51. Sad Cypress

Air date: 26/12/2003
Published: 1940

For the second consecutive episode of Agatha Chrisie's Poirot we meet an innocent woman arrested and tried for murder. However, while Caroline Crale had perished many years earlier, Hercule Poirot was in a position to save Elinor Carlisle. And that, in a nutshell, is what Sad Cypress is all about.

Both the original novel and the TV adaptation open in the middle of the court proceedings, with the accused almost in a dream, detached from all that is going on around her. We then jump back to the beginning of events that led to the murder of Mary Gerrard.

Elinor receives an anonymous letter, warning that someone is out to cheat her out of her aunt's estate. She and Roddy Welman - her fiance (and her cousin by marriage) - go to visit Aunt Laura, who has suffered a stroke and is bed bound. She is cared for by Nurse O'Brien and Nurse Hopkins. Mary Gerrard, daughter of the groundsman, is also in attendance. Aunt Laura likes her and has paid for expensive education. We quickly learn that Mary's aunt is, or was, a nurse in New Zealand and that there is something in Aunt Laura's past that is a bit of a mystery. Laura dies, apparently after a second stroke. As she died intestate Elinor receives everything. In the meantime Roddy has taken a shine to Mary and, as a consequence, Elinor calls the engagement off.

The central sequence of events occurs when Elinor is clearing her aunt's possessions. Nurse Hopkins is helping Mary clear stuff at the nearby lodge where her father - who has also recently died - lived. Elinor makes fish paste sandwiches for them all. Nurse Hopkins make tea for herself and Mary. While Elinor and the nurse are upstairs Mary dies - of what is later discovered to be morphone hydrochloride poisoning. Elinor is arrested; the assumption being that the sandwiches were poisoned, and the motive apparently being her jealousy and anger at Mary breaking up her engagement to Roddy.

At this point the local GP, Dr Peter Lord, calls in Poirot to save the day. It is apparent very quickly that he is fond of Elinor. In the middle part of the novel Poirot, in typical fashion, interviews all the key characters in turn. It emerges that Mary was, in fact, the illegitimate daughter of Laura, and had been adopted by old man Gerrard and his wife.

Interestingly, Poirot's deductions are played out not in the usual manner, confronting all the key characters, but in the court scene. Nurse Hopkins was, it turns out, Mary's aunt from New Zealand. She had pursuaded Mary to make a will leaving everything to her aunt. As the illegitimate daughter of Laura Mary, as the true next of kin, would have inherited everything, rather than Elinor. Nurse Hopkins, therefore, murdered her for the money. She did so by poisoning not the sandwiches but the tea. She then injected herself with apomorphine hydrochloride - a powerful emetic, which enabled her to vomit up the poison she had also drunk in the tea! Elinor had seen her in the kitchen with a scratch on her arm. The nurse had claimed this was from a rose thorn - but it emerges that the variety of rose growing outside the kitchen doesn't have thorns! She had also poisoned Laura, to ensure she died intestate. Two witnesses - one flown from New Zealand, no less - testify that Nurse Hopkins is, in fact, Mary Riley. We never find out what happens to her (she has abruptly left the court), but assume she is eventually arrested. In the aftermath of an acquittal Dr Lord is persuaded by Poirot that he would make a better match for Elinor than Roddy.

The TV adaptation made rather more changes to the plot than normal, although it stuck to the central facts of the case. Poirot is called in much earlier: after the arrival of the letter, rather than after the murder of Mary. He therefore meets Mary when visiting the scene.

The biggest change, however, concerns the finale. For TV we return to the court case and Elinor is found guilty. This makes for a more theatrical 'race against time' to find the true culprit before Elinor is hanged.

Poirot lays a trap for Nurse Hopkins who tries to pull the 'poison in the tea' trick (followed by the "I'll inject myself to vomit it up again" trick!), but Poirot has switched his teacup for one with a rose in it containing something else (water, perhaps, or one of his 'infusions'?). He fakes starting to suffer the effects of poison before 'recovering' and unmasking the murderer.

The original ending seemed rather rushed, particularly given the witnesses Poirot is able to produce from nowhere to testify in court to the true identity of Nurse Hopkins. Perhaps this accounts for the very different ending for TV.

Curiously at one point Poirot, back in London, buys a newspaper. The billboard headline announces the death of Gershwin. The newspaper is dated September 16th, 1937. Unfortunately, George Gershwin died on July 11th of that year. Surely news travelled quicker than that in the 1930s?