Hello everyone!
Okay, Sherlock Holmes is also a distinct possibility, but I'll admit I need a special type of weather for him.
Hercule Poirot or Jane Marple, however, don't give me those hangups.
Besides, there are still some books I never managed to get to even though I've more or less gone through the entire collection before, a number of times.
BUT.
I'm not talking about an Agatha Christie original tonight, oh no.
No I'm going with a Sophie Hannah Poirot resurrection, of which there are now four new books altogether.
Tonight's pick is thus titled The Mystery of Three Quarters.
I've actually read and reviewed one other of the books in this series, though for some reason never got around to doing the first so I may have to go back and do so soon, but for the time being, you can find the appropriate links to everything you may need with regards to Agatha Christie down below at the bottom of the page.
Allons-y!
Poirot, the legendary Belgian detective, has just finished lunch and arrived back home when he gets accosted in the street by a woman named Sylvia Rule, who tells him she is deeply shocked he would stoop so low as to send her a letter accusing her of the murder of Barnabas Pandy.
Poirot, like the leader, goes: bzuh?
Especially as one: he has sent no such letter, and two: he not only gets accosted by Sylvia, but also by John McCrodden, Annabel Treadway, and Hugo Dockerill.
All four of them have received a letter signed by Poirot, and all four have been accused of murder.
Now, since the detective's honour is at stake, of course he's going to dig into the case, which at first glance looks to be a simple death by drowning. The old man in question fell asleep in the bathtub and slipped beneath the surface of the water. End of.
But did these people actually have either motive or chance to kill him, is the question?
Initially hesitant, the four eventually give in to the questions posed by Poirot as he begins to uncover what actually happened, piece by piece, with the help of his friend Catchpool, who returns from a holiday with his mother (trying desperately to marry him off) only to find his superior at Scotland Yard in a twist because of this situation.
Why?
Well, because McCrodden is the son of the famous 'Hangman', the judge most in favour of the death penalty, and thus it's in their best interest to get it solved ASAP.
Poirot initially thinks that all signs might point to McCrodden given he's the only odd one out of the foursome, but it quickly turns out that isn't the case at all really, especially when other evidence pops up suggesting Annabel Treadway, the supposed victim's granddaughter, also has evidence staking up against her.
I'll be honest, I also totally thought Annabel and John were lovers in the past and that was why she didn't want to marry anyone, but this turns out to be false.
Poirot discovers that all letters were sent from the same typewriter, so naturally he goes on a hunt for said device, but also that all four of the accused stood a chance of slipping away unseen from wherever they were at the time to get to the hall where the old man was living and murder him. Not to mention that there's a connection to an old friend of Pandy's whom Pandy sent a letter of reconciliation to, after decades of not speaking with him.
Slowly but surely, however, through the shared history the involved share, it turns out that none of the theories hold water.
See, all of them have a past together. ALL of them.
And all of them have, intentionally or not, hurt the actual person who wants to put Annabel Treadway to the gallows for a murder she didn't commit.
Oh, because Barnabas Pandy's death wasn't actually murder. The death of his manservant and best friend which happens on site as Poirot is there, however, IS.
Poirot then explains just what happened and what he's pieced together through the sheer power of little grey cells: none of the four accused had anything to do with Pandy's death. They did, however, have connections to the accuser, Annabel's older sister.
Sylvia Rule's son attends the same school as the other woman's, but more importantly, Sylvia Rule used to be the woman other women went to so they could get a miscarriage done. Naturally, this is what the older sister wanted at the time, but didn't end up doing because she decided to keep the child, who grew up to be her son Timothy.
Hugo Dockerill runs the school Timothy attends and wants to occasionally discipline Timothy which brings down the ire of the mother because her son can do no wrong - even if he himself actually admits that he's not fussed about the discipline, he does deserve it and she's overreacting.
John McCrodden was her lover back in the day while she was still wed to her husband (since deceased), and while she wanted to continue on with the affair, he wanted her to leave said husband and start a new life with him, which she didn't end up doing but was mad at him for not giving her what he wanted.
And finally, Annabel Treadway, the sister who is melancholy and pathologically attached to the dogs she owns, unhealthily so. The woman who would have hung for the murder that wasn't murder, and who is the culprit behind her sister's anger.
See what actually happened is this: when Annabel's niece Ivy was young, she fell into the river and Annabel rescued her, but there was a dog with them at the time who also wanted to help, managing to scratch poor Ivy's face. Annabel, on instinct, saved the dog first before going back for her niece, which then led to her castigating and punishing herself for the rest of her life, making her grandfather think her weak until he found out the truth about what happened, and how much she hated herself for it.
He also found out that his other granddaughter would love nothing more than for her sister to suffer and die because of something that almost happened, and he was going to cut the OLDER ONE out of his will because of her unbending streak of righteous justice, which was actually cruelty.
He died before this could happen though, and so she took matters into her own hands, writing to four people so that she could hide her intentions, and to get Annabel to the gallows for something she didn't commit, but something that almost happened.
And of course, she kills the manservant, which eventually lands her in front of a jury, though because John McCrodden is there by her side, his father takes a stance against the death penalty and she evades the gallows, but spends the rest of her life in prison, with her adored son never speaking to her again after learning he had almost been discarded AND that she lied about the letter he supposedly got from his father, when she had been the one to write it.
Basically her downfall was pulling Poirot into her schemes and it didn't help that she planted evidence all about because Poirot and Catchpool, through questioning, managed to find the truth anyway.
As well as the main thread, Poirot solves a mystery for a waitress at his favourite teashop, then can go back to his normal life, no more accused of falsely sending out weird ass letters.
FIN
Here, however, he isn't sure of practically anything until the very end, which is kind of sad because it brings him down to the level of other PIs, when he's always been above them all.
So this book is entertaining enough, and I know it's hard to fill Christie's shoes, but, with 40+ other books she wrote with Poirot at the helm, you'd think there was a good footprint to follow.
As I said, entertaining, but not necessarily as enchanting as the originals, though the mystery still deserves a head scratch or two before it's solved, so there's something in there for everyone in the end!
xx
*images not mine
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