Curtain (novel)
Curtain: Hercule Poirot's Last Case (original title Curtain: Poirot's Last Case ) is the 65th detective novel by Agatha Christie . It was published in the UK in September 1975 at the Collins Crime Club and later that year in the US at Dodd, Mead and Company . The Scherz Verlag (Bern, Munich) published the German-language first edition in 1976 with the translation by Ute Seesslen, which is still used today.
It determines Hercule Poirot in his 33rd and last novel. His investigation will be the first time since Dumb Witness of Arthur Hastings accompanied.
The novel alludes to Styles - the setting of the author's first novel: The Missing Link in the Chain .
Christie had left the manuscript of the book in a bank vault for more than 30 years - for bad times. It was only when it became clear in 1974 that she, now 84 years old, could not write another novel, did she authorize publication. The novel is the last book published in her lifetime.
introduction
After a year alone, Poirot, now plagued by osteoarthritis, and Captain Hastings, who is now widowed, meet again. When they receive an invitation to Styles, the house where they solved their first case together, they quickly accept it. But when the great detective calls one of the seemingly harmless guests "X", a ruthless serial killer, people doubt his sanity and the performance of his famous gray matter. But Poirot is sure that only he can prevent another murder, even if he has to risk his own life.
action
The killer, simply referred to by Poirot as X, is believed to have been involved in five previous murders. In all cases there was a clear suspect. Four of these suspects are now dead (one was hanged). Only in the case of Freda Clay, who allegedly murdered her aunt with an overdose of morphine, wasn't there enough evidence. Hastings claims that X is very unlikely to be involved in all five deaths, but Poirot, now in a wheelchair and assisted by his new servant Curtiss, refuses to reveal who X is. However, he is said to be staying in Styles, which has been converted into a hotel by the new owners Colonel and Mrs. Luttrell.
Hastings makes some discoveries the next day. This is how he met Elizabeth Cole, who also lives in the hotel. She tells him that she is the sister of Margaret Litchfield, who confessed to the murder of her father in one of the five cases. Margaret died at Broadmoor Hospital, and Elizabeth feels stigmatized by the incident. Later that day, along with a few other people, he overheard an argument between Colonel Luttrell and his wife. A little later he injured her with a gun when he apparently mistook her for a rabbit. Hastings suspects this is exactly the type of accident X is associated with, but Mrs. Luttrell recovers quickly.
Hastings is appalled that his daughter Judith is drawn to Major Allerton. Because he has found out that he is married, has alienated himself from his wife, a Catholic, but is not divorced. While Hastings and Elizabeth stand on the terrace with another guest, Stephen Norton, a bird watcher, Norton looks through his binoculars and sees something that excites him terribly. Hastings concludes that it is about Allerton and his daughter Judith. After his awkward attempts to change Judith's mind fail, he decides to murder Allerton. While waiting for an opportune time to poison him, he falls asleep. The next day, however, his opinion of the events changed.
Barbara Franklin, the wife of Judith's boss Dr. Franklin and childhood friend of Sir William Boyd Carrington, dies the following evening. She was poisoned with physostigmine , which is extracted from the calabar bean . And it is precisely this plant that is researched by her husband. After Poirot testifies in the judicial investigation that Mrs. Franklin was very excited and he saw her come out of the laboratory with a small bottle, a decision is made to commit suicide. But Hastings has his doubts and Poirot confirms his suspicions.
Norton, still agitated by what he had seen but not told, asks Hastings to arrange a meeting with Poirot. Poirot agrees, but asks Norton not to speak to anyone about what he has seen. During the night Hastings woke up to a noise and saw Norton walking into his bedroom in his pajamas and his gray hair hanging down untidily. The next morning, Norton is found dead in his locked room with a hole in the exact center of his forehead, the room key in his pajamas pocket, and near a pistol that a housekeeper recognizes as his own. Apparently X has struck again.
The following night Poirot dies of natural causes - not without leaving some clues to Hastings. There is a note stating that Hastings is to speak to Georges (Poirot's long-time servant) and two books - one is Othello by William Shakespeare and the other is the 1915 play John Ferguson by St. John, which is no longer familiar to today's readers Ervine , an Irish poet.
In the weeks following Poirot's death, Hastings discovers that Judith has kept Dr. Loved Franklin and is now marrying him. Both go to Africa as researchers. Was Judith the murderer? When he meets with Georges, he learns that Poirot had worn a wig and that the reasons for hiring the new servant Curtiss were vague. Should Curtiss be the killer?
