The Case of the Missing Will, by Agatha Christie
Read it here in about 20 minutes.
In honour of the Liars’ League’s recent Agatha Christie themed short story event, thinking about Agatha Christie’s legacy as Queen of Crime and Mystery…
Short stories don’t need much exposition, if any, and you can see this in ‘The Case of the Missing Will’: a woman arrives at Poirot’s apartment and tells him about the mystery she wants him to solve; he immediately sets to work solving it. Poirot and Hastings would already be known to fans of Agatha Christie, but you don’t need to have encountered these two characters before to understand their relationship and roles – it’s Poirot who the woman wants to meet with, and Poirot who does the sympathetic questioning; Hastings, on the other hand, diligently narrates the facts, and comments on Poirot’s arrogance ‘(Really, Poirot’s vanity is blatant!)’.
The conflict in the story is swiftly made clear, as the woman visiting Poirot tells him she wants him to find her uncle’s missing will. She is not emotional about finding the will, so the conflict really passes over to Poirot and becomes his conflict – he must solve this mystery, because he thrives on the intellectual challenge of doing so, and, as Hasting’s points out, is immensely proud of his abilities.
The story resolves in an unexpected way, in my opinion, as Poirot recovers the will, which has been hidden in plain sight, and written partially in invisible ink. Many of Agatha Christie’s stories (both short and long form) have, for me, unexpected solutions, and I don’t think I could ever write a story with this type of plot, which is probably one of the reasons that I, and so many others, enjoy reading them.
Mina Ma 