dies after saying "Why didn't you ask Evans?" This sentence and a photo of a beautiful woman that the stranger has in his breast pocket are the only traces. While Bobby is waiting by the corpse, a stranger arrives and introduces himself as Roger Bassington-ffrench. He offers Bobby to stay with the corpse because otherwise Bobby would be too late to play the organ in his father's church.

The dead man is identified as Alex Pritchard by his alleged sister, Amelia Cayman. She is said to be the woman in the photo and Bobby wonders how such a beautiful young woman can become such an unsightly older one. After the inquest, Mrs. Cayman and her husband want to know if Pritchard said anything before he died. Bobby says he didn't say anything. Only later, when he was talking to his girlfriend "Frankie" - Lady Frances Derwent - did the words come back to him. He writes a letter to the Caymans and receives a polite and meaningless reply.

Bobby wants to start working for a friend in a car repair shop in London, but receives a lucrative offer to work in Buenos Aires . However, he decides to decline this offer. Shortly thereafter, he fell ill after drinking beer from a bottle. The beer was poisoned. Local police believe it was a madman's act, but Frankie says Bobby was an assassinated victim. During his recovery, he sees the photo in an old local newspaper that was printed to find Pritchard's sister. He realizes immediately that this is not the photo he saw in the dead man's pocket. So Bassington-ffrench must have exchanged photos while he was alone with him, and Mrs. Cayman is not a relative of the victim. Bobby and Frankie decide the best way to solve the mystery is to find Bassington-ffrench.

They manage to find a trace of a house called Merroway Court in Hampshire , owned by a brother of Bassington-french, Henry, and his wife Sylvia. In front of this house they stage a car accident with the help of a doctor friend, so that Frankie (in reality unharmed) is invited to Merroway Court to recover. Frankie saw a newspaper clipping about the mysterious corpse and Sylvia noticed that he looked like a man she knew - Alan Carstairs. He was an adventurer and big game hunter and a friend of John Savage, a millionaire who recently committed suicide after learning of cancer. Frankie also meets two neighbors of the Bassington-frenchs - Dr. Nicholson and his young wife Moira. Dr. Nicholson runs a sanatorium in town . Frankie writes to Bobby to investigate the house. He goes to the site at night. There he meets a young woman who tells him that she is afraid for her life - the woman from the photo in her breast pocket. He can leave the property before he is discovered.

A few days later the young woman comes to the village inn where Bobby lives. She introduces herself as Moira Nicholson. She fears that her husband will kill her because she knew Alan Carstairs before the wedding with the doctor. The three decide to ask Roger about the whereabouts of the photo. He says he took the photo away to avoid scandal. He hadn't put Mrs. Cayman's photo in his pocket.

Because she is interested in John Savage's will, Frankie goes to see her lawyer in London. From this she learns that Carstairs was already there. At the time Savage was diagnosed with cancer, a couple from Templeton were visiting. The diagnosis was not confirmed by a specialist and he felt fine too. Even so, he committed suicide, leaving the Templetons £ 700,000. Then they disappeared. So Carstairs was on her trail.

Bobby is kidnapped and Frankie is also held in a lonely cottage while searching for him . The kidnapper is Roger. They manage to free themselves in the house and they also find Moira, who is drugged. When the police arrive, Roger escapes.

Bobby and Frankie are now tracking down the witnesses in the will. The will was drawn up the night before Savage died. The witnesses were the former cook and the former gardener of the house. They learn that Gladys, the housemaid, was not asked. Gladys was the only one in the house who knew Savage and she would have noticed immediately that it was Roger who was on the "death bed" trying to change the contents of the will, and they also discover that Gladys' last name is Evans - the Reason for Carstair's question: "Why didn't you ask Evans?"

They follow the trail of the housemaid and find her as a housekeeper in Bobby's father's parsonage. That was the reason Carstairs came to Wales: he was trying to find the girl because the will looked suspicious to him, and that is also the reason for the attack on Bobby's life.

Back in Wales, they meet Moira, who asks for help because she feels threatened by Roger. They want to meet in a small café, but Moira turns out to be Roger's accomplice. She tries to poison Frankie and Bobby first. When she is caught, she shoots Frankie. The shot misses and she can be overwhelmed.

A few weeks later they received a letter from Roger in South America in which he made a confession. Frankie and Bobby recognize their love for each other and become a couple.

people

• Robert "Bobby" Jones - son of the Vicar of Marchbolt
• Lady Frances "Frankie" Derwent - daughter of Lord Marchington
• Dr. Thomas - a golf partner of Bobby
• Alex Pritchard - the man who dies on the cliffs near Marchbolt, his real name is: Alan Carstairs, a friend of John Savage
• Mr. Jones Senior - Pastor of Marchbolt and father of Bobby
• Mr. Leo and Mrs. Amelia Cayman, supposed brother-in-law and sister of Alex Pritchard
• Badger Beadon - childhood friend of Bobby and his future business partner
• George Arbuthnot - a friend of Frankie's
• Henry and Sylvia Bassington-ffrench of Merroway Court in Hampshire
• Roger Bassington-ffrench - Henry's brother
• Dr. Nicholson - Canadian owner of a sanatorium near Merroway Court
• Moira Nicholson - his wife
• John Savage - late millionaire and big game hunter
• Mrs. Rivington - a friend of John Savage
• Gladys Roberts, nee Evans - former housemaid at "Mr. and Mrs. Templeton ”, now housekeeper at the Vicar of Marchmolt
• Rose Pratt, née Chudleigh - former cook at “Mr. and Mrs. Templeton ”and witness to the will of John Savage
• Albert Mere - former gardener at “Mr. and Mrs. Templeton ”and witness to the will of John Savage

