 Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition | |
| Author | Agatha Christie |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Not known |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
Publication date | September 1975 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 224 (first edition, hardcover) |
| ISBN | 0-00-231619-6 |
| OCLC | 1945891 |
| 823/.9/12 | |
| LC Class | PZ3.C4637 Cu PR6005.H66 |
| Preceded by | Poirot's Early Cases |
Curtain: Poirot's Last Case is a work ofdetective fiction by British writerAgatha Christie, first published in the UK by theCollins Crime Club in September 1975[1] and in the US byDodd, Mead and Company later in the same year, selling for $7.95.[2][3]
The novel featuresHercule Poirot andArthur Hastings in their final appearances in Christie's works. It is a country house novel, with all the characters and the murder set in one house. Not only does the novel return the characters to the setting of her first,The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but it reunites Poirot and Hastings, who last appeared together inDumb Witness in 1937. It wasadapted for television in 2013.
It is the last novel published by Christie before her death.Sleeping Murder, written duringthe Blitz and published posthumously, is her final published novel.
Poirot suspects that a single person is involved in five previous murders. In all cases, there was another clear suspect. Four of these suspects have since died (one of themhanged). In the case of Freda Clay, who allegedly gave her aunt an overdose ofmorphine, there was too little evidence to prosecute. Poirot calls on his old friend, the recently widowed Hastings, to join him atStyles Court in solving this case. Poirot alone sees the pattern of involvement. Using a wheelchair due toarthritis, and attended by his new valet Curtiss, Poirot will not share the name of the previously unsuspected person, using X instead.
X is among the guests with them at Styles. The old house is now a guest hotel under new owners, Colonel and Mrs Luttrell. The guests know each other, with this gathering initiated when Sir William Boyd-Carrington invites Dr Franklin and his wife to join him for a summer holiday stay. Hastings' daughter Judith accompanies Dr Franklin as his research assistant. The five prior murders took place in the area, among people known to this group. Elizabeth Cole tells Hastings that she is a sister of Margaret Litchfield, who confessed to the murder of their abusive father in one of the five cases. Margaret died inBroadmoor Asylum, and Elizabeth is stigmatised by the trauma.
Three incidents occur in the next few days that show the imprint of X. First, Hastings and others overhear an argument between the Luttrells. Shortly afterwards, Luttrell wounds his wife with arook rifle, saying he mistook her for a rabbit. Mrs Luttrell recovers, and the incident has a considerable effect on their marriage. Next, Hastings is concerned that his daughter Judith spends time with Major Allerton, a married man. While Hastings and Elizabeth are out withbirdwatcher Stephen Norton, Norton appears to see something through his binoculars that disturbs him. Hastings assumes it has to do with Allerton. When his attempts to persuade Judith to give Allerton up merely antagonise her, the worried father plans Allerton's murder. He falls asleep while waiting to poison Allerton and is relieved he took no action when he awakes the next day. Last, Barbara Franklin, wife of Judith's employer, Dr Franklin, dies the following evening. She was poisoned withphysostigmine sulphate, an extract from theCalabar bean that her husband researches. Poirot's testimony at the inquest – that Mrs Franklin had been upset and that he saw her emerge from Dr Franklin's laboratory with a small bottle – persuades the coroner to return a verdict of suicide.
Norton appears to still be concerned over what he saw days earlier when out with Hastings and Cole. Hastings advises Norton to confide in Poirot. They meet in Poirot's room. That night, Hastings is awakened by a noise and sees Norton going back into his bedroom. The next morning, Norton is found dead in his locked room with a bullet-hole in the centre of his forehead, the key in his dressing-gown pocket and a pistol nearby.
When Hastings tells Poirot that he saw Norton return to his room the previous night, Poirot says it is flimsy evidence, not having seen the face: the dressing-gown, the hair, the limp, can all be imitated. Yet there is no man in the house who could impersonate Norton, who was not tall. Poirot dies of a heart attack within hours. He leaves Hastings three clues: a copy ofOthello, a copy ofJohn Ferguson (a 1915 play bySt. John Greer Ervine), and a note to speak to his longtime valet, Georges. After Poirot is buried at Styles, Hastings learns that Judith has all along been in love with Dr Franklin. She will marry him and leave to do research in Africa. When Hastings speaks to Georges, he learns that Poirot wore a wig and that Poirot's reasons for employing Curtiss were vague.
