Crooked House: Agatha Christie’s Own Favourite, a Family Mansion and a Poisoned Patriarch
A rich Greek businessman is found dead in his London home... The Leonides were one big happy family living in a huge, rambling mansion. That was until the head of the family, Aristide, was killed by a fatal injection of eserine. Suspicion naturally falls on the old man’s young widow, fifty years his junior. But the murderer has not reckoned with the tenacity of Charles Hayward, fiancé of the dead millionaire’s granddaughter.
Author: Agatha Christie (1890–1976)
Title: Crooked House (1949)
Format: English Kindle edition
Scope: Standalone mystery (no Poirot or Marple)
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/B0046A9MS6 (ASIN B0046A9MS6)
The Crooked House
Aristide Leonides moved to England, where he built the Crooked House, a curiously shaped mansion in which he lodged his whole family, from his sons to his grandchildren and in-laws. The house of the title closely resembles the one in the nursery rhyme ’There was a crooked man’. The narrator, Charles, wonders whether ’crooked’ means dishonest, or, as Sophia puts it, ’twisted’.
Sophia and Charles
Sophia Leonides, the granddaughter, has won the heart of Charles, the son of an assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard, and when her grandfather is murdered by a member of the family, she asks him to investigate the case. Charles lives for the case in order to be able to marry his beloved Sophia, and just when they think it is all over, there is another murder.
The Leonides Family
The household is a gallery of distinctive characters. Philip, the elder son, is a cold, bookish historian; his wife Magda is an actress who turns every moment into a performance. Roger, the younger son, runs the family catering business into the ground and adores his austere wife Clemency. The old man’s sister-in-law, Edith de Haviland, a fierce elderly woman, has run the house since her sister’s death. Then there are the young widow Brenda, rumoured to be in love with the children’s tutor, Laurence Brown, and the grandchildren: Eustace, a sullen teenager, and twelve-year-old Josephine, who snoops around the house writing everything down in a notebook and announces that she knows who the murderer is.
Eye Drops and Insulin
The method is simple and chilling. Aristide, a diabetic, received regular insulin injections, and someone replaced the insulin with his own eye drops, which contained eserine. Anyone in the house could have done it. Chief Inspector Taverner leads the official inquiry, while Charles’s father, the Assistant Commissioner, advises his son to listen to the family and let the murderer reveal themselves by talking. It is advice that Charles takes, with consequences he does not foresee.
Christie’s Favourite
In a foreword to the novel, Christie wrote that it was one of the two books with which she was most satisfied, the other being Ordeal by Innocence. She also said that she had saved it up for years, thinking it over. Its ending was so startling that her publishers reportedly asked her to change it; she refused. Julian Fellowes wrote the screenplay for a 2017 film starring Glenn Close as Edith.
Without Poirot
One reason the book works so well is the absence of a great detective. Charles is an ordinary, decent man, in love and out of his depth, and the reader shares his confusion and growing unease. Read it without looking anything up: its effect depends on surprise.
A Shocking Ending
So begins a story of secrets and mysteries at the heart of a powerful, closed family. The shocking ending certainly surprised its first readers, and it makes the novel a masterpiece, excellent and full of mystery. Christie counted it among her own favourites among her books, and it is easy to see why.
As an Amazon Associate, this site earns from qualifying purchases.
Part of the reading recommendations featured on books.sapiensverbum.com.
