Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie [103]
Poirot goes on at some length about this young man who ‘was tall, slender, with features of great perfection such as a classical sculptor might have produced.’ We should probably remind ourselves at this point that, although Poirot is male, his author is female and is momentarily allowing herself to assess ideals of beauty in the nineteen sixties. And, in any case, appreciation of beauty is life-enhancing, whereas Poirot’s views on justice and mercy have a certain Old Testament rigour about them: ‘Too much mercy, as he knew from former experience both in Belgium and this country, often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second.’ Surely, all that men can do is to act justly and leave mercy to God. If there should turn out to be no God, then the concept of mercy is without meaning.
Thirty and forty years earlier, Agatha Christie was extremely circumspect in dealing with sexual inversion. In the sixties, however, she begins to talk of ‘queers’ and even, in Hallowe’en Party, allows a discussion of a lesbian relationship. Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis.
A certain trick with a person’s will in Hallowe’en Party has been used in an earlier Christie novel, but even if the reader happens to remember it he will not be helped thereby to discover the murderer. Although she may be beginning to fail in one or two other aspects of her craft, Dame Agatha retains her ability to surprise.
About Charles Osborne
This essay was adapted from Charles Osborne’s The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie: A Biographical Companion to the Works of Agatha Christie (1982, rev. 1999). Mr. Osborne was born in Brisbane in 1927. He is known internationally as an authority on opera, and has written a number of books on musical and literary subjects, among them The Complete Operas of Verdi (1969); Wagner and His World (1977); and W.H. Auden: The Life of a Poet (1980). An addict of crime fiction and the world’s leading authority on Agatha Christie, Charles Osborne adapted the Christie plays Black Coffee (Poirot); Spider’s Web; and The Unexpected Guest into novels. He lives in London.
About Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in 100 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Mrs Christie is the author of eighty crime novels and short story collections, nineteen plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.
Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was written towards the end of World War I (during which she served in the Voluntary Aid Detachments). In it she created Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian investigator who was destined to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. After having been rejected by a number of houses, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was eventually published by The Bodley Head in 1920.
In 1926, now averaging a book a year, Agatha Christie wrote her masterpiece. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the first of her books to be published by William Collins and marked the beginning of an author-publisher relationship that lasted for fifty years and produced over seventy books. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was also the first of Agatha Christie’s works to be dramatised—as Alibi—and to have a successful run in London’s West End. The Mousetrap, her most famous play, opened in 1952 and runs to this day at St Martin’s Theatre in the West End; it is the longest-running play in history.
Agatha Christie was made a Dame in 1971.