SPOILER ALERT *** The Analytical Christie - Part 1 of 2 (Permutations & Combinations of the ALIBI)

SiddharthaS

Christie designed her murder plots around the two primary variables that typically point to suspects - Motive and Opportunity.  

The ALIBI:   

Time and Location are the primary variables in an ALIBI.  Christie creates as foolproof an alibi for her murderer as possible, so that even if his motive is unraveled, it would hopefully be difficult to accuse him of the crime.  The time or the location of the murder (preferably both) must therefore be fudged to create a solid alibi.  

• Two types of locations - the location where the body is found, and the location where the murder occurs.  Unless there is reason to believe otherwise, the investigators will presume the location of the murder to be where the body was found.    
  
• Three variations of the timing aspect of the alibi - whether the murder actually occurred at the presumed time, before, or after. 

These variables provide six permutations and combinations to plot an alibi.  I have identified various Christie plots against all of them except one.  Perhaps even AC could not conceive that one.  

Note that the classification is based only on the "primary" murder and not on secondary murders which may have become necessary to protect the perpetrator from being apprehended.  

It will be great if you can point out errors and fill in the blanks... 

1. Murder committed WHERE body was found and  AT the Presumed Time ... Mysterious Affair at Styles, ABC Murders, Five Little Pigs,  Cards on the Table, Pocket full of Rye, A Murder is Announced, 4:50 From Paddington, Peril at End House, Death in the Clouds, A Caribbean Mystery, ...
2. Murder committed WHERE body was found but BEFORE the Presumed Time ...Funerals Are Fatal, Hercule Poirot's Christmas, Murder at the Vicarage, Death on the Nile, … 
   
3. Murder committed WHERE body was found but AFTER the Presumed Time ...Murder on the Orient Express, … 
   
4. Murder committed ELSEWHERE and AT the Presumed Time  ...Examples:  ??? 
5. Murder committed ELSEWHERE but BEFORE the Presumed Time ... Body in the Library, …  
6. Murder committed ELSEWHERE but AFTER the Presumed Time  ... Evil Under the Sun, …

(Part II reviews the MOTIVE variations)

   

GKCfan

***SPOILERS***

For #4, would you count Endless Night?  The death occurred when everybody thought it did, but not in the fields– the poisoning happened elsewhere, as opposed to the other theory of the victim being startled while riding.

SiddharthaS

@ GKCfan - Thank you - you seem to have hit the nail on the head!!  Yes, that would indeed be the closest possible example of alibi type #4. Looking back, I understand why I couldn't think of it myself. The evil personified in "Endless Night" was too depressing for me to be able to look at the book in terms of the cleverness of the plot.  Regardless, the existence of this peculiar example should validate the thesis about the highly analytical approach Christie adopted to identify and explore all possible variations of the alibi.  

Tommy_A_Jones

Doesn't Pocketful of Rye apply to 4?

Tommy_A_Jones

Oh No, #3 applies to Pocketful of Rye

Anubis

Roger Ackroyd would be #2.

Tommy_A_Jones

Oh Thankyou.

Tommy_A_Jones

I miss-read your Post Anubis, I don't know why I said Thankyou.

Anubis

I often do that too. No complaints from me about being thanked. I'm having trouble coming up with an example of #4. Cheers.

Tommy_A_Jones

What about One Two Buckle My Shoe for #4

SiddharthaS

@Tommy_A_Jones - I thought "One Two ... " fitted better with #2, as the murder location was the same where the body was eventually found, it was merely hidden in the meantime.   No?

Tommy_A_Jones

Oh right, Does The Sittaford Mystery fit #2 also?

SiddharthaS

@Tommy_A_Jones -  The "Presumed Time" of the murder in "Sittaford Mystery" is supposed to be BEFORE the actual murder, if you go by the message from the "beyond". In that case, it looks like #2.  The forensic guesstimate of the timing of the murder, IIRC, supports BOTH possibilities, #2 and #3.  

However, from a professional investigator's OR legal perspective, supernatural inputs have no meaning in a murder case and so what happened in the beginning of the narrative ought to be seen as either a coincidental and random happenstance, OR it must be seen as a deliberate ploy to create an alibi.  Once you stop being enamored by the supernatural, the narrative immediately points to who the killer must be.  

That is why I believe Christie could not possibly involve any of her professional sleuths, or even Superintendent Battle, in this mystery.  The resolution of the mystery happens based on an amateur's - read ordinary reader's - thought process.  Shows how deeply Christie thought of her characters in every plot.  

Thank you for the opportunity to think this aspect through.   

