Is it just me or is Agatha Christie the greatest detective fiction author of all times...
Unlike other such authors of her time and albeit even today, she chose to reveal how the detective in a particular story actually deduced his/her inferences. Sure, in Ms. Marple’s case the reader is sometimes left in the fog as to how she can always be correct with her village parallels( she should have written something like The Chocolate Box as she wrote in Poirot’s case to suggest that he is a human after all ), this particular story is not anything like that.
This story is designed somewhat like Murder On The Orient Express where the victim had comitted a crime long ago and was meted out the revenge for that deed after 20 years.
The story begins in suburban London where a man comes to visit a particular lady on a very dreary and cold day....as a result of which he is severely wrapped in various warm clothings and ( atleast what seems to the landlady ) has a very bad cold so as to be able to only whisper the name of the lady he wants to visit....She pays no particular notice to the point and does not even care to notice when the man leaves, until she goes upstairs and finds her tenant dead-strangled.......
In another part of England a couple have ventured on a fresh project- that of hotelry. The hotel in question is actually a manor-Monkswell Manor, and they have already got applications for three rooms.
Pinned to the body of the dead woman was a note with the nursery rhyme three blind mice written on it. The police further discovers evidence as to the fact that the murderer plans to visit the Monkswell Manor probably for the same reason for which he visited the deceased lady.
The plot is set- the occupants of the manor arrive on time-a Mr. Wren who is supposedly an architecture student with a distinctly unsettling presence; a Mrs. Boyle, a corpulent lady who had served in the army during the second world war and as such had acquired the habit of passing orders and of being perennialy displeased with every arrangement; a retired major ( whose name again I will not reveal, please read the book for that) who is a pleasant personality and tends to speak in staccato barks.
A fourth person turns up in the middle of the night, a Mr. Paravicini whose car turns in the snow storm.
As a result of this snow storm, the people get snowed in and thus trapped, and in this scene arrives the inspector, on skiis!
Further down the story the sergeants skiis get stolen, thus enclosing all of them in the same manor of which all are innocent except one.....and someones life is in great danger.....
It takes not much time for the occupants to crack under the pressure and before long suspicions and treachery start flying around thick and fast.....it is a fight unto death for someone or as it turns out more than one.
A must read, this story not just for its lucid narration but also for its striking climax.