Murder on the golf course
The murder on the golf course (original title The Murder on the Links ) is the third crime novel by Agatha Christie . It appeared first in the United States in 1923 with Dodd, Mead and Company and in May of the same year in the United Kingdom with The Bodley Head .
The German first edition was published in 1927 in the translation by Irene Kafka by Georg Müller Verlag (Munich). It is Agatha Christie's first novel to be translated into German.
It determines Hercule Poirot in his second novel together with Arthur Hastings . It is the only novel from Christie's pen that is set almost exclusively in France. This is remarkable in that Christie lived in France for some time as a young woman.
This novel contains a storyline in which Hastings meets his future wife, Dulcie Duveen. A development that "was very much wanted by Agatha Christie, she was able to push him back to Argentina after his marriage ." According to her own statements, she did not like the figure of Hastings she had created.
action
Captain Hastings arrives at his London apartment from a trip to France, which he now shares with Poirot. He excitedly tells the Belgian detective about a woman he met on the train from Paris to Calais and with whom he fell hopelessly in love. He doesn't know her real name because she only introduced herself to him as " Cinderella ". But Poirot doesn't listen, he's busy sorting his mail. Impatiently he throws the bills aside and gets upset about banal inquiries such as: “Find lapdogs of fashion ladies!” Then Poirot finds an extraordinary letter from France: “For God's sake, come!” Writes Monsieur Paul Renauld. Poirot decides to start the investigation and takes Hastings to France to the Villa Genevieve in Merlinville-sur-Mer on the French Channel coast , from where Renauld had written. When they ask for directions near the villa, they are watched by a young girl from the garden of another smaller villa. She has eyes full of worry.
When they reach the villa, they are too late: Renauld is dead. At two o'clock that night, he and his wife were attacked in their rooms by two masked men. Madame Renauld was handcuffed and her husband was taken away by the men who claimed to know "the secret". You seem to have come through the open front door, which shows no signs of burglary. Renauld was found stabbed to death in a freshly dug grave on the edge of the neighboring golf course under construction , very close to a bunker that was being built during the day.
Renauld's son Jack had just been sent on a business trip to South America by his father . Renauld had also given the chauffeur a completely unexpected leave of absence, so that there were only three domestic servants in the house, but they pretended not to have heard anything. The eldest of the three employees told Poirot and the police that Renauld often visited the neighbor Madame Daubreuil after his wife had gone to bed. It is, as it later turns out, the mother of the girl whom Poirot and Hastings had observed upon their arrival - Marthe Daubreuil.
The deceased had just changed his will two weeks earlier so that his wife becomes sole heir and his son does not inherit anything.
A clock with a broken glass also plays a role, going two hours ahead. The widow is asked to identify the body. She loses her composure and collapses in sadness at the sight of her dead husband.
Poirot tries to answer the following questions: Why is the clock moving forward? Why didn't the domestic workers hear anything? Why was the body found so quickly, even though it was so isolated? Why is there a piece of lead pipe next to the body?
In his investigation, Poirot is hindered by Monsieur Giraud, a young and ambitious Sûreté officer who has just arrived from Paris : he is of the opinion that the old Belgian, with his old-fashioned investigation methods, is not suitable to solve the case. The local investigator, Monsieur Hautet, is more helpful. He finds out that Renauld's neighbor at Villa Marguerite, Madame Daubreuil, has deposited 200,000 francs into her bank account in the past few weeks. Was she Monsieur Renauld's lover?
They visit the lady who, after the suspicions are voiced, gets angry and throws them out. After seeing Madame Daubreuil for the first time, Poirot tells Hastings that he knows her from before and that he connects her to a murder case that went back more than two decades.
Jack Renauld returns about later - his ship to South America was delayed and so he was able to turn back when he learned of his father's death. Jack had fallen out with his father because he wanted to get married - hence the change in the will. Poirot suspects that Marthe Daubreuil is a candidate and that the solution to the problem lies in Paris.
Poirot goes to Paris. Meanwhile, in Merlinville-sur-Mer, another body is found in a shed on the golf course. Nobody seems to know this man. If you look at his unkempt hands, he could be a tramp, but he wears clothes that are too fine. The strangest thing is that the man has been dead for about 48 hours, and thus died before Renauld was murdered.
Returning from Paris, Poirot and the village doctor examine the body that was last found and see foam on its lips. As a result of the examination, the doctor announces that the man died of an epileptic fit and was then "stabbed" to death.
