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Social Issues in Agatha Christie's Mysteries: Country, Class, Crime, Clothes and Children

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Social Issues in Agatha Christie's Mysteries: Country, Class, Crime, Clothes and Children SBORNlK PRACl F1LOZOF1CKE FAKULTY BRNENSKE UNIVERZITY STUDIA MINORA FACULTATIS PHILOSOPHICAE UNIVERSITATIS BRUNENSIS S 3, 1997— BRNO STUDIES IN ENGLISH 23 LIDIA KYZL1NKOVA SOCIAL ISSUES IN AGATHA CHRISTIE'S MYSTERIES: COUNTRY, CLASS, CRIME, CLOTHES AND CHILDREN The works of Agatha Christie are now generally agreed to rise well above the level of entertainment and a good many scholars are prepared to take her art, the skill of devising fresh and insoluble puzzles, with the seriousness proper to a Joyce or James or Lawrence. T. S. Eliot once planned a great tome on the de­ tective novel, with a whole swath devoted to her books. Apart from her pio­ neering work in the full-length novel of the detective genre, her puzzling plots, a whole range of exquisite characters, her famous and less famous sleuths, ex­ cellent comic relief with Watson-like and some cardboard figures, her pleasant and well-handled romance, or her own character and the instinct which made her work such a success, there is yet another area of interest: mystery writers tend to accumulate a surprising amount of accurate or at least very plausible information about everyday life, and because Agatha Christie's career spans so many decades, decades which have seen so many dramatic changes in British life, her books are thus a rich lode for social historians. Agatha Christie's first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in the very first year of a new decade, the 1920s, and immediately here we have our first tastes of many things that are to come in what will prove to be a long and satisfying career. The time setting of the novel is during World War I, and the little detective, Hercule Poirot, is on hand because he is one of a small group of Belgian refugees brought to live in a rural English village situ­ ated in Essex. This is not the only connection with World War I: one of the fe­ male protagonists, young Cynthia, the protegee of an elderly lady and owner of the manor, works in the Red Cross Dispensary, which makes her more inde­ pendent in a way similar to other upper-class girls who started to go out to work for the first time during this war. We are first introduced to Poirot's 'Watson' here, Captain Arthur Hastings, invalided from the Front and chancing to spend his recuperative leave with the family who own Styles Court, the scene of the crime. And a traditional Christie device first encountered in this novel and sue- 116 LIDIA KYZLINKOVA cessfully repeated many times is the setting of a crime in a large upper-class household with lots of servants available as possible suspects, witnesses, and even as victims or criminals, and plenty of family members, relatives and guests present to be used in these roles too, and, of course, all the aspects of the 'who- -will-get-the-money-when-the-head-of-the-family-is-gone' motif. Christie is known for her continuous criticism of her characters' preoccupation with class and money - not to mention their prejudices regarding national origin. Being a well-bred, upper-class lady herself, she preferred to set her stories in the hushed elegance of upper-class tea parlours where a servant would always answer the bell-pull, unless they have been strangled. This perfectly conventional English­ woman, the model of that peculiarly English kind of country lady with her fur coat and tweeds, her twin set and pearls, whom one sees serving tea on a green lawn, attending fetes to raise funds for the local Conservative party, is far from expressing entirely conventional views on a number of vital issues. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), The Murder at the Vicarage (1930), and Murder Is Easy (1939) are just a few novels that supply us with details of what peaceful little English villages must have been like in the era between wars. The Murder at the Vicarage is one of the Christie landmark novels be­ cause it introduces Miss Jane Marple, that delightful and perceptive elderly lady detective. The tiny country village settings are always enriched with fine char­ acterizations, depicting the people of a small English village, prior to World War II, e.g. in Murder Is Easy we have all the stock village characters: vicar, lawyer, doctor, local Very Important Personage, a full complement of elderly ladies, retired military man, and mischievous boy. The novel A Murder Is An­ nounced (1950) portrays conditions in a quiet village in the years right after World War II. Later, notably in The Mirror Crack'd (originally published as