June's Book of the Month: After the Funeral

Tuppence

This month we are reading After the Funeral. Often described as typical Christie territory, After the Funeral focuses on a wealthy, yet complicated, family who are attending a relatives funeral and waiting for the reading of the will. How would you describe After the Funeral?

Leave your thoughts, theories, questions and queries about the story below.

GKCfan

I like the subtlety of one clue that tripped up the killer, and you can see bits of clues and tropes from previous stories incorporated into this narrative.

Madame_Doyle

GKCfan said:

I like the subtlety of one clue that tripped up the killer, and you can see bits of clues and tropes from previous stories incorporated into this narrative.

What are some examples of tropes from previous stories?  The poisoned cake is the most obvious, but what else?

tudes

Yeah, @Tuppence , After the Funeral is A.C's territory. We can read all the things that is typical on her books. Money, big family and all of them are suspects of a crime, mansion. I think it's a great book, although I was a bit disappointed with the ending.

Tommy_A_Jones

I was wondering what Tropes meant In this context, I do like After The Funeral, It is very good and in my Top 10 of Poirot Novels, I also liked The Subtlety of the Clue that gave the Murderer away.

Madame_Doyle

@GKCfan  We are all still waiting for your reply about trope examples from previous works.  Some of us know what those terms mean and would like specifics about what you meant by your post.  I have already given the example of the poisoned cake device.

ChristieFanForLife

One of the things I remember most about "After The Funeral" is the poison cake device that you guys mentioned. I remember reading not too long ago that Agatha Christie wanted to write a story in which someone would be poisoned by thalidomide in a birthday cake ......not in the cake BUT the icing. Very clever. Well, in 1967 she wrote to a specialist asking about the impact of thalidomide in birthday cake icing, inquiring how long would it take for the poison to make an impact, how many grains would be needed, etc. Unfortunately this idea was never used in her story but it definitely would have been interesting to see what Agatha Christie would have made of it.

GKCfan

Here are some of the tropes I was referring to earlier (Spoilers ahead!)

•Taking poison or staging an attack on oneself to deflect suspicion (Death Comes as the End, Crooked House)

•A character in disguise at part of the crime ("Marsdon Manor," Evil Under the Sun)

•An entire family under suspicion (Crooked House, Appointment With Death, Mysterious Affair at Styles, Hercule Poirot's Christmas, A Pocket Full of Rye)

•A clue from artwork (Five Little Pigs, Mirror Crack'd, Hercule Poirot's Christmas)

•A phone call where one speaker presumably knows something, but is interrupted by an attack (Lord Edgware Dies, Hickory Dickory Dock, The Clocks)

•A deception made possible by not seeing someone in a long time (A Murder is Announced, Murder in Mesopotamia)

•Poirot takes on a false name and/or background (Third Girl, "Third Floor Flat")

•A reversed mirror creates a clue ("In a Glass Darkly,"  Dumb Witness)

•A clue from a smell that shouldn't be there (Death on the Nile, Five Little Pigs, inverted in "Murder in the Mews")

•The problems of Post-WWII society (A Murder is Announced, Taken at the Flood)

Griselda

Apart from  the devices the writer uses to enable the mystery to unfold, I sense a writer's focus on a favourite theme, namely,  the middle class family whose members would like to benefit from the inheritance of a largish sum of money. The 1953 work opens with a reference to the family, and the great forebear, Cornelius Abernethie, who had built the large Victorian monstrosity of a gothic house, in which the curtains are fading (reference the post- world war II problems with changing society which GCKFan refers to). The novel in which this particular theme is most explicitly alluded to, is, I think,  Taken at the Flood. In this novel, we meet different characters, each with a pet project or reason for needing money in their lives. In that Christie novel the point is explicitly emphasized that  they had all been conditioned for years to expect to be looked after by their wealthy relative Gordon Cloade. In A Pocket Full of Rye, this theme is less show-cased in its purest form, but none-the-less, there is the sense of the different reasons for needing money: to marry and escape debts; to start a radical school to fulfil idealistic fiance; to save the family business.The theme is somewhat diluted because of all the other issues going on in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but even so, the topic is there, and we are shown that money is an ever-present worry and menace in the lives of the twentieth century middle-class.

