Something's Rotten in the State of Meadowbank: Cat Among the Pigeons | 1959

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"But you must remember this," said Miss Bulstrode, "one or other of the girls may wish to make herself important by exaggerating some incident or even by inventing one. Girls do very odd things..." -Cat Among the Pigeons, p. 94

The Sum of It:
As we get closer and closer to the end of our Agatha journey this year, I am becoming more and more sad about saying goodbye to Poirot! Although Emily and I discovered this year that we prefer a Miss Marple book (#sorryHercule), it was still sad to realize this was my second to last Poirot read! Okay so on to the summarizing:

Our story begins in Ramat (a fictional Middle Eastern country) where the Prince of the land (one Prince Ali Yusef, Hereditary Sheik of Ramat) is consulting his British private pilot and pal, Bob Rawlinson. There's a revolution going on, and Prince Ali has decided he needs to flee the country or be killed. Bob agrees to fly him out, but before they go, Prince Ali entrusts Bob with a huge task: thinking of a way to smuggle nearly a million pounds's worth of jewels out of the country! Bob is like GEEZ, LOUISE HOW DO I DO THAT? The palace is full of spies, and the two men's plane ride will be dangerous enough. Luckily, Bob's sister and niece have been visiting him, and they should be able to leave the country un-searched. Bob goes to their hotel to make the jewel arrangements and potentially bid farewell (forever!?) to his family, but they are not there. He spends some time in their room doing something mysterious to hide the jewels, and then takes off with Prince Ali on their flight to freedom.

Some months later, Bob's niece, Jennifer, is one of many girls arriving at fancy-dancy school, Meadowbank, for the start of term. The school is run by "headmistress extraordinaire" Miss Bulstrode, who prides herself on running an establishment that takes on the brightest students, with a couple of princesses sprinkled in for the wow factor. One of these princesses is Princess Shaista of Ramat. Princess Shaista is fond of touting the fact that a) she is royal, b) she was engaged to her cousin, the now deceased Prince Ali (Bob and Ali's plane crashed in the mountains as they attempted to flee #RIP #sadface), and c) as an important royal, she is likely to be kidnapped at any moment. Miss Bulstrode and Co. assume she is just a dramatic teenage girl and ignore her fears.

Meadowbank is experiencing an influx of new staff, notably a new games mistress, Miss Springer, a new French mistress, Mlle. Blanche, and a young gardener named Adam, who is repeatedly described as obnoxious to the Meadowbank staff, as they assume all the young girls will be in love with him (#accurate). We learn early on that Gardener Adam is actually not a gardener (well, sort of, apparently his mom was good with plants?), but in fact a secret agent sent to keep an eye on Princess Shaista. The school year seems to be going along swimmingly, until games mistress Miss Springer is found #MURDERED in the new sports pavilion! Although a rather brusque and disliked woman, there doesn't seem to be much motive for her death. Local Inspector Kelsey is doing his best on the case, and then has to work double time when there is a SECOND murder, and a kidnapping to boot! The case needs a professional, and so, nearly 3/4 through the book, one of Meadowbank's plucky students gets herself to London to bring in none other than Hercule Poirot to make sense of it all. As he makes his way through his usual interviews, it becomes apparent that something (or more importantly, someONE!) is not right this year at Meadowbank...there is a cat among the pigeons!

The YOA Treatment:
When I first started reading this book, it felt a bit like Agatha was in two places at once. The opening scenes set in Ramat (and the following intrigue) felt very much like They Came to Baghdad or Destination Unknown. And then the rest of the story set at Meadowbank felt like her usual English countryside murder mystery. However, she did a fairly good job of bringing the two together and leaves you with a story that is one part caper, one part whodunit. I was a bit disappointed that Poirot didn't come into the picture earlier (and when he did, he figured things out awwwwfully quickly), but the cast of colorful Meadowbank characters kept my attention until it was finally time for Hercule's appearance.

