Murder in the Mews (by Agatha Christie)

I am still discovering, on our shelves, books by Agatha Christie which I had never previously read. Possibly they were acquired by - or for - one of our sons when he was a teenager. Our copy of ‘Murder in the Mews’ evidently came from a second-hand shop or church bookstall. I had not realised until I started reading it that it’s not a novel, but four short stories involving Hercule Poirot.

The first one, with the same title as the collection, starts with Poirot walking home with his friend Chief Inspector Japp on bonfire night. They discuss how easy it would be for a shot to be made, unnoticed, amongst the bangs and cracks of fireworks.

Unsurprisingly, Poirot is summoned the following morning to help investigate a case in the Mews where they had been walking. A young woman is dead, and it looks at first glance as if she took her own life. But the evidence suggests that this might not be the case. So interviews are set up, and various possible perpetrators or witnesses are questioned.

As happens in so many of Agatha Christie’s stories, I swallowed the many red herrings in this cleverly-written story. Only as Poirot starts to reveal what really happened did things start to click, and I could see that it was an ingenious plot, and I should indeed have spotted the outcome.

The second story, ‘The Incredible Theft’ is more of a political story. Several people are having dinner together, and afterwards two men discuss some important documents. They take a brief walk in the evening air while the secretary finds all the paperwork, only to discover, on returning, that one vital document has vanished. Various theories are proposed, and Poirot is called in; nobody wants to make this loss public knowledge.

Again, it’s a cleverly-thought-out story, but I found it a tad too convoluted. I don’t think I would ever have guessed how the paper disappeared; when it was explained by Poirot, I could see that it made sense, but I didn’t feel there were sufficient clues - or maybe they were too bound up in politics and business discussions.

The third story, ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’, begins with a rather autocratic letter to Poirot, telling him to be ready to visit a somewhat eccentric peer, at a moment’s notice. Naturally Poirot doesn’t want to do this, but he does make some inquiries to find out more about the person concerned. And then when the summons comes, he decides to go anyway…

Poirot arrives to discover that the person who wrote to him is dead, apparently by his own hand. Once again there are many questions asked, and it’s a good story, although - yet again - I doubt if I could ever have guessed the outcome.

The final story, ‘Triangle at Rhodes’, is the shortest of the four - only twenty pages, whereas each of the others was around fifty - and it was my least favourite. Poirot is on holiday in Rhodes, staying at a hotel where there are just a handful of guests who get to know each other quite well. One of the wives is supposedly a siren, on her fourth husband; the other wife seems overlooked when her husband is attracted to the siren.

But, as I should have expected with an Agatha Christie story, nothing is as it seems. It was too short a story for much characterisation, and I found the outcome and explanation of what happened a bit dubious… it didn’t feel up to the author’s usual brilliance, although it’s rather a different scenario from her usual style.

Overall I liked this book, and would recommend it to anyone who likes light crime fiction from 1930s.  Despite being around 90 years since this book was first published, it's still regularly re-printed as well as being widely available second-hand.

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