Four months after Poirot's death, Hastings receives a manuscript in which Poirot explains all. X was Norton, a man who had perfected the technique of whichIago inOthello (and a character in Ervine's play) is master: applying just such psychological pressure as is needed to provoke someone to commit murder, without his victim realising what is happening. Norton had demonstrated this ability, with Colonel Luttrell, with Hastings, and Mrs Franklin. Poirot intervened with sleeping pills in Hastings' hot chocolate that night, to avert a disastrous rash action. Ironically, Hastings had unwittingly intervened in Mrs. Franklin's plan to poison her husband, by turning a revolving bookcase table while seeking a book to solve a crossword clue (Othello again), thus swapping the cups of coffee, so Mrs Franklin poisoned herself. Poirot could not prove this. He sensed that Norton, who had been deliberately vague about whom he had seen through the binoculars, would hint that he had seen Franklin and Judith, to implicate them in the murder of Mrs Franklin, not inadvertent suicide as it was. This explains Poirot's testimony at her inquest, to ensure the police would stop their investigation.
Given his very weak heart, Poirot conceives that he must end the string of murders by killing Norton. Poirot invites Norton to his room for hot chocolate. At their meeting, he tells Norton what he suspects and his plan to execute him. Norton, arrogant and self-assured, insists on swapping cups. Anticipating this move, Poirot had drugged both cups, knowing that he had a higher tolerance for a sedative dose that would incapacitate Norton. Poirot moves the sleeping Norton back to his room using the wheelchair. Poirot could walk all along, one reason he needed a new valet who was unaware of that for this last case. Then, being the same height as Norton, he disguises himself by removing his wig and false moustache, ruffling up his grey hair, donning Norton's dressing-gown and walking with a limp. Having Hastings establish that Norton was alive after leaving Poirot's room, Poirot shoots Norton, leaves the pistol on the table and locks the room with a duplicate key. Poirot then writes his story and ceases to take hisamyl nitrite heart medicine. He cannot say it was right to commit murder, but on balance he was sure he prevented yet more instigated by Norton. His last wish for Hastings is typical for Poirot the matchmaker: he suggests that Hastings should pursue Elizabeth Cole.
In a review titled "The last labour of Hercules", Matthew Coady inThe Guardian, on 9 October 1975, wrote that the book was both "a curiosity and a triumph". He repeated the tale of the book being written some thirty years before and then stated that "through it, Dame Agatha, whose recent work has shown a decline, is seen once more at the peak of her ingenuity." Coady called Captain Hastings the "densest of Dr Watsons [but]... never has the stupidity of the faithful companion-chronicler been so cunningly exploited as it is here." Coady summarised the absolute basics of the plot and the questions raised within it and then said,
In providing the answers, the great illusionist of crime fiction provides a model demonstration of reader manipulation. The seemingly artless, simplistic Christie prose is mined with deceits. Inside the old, absurd conventions of the Country House mystery she reworks the least likely person trick with a freshness rivalling the originality she displayed nearly 50 years ago inThe Murder of Roger Ackroyd. For the egotistic Poirot, hero of some 40 books… it is a dazzlingly theatrical finish. 'Goodbye, cher ami', runs his final message to the hapless Hastings. 'They were good days.' For addicts, everywhere, they were among the best.[4]
Two months later, Coady nominatedCurtain as his Book of the Year in a column of critic's choices. He said, "No crime story of 1975 has given me more undiluted pleasure. As a critic, I welcome it, as a reminder that sheer ingenuity can still amaze."[5]
Maurice Richardson inThe Observer of 5 October 1975 summed up: "One of her most highly contrived jobs, artificial as a mechanical birdcage, but an unputdownable swansong."[6]
Robert Barnard, inA Talent to Deceive, less favourably writes:
Written in the 'forties, designed for publication after Christie's death, but in fact issued just before it. Based on an idea toyed with inPeril at End House (chapter 9) – a clever and interesting one, but needing greater subtlety in the handling than Christie's style or characterisation will allow (the characters here are in any case quite exceptionally pallid). In fact, for a long-cherished idea, and as an exit for Poirot, this is oddly perfunctory in execution.[7]
It was one of the bestselling books of1976.
Being their last case together, mention is made of earlier cases. Hastings became involved in the first Styles investigation in 1916, at which time he was thirty years old.[8] He married at the end of the next Poirot novel,The Murder on the Links, mentioned twice in this novel, as Hastings is now a widower.
Poirot mentions that once, in Egypt, he attempted to warn a murderer before the person committed the crime. That case is the one retold inDeath on the Nile. He mentions that there was another case in which he had done the same thing: almost certainly that retold in "Triangle at Rhodes" (published inMurder in the Mews in 1937). InThe A.B.C. Murders,Inspector Japp says to Poirot: "Shouldn't wonder if you ended by detecting your own death;" an indication that the idea ofCurtain had already formed in the author's mind in 1935. On 6 August 1975,The New York Times published a front-pageobituary of Poirot with a photograph to mark his death.[9][10][11]
Hastings also mentions "the case of Evelyn Carlisle" as he speculates over a possible hidden financial motive for X's actions, referring toSad Cypress which centred on the revelation of money as a motivation for the crime.
