The Dead Man in the Garden
The Dead Man in the Garden
The outside world was alive with cricket-song. Light in the garden was cast by lanterns hanging from iron posts, illuminating circles on the path and flashes on tree trunks and benches. [Aggie] hesitated, suddenly spooked by a place only seen before dappled with sunshine.
"Uncle Ben?" Mrs. Upton's voice would have been normal indoors, perhaps, but now sounded hollow, with all of the night surrounding it.
"Monsieur?" Hector whispered, barely heard above the drizzling fountain and the chirping of insects.
"I suppose he is already in the park," I said. But we remained where we were, briefly captivated by shifting shadows that seemed to hint at a sinister enchantment. Then a pony trap went by in the road beyond the gate, the clip-clop of hooves waking us from our moment's hesitation. A few steps farther, we stopped again, for the very worst reason of all. There, awkwardly sprawled on a bench, was Mr. Hart. His eyes stared unseeing at the branches above, and despite our calling, he remained as still as stone.
Wherever Aggie (short for Agatha) Morton (not short for Christie though it almost should be) turns up, especially when accompanied by Hector (read Hercule) Parrot (ditto Poirot), a dead body or two will be just around the corner. The last one was in the library; this time, a man has collapsed onto a bench in the garden of the hotel/spa where Aggie's mother is taking the waters in the hopes of relieving the depression she has been suffering from since her husband's death. Hector and Grannie Jane (aka Miss Marple) have also been invited to come along and are looking forward to enjoying their stay in this luxury hotel -- more so, after the body turned up! All three of them have what Mummy refers to as a "Morbid Preoccupation" with death in unusual situations.
Unfortunately for the three sleuths, the gentleman appears to have died of natural causes, namely a heart attack. However, this death followed so closely upon that of Mrs Shelton who had been staying at the hotel up to three weeks before she died, that Aggie and Hector are instantly suspicious and rightly so. When the dead man's niece asks them to go with her to the undertaker's, they are thrilled to discover that the undertaker's daughter and fellow worker shares their interest in the cause of Mrs Shelton's death. Apparently this knowledgeable daughter did an analysis of Mrs Shelton's fingernails which indicated that the woman had been ingesting arsenic on a regular basis for several weeks! So, of course, the two children dig deeper and find that a staged telephone call and a misplaced croquet mallet have led to the poor man's actually being scared to death! [Spoiler alert] Luckily, the local police inspector is much more tolerant of amateur detectives than some that Aggie and Hector have previously encountered. Over the doctor's complaints and objections, the police inspector listens to their reasoning and agrees with their conclusions. The doctor, seeing that the jig is up, attempts to escape but is apprehended by a reporter for the Torquay Voice (the reporter being another regular actor in this series), and the doctor is finally felled by a billiard ball to the nose by Grannie Jane! And here endeth the adventure.
As I have said before, these mysteries are stereotypical, patterned, and basically great fun. Aggie and Hector enjoy what they do and take advantage of any opportunities that might arise for amusement or for solving the crime of the moment. Readers never have the slightest doubt that the pair will be led to the right conclusions whether by luck or reasoning, whether helped or hindered by the authorities, but the path is often a bit tortuous, to say the least. And that, too, is fun. If it causes an adult (me, for example) to roll her eyes heavenward from time to time, so be it. I also suspect that these books are more appealing to girls than boys (at the risk of being accused of being gender-biased), but I would be happy to be shown to be wrong. As I have said before, Aggie is a great introduction to the "real" Agatha Christie, and the series is a good transition to so-called adult literature, a stage at which we too often lose young readers.
As a once-upon-a-time children's librarian in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Mary Thomas would definitely add this series to her elementary-school library and recommend the books for older readers.