“Hallowe’en Party” by Agatha Christie

The Hallowe’en party for schoolchildren who are over 11 has been a success. The contests have been finished, the winners defined and the prizes given for everything: bobbing for apples, cutting the flour cake and the best decorated broom. After the Snapdragon everyone should go home – there is nothing more to do here. Only nobody can locate that thirteen-year-old girl, Joyce, who always boasts… annoying, isn’t it, that she delays everyone else?

Later she is found dead – drowned – in a bucket full of water. A bucket used for bobbing for apples. What did she say before, during the preparations for the party? Something about having once witnessed a murder… nobody believed her, apparently… or did someone?

Hercule Poirot agrees to help with the investigation at the request of his friend Ariadne Oliver. She was at the ill-fated party – she was naturally shocked with the outcome. Poirot never fails – she knows it. She pays him a visit and asks for help.

Poirot is old – really old now, in 1969. He must be over a hundred – but he is just as shrewd as ever, with the same wonderful knowledge of human psychology. He starts making inquiries, as things become more interesting. Where did that East European au pair girl go? Was the old lady’s will a forgery? And who killed the young forger? Poirot won’t accept everyone’s version of events – he needs to be sure. Everyone’s opinion on what happened can be wrong.

I don’t know how he guessed the name of the murderer. When asked, he answered simply, “He fitted”. Strangely enough, this novel is one of the very few written by this author, in which I was able to guess the true answer before finishing the book. And I would have given the same explanation. He fitted indeed. She fitted too.

Poirot’s interference didn’t save a little boy, Joyce’s younger brother Leopold. Those who have killed once will do it again, and so Leopold dies. But he acts just in time to save another young life – that of a charming 12-year-old girl called Miranda, Joyce’s closest friend. Without him, she would have been dead also, for the criminals want to achieve their goals so badly, they’d stop at nothing. They’ve been murdering people for about three years to get what they want. As Poirot says elsewhere, murder is a habit.

This book is one of Agatha Christie’s late works, and is written more poetically than most of her other books, crisp and cheerful. She describes the beauty of the nearby garden with so much love as if it were the most important part of her story; she dwells on it. She also dwells on the beauty of its creator – Michael Garfield. Life has taught me to be wary of men with too much beauty in them.

There are parts of the book I like re-reading, but overall it’s not one of my favourites. I don’t like it when I can guess the murderer(s) too early, and the book seems a bit too moody, but it was still quite interesting meeting this “different” Agatha Christie. It was useful also as cultural education – I’ve learned a lot about what people do at Hallowe’en parties. And meeting Ariadne Oliver was fun.