The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge, by Agatha Christie
Read it here in about 30 minutes.
In honour of the Liars’ League’s upcoming Agatha Christie themed short story event, thinking about Agatha Christie’s legacy as Queen of Crime and Mystery…
I love Agatha Christie’s story titles – they may indicate the crime, and sometimes the location (Death on the Nile; Murder on the Orient Express), or even the victim (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; Mrs McGinty’s Dead), but they are often ambiguous, suggesting vague mysteries and secrets (The Mysterious Affair at Styles – what ‘mysterious’ thing has happened?, what ‘affair’; The Secret of Chimneys – what is/are ‘Chimneys’?). Overall, the effect of these titles is to create suspense for the reader. Many of the titles use the determiner ‘the’, which adds a sense of importance to the crime. In this particular story – The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge – the reader may wonder what mystery they’re going to encounter, where is Hunter’s Lodge, etc., although ‘Hunter’s’ may suggest a gun is involved. The fact a ‘Hunter’s Lodge’ is mentioned may also suggest the setting is an isolated place, while the determiner ‘The’ suggests nothing mysterious normally happens at this location.
In this story, poor Poirot is unwell with the flu, so sends Hastings off to investigate the titular crime, which happens to be a mysterious murder. Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard, a frequent guest in Poirot stories, is also on the scene, so the two men combine their inept crime-solving skills. Luckily, Poirot can solve the crime regardless, as Hastings reports back all findings and events. The uselessness of the sidekicks may be a cliché, but it rounds out the characters, creates a stable text-world, and adds humour; for example, when Poirot admonishes Hastings, ‘do not waste time taking photographs of interiors they are underexposed and not in the least artistic’, or when Hastings is appalled by Poirot’s ‘garish, silk dressing-gown’ – these comments are typical of the relationship between the two.
Not all of Christie’s stories end with the criminal facing trial, which is the case in this short story – this is unusual for the detective genre, but Christie did allow other kinds of justice in these situations, such as suicide or natural events. This variation from the norm is just one example of Christie being ahead of her time; she also used unreliable narrators, unemotionally killed off child characters, and even had a child as the murderer in one particular story. The beloved characters, and how she played with the genre, are just two of the reasons for Christie’s popularity as an author.
Mina Ma 