This theme got me thinking about Agatha Christie.Would she have been a member of one of those sorts of families - before writing success dragged her upwards and away into a new stratosphere of fame and wealth? Did her fame actually distance her psychologically from that context, and the life she would have had without that talent,  and did it give her the ability to survey those she left behind with a more keenly critical eye - which we, the readers so admire? She would have seen her old life with a changed perspective, but never-the-less a deep, first-hand awareness of the  feelings which go with the territory, and an authentic ear for the euphemisms  used to talk about the delicate subject of money with relatives. We know, that for that class, and generation, it was frowned upon to boast about, or to discuss filthy lucre - especially when you were trying to distance yourself from your manufacturing ancestry.

For me, the theme at the heart of After the Funeral, for me, is the delicate subject of middle-class want, and a clever and subtle investigation by Christie of the sense of misplaced entitlement among members of this social group: they almost feel their needs and wants are justified, legitimate, and certainly worthy. In the case of the SPOILER, murderer, they feel that their wishes are modest and justifed because they are modest.....in short, that they almost deserve to have the money, and the person who ought to have got it, legally-speaking does not. (The silly Cora Lansquenet, who doesn't know a Rembrandt when she sees one! )We can see that the life of a gentile lady's companion was a bitter one! I'll never forget the impact of reading ( and, to be fair, seeing in David Suchet's dramatisation) the moment when Susan says: 'You killed her - in that brutal way for  five thousand pounds?' 

'Five thousand pounds,' said Poirot, 'would have rented and equipped a tea-shop...'

It was that moment that I, as a reader, so enjoyed and admired Christie's exposure of  the human soul,  and the way that  feelings affect our decisions. I felt, here is a writer who thoroughly understands humanity. At this moment, the themes of the novels - Lanscombe's regret at leaving the big house,  even, - all came together to form a logical conclusion, as it were. Christie is telling us that money, and the lack of it, shapes our feelings as much as the bigger issues in life, such as ambition, passion, ego, even madness. In many ways, for me,Christie is the biographer of the Mundane Murderer. 

 I'd actually like a writer to investigate Christie's life, and to find out when she started to get very rich and successful as a result of her writing, and how this development - gradually - impacted upon her writer's perspective. Is it why she is able to be so analytical about human life - because she started to be removed from the ordinary issues of human experience - in a financial sense?  I was even thinking about successful men and women of that arts in our day and age, and how their money affects them. Some rich musicians turn politician, and start to lecture the rest of us in the class we used to belong to on what we should do with our money, vis-a-vis the rest of the world's population.  Some of the recently rich of the world  buy a football club, you could say, in order to  experience vicariously the  ordinary down- to- earth thrills they can never quite appreciate again, having been lifted away from such a life as a result of their new-found wealth. One thing is for sure, I think that Agatha Christie understood this sort of social group better than she did the aristocracy, who, when she writes about them, don't come across as quite real - well in my opinion. I found the Angatells in The Hollow to be a little like characatures  of themselves. 

ChristieFanForLife

Griselda said:

In the case of the SPOILER, murderer, they feel that their wishes are modest and justified because they are modest.....in short, that they almost deserve to have the money, and the person who ought to have got it, legally-speaking does not. (The silly Cora Lansquenet, who doesn't know a Rembrandt when she sees one! )We can see that the life of a gentile lady's companion was a bitter one! I'll never forget the impact of reading ( and, to be fair, seeing in David Suchet's dramatisation) the moment when Susan says: 'You killed her - in that brutal way for  five thousand pounds?' 

'Five thousand pounds,' said Poirot, 'would have rented and equipped a tea-shop...'

It was that moment that I, as a reader, so enjoyed and admired Christie's exposure of  the human soul,  and the way that  feelings affect our decisions. I felt, here is a writer who thoroughly understands humanity. At this moment, the themes of the novels - Lanscombe's regret at leaving the big house,  even, - all came together to form a logical conclusion, as it were. Christie is telling us that money, and the lack of it, shapes our feelings as much as the bigger issues in life, such as ambition, passion, ego, even madness. In many ways, for me,Christie is the biographer of the Mundane Murderer. 