Film adaptations

Why didn't you ask Evans? 1980 (TV movie)

Why Didn't They Ask Evans was adapted for television by London Weekend Television and aired on March 30, 1980. Before this production, there were already some television productions based on the author's works, which she often disliked, especially a broadcast of And then there was none from 1949 with many errors (such as the fact that one of the “corpses” in Blickwinkel the camera gets up and walks away). Since the 1960s, the author has refused to film her works for television.

After her death, her heirs, especially her daughter Rosalind Hicks, deviated from it and Why Didn't They Ask Evans was the first television production of this new era. The leading roles are played by Francesca Annis as Lady Frances (Frankie) Derwent and James Warwick as Bobby Jones. The work received widespread attention and received good reviews. In addition, the filming showed that Christie's works are suitable for the television screen. - Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime , Miss Marple with Joan Hickson (who has a small role in Evans ), Agatha Christie's Poirot with David Suchet and Agatha Christie's Marple with Geraldine McEwan (until she left) and now with Julia Mackenzie : everyone can do theirs Attributing style and success to this production.

Agatha Christie's Marple 2008

In 2008 ITV produced a film with this title as the third episode of the fourth season of the English television series Agatha Christie's Marple with Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple , although this does not appear in the novel.

Important English and German language editions

A step into the void, German edition by Goldmann Verlag 1997

• 1933, The McCall Company (USA) (abridged version as part of Six Redbook Novels ), 1933
• 1934, Collins Crime Club (London), September 1934
• 1935 German first edition: Goldmann Verlag Leipzig in the translation by Otto Albrecht van Bebber

The novel first appeared in the USA in a short version in the November 1933 issue of Redbook Magazine (Volume 62, Number 1) under the title The Boomerang Clue with illustrations by Joseph Franke. This version was then published in the Six Redbook Novels collection , even before the full version was published by Dodd & Mead in 1935. The other five abstracts of novels in this collection were The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett , The Figure in the Fog by Mignon G. Eberhart , The Cross of Peace by Philip Gibbs, White Piracy by James Warner Bellah and Parade Ground by Charles L. Clifford.

golf

The name of the amateur investigator and amateur golfer Bobby Jones refers to the real Bobby Jones , a well-known star golfer from the USA at the time the novel was written. It is briefly referred to in Chapter 1.

dedication

The dedication of the book reads:

For Christopher Mallock - in memory of Hinds.

The Mallock family were friends of the author from the years before her first wedding. They put on amateur theater performances at their Cockington Court home, near Torquay , in which Christie would attend to overcome her shyness.

Audio books

• 2006 A step into the void (3 CDs): abridged reading. Translated from the English by Tanja Handels. Read by Konstantin Graudus. Director: Sven Stricker. The Hörverlag Munich
• 2009 The Step into Emptiness (3 CDs): abridged reading. Translated from the English by Tanja Handels. Read by Konstantin Graudus. Director: Sven Stricker. The Hörverlag Munich. [Identical to the 2006 edition apart from the changed title]
• 2006 A step into the void (5 CDs): only unabridged reading. Speaker: Manfred Fenner. Director: Hans Eckardt: Publishing house and studio for audio book productions, Marburg

Web links

• Why Didn't They Ask Evans? on the official Agatha Christie website
• Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (1980) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Marple: Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (2008) in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club - A checklist of First Editions . Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15)
2. ↑ John Cooper and BA Pyke. Detective Fiction - the collector's guide : Second Edition (Pages 82 and 86) Scholar Press. 1994. ISBN 0-85967-991-8
3. ↑ American Tribute to Agatha Christie
4. ↑ ^{a b} German first edition in the catalog of the German National Library
5. ↑ Morgan, Janet. Agatha Christie, A Biography . (Page 347) Collins, 1984 ISBN 0-00-216330-6 .
6. ↑ Morgan. (Page 272).
7. ↑ Morgan. (Page 347)
8. ↑ Haining, Peter. Agatha Christie - Murder in Four Acts (Page 79). 1990. Virgin Books. ISBN 1-85227-273-2 .
9. ↑ Haining. (Pages 77 and 81)
10. ↑ A host of stars ask ... why didn't they ask Evans? , ITV Press Center, August 5, 2008 ( April 2, 2012 memento on the Internet Archive )
11. ↑ Morgan. (Page 45).
12. ^ BBC website photograph of Cockington and the Christie connection
13. ^ Audiobook (licensed) in the catalog of the German National Library
14. ↑ Audiobook (complete) in the catalog of the German National Library