Christie wrote the novel in the early 1940s, during the Second World War. Partly fearing for her own survival,[citation needed] and wanting to have a fitting end to Poirot's series of novels, Christie had the novel locked away in a bank vault for over thirty years. In the same way, she wrote and locked away Miss Marple's "last" case via the manuscript which was later retitled “Sleeping Murder”. Dame Agatha legally gave the rights to the "last" Poirot novel to her daughter Rosalind and gave the rights to the "last" Miss Marple novel to her second husband Max.
Dame Agatha explained to Rosalind and Max: "It will cheer you up, when you come back from the funeral, or the Memorial Service, to think that you have got a couple of books, one belonging to each of you!”[12]
The final Poirot novel that Christie wrote,Elephants Can Remember, was published in 1972 and takes place in that year, followed by Christie's last novel to be written,Postern of Fate. Finally, Christie authorisedCurtain's removal from the vault and its subsequent publication. It was the last of her books to be published during her lifetime.
Due to its earlier date of composition,Curtain makes no mention of Poirot's later cases in novels published after the Second World War. Christie could not anticipate how long she would live, nor that she would continue to write more stories about the popular detective she had come to detest (seeHercule Poirot and Miss Marple for further discussion of her views of Poirot); nor was the story rewritten to a contemporary setting at the time of its publication. Therefore, it is difficult to fit the novel into a consistent chronology with her post-war stories.
The exact time period of the story is not specified, beyond it being summertime, but some inferences can be drawn. References to the Second World War (Hastings describes himself as "Wounded in the war that for me would always bethe war—the war that was wiped out now by a second and more desperate war") place it after its end—a date as yet unknown at the time of the book's writing—and the events ofThe Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1916 are said to have happened "Twenty years ago and over". Also, Hastings' daughter Judith is 21 inCurtain; he met her mother inThe Murder on the Links, published 1923. Hastings himself appears to be in his fifties, since he describes a woman between 30 and 40 as "well over ten years my junior." All of this suggests a 1940s timeframe, despite this being inconsistent with Poirot's continued appearances in books taking place as late as the 1970s. A significantly later date would introduce other anachronisms, such as the mentions ofhanging, which wasabolished in Great Britain in 1965.
The story clearly ends Poirot's career, for he dies in the novel. Poirot's death was announced inThe New York Times with a front-page obituary, a rare honour for a fictional character.[13][14]
The novel was adapted in 2013 starringDavid Suchet as Poirot. It was the final episode of the final series ofAgatha Christie's Poirot, and the first of the final series to be filmed.Hugh Fraser again returned to the role of Hastings, for the second time in Season 13 (he also appeared in Episode 2 ("The Big Four")) after an extended absence from the series; stars such asAlice Orr-Ewing (Judith Hastings),Helen Baxendale (Elizabeth Cole),Anne Reid (Daisy Luttrell),Matthew McNulty (Major Allerton),Shaun Dingwall (Dr Franklin),Anna Madeley (Mrs. Franklin),Aidan McArdle (Stephen Norton) andPhilip Glenister (Sir William Boyd-Carrington) were among the other cast. The programme was aired in Britain on 13 November 2013, and later on Acorn TV on 25 August 2014.[16] The adaptation mentions only the Litchfield, Sharples, and Etherington murders. Margaret Litchfield is hanged during the opening credits, whereas in the novel she dies in an asylum. The killer is not labelled 'X' as in the novel, the purpose of the label being achieved in other ways. Otherwise, the adaptation remains extremely faithful to the novel.[citation needed] With the exception ofThe Mysterious Affair at Styles, set in the First World War, the rest of the ITV Poirot series are set in the 1930s, regardless of when the novels were written, or the contemporary features in each of the novels; this last story sets the year as 1949.[17]
On 19 December 2013, Barnaby Walter ofThe Edge listed the adaptation and Poirot's death scene at number 2 on the list of the Best TV Drama Moments of 2013.[18] In 2015,Curtain was nominated for Outstanding Television Movie in the 67thEmmy Awards,[19][20] but eventually lost toBessie.[21]
In the US the novel was serialised inLadies Home Journal in two abridged instalments from July (Volume XCII, Number 7) to August 1975 (Volume XCII, Number 8) with an illustration by Mark English.
Image of Front Page Obituary
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