53. The Hollow

Air Date: 26/04/2004
Published: 1946

The Hollow is, on the whole, a rather sad tale.

While it may sound strange to say so, whodunnits very often aren't. In real life, of course, murder is shocking, distressing, disturbing and, yes, sad. But in the fictional world of the whodunnit things are generally different. I doubt, for example, anyone has ever felt remorse for poor Dr Black during a game of Cluedo.

And while written whodunnits have considerably more content than a board game, the fact is that we as readers (or viewers) are with the detective, or the amateur sleuth, trying to unravel clues. It is, at the end of the day, entertainment.

That's not to say that your average whodunnit is slapstick; it's just to recognise that the abiding feeling at the end of it all is not usually sadness. And yet The Hollow is a sad story.

In the book's opening chapters we are introduced to various members of the quirky Angkatell family circle: Sir Henry and his absent-minded wife Lucy; cousins Midge, Henrietta, Edward and David; and Dr John Christow and his seemingly dull-witted, clumsy wife, Gerda. Christow, a Harley Street GP with a passion for medical research, is having a fling with Henrietta, a sculptress. Dull and boring Edward, who lives at the family's older country pile, is lovesick for Henrietta.

The family gather for a weekend houseparty. Hercule Poirot is staying at a nearby cottage for the weekend and has been invited for Sunday lunch. However, on the Saturday evening the actress Veronica Cray, an old flame of Christow's, turns up, ostensibly in search of a box of matches, but evidently to reacquaint herself with Christow. An evening of passion follows after he walks her home. The next day she sends him a note summonsing him to her rented cottage, but they argue and Christow realises he is now well and truly over his former lover. However, on the way back to the family home he is shot by the swimming pool.

It is at this point that Poirot turns up for Sunday lunch - to be greeted by what appears a staged scene, with a dead body, Gerda standing over her husband holding a gun, and others looking generally shocked and stunned. The gun ends up in the pool (ruining any potential fingerprints) and Gerda claims she had arrived to find her husband shot. In panic she had picked up the gun.

Poirot rather slips in and out of the story (a feature of Christie's post-war novels), with much of the questioning of suspects being handled by Inspector Grange. A turning point comes when it is revealed that the gun in the swimming pool wasn't the weapon that fired the bullet that killed Christow! The actual murder weapon is later found in a hedge by Poirot's cottage.

Edward and Midge get engaged; then break it off (Midge realises he still holds a candle for Henrietta). Edward later tries to commit suicide, which brings them back together again.

In the penultimate chapter all is revealed. It was Gerda. She had gone out on the Saturday night and seen her husband and Veronica in the pavilion by the pool and, realising that her idealised marriage was a lie, had decided to kill him. The carrying of two guns had been a deliberate ploy to cover her tracks. Henrietta had taken the lead in covering up for her, as she believed this was John's dying wish. The fact that the second gun was in a holster proves to be a factor in the unravelling of the subterfuge.

As I have so often found myself commenting on in these reflections, the TV adaptation is remarkably faithful to much of the book's detail. David the academic one is omitted (not surprisingly: he contributes little to the essential elements of the story) and the gun is found buried in one Henrietta's statues at her flat in London. Some of the details are significantly abbreviated. Edward and Midge do get engaged; they don't break it off and Edward doesn't try to take his own life. Poirot comes into the action slightly earlier (he is invited to the Saturday evening dinner, and so is there when Veronica makes her dramatic entrance). He is, obviously, far more central to the whole investigative process. The holster is also discovered much earlier, but little is made of its significance until later.

Dr John Christow is, in many ways, set up as the classic victim (several people have motives to kill him), but it is the character of Gerda, who turns out to be the murderer, that perhaps gives the storyline its considerable pathos. In both book and adaptation she takes her own life when her crime is uncovered.