Plot devices in Agatha Christie's novels
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Agatha Christie’s reputation as “The Queen of Crime” was built by the large number of classic plot devices that she introduced, or for which she provided the most famous example.
[edit] Plot devices
[edit] A character notices something odd, but cannot identify what it is
This is a very common clue to the reader that something specific should be regarded as relevant in the immediate events. In “The Mystery of the Spanish Chest” a character seems to remember that there was something odd about a room. Poirot remembers that she is puzzled, and later prompts her to remember that a screen was in the wrong place.
In many other examples, a person appears familiar for some reason. In her early novels, Christie sometimes uses this to indicate that the person is someone else in disguise, but later (when her plot machinery is less incredible) the reason for the familiarity is more subtle. Familiarity, especially in the eyes, is often used to foreshadow illegitimate children or hidden family relations, as in "Murder for Christmas".
[edit] Attention is drawn to something that should be there and isn’t
In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot draws the attention of Hastings to footprints in one of two flower beds. Hastings is misled into thinking that Poirot is interested in the footprints, but he is actually interested in their absence from the other bed, where they should have also been found.
This plot device – which appears in several different forms throughout her novels – was borrowed by Christie from Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story, “Silver Blaze”. In this, Sherlock Holmes refers to “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time”, where the “curious” thing is the fact that the dog does not bark rather than that it does. Christie effectively admits the debt in the tenth chapter of Cards on the Table when her crime novelist character, Ariadne Oliver, explicitly mentions the source. The same reference is also specifically mentioned by Poirot in “Murder in the Mews”.
[edit] The detective draws an inference from something overheard or unconnected
In the first chapter of Lord Edgware Dies Hastings tells the reader that Poirot has always attributed his solution of this mystery to “a chance remark of a stranger in the street”. (The remark – “If they had just had the sense to ask Ellis right away” – has nothing directly to do with the mystery.) This is just one of many examples when the nature of the mystery is explained by an epiphany in which the detective makes a relevant discovery on the strength of a random occurrence.
[edit] The murder proves to be an opportunistic crime complicating a complex one
In Murder on the Links most of the confusing elements of the crime are discovered to have been part of an elaborate plan by the victim to stage his own death and disappear. It is when he is happened upon by the real murderer that the final elements are added to the puzzle.
Similarly, in “The Mystery of the Spanish Chest” the victim himself plans to hide in the chest and catch his wife with the man that he suspects of being her lover. The murderer kills him while he is in the chest, resulting in a more complex situation to be solved than might otherwise have arisen.
[edit] A significant item is hidden “in plain sight”
In Murder on the Links Poirot stresses the potential importance of a length of lead pipe that is completely overlooked by a rival detective who only focuses on very small clues.
In a sense, many of Christie’s novels employ the same device on a different level, in the sense that the murderer is rarely “the person one would least suspect”: more usually he or she is a character that has been very visible from early in the novel.
[edit] “No one ever notices …”
It was Christie’s assertion that no one ever notices someone waiting upon them. In Sparkling Cyanide the murderer dresses as a waiter in order to poison a glass of champagne, while in Death in the Clouds the murderer dresses as a steward aboard an aircraft to prick the victim with a poisoned thorn. This is a somewhat contentious device on Christie’s part, but it was also used by G.K. Chesterton in at least one of his Father Brown stories.
[edit] Identities are concealed
Another contentious plot device used repeatedly in Christie’s work is the concealment of identity. In Third Girl, Taken at the Flood and After the Funeral characters are able to pass themselves off as relatives who have been unseen for considerable periods.
More incredibly, in Third Girl a young woman fails to notice that her stepmother is also living with her in disguise as a flatmate and, in Murder in Mesopotamia a woman marries a man without realising that it is actually her former husband.
[edit] A character who is considered unreliable or untrustworthy speaks the truth, but nobody listens to him
In A Murder is Announced the silly and forgetful Dora Bunner tells Inspector Craddock what one particular character was doing shortly before the murder took place. But because she is so unreliable, everybody believes she was mistaken until she started to believe the version of the murderer herself. In The Mousetrap, Mrs Boyle points out that one character cannot be who he pretends to be, but nobody pays attention since Mrs Boyle is presented as a rather unpleasant woman who complains about everyone. In Crooked House, Brenda Leonides tells the narrator pretty early in the book that she thinks the character, who later turns out to be the murderer, might not be quite right in the head, but nobody believes her since Brenda herself is the main suspect in the poisoning of her much older and rich husband.
[edit] Twist endings
[edit] The murderer appears to be the intended victim
In Peril at End House, a young woman (Nick Buckley) appears to be the target for a number of murder attempts. In fact she has arranged these in order to mask her own murder (of a distant cousin, Maggie) as another botched murder attempt that has miscarried.
Same device for masking a real murder has been used in A Murder is Announced (twice) and The Mirror Crack'd. Staged unsuccessful murder attempts appear in After the Funeral, Crooked House and Third Girl.
[edit] The murderer appears to be an actual victim
In And Then There Were None, multiple victims are killed by one of a diminishing number of suspects. At the end it appears that the murderer must be one of the two survivors, but in fact the murderer has earlier conspired to stage his own death, leaving him alive to complete his programme of executions before committing suicide.
[edit] The murder has been committed by all of the suspects
In Murder on the Orient Express, Poirot reveals that all (but one) of the suspects committed the murder as part of an elaborate conspiracy.
[edit] The murderer is the narrator
In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the murder has been committed by the narrator, Dr. Sheppard, who never lies but omits mention of any of the actions that would demonstrate his guilt. The same thing happened in Endless Night.
[edit] The murderer is a policeman
In Hercule Poirot's Christmas the murder has been committed by the investigating policeman, who also happens to be the illegitimate son of the victim.
[edit] The murderer is the detective
In Curtain: Poirot's Last Case the final murder is committed by Poirot.
[edit] The murderer is a child
In Crooked House the murderer is a twelve year-old girl whose appealing nature conceals a psychopathic streak.
[edit] The conspirators in a murder appear to hate one another
In Death on the Nile the initial suspect, Jacqueline de Bellefort, has actually shot the victim’s husband, Simon Doyle, before the murder. The solution to the mystery reveals that they are working together, and shooting has been carefully staged. Similarly, the conspirator cousins in The Mysterious Affair at Styles only pretend to hate one another.
This twist was well enough known for Christie to use it as a red herring in Hercule Poirot's Christmas.
[edit] The murders are unconnected
While it is a common red herring to include unrelated minor crimes like robberies in the stories, in Cat Among the Pigeons two murders actually have no connection at all except for place and method. The second murderer just happened to mimic the first murder in execution.
[edit] The murder takes place after the corpse is discovered
In Evil Under the Sun, the body of the victim is apparently discovered by two characters, one of whom goes to fetch the police. The murderer, however, has only “discovered” the body of his accomplice, and is left free to murder the real victim with a seemingly perfect alibi established.
[edit] The murderer is … exactly who it appears to be
In The Hollow, Poirot arrives at the scene of a murder in time to see a woman with a gun in her hand standing over the body of her husband, who is bleeding to death from a fresh bullet wound. It turns out at the end of the novel that she did in fact shoot him, but that this fact has subsequently been obfuscated by the other witnesses.
