A review of Peril At End House by Agatha Christie – 230825

Peril at End House, otherwise known as Tether’s End, was originally published in 1932 and is the eighth in her Hercule Poirot series. It is classic Christie, entertaining, a page turner, with a twist at the end. It also has Poirot, who is at his self-preening best, somewhat discomforted as he struggles to make sense of an intriguing mystery until a throwaway remark in a letter puts him on the right track. The faithful Hastings, back in harness after his period in Argentina, acts as his stooge and while, to his friend’s amusement, he often makes the wrong assumptions, he does weigh in with a helpful suggestion.

It is not the usual straightforward murder mystery with a victim and a culprit to identify. As Poirot says himself, for a man of his calibre that would be a fairly simple task. Instead, his brief is to prevent someone from being murdered, a woman, Nick Buckley, who seems to be particularly accident prone. In the last few days. a heavy picture had fallen on to her bed, a rock had fallen from a cliff top and just missed her, the brakes on her car had failed having been tampered with, and while she is talking to Poirot she thinks she has been attacked by a bee but, in fact, a bullet has just passed through her hat. Naturally, she is frightened, and the gallant Belgian sleuth cannot resist helping her, even if, to his chagrin, she volunteers that she has never heard of him.

Poirot, on investigating her background and her set of friends, struggles to find an obvious motive. She is not rich and the property she owns, End House, is mortgaged to the hilt. He makes a list of possible suspects with motives and opportunities which runs from A to J, with J being a person or persons unknown.

For her own safety, Poirot suggests that Nick invites a trusted friend to stay with her and is mortified when Maggie, who comes down from Yorkshire in response to her urgent request, is shot dead when she is mistaken for Nick. Even when Poirot moves her to a nursing home and entreats her not to eat anything that is sent to her, she is poisoned after eating a chocolate from a box seemingly sent by the sleuth himself.

The truth begins to reveal itself when the death of the famous explorer and pilot, Michael Seton, is announced. Seton was a rich man who had inherited a fortune from his recently deceased uncle and had made a will in favour of his fiancée. Money, a powerful motive which had been absent hitherto, and jealousy begin to raise their ugly heads and Poirot begins to see the light, staging Nick’s death and holding a meeting of all the suspects at which Nick’s will is to be read. She enters, dea ex machina, and triggers off a surprising series of events, including an attempted murder, a suicide, the arrest of Maggie’s murderer, and, for good measure, the unmasking of a proficient forger and a cocaine dealer. Not a bad evening’s work.

Much of the case revolves around which version of Nick Buckley the reader chooses to believe in. Is she the persecuted woman who seems destined to end up as a murderer’s victim or is she the fantasist that one of her circle, Frederica Rice, suggests? It is a well-constructed plot and there are enough clues scattered around the text for the diligent reader to begin to make sense of what is going on. The actual solution to Maggie’s murder involves some legerdemain over names which, for the fair play purist, is a little underhand.

This was great fun, entertaining, undemanding and a great holiday read.