The Floating Admiral - Agatha Christie [123]
15. The Admiral’s pipe was left on the Vicar’s table during his visit. It has no significance in the plot except that, when coupled with Holland’s story of having seen the Admiral at Rundel Croft after midnight, it may serve to throw fresh suspicion on the Vicar.
CHAPTER VIII
By Ronald A. Knox
CHAPTER 1. The salient feature of the situation—none of the later contributors have dealt with it—seems to me the fact that the body is in a boat at all. A murder in a boat is very unlikely; but why put a body into a boat, when it would be simpler to throw it into the stream? Unless, indeed, a very elaborate frame-up is intended, the position of the boat on the river having been artificially engineered so as to cast suspicion of murder upon some innocent person.
If Canon Whitechurch has any murderer in view at all, Ware should be the man—we must assume that Canon Whitechurch respects the honour of the cloth. Ceteris paribus, in a modern detective story the first person named is likely to be the criminal.
In favour of Ware’s guilt, it must be observed that he claims not to recognise Penistone’s corpse, though he had met him long before on the China station. It does not seem probable that Ware would not know Penistone by sight after even a month’s residence, in the height of the summer, since Ware was always fishing, and Penistone kept a boat. Against Ware’s guilt, the fact that Penistone has come to settle next door to him forms an improbable coincidence, if we are to suppose that Ware harboured an old grudge against him.
I once laid it down that no Chinaman should appear in a detective story. I feel inclined to extend the rule so as to apply to residents in China. It appears that Admiral Penistone, Sir W. Denny, Walter Fitzgerald, Ware, and Holland are all intimate with China, which seems overdoing it.
Chapter 2. I imagine that the Coles meant to incriminate Elma, though they may have had their eye on Denny.
Chapter 3. Wade seems to suspect Elma; the packing up or concealing of her evening things points this way. (Why did she dress up to meet the Vicar? This must be considered.) The words “And if it was …” in Chapter III seem more designed to incriminate Ware; so does Appleton’s theory of the murder having taken place up-stream.
Does dew form on boats floating in rivers? The encyclopædia gives me no help.
Chapter 4. Mrs. Christie seems suspicious of Denny; he is hard up, Penistone’s change of residence is attributed to a desire to be near him, and, according to Mrs. Davis, Denny was none too pleased over it. On the ordinary principles of a mystery story, this should mean that Penistone is blackmailing Denny. I cannot find out what is the importance, if any, of the Vicar’s runaway wife. She left her husband in 1920, well after the War, so it seems difficult to identify her with Elma, who was with her uncle at that time. How far is Whynmouth from London?
Chapter 5. Rhode seems to be fixing it on Holland. Penistone might have gone to Whynmouth to interview Holland, who met and murdered him, and conveyed him up-stream; afterwards transferring the corpse into the Vicar’s boat, and running the other boat in head first. But of course Denny is under suspicion, from the position of his house. And again, Ware’s insistence that the murder was committed down-stream might be an effort to exculpate the real criminal, himself. How far up was the river tidal?
Chapter 6. Kennedy seems to point to the Vicar. If not, why was the weapon taken from the Vicarage summer-house? (Unless