The dissolution takes place only after four months, through Poirot's farewell letter, which he has deposited with a law firm. In it, Poirot confesses, in addition to wearing the wig, that his beard was also wrong. And he proves Norton is Mr. X. Like Iago from Othello and a character from Ervine's play, he had perfected a technique that would allow him to influence other people to do things they would never have done under normal circumstances. So the reader could witness how he influenced Colonel Luttrell to shoot his wife or how he got Hastings to almost kill Allerton. It was also one of Norton's contrivances that created the impression that Judith loved Allerton. Poirot knew about all of this but could not prove it, so he tried to prevent the worst. Among other things, by putting a sleeping pill in the chocolate of Hastings, who slept through the planned murder of Allerton.
Depressed by the two missed opportunities, Norton turns to Mrs. Franklin - who immediately tries to kill her husband in order to return to her rich and attractive childhood sweetheart, Boyd Carrington. This murder was prevented (what an irony of fate) by Hastings, who turned the table in front of the shelf in search of a book (again Shakespeare's Othello) and swapped Mrs. and Mr. Franklin's coffee cups with it. So Mrs. Franklin himself drank the poisoned coffee.
Still having no evidence, Poirot decided to kill Norton to keep Norton from causing further harm. At the joint meeting he confronted Norton with the truth and threatened him with conviction. They both drank chocolate, but Norton insisted on swapping cups. In both cups, however, was the same sleeping pill that was used to put Hastings out of action. Poirot was used to taking the drug and nothing happened to him.
When Norton was unconscious, Poirot put him in his wheelchair (because he had only faked his mobility and hired a new servant to do this) and drove him back to Norton's room. There Poirot took off his beard, tousled his gray hair, and put on Norton's pajamas. Then he staged the performance described above. The fact that Norton was seen alive after leaving Poirot's room did not lead to suspicion of Poirot. Then he locked the room with a spare key.
Poirot's last act was to write his suicide note and await his death. His last wish was that Hastings should marry Elizabeth Cole.
people
- Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective
- Captain Arthur Hastings, Poirot's friend and Judith's father
- Curtiss, Poirot's servant
- Dr. John Franklin, a research chemist
- Barbara Franklin, his disabled wife
- Judith Hastings, Franklin's laboratory assistant and Captain Hastings' daughter
- Nurse Craven, Barbara Franklin's nurse
- Sir William Boyd Carrington, the former governor of a province in India
- Major Allerton, a womanizer
- Stephen Norton, a bird watcher
- Col. Toby Luttrell, owner of Styles Court
- Mrs. Luttrell, his wife
- Elizabeth Cole
- Georges, Poirot's ex-servant
- X, the person Poirot calls the murderer, whose identity remains a secret until the end of the novel.
References to other works
Since the novel was written in the 1940s, there are of course no references to the author's late work. The delayed publication also results in some anachronisms. So one speaks in the novel about the perpetrator going to hang. The death penalty was abolished in the United Kingdom in 1965.
There are also some questions about the age of Hastings. He came to The Missing Link in the Chain as a World War I wounded man and was about thirty years old. Because he writes about John Cavendish in the first chapter "He was also about fifteen years older than me, although he didn't look like forty-five." And since we know that Poirot did not survive the 1972 novel Forgotten Elephants , Hastings must be a good 90 years old. There is no need to calculate Poirot's age using this method, since in 1916 he was a retired police officer.
References in other plants
In The Murders of Mr. ABC , Inspector Japp says to Poirot: "I wouldn't be surprised if you even investigated your own death for a criminal investigation". The plan for Hercule Poirot's death was already in the author's head in 1935. On August 6, 1975, The New York Times published an obituary for Poirot on its front page. It was the first and only time such an ad was shown for a fictional personality.
Important publications in English and German
- 1975 Collins Crime Club (London), September 1975, ISBN 0-00-231619-6
- 1975 Dodd Mead and Company (New York), ISBN 0-39-607191-0
- 1976 German language first edition Scherzverlag in the translation by Ute Seesslen
Film adaptations
This novel was filmed in 2013 for the English television series Agatha Christie's Poirot . The episode aired on November 13, 2013.
Audio books
The novel is one of the few by the author who has not been translated into a German audio book.
Web links
- Curtain on the official Agatha Christie website
Individual evidence
- ↑ Collins Crime Club - A checklist of First Editions Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15)
- ^ Cooper and 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
- ↑ Haining, Peter. Agatha Christie: Murder in Four Acts (Page 17). Virgin Books 1990 ISBN 1-85227-273-2 .
- ↑ New York Times article