Tommy_A_Jones

In a way your first point sought of can be like other books SPOILER ALERT Imagine who would be most likely to know of the Topography of the House and you can solve A Murder Is Announced, Quite often one bit of Information reveals the Identity of the Murderer or A Murderer, I don't see why The use of supernatural Behaviour in The Sittaford Mystery means The sleuth can't be Poirot,

SiddharthaS

@Tommy_A_Jones:  "I don't see why the use of supernatural Behaviour in The Sittaford Mystery means the sleuth can't be Poirot".  

**** SPOILER ALERT **** 

I thought I had given my rationale earlier.  Let us see what others may have to say.  But in the meantime let me elaborate.  

The folks who sat at the Ouija board that night must be somewhat credulous by nature, given their preferred choice of entertainment.   They did not choose Bridge as in "Cards on the Table", or as in another story whose name I don't recall at this time.  Nor did they choose any other intellectually challenging game.  This choice of entertainment also is valuable to Christie to create the atmosphere where the anxiety about the well being of the eventual victim seems natural to most of those who are involved.  Poirot's presence would have spoiled the atmosphere, though Christie could have always brought him in later on.    

But even if was not present at the Ouija board, Poirot's scientific. logical and pragmatic mind would cause him to discount the Ouija board's signal as a credible input.  Yet that game is exactly what triggers the lonely effort to ensure that the victim is safe, and to the discovery of the body.  

Poirot would therefore immediately wonder if there is more to the Ouija message than meets the eye.  Once he begins to think on that line, the sequence of events itself would suggest that the murder may NOT have already occurred.  And once Poirot gets on that track, it becomes merely a question of investigating the logistics of the crime.  Poirot would have done that investigation right away (recall his asking for a detailed list of items that the passengers carried with them in "Death in the Clouds").  

The way it happens in the book, it is a vague instinct that causes one of the amateur sleuths to look around, come cross the logistical clue, and say "I know who did it; but I still don't know why"!  The obscure motive is of course left for someone else to find out, although Christie does plant the relevant clue while describing the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator.  

About what you said about "A Murder is Announced", I absolutely agree with you.   I can even recall thinking on those terms.  However, I was very, very young and still struggling with the English language when I first read the book, and so did not pursue that line of thinking at all,  

shana

@SiddhartaS the level of your analyzing abilities is amazing.

=D>

Tommy_A_Jones

I still maintain Poirot could have been the Sleuth, he wouldn't have had to be at The Oija Board Incident after all he wasn't at The Halloween Party riadne was and she got Poirot involved just like she got him involved in Dead Man's Folly, If The Book had Poirot in and the idea of him wondering about the Oija incident wasn't metioned wouldn't necessarily mean he didn't question the incident, it could be inferred In a lot of books not everything is spelt out sentances not finished etc like in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd..

SiddharthaS

@Tommy_A_Jones: In principle there is no reason why Poirot, Miss Marple, or even Tommy/Tuppence should not be there in "Sittaford Mystery", or indeed in any other mystery where none of Christie's detectives participate.  Given the setting, perhaps the Satterthwaite/Harley-Quin combo would perhaps been very appropriate. 
But the fact is that Christie actually decided that this mystery is best resolved by amateurs. All I am doing in this discussion/sub-thread is try and probe Dame Agatha's mind about her treatment of her plots in general, and the "Sittaford Mystery" in particular.  
Let us also keep in mind the fact that Christie wrote "Sittaford Mystery" as a novel.  My argument is that the plot has no real challenge for someone like Poirot, so had he been involved, it would at best be a short story rather than a novel.  But perhaps that becomes another discussion. 

SiddharthaS

@shana - thank you. I think reading Christie books from a young age helps "growing up" in many ways.  Improving analytical abilities is but one aspect.  In real life, so many people are good at analysis; it is people with the rare ability to synthesize who stand out - I am of course not talking about planning murders !      

Tommy_A_Jones

SiddharthasS I don't agree about The Sittaford Mystery having to be a short story if Poirot was in it but I do think if he was in it it would have to have Ariadne in it as either she would be at the event and bring Poirot in the Mystery like Halloween Party or Dead Man's Folly or an AcQuaintance of Ariadne would ask her advice and she would then get Poirot involved like in The 3rd Girl., It does matter to an extent who is the sleuth in the book because if it is Poirot it can't have Ariadne and if it is Miss Marple Hastings and Japp can't appear.

SiddharthaS

Thank you Tommy_A_Jones - I respect your perspective and will keep on thinking about what you say.  

