Have you ever guessed the murderer?

LukeMcLAren

Have you ever guessed the murderer? I have guessed - just guessed, and about three times I have been right. Also quite often I have found out one of the clues. But I've never found out all: the motive, opportunity, identity, clues etc. Although I know most of the ways that she distracts our attention from the most obvious clues, I just seem to be taken in every time. Have you ever spotted how she distract 

silvana

I guessed the murderer in Peril at end house! That was an easy one. But....that was the only one!  :-)

maryamalbulushi

I am proud to say i guessed the murderer in 4.50 from paddington with all the clues.motive..etc . Also in n or m ? I only guessed the female clearly and there were others who i guessed but not completely

Griselda

As. I mentioned before, she has a sudden interruption, a telegram, for example, to,divert you from a big clue. She also has the person who thinks something doesn't add up and is thinking why, suddenly getting confused, and remembering something else, which is a bit daft, so we think they are just rambling. Spot the dotty older person who seems like they are past it, but through that haze of rambling comments is absolutely or on. See The Moving Finger for Jerry's dream, SPOILER ALERT, being close to the truth. Also, Mrs Dane Calthorpe in this book coming out with s a prescient observation. Look out for the dotty older woman in The Hollow. Whenever a character is given page space to talk at length, there is the clue. It will for a reason when they talk about their past. See Mrs Folliat's rambling about Hattie in Dead Man's Folly ( an underrated work). Poirot does go still, or quiet when a clue has been given. Charming cads with crisply curling hair are usually suspect. Not so A Murder is Announced, but very often. Also, any mention of someone having been to some place often has significance. Clues are often about that, Poirot remembers he has read about a jewel theft in that place, or something ( See The Mystery SPOILER ALERT of the Blue Train, and SPOILER ALERT A Pocket Full of Rye.) too much suspicious information coming all at once, eg, in one chapter, about a person means a red herring, eg, in SPOILER ALERT Three Act Tragedy about Mr and Mrs Dacres's. Proper rationale for crimes is built up carefully by AC.

Griselda

Don't know how you got the 4.50 from Paddington, Maryam. That is impressive.

Griselda

AC also likes to have a maid or old dodderer who know something but doesn't know that they know something -- eg, that it is significant. ( See, SPOILER ALERT, Hercule Poirot's Christmas, and what the butler keeps thinking. ) It doesn't really help, much, because we don't know why it is significant either. But if someone remembers someone saying something odd, that will be a clue. I don't think AC's work is just clever tricks. She knows the characters of her principal players inside out, and if we try to think of how they might be, we should be able to judge how they would behave and whether what they have done is plausible. Plots always hinge around this: an explanation which cannot be true because the victim or other character would not have done this or that. This at least helps us to sift valuable clues from red herrings. As Poirot says, it is all psychology.

taliavishay-arbel

Griselda, spot on - you remind me of 2 incidents: in "The mirror cracked", the studio maid, Gladys, tells Cherry (who tells Miss Marple) "It was odd, she did it on purpose" (or words to that effect) about spilling th drink and SPOILER Miss Marple has to untangle who the "she" is; in "The moving finger" Agnes, the maid, has "something odd" on her mind and wants to consult Partridge; since she is killed before she can speak, Miss Marple has to figure out what she can have seen.

Griselda

Yes, that's a classic, in The Mirror Cracked. There is often a lot of confusion with prepositions, so we can't be sure of what the speaker had meant. That Mirror Cracked one reminds me of the " She wasn't there " quote in A Murder Is Announced. It is all about emphasis on certain words. I wonder what the best give away is. Actually, I think it might be Poirot's 'strain of weakness' speech in The murder of Roger Ackroyd, but we were so far unprepared for who the murderer would be, that it's hardly strange that most readers would have missed this. I'd love to know if anyone did actually guess it without having seen the tv dramatisation, etc.

Griselda

As for somebody thinking that something is odd, but not quite knowing why, I think that this is the most reliably accurate means to deciding whether something is a clue, eg, Agatha Christie is indicating to the reader who might be the killer. The problem is, it is difficult usually to work out why the person is unsettled about something not being right. I'm thinking of the maid in Peril At End House not going out to watch the fireworks because she senses something is not right. We find out later who is making her uncomfortable, but you would need to do a check of everyone around at the time in order to use this information to point you to the likely killer. That is the sort of clue that Poirot can say has been a giveaway, but hasn't been a lot of help to we the readers. I guess he uses his instincts as to what is natural behaviour in order to devine a killer, and we are not there and so we are at something of a disadvantage.

Theodora

A few times, but it was a hunch. I really prefer not to. I like to be surprised.

SuspiciousCharacter

The only book I solved was Murder in Mesopotamia (in that I guessed how and why it was done.) But I correctly guessed the culprits for Three-Act Tragedy, The Mystery on the Blue Train, and Curtain.

Griselda

That is amazing, Mystery on the Blue Train. How did you do it, Suspicious Character?

SuspiciousCharacter

Haha, thanks. They headed my list of suspects, mostly due to the silent "K," but I didn't quite solve it---I couldn't guess how or why they were involved in the crime. 

Christopher_Wren

Lord Edgware dies. Right after the murder I thought about this possibility. And I was sure, when no character even seemed to consider it.

SiddharthaS

I am not naming guesses that turned out to be accurate.

Sittaford Mystery (Who and How - recently discussed at length in the thread on The Analytical Christie - Permutations & Combinations of the Alibi);

Funerals Are Fatal (Who and How);

Death on the Nile (Who, How, Why);

ABC Murders (Who, Why, How was not specifically complicated);

*** SPOILER ALERT *** Mystery of the Spanish Chest (References to Desdemona were clues - Othello was murdered, so how far could Iago be?);

*** SPOILER ALERT *** Sad Cypress (Of the three at the murder location, one was the accused and the second was the victim; that left the third who had to be the perpetrator.  The motive needed some imagination.   But the how was not difficult given the profession of the person concerned);  

*** SPOILER ALERT *** A Murder is Announced (Who was most likely to be able to organize and efficiently execute it?  The genetic reality behind the clue was a known item but I had missed it)

A few short stories including one from Tuesday Murders about a curse causing a stabbing death (there is a similar episode in the Adrian Monk TV series that used the same concept some 50 years later); 

Perhaps I shall recall a few of the novels if I go over the list.