Air date: 16/03/1996
Published: 1937
Dumb Witness is one of those stories where my preferences lay decidedly with the TV adaptation.
The novel opens with the stark sentence, "Miss Arundell died on May 1st." It quickly becomes apparent that what follows is by way of flashback, as we are introduced to aging Miss Emily Arundell, her fussy companion, Miss Lawson, her nieces and nephews Theresa (engaged to a young doctor), the seemingly amoral Charles, and Bella (married to a Greek doctor). All three are keen to get their hands on some of Miss Arundell's considerable fortune.
There is an accident while all three are staying with their aunt. Miss Arundell falls down the stairs at night. Bob, her dog, is blamed for leaving his ball at the top of the stairs. Fortunately Miss Arundell is not seriously injured. While recovering she begins to have doubts about the cause of the incident, and writes to both her solicitor (to change her will) and to Poirot.
It is only when we get to chapter five, and Poirot is reading his mail, that we discover that the previous four chapters have been narrated by Captain Hastings. Although Miss Arundell wrote on April 28th it has taken some weeks for the letter to reach our Belgian detective.
Intrigued, the pair head off for the town of Market Basing. However, upon arrival, they discover that Miss Arundell died some weeks previously - apparently of liver failure. The change of will had seen her leave everything to Miss Lawson.
However, when Poirot discovers a nail in the landing skirting board he suspects that Miss Arundell's fall had been attempted murder. He begins to investigate further.
The middle part of the book is, to my mind, rather ponderous, as Poirot visits and interviews the various leading players and other locals. Eventually Miss Lawson remembers seeing someone kneeling on the landing on the night of the accident, wearing a brooch with the initials 'TA' on it. This obviously suggests Theresa Arundell had attempted to murder her aunt.
However, Poirot eventually realises that Miss Lawson was looking in a mirror at the time! 'TA' therefore becomes 'AT' - (Ara)bella Tanios. Bella had subsequently created the impression that she was terrified of her husband, Dr Tanios, and had left him, seeking sanctuary with Miss Lawson.
A rather unnecessary addition to the story is an interest in spiritualism. Two sisters, the Tripps, and Miss Lawson, show an enthusiasm for the practice, and claim that Miss Arundell was emanating a "luminous haze" at the time of her death.
Very late in the story Poirot introduces the element of phosphorous to account for this. Bella Tanios had poisoned her aunt. She hadn't realised that the will had been changed (although Charles was aware of this before his aunt's death). Motive? She disliked her husband and wanted to be rid of him and to make a life of her own. Poirot gives her a letter with his summary of events. She commits suicide before he gets to do his usual summing up.
Dumb Witness is one of Christie's longer Poirot novels. Considerable tightening up of the storyline takes place to bring it to the small screen.
The adaptation opens with Bob watching someone doing something nefarious on the landing. Miss Lawson hears Bob bark and sees the person in the mirror. We clearly see 'TA' (now on the breast pocket of a dressing gown, rather than on a brooch) - providing the initial clue much earlier.
A common feature in Agatha Christie's Poirot has been for Poirot to be present at the time of a murder, rather than hearing everything in flashback. So here he and Hastings arrive in the Lake District (a different setting to the novel) to see Charles (an old acquaintance of Hastings) attempt to beat the motorboat world speed record. Perhaps because of the link with Hastings Charles is far less criminally intentioned in the adaptation.
Bob's trick with the ball is now that he both bunts it down the stairs and runs after it to catch it (in the novel he bunts it down for others to retrieve). Afterwards he always returns it to his basket - which initially alerts Poirot to the unlikelihood of his ball being at the top of the stairs. The skirting board nail, covered in varnish, has become a screw eyelet, which later gets removed - confirming Poirot's suspicions. This is, I think, more plausible than the nail being left in the skirting board for weeks as in the original novel, and makes for a good clue to Poirot being on the right track.
Theresa's fiance, Dr Donaldson, is omitted altogether, as are several of the village characters that Poirot interviews in the novel. However, Miss Arundel's doctor, Dr Grainger, is retained. In fact, if anything, he has a bigger role in the adaptation. First, he has a romantic association with Miss Lawson (who is not quite so fussy as in the novel), and it is he who first suspects phosphorous when told of a green luminous haze on Miss Arundel's breath shortly before she died. He telephones Dr Tanios, but the call is taken by Bella. Shortly after, he is murdered. Big clue. A red herring is thrown in, however: we see Charles using a mixture containing phosphorous to polish his boat.
In his summing up Poirot refers to the mirror image of 'AT'. Bella, it now transpires, added phosphorous to her aunt's liver capsules, which gets round why she killed her even after the will had been changed: she had, in fact, added the substance to the capsule before the change of will, not knowing exactly when her aunt would take the capsule in question.
Dumb Witness marked the end of season six, which had been spread over 1995 and 1996. It would be four years before we would see Poirot on our TV screens again - the longest gap in the entire history of the programme.