When they are alone, Poirot Hastings says that his investigations in Paris have borne fruit and that Madame Daubreuil is really Madame Beroldy, who twenty years ago stood on trial for the death of her elderly husband. The husband was also murdered by two masked men who broke into his house that night and wanted to know "the secret". Madame Beroldy had had a young lover, Georges Conneau, who fled from arrest but sent a letter to the police confessing that there were no masked men and that he himself allegedly stabbed Monsieur Beroldy. Madame Beroldy gave a tearful and convincing performance on the witness stand and convinced the jury of her innocence, but remained suspicious to most people. Then she disappeared.
Poirot concludes that Paul Renauld was really Georges Conneau. He fled to Canada and then to South America, where he made his fortune and started a family with his wife and son. When he returned to France he was very unlucky that the neighbor of the house he bought was Madame Beroldy, now Daubreuil, who began to blackmail him. When a tramp died of an epileptic fit on his property, he saw an opportunity to repeat the plan from twenty years ago by faking his own death and, with the help of his wife, freeing himself from the blackmailer's clutches. His plan was to send his son on a business trip, give his chauffeur a vacation, and stage the kidnapping. Then it was to go to the golf course, where the tramp with his, Renaulds / Conneaus, clothes were to be placed in the prepared grave, after he had disfigured his face with the lead pipe beyond recognition. All of this was to take place at midnight so that Renauld could catch the last train to escape. The alibi was supposed to give him the clock that was set to two o'clock and then destroyed. Unfortunately, the clock did not stop after the strike and the deception was revealed.
What then went wrong was that Renauld himself was stabbed to death by an unknown hand after he had finished digging the grave, but before he could retrieve the tramp's body - that's why his wife passed out during identification: she had her husband, yes not expected.
Jack's innocence is proven by a young girl named Bella, to whom he is engaged. Poirot then realizes that there is only one suspect who could have benefited from Renauld's death - Marthe Daubreuil. She knows nothing about Jack's disinheritance and thinks she can make her fortune by marrying Jack after her father's death. She overheard the Renaulds discussing the plan with the dead tramp and stabbed Renauld on the golf course.
Through a quarrel between Jack and his mother, staged by Poirot, in which the latter threatens to disinherit him, Marthe tries to murder Jack's mother before a possible change of will. Poirot is able to prevent this attempted murder at the last minute, with Marthe himself killing. Your mother disappears again. Jack and his mother go to South America and Hastings ends up with Dulcie Duveen, the sister of the girl who proved Jack's innocence - his "Cinderella", whom he met on the train at the beginning of the novel. Captain Hastings and his wife also emigrate to a farm in South America.
people
- Hercule Poirot
- Captain Arthur Hastings
In the Villa Geneviève
- Paul Renauld - formerly Georges Conneau
- Eloise Renauld - his wife
- Jack Renauld - his son
- Françoise Arrichet - elderly domestic servant
- Léonie Oulard - Younger Domestic Servant
- Denise Oulard - her sister and also a domestic servant
- Auguste - gardener
- Gabriel Stonor - Secretary
In the Villa Marguerite
- Madame Daubreuil - Paul Renauld's neighbor, formerly Madame Jeanne Beroldy
- Marthe Daubreuil - her daughter
Merlinviller and Paris Police
- Lucien Bex - a police superintendent
- Monsieur Hautet - an examining magistrate
- Dr. Durand - the local doctor in Merlinville
- Monsieur Giraud - from the Paris Sûreté
- M. Marchaud - a police officer
Other
- Joseph Aarons - British theater agent
- Bella Duveen - bride of Jack Renauld and actress
- Dulcie Duveen - sister Bella, also an actress and Hastings as Cinderella known
- Maître Grosier - Jack Renauld's advisor
Reviews
The Times Literary Supplement reviewed the novel in its June 7, 1923 edition. This review compared the investigative methods of Poirot with those of Sherlock Holmes and concluded that the book "offers the reader a compelling story of a special kind."
The New York Times Book Review of March 25, 1923: "This is a remarkably good detective story and one that can only be highly recommended to anyone who likes this type of novel." After the plot is detailed, the reviewer continues: " The story has peculiar complications and the reader has to be very astute in guessing the murderer. The author is remarkably adept at constructing and unraveling the mystery that evolves with constantly fresh interests and new entanglements. The novel is a recommendation not only for the way she worked the story out, but also for the high level of artistry with which it was written. And that, although, except in the case of Poirot, she does not care so much about the portraits of the characters - most of the people are drawn with expressive and characteristic lines. "
References to other works
The theater agent Joseph Aarons plays both in the novel The Blue Express and in the short story The Double Sin .
