Locked Room Library #4: CURTAIN (1975)

“But rest assured, my indications will lead you to the truth.” He paused. Then he said: “And perhaps, then, you would wish that they had not led you so far. You would say instead: ‘Ring down the curtain.’”

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was one of the first mystery novels I read, the one that arguably made me Someone Who Is Into Detective Fiction. The other two Poirot novels that my school library had were Murder on the Orient Express and Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. Quite the reading order. What you might call a speedrun. Which meant that this grand summation of Poirot flew way over my head the first time I read it (where is Styles, anyway?). I've now read, I think, just over half of the novels, so more of the references to past events made sense. On a reread, I would still say Curtain's mystery has its underwhelming elements. But oh, that ending.

The Locked Room:

A man is found dead in his locked room (which the narrator saw him enter), holding a gun and with a bullet hole in the centre of his forehead.

Apart from the suspicious placement of the bullet hole, that sounds like a straightforward suicide, but when there's already been one murder...

The Story:

Poirot is dying, and in his final days he summons Hastings back to Styles, the location of their first adventure. The mansion is now a boarding house, at least one of the former owners having passed away due to old age, and the book is pervaded with a sense of melancholy, particularly from Hastings, about how different things are than they were back then. Britain is a waning colonial power! Ladies can become scientists! The times, they are a changin', though perhaps not as much as you might think. Although Curtain was published 11 years after the release of that Bob Dylan album, it certainly isn't set then. Apparently, it was written during WWII in case Christie didn't survive the war, and as a result the timeline is murky. Past books are referenced, but not all of them, and while Hickory Dickory Dock was set in the 50s, it's not clear that this chronologically-later entry is. Although, I was briefly struck by the incongruity of imagining Hastings' daughter Judith with a pageboy cut and bell-bottoms.

They are here to catch the subtlest of murderers, a person Poirot knows the identity of but only refers to as "X". X's tangential involvement in at least five open-and-shut murder cases leads Poirot to believe that they had a hand in each case, and these wildly different events with known culprits are secretly the work of a serial killer. X is one of the lodgers at Styles, so Poirot, knowing that a murder will occur, has enlisted Hastings' help for the last time.

Of course, this only draws Hastings further into his nostalgia ant-spiral about their happier days, but even on his deathbed, Poirot reminds him that things weren't so happy for everyone:

“You may speak for yourself, Hastings. For me, my arrival at Styles St. Mary was a sad and painful time. I was a refugee, wounded, exiled from home and country, existing by charity in a foreign land.”

And if you've read The Mysterious Affair at Styles, you'll remember that Hastings wasn't so jolly back then, either.

I couldn't help but be moved by the presentation of Poirot's worsening health. His mind is as sharp as ever, but his joints are arthritic, his robust frame sunken, and his lips blue from a heart that is giving out on him. His mind is as sharp as ever, but "[t]he machine, mon ami, it wears out." There is a marked contrast between someone who is very sick and someone who is dying, and that "Oh." moment when you realize that someone you love has crossed that threshold is always lonely. I think anyone who has experienced it would recognize it here. The book suggests it would be condescending to pity the world's greatest detective for having made it to the end of a long life well-lived, but in fairness to both Hastings and Curtain's gloomy tone, he is narrating while grieving the imminent loss of his friendship.

That's the only angle on which I'll be fair to Hastings, because this is one of his more grating turns. I've always felt that Hastings comes off like every unfair pop-cultural portrayal of Dr. Watson ("That's not a clue, Hastings, that's your jar of jam.") You may notice that of the three introductory novels I mentioned above, Curtain is the only one that includes Hastings, and I'm sure that informs my bias against him as a character. When I read Curtain for the first time, I found his sudden and intimate presence in the narrative to be an unwelcome intrusion.

My impression hasn't changed all that much. If Watson sees without observing, Hastings somehow contrives to narrate without thinking. After what seems to be multiple days of investigating, Poirot has to spell out for him that he is supposed to be trying to identify X's potential victim. What had he been doing up till now?! By the time of that conversation, the reader has probably identified multiple interpersonal relationships among the ramshackle cast, as seen through his incurious eyes, that could be twisted into an airtight murder. At least one of them (you will not be surprised to hear) does end in murder. But when Hastings isn't busy sighing wistfully, he's mostly investigating his daughter's love life, and even there he fails to draw some basic inferences. It's telling that the murderer's plan relies on Hastings being blind to the blindingly obvious. His emotional drama is alright, but good grief does he ever miss what is right in front of his nose.

Solution Satisfaction Rating:

"I could do it—and I was probably the only person who could," Poirot says, after his rather shaky testimony about the victim's temperament is believed in the inquest without question. The same could be said of Agatha Christie and Curtain's solution. It's not that the locked room is such an ingenious trick, it's that it could only be pulled off by Agatha Christie. You are fooled by the weight of decades of precedence for How Poirot Novels Operate. This is not the only, or even the first, example of this type of solution, but you can't say she didn't earn it.

As for X's methods, I find them incredible. Like, literally. (ROT13: Gur vqrn bs n zheqrere jub pnwbyrf bgure crbcyr vagb pbzzvggvat zheqre gb fngvfsl gurve fnqvfgvp hetrf vf vagrerfgvat, ohg V unq gebhoyr oryvrivat gung (rira vs gurl whfg gubhtug gung gurl jrer gnpgyrff) nalbar jbhyq abg erzrzore K orvat fhpu n qenzn-zbatre. K qbrfa'g unir cflpuvp cbjref.) However, I would still maintain that the ethical dilemma presented here does more to turn Poirot from "caricature" to "character" than any other book or adaptation. Far better than any tacked-on backstory that he was secretly a Catholic priest.