Poirot Loses a Client - Was it Fair

CaptainHastings

THIS TOPIC WILL INVARIABLY SPOIL THE NOVEL.  READ ONLY IF YOU HAVE ALREADY READ Poirot Loses a Client:









Did it strike anyone as unfair or underhanded of Dame Christie to have Bella Tanios as the killer?  When the companion of the late Emily Arundel (I forget her name) see a woman wearing a brooch in the initials "TA" doing something curious on the staircase, I instantly picked up on the reflectivity trick and how it would really be "AT," in reverse.  So I knew it was not Teresa Arundel.  I actually flipped back to see if Bella's husband, Dr. Tanios's first name might begin with an "A."  No luck - it was Jacob.  Then I flipped back and re-read the chapter introducing the Tripp sisters.  No luck there too.  One sister's name was Julia and the other's name I forget, but it did not begin with "A."  Their daughter (or the teenager who lived with them) was unnamed.  In any event, if she was, again, not with a first name starting with "A."  So, apparently, though she is not referred to as "Arabella Tanios," anywhere else in the book, we're supposed to intuit that her full name is such and therefore, she is the person on the stairs wearing a brooch in the initials "AT," reflected to Mrs. Arundel's companion as "TA."  How can we (or Poirot) make that leap?  Couldn't her name have been simply "Bella," and therefore "BT?"  Why 'Arabella?'  If Christie chose never to identify her by her full name, couldn't her name have just as easily been Mirabella?  Sabella?  Isabella?  The list is endless.  Not fair.  Not fair in the least.  I could see if there was one sentence - one seemingly insignificant sentence in which she was referred to as "Arabella," like when the history of the Arundel family is provided.  It could be easy for a reader to disregard that and skim through a crucial clue like that.  Those that do would do so at the peril of not solving the mystery.  Those that remember or take the time to look back through the riffled pages could be rewarded by figuring it out before the final 2 pages.  As it happened, I just do not believe there were enough clues for the reader to conclude Bella was the guilty party ahead of the final pages and certainly not ahead of Poirot!

Nathan Robert Michael Rees

I when reading felt it was prehaps a bit unfair because I did not realize Bella was a shortened name. But if it helps when I read an Agatha Christie and I know who the murder(s) is. I still can't work it out, for example Evil Under The Sun, I know who the murder(s) is/are, I have seen the TV version and the movie version as well as the PC game. When I read the book it did not become obious once how Poirot could work it out and indeed I could not work it out dispite the fact I knew who the murderer(s) is/are.

Tommy_A_Jones

Didn't The Companion see the Brooch via a Mirror in which case it was fair, It is ne of the cases where The Murderer is so insignificant you forget about them and so don't imagine they are the Murderer, like The Mystery of The Blue Train because of the relationship between the Murderer and their Boss you don't imagine the person who is the Murderer could do it because Employees don't usually turn out to be Murderers

CaptainHastings

Nathan, that may well be true, but that '82 movie version of Evil Under the Sun sure was good, was it not?!  Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith trading barbs.  Thirty years later Smith does that kind of dialogue just as well as the Dowager Countess Grantham with the likes of Shirley Maclaine and Penelope Wilton.

Tommy_A_Jones

After a while I suppose you become accustomed to the tricks Agatha Uses in her books, the unfinished sentence, the mentioning of people who are dead but you have never met them so can you be sure they are deceased?, the use of a Hat on a "dead Body" and two people finding a body and one of them going to summon help are all Tricks that Agatha Christie used and so after a while you should be wise to them and not fall into the trap.

Maggie Smith is a wonderful Actress, whenever she has a line in anything In find it impossible not to laugh, she would have made an Excellent Miss Marple and maybe one who could have knocked Joan Hickson's Portrayal of the Top Spot which is where it quite rightly is at the moment. 

GKCfan

***SPOILERS***

It's actually very subtle, but on three separate occasions, it is clearly stated that Emily Arundell had a sister named Arabella, and it's clarified at one point that Arabella Arundell was the mother of the woman who would one day become Bella Tanios.  Poirot says in his summation that she must have been named after her mother.  So it is fair and very understated– the reader has to put two and two together.

CaptainHastings

Great point, Tommy.  Maggie Smith would be a terrific Miss Marple.  Maybe more for her earlier books when Miss Marple was not quite as mellowed as she was in her later novels.  She was just more provincial, conservative in her views.  Not too unlike Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess of Grantham on Downton Abbey.  Although never quite as snobbish as the Dowager.  But Maggie Smith could play Miss marple at any stage of her life.  Great casting!

Tommy_A_Jones

Thank you Captain Hastings, When I heard she had said she couldn't do it because of Harry Potter I was so disappointed, I think she would look like a slightly younger Angela Landesbury, the way Angela Landesbury looks in Murder She Wrote, I have always thought Angela Thorne and Patricia Garwood look slightly similar but the same type so have always thought they would be good too, btw, Great Name, I suppose he is one of your favourite Characters, and Mine, I have a Trilby amd when I wear it I feel like him for a while.

CaptainHastings

We could only hope Maggie Smith will reprise the role.  I guess  it will depend on how much longer Downton Abbey runs.  Personally, I hope the show and Smith as Violet continue indefinitely.  Thanks for the kudos on the name CaptainHastings.  I do like him, but I always think he's so put upon by Poirot.  What with Poirot using him as a negative barometer all the time and making him feel so inferior.  I thought my selecting his name as my handle might serve as an homage of sorts to a rather unsung hero in literature.  I also like how he has an eye for the ladies and often knows how to talk to them.  I've always thought Poirot had a more clinical view of beauty.  Kind of like he recognizes outward beauty or plainness in women but more as a clue to their inward feelings and capabilities (i.e., their likelihood to commit murder).  But Hastings looked at women the way most men do, romantically, sexually.  Without that, Christie's hero would come off all too robotic.  Since Poirot has no sex drive (save for the few instances where the Russian Countess Vera Rostakov) appears, Hastings is a far more necessary component to her oevre than meets the eye.

joe.petrizzo.7

Spoiler!

It's also mentioned when Poirot sees the monument at the tomb.  I remember when I first read it there had to be some significance.

Madame_Doyle

I don't think it's unfair at all.  Agatha Christie plays these games with names throughout her work, and if the readers look for the clues that way, chances are that they will not be fooled.  Peril At End house is a mystery that is easy to guess once we realize how she tries to fool us with names.  There are many other good examples, and to be honest, in Poirot Loses A Client, the Bella clue is pretty blatant and hard to miss.  

Griselda

I think we are supposed to puzzle over who is sufficiently unlikely to be the murderer. Theresa and her brother are just too obvious, and if you know AC, you'll know that she won't make the murderer the weak, dissolute, spoilt type. (as she doesn't with the nephew in SPOILER A Murder is Announced) It seems it could be the doctor, but not enough shade and subtlety about that. Few would guess Bella, but it is obvious when you know: as Poirot said, psychologically, you can't be both afraid for your husband and of him. She slipped up there, in the way she presented herself. It is somewhat obvious with the initials, to the extent, I wonder if AC wanted us to think that there must be some double bluff, someone wearing someone's else's jewellry/clothes to make everyone think it is them. She maybe thought that people were used to her style, and would think she would have the murderer deliberately throwing blame on another by wearing his things. What silly person, though, would wander about being suspicious with their initials on them. But she didn't think anyone would think she had been doing anything, I suppose. She thought she was safe. Clever of Poirot to think to look for evidence of a thread having been put across.