This week: MURDER! and leftovers

From The Montgomery Advertiser. 

Last night I enjoyed the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's final performance of "The Mousetrap", based off of Christie's "Three Blind Mice".  (The play is still running in the west end, of course, sixty four years and counting...)   A spooky locked-room murder mystery is just the thing to kick off October, especially when executed by fine actors like those of the ASF.  Theater-goers filled the parking lot and invaded the park the theater is set in; I have never seen such a crowd there!  "The Mousetrap" takes place in the wintry English countryside, some time after the war. A young couple has inherited a roomy house and decided to run it as a country inn, and on the night the play kicks off, they are expecting their first guests.  A blizzard cuts the inn off from civilization just as the last guest arrives, and the tension inside the house is soon just as thick as the snow outside.  The guests are eccentric and opinionated,  and stress levels only increase when the house receives a phone call. There's been a grisly murder in London, with a possible connection to this address. The police are coming.   Soon there's an actual body on the floor, and the inspector's questions cast suspicion on everyone, reducing even the husband and wife to being fearful of one another.

I was quite surprised by the ending,  more for the dramatically quick resolution than the twist. .  My only disappointment was that the theater didn't sternly admonish us against spoiling the ending.  It certainly put me in the mood for a few more gloomy mysteries, just the thing for October with Halloween not far off.  In the short term, though, this week will see a little more history (leftovers, really, consumed reluctantly), and more posts from my week in New Mexico, this time including Albuquerque and Santa Fe. (Fun fact: did you know that in 1862, the Confederates invaded New Mexico? I didn't, and I've been reading about the war since adolescence!)   I'm still waiting for things to get back to 'normal'...I suppose eventually the magic will wear off and I'll stop dreaming of the mountains.. Then it will be time to go again.

Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express
© 1934 Agatha Christie
256 pages

"Why does everyone on this train tell lies?!"

A dark and snowy night; the Orient Express, rolling from Istanbul to Paris, slows to a stop in the wilderness, trapped by the growing piles of snow as its passengers sleep. But the slumber of the travelers is disturbed by a sudden cry, the sighting of a figure in a red kimono, and -- the discovery of a dead passenger, stabbed in his sleep.  Murder has been committed -- murder most foul!

..or not. Quickly enough, an officer of the train line enlists his friend, Hercule Poirot, to sort out whodunit, and in the course of their investigation they realize the dead man was a notorious child-killer from America. If anyone deserved to run into a knife several times, it was this fellow. Still, train lines can't have passengers being stabbed willy-nilly; the culprit must be found out. So, with the train still stranded in the wilderness, and no escape available for any suspects, the passengers are summoned to the dining coach one by one and interviewed by the famed detective. The story grows ever more complex; the evidence is contradictory, and everyone seems to have an alibi.  The deceased didn't encounter some malicious vanishing wizard's casting of sectum sempra  -- someone on board must have plotted and committed the deed.

Murder on the Orient Express is my second Christie novel, the first being And Then There Were None, read during the Clinton years. Like that one, the ending here is a terrific twist.  Murder is a story of conversation and deduction, a classic locked-room mystery in which the room is a train cabin. Although the alias of the murdered man leads Poirot to suspect the stabbing had something to do with his notorious villainy in America, the presence of suspects with links to the devastated family confirms it. Only hitch: virtually everyone on the train proves to have some connection to that family.  Unlike the train itself, Poirot's investigation flies  along, with one confusing clue after another baffling the train officials and physician, but giving Poirot some insight into what they are being led to believe happened.   The ultimate resolution is a twist, as mentioned, but not improbable. It is, after all the other alternatives were exhausted, the only possible solution.

Christie definitely lives up to her reputation, and I'll warrant Poirot will appear here again..