Poirot Retrospective #20: Dumb Witness

 

Poirot Retrospective #20: Dumb Witness

I enjoyed this one... but it's not a great book. I did some digging after I finished it and it turns out it was a short story that Christie expanded into a full book... and it shows. It feels very thin, and there aren't many characters, and the murder and solution are not particularly memorable.

The title refers to a terrier owned by an old lady (Bob the Dog) - he can't speak, and witnesses the crime, so is literally a "dumb" witness. And it's also a red herring, because the dog plays no real part in anything ... EXCEPT that Christie, multiple times throughout the novel, "translates" the dog's voice (!) so it becomes something of a speaking character (although only about dog matters, never crime).

Also, at the end of the book, Hastings adopts the dog, and they become best friends (!!). Which is easily the best part of the book. Poirot constantly jests that Hastings is loyal and steadfast as a dog, so he makes a small joke here about how Hastings and Bob the Dog understand each other so well. Was a nice moment.

Otherwise: an old lady is tripped late at night and falls down the stairs. She survives, but realizes it wasn't an accident. She writes to Poirot, and then changes her will. She then dies "of a liver illness" a couple weeks later. Meanwhile, the letter to Poirot is delayed and he doesn't arrive until after the death.

He starts digging - he immediately senses things are fishy - he makes a list of five main suspects: a nephew (amoral playboy), a niece (a wasteful hedonist), another niece (a dull housewife who was so desperate for a family "she deigned to marry a Greek"), and the Greek husband (a personable doctor that no one trusts because he's foreign)... and also a companion lady who is scatter-brained but seemingly harmless.

All had financial motives, so Poirot has to look deeper. He asks the servants, the neighbors, the local doctor and lawyer, etc etc. Finally he figures it out.

This was one I got half-right - I thought it was a pair of criminals together, but instead it's just one person - so I sort of guessed right. The "clues" such as they are, are terrible and obscure and poorly delineated. The things the reader is supposed to use to figure out or otherwise guess the criminal are basically impossible throwaway mentions.

But this was one of the books where the writing was fun and the characters acceptably wacky - Poirot has a ball lying to everyone and making up stories about why he's looking into things - so I just ignored the crime and had fun with the social aspect.

All in all, an OK, mediocre book. I am almost done with the Poirot quest. There are only three more novels that are considered "substantial" - Evil Under the Sun, Sad Cypress, and Taken at the Flood.

The remaining novels - Mystery of the Blue Train, Murder in the Mews, Labours of Hercules, Hickory Dickory Dock, The Clocks, Three Act Tragedy, One Two Buckle My Shoe, Mrs McGinty's Dead, and Elephants Can Remember, are supposedly average or worse than average. I will likely read those slowly over the course of 2023, as they go on sale especially, but scattered between other more pressing ones.