I also admire Agatha's take on a bit of a coming of age story by setting this mystery at a girl's school. Quite a bit of the story is seen through the eyes of several of Meadowbank's students and it's entertaining to see how their adolescent trials and tribulations fit into the plot. Secret cigarettes are discovered, tennis rackets are unraveling, tiffs are had with Mother, and the halls are thick with gossip about the teachers. I'm attempting to work my way through Emma Cline's truly excellent book, The Girls, and while Cat Among the Pigeons is vastly different, I get some of those same pangs of recognition of my younger self like "Oh wow, that IS what it was like to be 15 and have a crush on the hot guy that mows the lawn at your school."

Overall, a read that's fun and intriguing and with a bit of Poirot to boot!

-A.

Where Have All the Scientists Gone?: Destination Unknown | 1954

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"To Hilary it all had an unreal quality. It was as though she was still in a dream, mercifully protected from contact with reality. This was only a delay, only a matter of waiting. She was still on her journey - her journey of escape. She was still getting away from it all, still going towards that spot where her life would start again." -Destination Unknown, p. 27

The Sum of It:
We return for this week's second read to Caper-town aka one of those times when Agatha decided to write about espionage for a change. Destination Unknown (also known as Many Steps to Death) begins with some good old Cold War Era drama: scientists are disappearing from various countries and the British government is afraid they are defecting to the Soviet Union (#yikes). The most recent disappearee is Thomas Betterton. His wife, Olive, is quite distraught about his MIA status and tells the authorities hey can you please help me find my husband? Also, unrelated, my doctor says I'm probably due for a break down soon, so I think I need to hit up the beach so can I peace out? Investigating Official named Jessop says, okay sure, Mrs. Betterton, go have some rest and we will figure out what happened to your husband. Being a smarty, he also thinks that perhaps Olive Betterton knows EXACTLY where her husband has gone off to, and decides maybe he needs a little beach vacay as well...

MEANWHILE, one Hilary Craven is on a flight to Casablanca via Paris, basically on a farewell Europe tour before she plans to commit suicide. Her life has become quite grim due to the death of her young daughter and, shortly thereafter, her husband leaving her for another woman. There is some fog in France, so she gets put on a different flight to Casablanca (ugh, airports...), and is then even further bummed out when she finds out her original flight CRASHED and there were only a few survivors. She checks into a nice hotel in Casablanca, visits several drugstores for a stockpile of sleeping pills, has a nice dinner, and heads to her room to take all the pills. HOWEVER, before she can complete this plan, who bursts into her room but Jessop! He says, listen, I saw you buy all those pills today and I know you're planning to kill yourself. How about instead of taking pills you agree to help me out with some seriously dangerous spy work because you don't really care about being alive so if you die it's all good? Hilary deliberates for a bit, but decides to go along with Jessop's offer because she literally has nothing else to live for.

Jessop needs Hilary to impersonate Olive Betterton BECAUSE Olive was on the original Casablanca flight that crashed and, although she survived, is not expected to live much longer. Hilary goes to Olive's bedside in time to hear some ominous words about a dangerous Boris and a poem about snow before Olive dies. Armed with only these super vague clues, Hilary reads up on Olive's life, undergoes some voluntary surgery to make herself look like she had been in a plane crash, and continues Olive Betterton's trip itinerary. What follows is a wholeeeee lot of, to be frank, confusing and at times pretty boring spy drama involving MORE plane crashes, leper colonies, and hidden scientist colonies seeking to take over the world (uh...not cool, guys.)

The YOA Treatment:
I really adore the premise of this book. For the first few chapters I was really hooked on the idea of a woman abandoning suicide for a truly dangerous spy mission. The set up of this book had a very Agatha-esque feel, and yet it became very muddled in the middle, and failed to really hold my interest by the end. I admire Dame Agatha for expanding beyond her typical murder mystery novel, that, no doubt, had become kind of monotonous for her by this point in her career. And yet...spy novels were not her thing. There are moments when you can see her style peeking out, but the plot lacks that climactic twist ending that you expect when you read her works.

Also of interesting note: Destination Unknown is considered to have influence from real-life scientists defecting to the Soviet Union in the 1950s. You can read about these two men, Bruno Pontecorvo and Klaus Fuchs, and see how their stories parallel aspects of Destination Unknown.

-A.