Hastings, always referred to and addressed by Poirot in French as mon cher ami Hastings ("my dear friend Hastings"), does not immediately disappear from the Poirot novels, as Christie planned, but appears in numerous others. It was not until 1937 in The Ball Playing Dog that he disappeared from the scene for the time being. He made his last appearance in the novel Curtain , written in 1940 , which was published more than 30 years later. This novel, in which Christie lets the Belgian master detective die, also speaks of the death of Hastings' wife Dulcie, with whom he had a happy marriage and daughter and who is buried in Argentina.
Important English and German language editions
- 1923 Dodd Mead and Company (New York) the (novel first appeared in the US)
- 1923 first published in the UK: John Lane (The Bodley Head)
- 1927 German first edition in the translation by Irene Kafka
- 1937 edited by Friedrich Pütsch in Goldmannverlag (Leipzig)
- 1999 New edition in translation by Gabriele Haefs by Scherz Verlag
Audio books
- 2003 Murder on the Golf Course (6CDs). Only unabridged reading. Speaker: Martin Maria Schwarz. Director: Hans Eckardt. Translation by Gabriele Haefs. Publishing house and studio for audio book productions (Marburg)
Film, television or stage adaptations
Saturday Night Theater (BBC Radio 4)
The murder on the golf course was broadcast as a 90-minute radio play by the BBC on the eve of Agatha Christie's 100th birthday, September 15, 1990. John Moffatt speaks the Poirot.
Agatha Christie's Poirot
The book was adapted for a 94-minute long episode of the series Agatha Christie's Poirot and on February 11, 1996 as the third episode of the sixth season on the British broadcaster ITV for the first time. David Suchet plays the Hercule Poirot .
There are three big changes to the book:
- In the book Poirot is invited by Renauld, in the film Poirot and Hastings are on vacation in Deauville and Renauld approaches them at the hotel.
- Paul Renauld's murder takes place just ten years after the Beroldy murder (instead of twenty as in book twenty). This has to change the role of Jack Renauld. He is now a stepson who has a strong motive for the murder.
- Dulcie and Bella Duveen are one person in the movie, and Hastings doesn't meet her on the train either. He ends up getting Bella, who Jack Renauld leaves for him.
dedication
Christie dedicated her third book as follows:
“For my husband. A great lover of detective stories and especially mine, for great help and criticism. "
Christie is referring to her first husband, Archibald Christie (1890–1962), from whom she divorced in 1928. After that, the dedication was no longer printed in many editions.
golf
The subject of "golf" does not only play a role in this Christie's novel. The turf ball sport also appears in One Step into the Void , at 4:50 p.m. from Paddington and in Shortly Before Midnight . Golf should play a traumatizing role in Christie's life . Her first husband, according to her own statements, became addicted to golf after the couple moved to London and spent more time on the golf course than with his wife. In this phase of her life, she described herself as a "golf widow". In this respect, the title and dedication are to be understood as an ironic wink with the fence post to the husband. Ultimately, Christie lost the competition with the golf course: Archibald Christie separated from his wife because of his new golf partner, whom he married after the divorce and who remained his wife until his death. After the separation, Agatha Christie gave up the game of golf she had never loved and which she had learned only for the sake of her husband.
Web links
- The Murder on the Links on the official Agatha Christie website
- Murder on the Links (1996) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ 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
- ↑ American Tribute to Agatha Christie
- ^ The English Catalog of Books . Vol XI (AL: January 1921 - December 1925). Kraus Reprint Corporation, Millwood, New York, 1979 (page 310)
- ^ A b Translation by Irene Kafka in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ Thompson, Laura. Agatha Christie: An English Mystery . London: Headline Review. 2008. ISBN 978-0-7553-1488-1 .
- ↑ The Times Literary Supplement June 7, 1923 (Page 389)
- ^ The New York Times Book Review March 25, 1923 (Page 14)
- ↑ Revision by Friedrich Pütsch in 1937 in the catalog of the German National Library
- ^ New translation by Gabriele Haefs in 1999 in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ Audiobook (complete) in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ http://valuablebook.wordpress.com/2008/03/14/agatha-christie-golf-books/