The Pleasures of Poirot: "After the Funeral"
This murder mystery has everything: family drama, secrets, poisoned wedding cake and, of course, everyone's favorite Belgian detective.
I’m embarking on a rather herculean effort: to read all of the Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries written by Agatha Christie and to watch all their screen adaptations and write about them here. Originally, I had thought of forming an entirely new newsletter strictly for the Christie material, but I figured that might be too onerous, and it made more sense to just make it a regular feature here at Omnivorous. After all, the entire point of this newsletter is to provide you, dear readers, with my takes on a whole host of things: culture both past and present, politics, books, TV and movies, and so on. Hopefully some of you share my love of Agatha Christie, Poirot, Miss Marple, and everything delightfully old-fashioned that they represent.
So, without further ado, let’s get into it, shall we?
First up, we have After the Funeral, in which Poirot is called in by a lawyer friend to investigate a brutal murder that occured among the Abernethie family. The victim, Cora Lansquenet, was the sister of the deceased Richard and had attended his funeral, at which she blurted out her belief that he’d been murdered. Someone was, seemingly, threatened by this revelation and hacked her to death with a hatchet. As it turns out, however, it wasn’t one of the many grasping members of the family but, instead, her female companion, Miss Gilchrist, who murdered her in order to obtain a Vermeer painting, which she would use to finance a tea shop that she planned to open. She disguised herself as Cora--whom no one had seen in a number of years, if ever--and planted the seeds for a distraction.
One of the first things you’ll notice about After the Funeral is just how little time Poirot actually appears. In fact, we’re almost a third of the way through the novel before Mr. Entwhistle seeks him out, and even then we spend far more time with the various members of the Abernethie family than we do with him. To some, this might be a bit disappointing since, after all, we read these books mainly for the pleasure of Poirot himself, with his little French asides, his fastidiousness, and his numerous quirks. However, this narrative structure also allows us to have insights into the various characters, and it allows us to see just how toxic the Abernethies are. Each of them, including those who are only part of the family through marriage, has something to hide or some potential motivation for committing the murder.
More striking, to me at least, was the setting. By this time, Poirot is getting on in years, and the story takes place in a post-World War II Britain, with all of the strife and misery that implies. Rationing is mentioned on several occasions, and several of the characters--most notably Richard’s curmudgeonly hypochondriac of a brother, Timothy--complain about the changes in society, including how difficult it is to get help. This is a Britain that is still trying to find its feet in the aftermath of a global conflict and the ongoing dissolution of its overseas empire, and Christie skillfully shows us how this plays out at the level of the personal. In fact, it could be argued that Miss Gilchrist would never have committed the murder at all had the privations of the war not spelled the doom of her beloved tea shop.
Of all of the characters, however, it’s Poirot who bears the brunt of all of this. As an expatriate Belgian living in London, he has always existed in a sort of liminal state, with many people refusing to ever see him as anything other than a foreign interloper. Though this happens in many of the stories and novels, it’s especially clear in this one, and the Abernethie family mostly treat him with either amusement or outright contempt. The beauty of After the Funeral, though, is that it gives the detective the chance to use his “foreignness” as a means of getting access to information and confidences that he might not otherwise have possessed. He’s able to gather all of the various Abernethie heirs at the house under the guise of being a foreign investor interested in transforming the old mansion into a home for refugees displaced by the war. Still, there are a few indications, subtle to be sure, that Poirot does grow a bit weary of having xenophobic, spoiled English folk dismiss him.
And then there’s the murderess herself. You have to give her credit for her ingenuity and simple audacity, especially as it would have taken quite a bit of self-assurance to try to pass oneself off as a relative in a room full of those who, though they only knew her slightly, still could very well have pulled the mask off at the slightest sign that she wasn’t who she claimed. However, like so many other murderers in the Christie canon, she’s tripped up by two things: the fact that she practiced Cora’s mannerisms in a mirror (and thus had them backward, something recognized by a member of the family) and by mentioning something she could only have seen during her time passing as Cora.
All the same, it’s rather hard not to feel a little sorry for Miss Gilchrist, who seems to have really been psychologically broken by the fact that her little tea shop failed. There’s also just the faintest hint here and there that there might have been something more than mere friendship between the two women. The fact that she goes more than a little mad before she goes on trial just adds that much more pathos and tragedy to her story.
In fact, there’s quite a lot of pathos in this story, and though the murder of Cora is the centerpiece, there are a number of other personal dramas that play out at the same time. There are characters that are having affairs and others that are struggling with mental illness, but for my money the most touching is Richard’s sister-in-law, Helen, who has been caring for an illegitimate child on Cyprus. It’s a grace-note, to be sure, but it’s one of those elements of Christie’s writing that makes her fiction truly stand out.
Which brings us to the adaptation of the book as part of the series Agatha Christie’s Poirot.
I’ve been a huge fan of the ITV adaptations of Christie’s novels for years now, ever since my mother and I started watching them way back in the early 90s. By this point, there’s a strong consensus that David Suchet is the definitive Poirot, the one actor who has so completely become the Belgian detective that it’s impossible (for me, at least) to see anyone else convincingly take on the role. (I will admit, though, that I am also a fan of Peter Ustinov as Poirot, though I think that has more to do with my love of Ustinov, since he does tend to ham it up a bit).
For the most part, the adaptation is faithful to the novel, insofar as Cora’s murder is concerned. However, where it takes a pretty substantial liberty is in the subplot involving Richard and George who, in this version, is Helen’s illegitimate son with Richard (rather than, in the book, the son of his sister, Laura). Though this might offend some Christie purists, I can understand why the writers would take this approach. In the novel, Richard’s death is essentially a misdirect. He died, as should have been clear from the beginning, of entirely natural causes, and so it can seem a bit extraneous. By folding together the George and Helen plotlines, it adds another bit of pathos and tragedy, since George blames himself for Richard’s death (they’d quarreled shortly beforehand) and his mother for her betrayal of his father. And, to top things off, George is also having an affair with his first cousin Susan (who is married in the book). It’s a bit risque, but the adaptation manages to make it more touching and slightly tragic rather than simply titillating.
The other significant change is how directly Poirot is involved in matters from the beginning. In fact, the film opens with him on a train, sitting across from Mr. Entwhistle, who explains to him the complicated family dynamics at play (in this case, he’s actually the son of the elder Mr. Entwhistle). Once again, this makes sense. After all, the viewers of Poirot don’t want to spend the majority of the movie not even seeing their lovable if exasperating detective, especially since David Suchet is just so damn good in the role. Unfortunately, this does mean that we know rather less about the characters than we do in the novel, but that seems, on the whole, to be a rather worthwhile sacrifice.
The rest of the cast are uniformly excellent, with Michael Fassbender a standout with his charismatic and strangely touching performance as George, a man clearly struggling with the knowledge that his mother had an affair with his uncle and that he is the product of that illicit union.
All in all, the Poirot adaptation manages to stay true to the book and, like its source material, it even allows us to feel a little sorry for the perpetrator.
Before I sign off, I just want to acknowledge that yes, I know that the MGM film Murder at the Gallop is, technically speaking, an adaptation of this book. However, given that that film transforms it into a mystery involving Miss Marple (with Margaret Rutherford in the role), I’ll just say in passing that it’s a serviceable film, with a much lighter tone than either the novel or the ITV adaptation. Though I’m not the biggest fan of Rutherford’s interpretation of Marple, I will say that she is very amusing in this film.
And there you have it, the first entry of “The Pleasures of Poirot.” Next up, I’ll be discussing The ABC Murders, so stay tuned!
Spoiler Alert??