I remember when I first read (I think I read the book before watching the David Suchet film version of it) and when I saw the ending, I was thinking to myself, "All this over a tea-shop?!?!?!" Though this may "sound" unrealistic, it is VERY real because there are cases of people who kill for less than even over a tea-shop! There are some who kill just for the fun of it--for example Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb (If you don't know who they are look them up). So to murder someone in order to have the money to own a tea-shop isn't that far-fetched. But again human nature plays a role behind the murder.....Cora's lady companion, Miss Gilchrist, had ambition and passion to get her own tea-shop and was willing to do anything to get it. She had ego, thinking she could get away with it. And even some madness as you said Griselda, because in the end, whatever is behind the murder, whatever gain the murderer thinks he/she will get, there is madness for murder is madness. 

Tommy_A_Jones

Thankyou GKCfan, so Tropes in this context are devices appear in other books.

Madame_Doyle

@GKCfan ...your original post says "previous" stories yet whoever put this list together didn't understand that you can't "incorporate" as yet unwritten works into a current one.  For example, The Clocks, Third Girl, and Hickory Dickory Dock were all published later than After the Funeral.  The caliber of her fans who read these discussions will pick up on those errors right away.

GKCfan

That's correct– I should have described them as "recurring tropes."  Thank you for catching my error.

Griselda

There is the time when Poirot is falling asleep, and in half-sleep, experiences thoughts of the smell of paint, nuns turning up at the house, Cora being deceitful about her paintings. it is like Jerry in The Moving Finger falling asleep and dreaming of a smoke screen and a great dane. The confusion of half - somnalence allows Christie to put out a few clues to us, but drag them back in a mist of contradictory thoughts and hints which makes sure we don't guess the answer too quickly and easily. But is it likely Poirot would think like this even dropping off to sleep? He is so clear and precise, that this method of thinking seems more suited to Ariadne Oliver than him. I can't see him paying attention to these random thoughts - he'd say to himself, 'Ah! I'm dreaming. I'll forget this head fuddle and put on my eye shades and go to sleep.' Do all these tropes suggest that this isn't a very fine novel by Christie, and she's repeating her themes, and painting the story by numbers, as it were, instead of feeling it? Perhaps she had the idea of the companion and the jealousy and resentment, but couldn't be inspired by any good other characters. Sad Cypress is a bit like this. The surrounding characters are weak, I think. You can't believe or get interested in them. Eg, why would you want your real daughter to struggle as a masseuse, instead of saying 'she matters to me' and leaving her a big sum. If you are avant garde enough to have an affair, in those days, you are daring enough to acknowledge it on your death bed. (I wonder what the hook was to inspire Sad Cypress? the relative overseas I think is what suggested the story. The long lost relative nobody really knows.)

After the Funeral and Sad Cypress are slightly 'also ran' Christie stories, aren't they?

Mousie Aries

The news says: 'The book is dedicated to Christie’s brother-in-law James and reads, "For James in memory of happy days at Abney."' I think James here doesn't refer to Christie's brother-in-law, that's more likely to be her nephew.

Mousie Aries

Mousie Aries said:

The news says: 'The book is dedicated to Christie’s brother-in-law James and reads, "For James in memory of happy days at Abney."' I think James here doesn't refer to Christie's brother-in-law, that's more likely to be her nephew.

In the book "The Complete Christie: An Agatha Christie Encyclopedia" (Matthew Bunson, 2000), there is a paragraph as follow:

    Christie dedicated the novel thus: "For James—In memory of happy days at Abney." The James was James Watts, Jr. (III), her nephew, with whom she spent many happy hours at the Watts family home of Abney Hall. The estate also served as the model for the fictional Enderby Hall.

ChristieFanForLife

Abney Hall also served as inspiration for the Poirot short story "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding" (also known as The Theft of The Royal Ruby) where Agatha spent her Christmases there in her younger years. Here is an interesting little tidbit: Vanessa Wagstaff writes in her 2004 books, Agatha Christie: A Readers’ Companion, "Abney became Agatha's greatest inspiration for country-house life, with all the servants and grandeur which have been woven into her plots. The descriptions of the fictional Styles, Chimneys, Stoneygates and the other houses in her stories are mostly Abney in various forms." 

Here is a beautiful overview of Abney Hall, inspiration for the Enderby Hall estate in After The Funeral:

Griselda

Thank you for this post, ChristieFanForLife it has reallu enhanced my enjoyment of reading the novels, and I am going to use the picture to imagine The house in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd also. I'm going to have that view for when Major Blunt walks along the terrace for a smoke and hears the SPOILER dictaphone play, and sees a glimpse of white cambric as SPOILER Ursula Bourne escapes to the summer house behind that bush on the left.