47. Lord Edgware Dies

Air date: 19/02/2000
Published: 1933

After the strange setting of the previous production we returned to more familiar ground with the next episode in Agatha Christie's Poirot.

Lord Edgware Dies is, I found, an enjoyable read. At one and the same time, it is both simple and complex. Simple in that it is built upon what I might call the rare 'double bluff' of whodunnit plots: where the most obvious suspect is, for once, the murderer! And yet, there is a lot of detail to hold on to as the story unfolds.

Poirot and Hastings are attending a theatrical show given by the American impressionist Carlotta Adams. Among her 'victims' is actress Jane Wilkinson, who later approaches Poirot to act as go-between in her attempt to get a divorce from her husband, Lord Edgware. He, apparently, refuses to accede to her request. She is not averse to stating, rather theatrically, that she could well go and bump him off!

When he is later found stabbed in the neck at his home, she is, therefore, the obvious suspect. However - and much to the frustration of Inspector Japp - she appears to have a watertight alibi: on the evening in question she was dining at someone's house. During the evening she mysteriously took a phone call from someone who quickly hung up. Carlotta Adams is later found dead, from an overdose of veronal. Still later another dinner party guest, aspiring writer Donald Ross, is also killed (the death-toll begins to look like a plot of Midsomer Murders!).

Characters intended to lead us off the scent include actor Bryan Martin, a one-time love interest of Jane Wilkinson, Miss Carroll, Lord Edgware's secretary, Jenny Driver (a friend of Carlotta Adams), Edgware's daughter Geraldine, who admits she hated him, and Ronald Marsh, his nephew, who becomes the new Lord Edgware.

The essence of the plot is that Wilkinson had persuaded Carlotta Adams, as part of a 'friendly hoax', to impersonate her and attend the dinner party. This allowed Wilkinson to go and murder her husband. The phone call was made by her, to double-check that Adams had not been rumbled. Adams, of course, then had to be murdered before she found out the purpose for which she had been involved. Ross is killed because during a subsequent lunch conversation Wilkinson shows little understanding of the role of Paris in ancient Greek mythology - whereas the 'other Jane Wilkinson' had done so at the original supper party.

There are, for me, two things to note about the TV adaptation. First, the changes and simplifications to the plotline. In the original Bryan Martin had intercepted a letter from Lord Edgware to his wife granting a divorce; for TV Wilkinson herself has done this. The reason? The man she wants to marry, The Duke of Merton, is a Catholic. While marrying a widow would be no problem; marrying a divorcee would. In the original it is Carlotta Adams who books into a hotel as the mysterious Miss Van Dusen (where she and Wilkinson twice exchange clothes during the fateful evening); for TV Wilkinson, an actress herself, of course, is the one to do this.

In the original Wilkinson is absent when Poirot does his usual grand summing-up. Later Hastings, our narrator, records a letter she subsequently wrote to Poirot. For TV she is present for Poirot's theatrical denouement. In both, though, she offers the line about possibly earning a place in Madame Tussard's for her crime.

Jenny Driver has, for some reason, become Penny Driver. Ronald Marsh is, in addition to being the hard-up heir to the title of Lord Edgware, now a theatrical producer. Ironically, more is made for TV of butler Alton. In the original it is not clear why, at one point, he does a runner. On TV he has stolen money from Edgware's safe (having discovered the dead body). He later dies, falling through a roof at an airport while trying to evade the police.

The second thing to note concerns the chronology of Poirot - something I have touched upon several times during this 'journey'.

In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Poirot (already an oldish man when Christie first created him) had retired to the village of King's Abbot to grow marrows. Nothing is said at the end of the book to suggest what might happen to him in the future. In terms of the original publications that book was followed by The Big Four - something of a mess of a story, being an amalgem of several short stories, and produced at a difficult time in Agatha Christie's personal life. The Mystery of the Blue Train and Peril at End House would follow before Lord Edgware Dies was published. By then, presumably, many fans will have lost interest in issues of chronology, the age of Poirot, or whether or not he continued living in King's Abbot.

It's interesting to note that the TV producers were, to an extent, aware of these issues. At the end of the adaptation of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Poirot comments on not being able to run away from the evils of human nature. In Lord Edgware Dies we are clearly meant to assume he took the decision to return to London and his private detective practice. Miss Lemon is seen administering the unpacking of files; she and Poirot go to welcome Hastings home from Argentina; and at a supper party that evening Inspector Japp announces that it is just like 'old times', with the four team members back together: all that's missing, he muses, is a body!

46. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Air date: 02/01/2000
Published: 1926

Sunday, January 2nd, 2000. The froth on the big new year's celebrations had gone. The so-called millennium bug had not, it seemed, wiped out our computers. Many people were, no doubt, contemplating a return to work the next morning after an extended Christmas break.

And this was the night Agatha Christie's Poirot returned to our screens after a four year gap. It seems strange looking back on that time now, although I'll say more when I get to David Suchet's reflections.

