Goodbye to Mrs. Oliver
Reunion with Mrs. Oliver (original title Dead Man's Folly ) is the 48th detective novel by Agatha Christie . It first appeared in the US in October 1956 with Dodd, Mead and Company and on November 5 of the same year in the United Kingdom with the Collins Crime Club . The German first edition was published in 1959 by Scherz Verlag (Bern; Stuttgart; Vienna) with the translation by Dorothea Gotfurt, which is still used today .
It is determined by Hercule Poirot in his 27th novel and Ariadne Oliver in their third novel.
background
In 1954, Agatha Christie wrote the short story Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly , originally to use the proceeds to create new windows for the Church of Churston Ferrers . There are numerous local references in it, including to her Greenway Estate . She then decided to change, and two years later she decided to expand the story into a novel. The original story was only rediscovered and published in 2013, and published in German in 2015 as "The Secret of Greenshore Garden: A Case for Hercule Poirot".
The house in which the novel is set is Christie's own in Devon : Greenway House in Greenway Estate , which in the novel is called Nasse House.
introduction
When Poirot is invited by the famous crime writer Ariadne Oliver to a country house in Devon, he gladly accepts this invitation out of respect for her famous “intuition”. A murder hunt organized by Mrs. Oliver will take place at Nasse House as part of a garden party, which Poirot is to "professionally" accompany. But soon a murder happens and the game becomes serious.
action
On the way to Nasse House, Poirot takes two hitchhikers with him - a Dutch woman and an Italian woman - who live in the youth hostel on the neighboring property. When he arrives, Mrs. Oliver portrays an uncertain feeling that her staging of the murder hunt is being influenced by someone. However, she cannot make them out and is only guided by her intuition.
Nasse House is owned by the wealthy George Stubbs, who acquires a title of nobility through adoption and can be addressed as Sir George. His much younger wife is the seemingly stupid and easily influenced Hattie, a young woman who was introduced to him by Amy Folliat, the only surviving family member of the former owners of Nasse House. Her sons died in World War II and she now lives in the property's gatehouse.
Another visitor to the country estate is the architect Michael Weyman, who especially criticizes the construction of a folly a few years ago in a completely unsuitable place on the property and who is supposed to design a tennis pavilion.
On the day of the festival, Hattie receives a letter in which her cousin Etienne de Sousa announces his visit. She is excited and calls him a murderer. In the murder game, Marlene Tucker takes on the role of the victim. She is supposed to wait in the boathouse and play dead when other players arrive. Poirot visits the party and later discovers Marlene's body with Mrs. Oliver. She has been strangled. At the same time, Hattie is also missing.
The investigation focuses first on Etienne de Sousa, whose appearance appears to be linked to the disappearance of Hattie. Another suspect is Amanda Brewis, George's secretary, who is in love with him and who was sent to the boathouse by Hattie with some refreshment for Marlene. Further confusion is caused by the behavior of the Legges, who have something to hide and who met a gentleman in a turtle shirt on the premises. It later emerges that this meeting had nothing to do with the crime, but with Legge's career as a nuclear physicist.
Poirot's attention turns to Amy Folliat, who seems to know more than she says. After the boatswain Merdell dies, Poirot discovers that he was Marlene's grandfather. Now Poirot brings all the traces together: Marlene had learned from her grandfather that he had once found a corpse on the property in the forest. And in George he had also recognized James Folliat, the former owner. Poirot found out about it through his sentence "There will always be folliats in Nasse House".
James was missing in the war, but not dead. His mother had set him up with the simple-minded but very rich Hattie. With their money, he was able to take on a new identity and keep Nasse House in the family. Little did his mother know he was already married, so he killed Hattie, buried her in the foundations of the Folly, and replaced her with his first wife, a young Italian.
Marlene blackmailed George for guessing the truth. George and Hattie decide to kill her. The day before the festival, Hattie begins to create a new identity - that of the Italian hitchhiker. Then she murdered Marlene as Hattie and leaves the party dressed as the Italian. Hattie had to leave that day at the latest because her cousin had announced a visit a few weeks earlier and he would have recognized the dizziness immediately.
George is no longer seen until the end of the novel, which focuses on his mother's desperation.
people
- Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective
- Ariadne Oliver, a famous writer
- Inspector Bland, the investigating officer
- Sergeant Frank Cottrell, a police officer
- Constable Bob Hoskins, a police officer
- Sir George Stubbs, owner of Nasse House
- Hattie, Lady Stubbs, George's wife
- Etienne de Sousa, Lady Stubbs' cousin
- Amanda Brewis, George's secretary
- Amy Folliat, the former owner, now lives in the gatehouse
- Mr. Masterton, Member of Parliament
- Mrs. Masterton, his wife
- Captain Jim Warburton
- Michael Weyman, an architect
- Alec Legge, a nuclear physicist
- Sally Legge, his wife
- Marlene Tucker, a girl from the village
- Marilyn Tucker, Marlene's younger sister
- Mrs. Tucker, Marlene's mother
- Merdell, a boatswain
- Henden, the butler
- an Italian hitchhiker
- a Dutch hitchhiker
- a young man in a turtle shirt
Film adaptations
The novel was filmed in 1986 with Peter Ustinov as Poirot and Jean Stapleton as Oliver and published under the German title Mord with roles distributed . The action was relocated to the 1980s and filmed in West Wycombe Park in Buckinghamshire.
In 2013 he was filmed again for the English television series Agatha Christie's Poirot . The episode aired on October 30, 2013.
computer game
On October 15, 2009, “I-Play” released a computer game based on the novel.
Major expenses
- 1956 Dodd Mead and Company (New York), October 1956
- 1956 Collins Crime Club (London), 5th November 1956
- 1959 German first edition by Scherz Verlag in the translation by Dorothea Gotfurt
Web links
- Dead Man's Folly on the official Agatha Christie website
- Dead Man's Folly (1986) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Agatha Christie: Dead Man's Folly (September 30, 2011 memento on the Internet Archive ) the game on the I-Play web site
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 15)
- ↑ a b German first edition in the catalog of the German National Library
- ^ Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly. Retrieved December 9, 2015 .
- ↑ 'The Secret of Greenshore Garden' in the catalog of the German National Library