Three's Company: Towards Zero | 1944

(image of US First Edition cover from here)

"I like a good detective story,' said the venerable Mr. Treaves. 

'But you know, they begin in the wrong place! They begin with the murder. But the murder is the end. The story begins long before that -- years before sometimes -- with all the causes and events that bring certain people to a certain place at a certain time on a certain day. All converging towards a given spot...And then, when the time comes -- over the top! Zero hour!' 

He sat in front of the fire and reflected on the events of the day. 'Even now,' he thought, 'some drama is in the course of preparation. If I were writing one of these amusing stories of blood and crime, I should begin now with an elderly gentleman sitting in front of the fire opening his letters -- going, unbeknownst to himself -- towards zero.'" - Towards Zero, p. 3

The Sum of It:

Towards Zero is basically about tennis and cliffs. NOT REALLY. But kind of?

The book begins in prologue, with a bunch of lawyers sitting around a fire, reminiscing about court. The wise elder amongst them, Mr. Treves, starts expounding on how there's so much background that goes into every crime committed, really the murder is the least interesting part. He returns to the story later when he decides to go on vacay in the little seaside village of Saltcreek, near the home of his friend Lady Tressilian. 

The next scene is in a hospital, with a young man who's pretty frustrated because he tried to fling himself off a cliff across the river from Lady Tressilian's house, Gull's Point, and got stuck in a tree and then someone rescued him and he doesn't understand why people wouldn't just leave him alone. He'll join us again later when he goes back to visit the scene of his survival a year later. Same time Mr. Treves is going to Saltcreek. Notice a theme?

We quickly find out that Lady Tressilian, an invalid, has a bunch of people who regularly come to visit her beach house. Among those are Neville Strange, a handsome and affable professional tennis player, his ex-wife Audrey, and his new wife, Kay. Audrey is often described as looking like a beautiful ghost #RowenaRavenclaw because she is pale and enchanting in a quiet way, while new-wife Kay is beautiful in more of a siren-y way, with auburn hair, tan skin, and flashing eyes. Needless to say, everyone is expecting #MAJORAWKWARDNESS when Neville requests that everyone come visit Lady T at the same time for a group vacay. 

They also join up with Mary Aldin, Lady T's companion/cousin, who is super capable and self-sacrificing and has a Cruella DeVille style white streak in the front of her hair. She's got a bit of a crush on, well, maybe everyone, but kind of seems like she has the feels for another family friend, Thomas Royde, who has a bum arm from an earthquake-smashing incident, grows tea in Malay or somesuch, and has long harbored feels for the beautiful ghost, Audrey Strange (Neville's first wife), because they grew up together. Ted Latimer, one of new-wife-Kay's bffs who is a #handsomeface #maybegigolo drops by to visit. 

So everybody gets together for a jolly awkward holiday at Gull's Point. There is a great deal of emphasis on underlying tensions. Everyone is a bit on edge and often caught staring at one another. Mr. Treves comes over for dinner and is like "a storm's a-brewin', watch out people" and then is promptly #MURDERED in a very indirect way by someone forcing him to take the stairs at his hotel instead of an elevator because he's got a weak heart and poor fella doesn't make it to the top. Turns out there was a sign on the elevator saying it was out of order, when it was totally operational! WHY? However, his is only the first of the #MURDERs and once the next one happens, it's a doozy, and everyone in the house is implicated. Only an outsider can figure it out! Here comes Inspector Battle, #FriendofPoirot, to do some deducing. He'll need some help from another outsider before its over and done with, but by the time the main murder actually happens, we've got ourselves a FINE KETTLE OF FISH. 

The YOA Treatment:

This was a different take on the classic murder mystery for exactly the reason cited in the lead quote above. It definitely does not start with the murder. In fact, the main murder doesn't happen til nearly a hundred pages into the book. Agatha really spends time investing in the backgrounds of each character. Without Poirot here to do all the psychological background work, we kind of get an opportunity to do some of it ourselves, which is an interesting twist. Honestly, in this way, this one is sort of similar to some of your more contemporary mysteries, like The Girl on the Train, or Black Chalk, in that it spends a great deal of time on the circumstances and the "why?" and less time on the murder itself. #Trendsetter

This one is also SO twisty. I really don't know if anyone could figure it out. In part that's a bit sneaky of Agatha, but then, that's kind of the point, and there are probably some out there who decided who the culprit was and how he/she did it before the book ended, but this is a real surprise ending, probably the most TOTALLY surprised I've been since Lord Edgware Dies, where I really didn't think the culprit was gonna be the culprit. Similarly, though even more so in this case, I was all like "noooo Agatha not that one!" I really kind of liked and had some sympathy for the culprit in this one, even though this person had some weaknesses, so I was a little bummed when they turned out to be the baddie. BUT I think that is pretty good of Agatha to create a villain who you want to like and trust, and who you're disappointed to see head off to jail in the end. 

This one is a classic, though a bit of a slow burn, given all the background Agatha works pretty hard to build up before the crime is really committed, but the resolution is totally worth it. 

THAT SAID, in the last two pages Agatha drops in one of the most random and unrealistic proposal/love scenes ever, which is kind of a buzzkill after the real resolution of the mystery, but I think maybe she thought the resolution was a bit grim, and decided to lighten things up at the end. If she had written the book now, I think her editor would have said KEEP IT DARK, LADY! 

- E.