The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, 1962), we are given a whole social study concerning village life. The first chapter alone is full to overflowing with refer­ ences to the many changes in St. Mary Mead in the years that have intervened between Murder at the Vicarage and The Mirror Crack'd. The same little group of charming Queen Anne and Georgian houses is still there, but except for some elderly ladies, their owners have changed. The church and the vicarage are in­ tact, so is the Blue Boar. However, only a few old shops remain in the village main street, as 'a glittering new supermarket - anathema to the elderly ladies of the village' now stands at one end of it: Packets of things one's never heard of ... All these great packets of breakfast cereal instead of cooking a child a proper breakfast of bacon and eggs. And you are expected to take a basket yourself and go round looking for things ... usually made up in inconvenient sizes, too much or too little. And then a long queue waiting to pay as you go out. Most tiring. {The Mirror Crack'd, pp.3-4) Gradually we are offered a more up-to-date look at the same strata of society - we learn about such down-to-earth things as food shortages, housing scarcity, SOCIAL ISSUES IN AGATHA CHRISTIE'S MYSTERIES 117 difficulty in getting domestic help, and the sudden influx of strangers to areas that had had stable populations for generations. The last item does not only con­ cern the working class who came to live in the new residential addition to the village, called the Development, but also classless celebrities, film stars and various artists, who are interested in renovating huge houses like Gossington Hall here. Gossington Hall, the estate of Colonel and Mrs Bantry, had been sold by Mrs Bantry after her husband's death. The widow retained for herself just a small cottage and enough land for her beloved gardening. The house has had several owners since then. The newest owner is a famous film star. Much refur­ bishing and redecorating has been done to the house and grounds. Bathrooms have been added, a swimming pool has been built, and a good deal of money has been spent on plumbing, electric cookers, and dishwashers. And a Grand Opening is scheduled to give the local people a chance to see for themselves. It is to be a combination open house and fete with proceeds going to the St. John's Ambulance Corps. A real fete, this tradition of rural England, this time to raise money for restoration of the church tower is more fully described in The Pale Horse (1961), where there are fortunetellers, stalls for sale of handcrafted items, games for the children, refreshment booths, and the many willing women who seem to do most of the work. There is an aura that emanates from the pages of her books the country homes, the chintz-covered furniture and the servants, who make up a substantial part of her descriptions, speculations and analyses. In the stories, where brains, sophistication and wealth are all the same thing - or appear to be - the servants are rarely seen as having enough intelligence or personality to be suspected of the dastardly deed itself and are doomed to the realm of the red herring. So no gardeners, housemaids, cooks, nurse-attendants, valets, butlers, nannies, twee­ nies and au pairs rank among the ruthless murderers. Paid companions, private nurses, governesses and masseurs form a more dangerous category, as is obvi­ ous from e.g. Cards on the Table (1936), Sad Cypress (1940), After the Funeral (1953), Ordeal by Innocence (1958), or Endless Night (1967). Even these, how­ ever, are easily fooled by their employers. Miss Marple demonstrates this at the very beginning of the before mentioned The Mirror Crack'd when she sends her obnoxious nurse-companion, Miss Knight, on useless errands in order to have an independent morning. After musing how 'devoted maidservants have gone out of fashion', Miss Marple makes a request: You might go into Longdon's and see if the curtains are ready. And perhaps another skein of the blue wool from Mrs. Wisley. And a box of black currant lozenges at the chemist's. And change my book at the li­ brary - but don't let them give you anything that isn't on my list... And if it isn't too far for you, perhaps you wouldn't mind going as far as Halletts and see if they have one of these up-and-down egg whisks - not the turn-the-handle kind. (She knew very well they had nothing of the kind, but Halletts was the farthest shop possible.) 118 LIDIA KYZLINKOVA (The Mirror Crack'd, p. 8) Miss Knight takes the bait of course, thinking she is lucky to have an excuse to shop and gossip. She hurries to make her 'abortive inquiries' just as the old dear, frail and foxy Miss Marple had planned.
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