Sad Cypress
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Hercule Poirot |
| Genre(s) | Crime |
| Publisher | Harper Collins |
| Released | 1940 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-00-712071-0 |
| Preceded by | Hercule Poirot's Christmas |
| Followed by | One, Two, Buckle My Shoe |
Sad Cypress (published in 1940) is a crime novel, written by Agatha Christie, featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The novel is notable for being the first courtroom drama in the Poirot series.
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[edit] Plot introduction
A lovely young girl has died of poison. A woman stands in the dock charged with her murder. Hercule Poirot looks on from the gallery. But is she really guilty?
[edit] Plot summary
The novel is written in three parts: in the first place an account, largely from the perspective of the subsequent defendant, Elinor Carlisle, of the death of her aunt, Laura Welman, and the subsequent death of the victim, Mary Gerrard; secondly an account of Poirot’s investigation; and, thirdly, a sequence in court, again mainly from Elinor’s perspective.
In the first part, distant cousins Elinor Carlisle and Roddy Welman are happily engaged to be married when they receive an anonymous letter claiming that someone is "sucking up" to their wealthy aunt, Laura Welman, from whom Elinor and Roddy expect to inherit a sizeable fortune. Elinor immediately suspects Mary Gerrard, the lodge keeper’s daughter, to whom Laura has taken a considerable liking. They go down to visit their aunt: partly to see her and partly to protect their interests.
Laura is helpless after a stroke and speaks of a desire to die, most notably to Peter Lord, her physician. After a second stroke, she asks Elinor to ask the family solicitor to prepare a will under which it is clear that Mary is to be a beneficiary. Roddy has fallen in love with Mary, provoking Elinor’s jealousy. Laura dies intestate during the night and her estate goes to Elinor outright as her only surviving blood relative.
Subsequently, Elinor releases Roddy from the engagement and makes moves to settle money on him (which he refuses) and two thousand pounds on Mary (which she doesn’t). At an impromptu tea party thrown by Elinor for Mary and Nurse Hopkins, Mary dies of poison that had supposedly been put into a fish-paste sandwich. Elinor (who has been behaving suspiciously) is put on trial. Worse, when the body of her aunt is exhumed it is discovered that both women died of morphine poisoning. Elinor had easy access to morphine from a bottle that apparently went missing from Nurse Hopkins’s bag.
In the second part of the novel, Poirot is persuaded to investigate the case by Peter Lord, who is in love with Elinor and wants her to be acquitted at all costs. Poirot’s investigation focuses on a small number of elements. Was the poison in the sandwiches, which everyone ate, or something else, such as the tea that was prepared by Nurse Hopkins and drunk by them both? What is the secret of Mary’s birth, which everyone seems so keen to conceal? Was there any significance in the scratch of a thorn on Nurse Hopkins’s wrist? Is Peter Lord right to draw Poirot’s attention to evidence that someone watching through the window might have poisoned the sandwich, thinking that it would be eaten by Elinor?
In the third part of the novel, the case appears to go badly for Elinor, until her Defence unveils three theories that might exonerate her. The first (that Mary committed suicide) seems thin, and the second (Peter Lord’s theory of the killer outside the window) is unconvincing. But the third theory is Poirot’s.
A torn pharmaceutical label that the Prosecution supposed to have held morphine hydrochloride, the poison, had in fact held apomorphine hydrochloride, an emetic. This was revealed because on an ampoule, the M in Morphine would be capital; Poirot finds a lowercase M - thus it isn't morphine. Nurse Hopkins had injected herself with this emetic, apomorphine, in order to vomit the morphine that she had ingested in the tea. Her claim to have scratched herself on a thorn is disproved when it is revealed that the rose tree in question was a thornless variety: Zephyrine Drouhin.
If the means were simple, the motive is complex. Mary Gerrard is not the daughter of Eliza and Bob Gerrard. Instead – as Poirot has discovered from Nurse Hopkins in the course of the investigation - she is the daughter of Laura Welman and Sir Lewis Rycroft, which made her the heiress to Laura’s estate since she was actually a closer relative than Elinor. When Nurse Hopkins encouraged Mary to write a will, Mary named as its beneficiary the woman that she supposed to be her aunt, Mary Riley (Eliza’s sister), in New Zealand. Mary Riley married (and, as it happens, murdered) someone called Draper, and Mary Draper is none other than … Nurse Hopkins.
Poirot ends the novel by rebuking Peter Lord for his clumsy efforts to implicate the hypothetical killer outside the window. He has planted evidence and led Poirot to it in a desperate bid to free Elinor. Peter’s momentary embarrassment is presumably alleviated by Poirot’s assurance that it is to him, and not to her former love Roddy, that Elinor is now likely to become married.
[edit] Characters in “Sad Cypress”
- Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective
- Mrs. Laura Welman, a widow
- Mary Gerrard, her protégée
[edit] Suspects
- Elinor Carlisle, Laura’s niece
- Roddy Welman, Laura’s nephew by marriage
- Dr. Peter Lord, Laura’s doctor
- Nurse Jessie Hopkins, the District Nurse
- Nurse Eileen O’Brien, Laura’s nurse
- Mr Seddon, Laura’s solicitor
- Mrs Bishop, Laura’s housekeeper
- Horlick, the gardener
- Bob Gerrard, the lodge keeper and Mary’s father
- Ted Bigland, a farmer’s son
[edit] Characters in the courtroom
- The Judge
- Sir Edwin Bulmer, Counsel for the Defence
- Sir Samuel Attenbury, Counsel for the Prosecution
- Dr. Alan Garcia, expert witness for the Prosecution
- Inspector Brill, the investigating officer
- Mr. Abbott, a grocer
- Alfred James Wargrave, a rose-grower
- James Arthur Littledale, a chemist
- Amelia Mary Sedley, a witness from New Zealand
- Edward John Marshall, a witness from New Zealand
[edit] Trivia
The title comes from a song from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night which is printed as an epigraph to the novel.
Peter Lord says that he has been recommended to consult Poirot by Dr. John Stillingfleet on the basis of Poirot’s brilliant performance in the case related in the short story, “The Dream”. The character of Stillingfleet later reappears in Third Girl.
[edit] Publishing and Dramatization History
Publishing: First published in 1940 by William Collins Sons & Co. in London, and by Dodd, Mead & Co. in New York. Currently issued by Harper Collins, with the ISBN 0-00-712071-0
Dramatization: Produced by LWT in 2003 in the series Agatha Christie's Poirot. Written by David Pirie based on the novel by Agatha Christie, directed by David Moore. Starring David Suchet, Elizabeth Dermot Walsh, Paul McGann and Marion O'Dwyer.
Audio Dramatization: Donald Moffat played Hercule Poirot in several radio adaptions of the Agatha Christie novels, incuding this one. Charles Simpson plays Roddy Wellman.
