The Nun Motif: After the Funeral | 1953

(image from here)

"It shows you, Madame, the dangers of conversations. It is a profound belief of mine that if you can induce a person to talk to you for long enough, on any subject whatever! sooner or later they will give themselves away." -Hercule Poirot, After the Funeral, p. 283

The Sum of It:
We are back to good old fashioned big family murder this week with After the Funeral (also called Funerals are Fatal). The story begins with the rather sudden, yet not entirely unexpected, death of older gentleman, Richard Abernethie. His remaining family members (sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, and one younger sister) attend his funeral without much pomp and circumstance. However, the drama turns up a notch when eccentric Cora Abernethie Lansquenet blurts out her observations of her brother's death: "But he was murdered, wasn't he?"

The family is rather taken aback, assuming Richard's death in his sleep was perfectly natural, and rush to chalk up her remarks to Cora Be Cray. However, Cora's words linger with each Abernethie as they leave the family gathering...especially when Cora turns up #MURDERED the next day! (and #murdered with a hatchet no less...it's pretty gruesome for Agatha...#yikes.) The Abernethie's lawyer, Mr. Entwhistle, is very disturbed by the turn of events, and after some light investigation of his own, he enlists the heavy-duty assistance of retired detective Hercule Poirot to get to the bottom of who is killing the Abernethies.

There is kind of a lot of comings and goings in this book. Poirot doesn't get involved until two murders in, and the book divides most of its time between Enderby, the Abernethie family home, and Cora's small cottage, which is short-term inhabited after her death by her companion, a Miss Gilchrist who spends a lot of time defending the poor artistic abilities of her late mistress and telling sad tales of her own out-of-business tea shop. Richard Abernethie's surviving family members are often visiting one another and repeatedly having vague discussions about their alibis for each murder and how lucky it is that Richard left them money. #suspicious? There's also quite a bit about nuns showing up to the point of giving one of the characters the creeps (don't worry - it ends up helping Poirot solve the crime in the end.) However, overall, I enjoyed this book immensely. It's the kind of Christie you know and love, and you can tell it's the kind of story Agatha liked to write. I've always liked the solution of this story because of its simplistic cleverness (those of you who have read it will know what I mean!)

The YOA Treatment:
After the Funeral features Poirot investigating in his usual style, yet with a few, unexpected additions. Sure, he does his usual spiel of talking to all the characters involved to size them up and see if some basic conversation will lend him any clues. Per usual, this works like a charm, and a few slips of the tongue during a Poirot chat are enough to give the murderer away. However, this story also briefly features a lesser-known Poirot comrade: one Mr. Goby. Mr. Goby shows up in chapter 12 and is described as an elderly man (as is Poirot in this story), "small and spare and shrunken," with an aversion to eye contact and in possession of a double-jointed thumb #odddetail. Like Poirot, Mr. Goby is retired, but is willing to take a few days to do some P.I. work for Poirot by giving him the skeletons in the closet of all the potentially guilty Abernethies (along with some grumpy speeches about the Government.) Mr. Goby can be found giving Poirot a hand in several other books, including The Mystery of the Blue Train, Third Girl, and Elephants Can Remember. It's always fun to see Agatha spice up Poirot's world with new associates, particularly in these later stories devoid of the usual Hastings/Miss Lemon/Japp crew.

-A.