'After the Funeral' by Agatha Christie

I notice I haven't reviewed an Agatha Christie novel for a little while. Here is a good one to break the drought.  

MY THOUGHTS:

The scene is Enderby, a run-down Victorian manor house. 

Elderly Richard Abernethie has just died. He'd brought up his younger siblings and outlived all but two. In addition, there is now a bachelor nephew, George, and two nieces, Susan and Rosamund, along with their husbands. When the extended family returns after the funeral for afternoon tea, flaky Aunt Cora puts her foot in her mouth. She says, 'He was murdered, wasn't he? I thought from what he said...' 

Cora has a long history of social faux pas, but now she's done it once too often. The following day, she's discovered viciously murdered in bed. The killer struck her skull with a hatchet and tried to make it appear like a simple robbery. 

Although there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding Richard's death, loyal family lawyer, Mr Entwhistle, can't shake off an uneasy feeling. He'd hate to think bad of the family he's served for decades, but before long Cora's live-in companion, Miss Gilchrist, seems marked for murder too. It appears evident that one member of the Abernethie family is a rat, trying to dispose of anybody who might have the slightest inkling of whatever Richard said to his youngest sister. 

It is high time for Entwhistle to call his good friend, Hercule Poirot, out from retirement. If anyone can get to the bottom of the evil menace, surely he can. 

When Poirot investigates the backgrounds of everyone who was present after Richard's funeral, he regards each and every one of them as people who would never commit murder as a general rule, but might make an exception for a special case. (Of course any subsequent incidents are strictly necessary for cover-up.)

He says:

'Let us admit without more ado that the world is full of the young, or even the middle-aged, who wait patiently or impatiently for the death of someone whose decease will give them, if not affluence, then at least opportunity.' 

That applies to everyone. Doesn't it always?

It was a fun read. Several relatives drop humorous one-liners, especially when they're brought together again, ostensibly to select personal keepsakes from Richard's estate. The investigations cleverly paint a composite picture of Cora's character, after she's dead. And some of the other relatives are larger-than-life. George, the closet gambler, Rosamund, the air-headed actress, and Uncle Timothy, the tedious hypochondriac whose wife, Maude, lives to pamper him.

When Poirot gathers them all together in the drawing room to make the big reveal, I still didn't have a clue who to point the finger at, and I prefer it that way. It turns out the crook was willing to go to devious lengths to deflect suspicion. 

* A quick note on my edition's cover: we need to progress pretty far into the story before the significance of the nun becomes apparent. The younger generations' discussion of ladies of the cloth is very amusing once we get there. 

🌟🌟🌟🌟