As it is, I found the novel boring because

• even as a teenager I thought the WHO was immediately obvious;
• the HOW was a minor matter of guesswork (even though I had never seen snow in my life till then, I did go back to the geographical description of the two locations to ascertain the feasibility of the means) - a suspicion that was confirmed when our amateur sleuth looked at the contents of that closet; and 
• the WHY did not seem to matter then.  I was too young to understand that it is the motive that drives people to kill - even sociopaths have their rationale.

Today I think that had it been a short story, I would not have found it boring, and that for Poirot it would have been a no brainer to be solved in a jiffy. 

That certain mysteries can be easy to deduce is illustrated in a short story (I forget the name) where Poirot insists that he does not need to personally sniff around looking for physical clues (a la Sherlock Holmes) and his grey cells can solve the mystery without leaving his home if he knows about the characters and other details.  He is bed-ridden and obtains the details of the case as they unfold through Captain Hastings.  In the end, Poirot's grey cells triumph even as Japp and Co. are actively doing their sniffing.   That story had more meat than "Sittaford Mystery" though, and could have been turned into a novel IMO. 

BTW it is interesting that the motives in "Sittaford Mystery" and "Funerals Are Fatal" are quantitatively identical and seemingly trivial.  That shows that the strength of a motive that results in a murder tends to be very personal and has a time dimension to it. 

I am a bit disappointed that no one has bothered to comment on the "Motives" thread.    

Tommy_A_Jones

When I finished it the 2nd time I very nearly started it again I enjoyed it that much, I should have guessed the who and how but I was obviously blown away by the magnificence of the book, Yes the motives of Sittaford Mystery and After The Funeral are to some extent alike but only the money side, I read books in English so I am assuming Funerals are Fatal is After The Funeral Poirot could solve Mysteries quite quickly like The Murder of Roger Ackroysd ascould Miss Marple with A Murder Is Announced but it is Agatha Christie and her skill at misdirection that makes them last so long

SiddharthaS

@Tommy_A_Jones - yes those two (Funeral/Poirot) books are the same - one is the original title and the other probably American.  I am planning to read Sittaford Mystery again.  It is one of the few Christie books I did not re-read after reading it for the first time (that was rather early in my Christie career).     I am sure I shall enjoy it better this time, for there is no anxious need to find out the who, how, and why.

Tommy_A_Jones

I really enjoy it Is Narracott married? I can't remember, maybe his wife could be at the séance or Battle's Wife if you wanted to have a recuring Character and Battle could be the sleuth but I think it is fine as it is.

Griselda

I have just re-read Sittaford, and I find the clean simple narrative style so attractive. I like the attention to detail in order to give the reader a sense of the character: Major Burnaby's little bungalow, contrasting with Captsin Trevelyan's sizeable mansion. The clues are fairly placed - eg competitions - and the Captain being meticulously neat and orderly, so nothing would be dirty or out of place, if he had anything to do with it. What interesting social history details: afternoon frocks worn by the Willett ladies;why a special afternoon dress if they don't work at all? However, some of the types are long gone and too far obsolete for us as readers to imagine them: Captain Wyatt. We don't know what retired Indian army types were like.

Tommy_A_Jones

But we do still have people who are Colonel X or we did in my memory, I belonged to a Charity and had occasion to visit a Man who I was told was a Colonel X Although this was in the 90s the man had retired from The Army years before, I think it far less likely to come across people like the Wodehouseian Chap who lived with his Relative, we don't get people as barmy as he is still do we?

Tommy_A_Jones

I meant to say Griselda I love your Analysis of the Book

Griselda

Thanks Tommy. I must remember to just have read works before I comment, as I did this time, instead of going from hazy memory.

Griselda

The Sittaford Mystery, was set in 1931 before DNA evidence. I feel that without a confession, the police would have struggled to make their accusations stick. What do other members think? Which Christie mysteries present the most watertight proof, and which are holey?

Tommy_A_Jones

I agree, The Case against the Murderer was all circumstantial, SPOILER ALERT!!! The Ski's The fact the Murderer said that modest sounding houses sounded better for Quizzes, The Table Turning etc. would probably not be enough even collectively to Prosecute but that is the same with a lot of The Books I think.

Griselda

Yes. Sittaford, especially, puts who dun it satisfaction before derail and characterisation - but what a success. Christie will have baffled many of us. The overriding evidence I can think of is in the following mysteries: SPOILER ALERT Murder at the Vicarage - suspect caught discussing his crime A Murder is Announce and The Moving Finger - suspect caught trying to kill somebody else Peril at End House - suspect caught trying to incriminate somebody Death on the Nile - confession The Spanish Chest ( short story) presumed confession Three Act Tragedy - solid documentary evidence: passport stamp contradicting alibi The Crooked House - diary self-incrimination I could go on