The series returned with an adaptation of the book often acclaimed as the masterpiece which really established Christie's reputation: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

When I embarked on this project of comparing the written word with the TV adaptations I had to consider the inevitable revealing of plot lines - 'spoilers', as they are called in the entertainment industry. I consoled myself with the likelihood that the only people who would be interested in my analytical musings would be fans; those who had already seen the TV productions, or read the books - or both.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is the first story where I have had qualms about revealing all. So (and this is probably the only time I will write this) if you don't know the story, you might care to skip this chapter until you do.

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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the third novel to feature Hercule Poirot. It was also preceded by the publication of the first collection of eleven short stories, Poirot Investigates.Those who had already become fans were, therefore, by now familiar with Christie's use of the 'character-narrator' technique; where someone within the story tells the story. That character had been Poirot's trusty sidekick Captain Arthur Hastings.

Now we meet a new character-narrator, village GP Dr James Sheppard. Poirot, already aged when readers first met him in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, had retired to the village of King's Abbot to grow marrows!

The big surprise Christie pulls in this book (and I can only imagine the initial impact it had when first published) is that the narrator turns out to be the murderer!

The story begins with the announcement that a Mrs Ferrars had died. She had overdosed, apparently, on veronol, a year after the death of her husband. Sheppard tells us about wealthy Roger Ackroyd and the various members of his family and staff. When he and his sister Caroline first meet their neighbour Poirot they assume he is a retired hairdresser!

Ackroyd invites the doctor to dinner and later reveals that Mrs Ferrars, with whom he had developed a romantic attachment, had confessed to having murdered her husband. Someone else knew about this and was blackmailing her. That very evening a letter arrives from Mrs Ferrars (written before she committed suicide) in which she will, it seems, reveal the name of the blackmailer.

The doctor leaves. At home he apparently receives a phone call from servant Parker saying Ackroyd has been murdered, but on returning to Ackroyd's home Parker knows nothing of this! On entering the study the pair discover Ackroyd has, in fact, been stabbed to death.

Suspicion eventually falls on Ackroyd's step-son Roger Paton, who has disappeared. Flora Ackroyd, daughter of Ackroyd's widowed sister-in-law (who is engaged to Paton), persuades Poirot to become involved in the investigations.

As in a number of Christie's stories everything revolves around timings. Ackroyd is heard talking in his study sometime after the doctor had left. Personal assistant Geoffrey Raymond was playing billiards with another guest, Hector Blunt. The doctor passed a mysterious visitor on his way home. The study window was open. Parker recognised a chair had been moved when he and the doctor entered the study. And someone had a rendevous in the garden summer house.

Poirot manages to navigate his way through all these distractions to work out that the doctor was the blackmailer and he killed Ackroyd to prevent this becoming known. He had used a dictaphone, hidden behind the chair, to make it sound as though Ackroyd was alive later than he was. For those with keen observation skills - or, in my case, for those who know the story in advance - there are a couple of clear clues in the doctor's narration of events to suggest he was the killer.

We eventually find out that Paton has already secretly married the parlourmaid, Ursula Bourne. Another red herring concerns the drug-taking son of one of the staff.

So how would the scriptwriters handle this plot for TV? The adaptation begins when it is all over, and Poirot is reading the journal written by the murderer. Poirot's reading is cleverly interspersed throughout.

The doctor already knows Poirot as a retired detective. His sister appears less of a nosey gossip-monger than in the original. The adaptation is very faithful to the main key elements of the plot, with a few inevitable simplifications for TV. Some of the characters, like Hector Blunt and some of the servants, are omitted, along with some sub-plots - notably the drug-taking Charles Kent. Our old friend Chief Inspector Japp replaces Inspector Raglan, and his first meeting with Poirot is something of a touching reunion between two old comrades.

One surprise is an additional murder! Parker is run over on his way home from an evening drinking at the local pub. Clearly he was killed for being too observant about details (like the chair that was moved).

It is, however, the finale that provides the biggest difference. In the original Poirot confronts the doctor with the true sequence of events. The doctor departs and the last, sombre chapter sees him writing immediately before, apparently, taking his own life.

For TV his sister finds the journal in the glove compartment of the doctor's car, along with a gun (which, apparently, he had originally taken with him to kill Ackroyd with, before deciding to take advantage of an ornamental daggar already in the house). She joins the denouement conversation and allows Sheppard to grab the gun and attempt an escape. However, he does eventually take his own life - with the final bullet in the revolver.

The dramatic chase through Ackroyd's factory seemed somewhat out of keeping with the plot, and with the character of the doctor himself.

At one point Poirot and Japp visit London, and take the opportunity to look round Poirot's old flat. There he talks of ghosts from the past. At the end of the episode he confesses that he could not escape human nature by simply retiring to the country - paving the way, we assume, for normality to be resumed in the next episode!