Third girl - Agatha Christie [110]
Later, Poirot likens this youth to a Van Dyke portrait, and defends him against a charge of effeminacy. It is not that Poirot is unnaturally interested in young men, simply that his author is more sharply critical of her own sex. She is critical, too, of modern craftsmanship. When Mrs. Oliver visits a flat in Borodene Mansions, she comes to a door marked 67 in metal numbers affixed to the centre of the door: ‘The numeral 7 detached itself and fell on her feet as she arrived.’
Mrs. Oliver (or, through her, Mrs. Christie) also takes a dig at her publisher — ‘I don’t believe you know whether anything I write is good or bad’ — and complains of the things strangers say to her in public, such as ‘how much they like my books, and how they’ve been longing to meet me’. Cynicism infects one or two of the other characters as well, among them the incredibly ancient ex-soldier, Sir Roderick Horsefield, who is engaged in writing his memoirs: ‘All the chaps are doing it nowadays. We’ve had Montgomery and Alanbrooke all shooting their mouths off in print, mostly saying what they thought of the other generals. We’ve even had old Moran, a respectable physician, blabbing about his important patient.’ (Lord Moran, former President of the Royal College of Physicians, published his Winston Churchill, the Struggle for Survival in 1966.)
Several characters from Third Girl have appeared or will appear, in other works of Agatha Christie. Mr Goby had begun gathering information for Poirot as early as The Mystery of the Blue Train in 1928, and will be called upon again in Elephants Can Remember in 1972. Dr Stillingfleet, a friend of Poirot, appeared in the story, ‘The Dream’ (The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding: 1960). At the end of Third Girl, he is planning to go to Australia and marry someone he has met during Poirot’s investigation of the murders in which Norma Restarick was involved. Chief Inspector Neele had become a friend of Miss Marple in A Pocket Full of Rye (1953), at which time he held the rank of Inspector.
A ‘ridiculous nursery rhyme’ comes into Poirot’s mind and helps him to find the solution to the Third Girl mystery, though exactly how ‘Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub’ manages to do this is not vouchsafed to the reader. Third Girl is more impressive as an elderly author’s picture of the ‘swinging sixties’ than as a murder mystery. Some Christie commentators will not even allow it this merit. Robert Barnard8 calls it ‘one of Christie’s more embarrassing attempts to haul herself abreast of the swinging sixties’, and Barzun and Taylor9 incline to the belief that ‘admirers of the author will not blemish their vision of her by reading this late one.’
8In A Talent to Deceive (1980).
9In A Catalogue of Crime (1971).
Admirers of Agatha Christie will doubtless make up their own minds. In the view of this writer, they would be unwise to ignore Third Girl.
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