by Mark Place
But we’re getting a long way from reviewing a mystery story – and to get back to that task I would say that none of this changes the fact that this is a really ingenious tale, which could (like many of Christie’s short puzzles) have formed the basis for a full-length novel. The central clue of the Bridge game that is one player short is a master-stroke and there are also developments in Christie’s narrative construction. The cryptic denouement is no doubt a product of a necessary economy brought about by the limited column inches offered by the magazine context, but it also means that the reader has to do more work than usual: rather than have Poirot tell us point by point exactly how the whole thing was done, Christie has the detective explain the solutions to the various questions that have arisen along the way, whilst leaving the reader to piece together these revelations into one master-narrative of the true facts of Reedburn’s death. It adds a bit of variety to the usual whodunit structure by literally mixing up the narrative a little.
Hastings’s character is also coming to the fore. He will never escape from being something of a cipher, but I like that Christie plays on the idea of Hastings as a frustrated sensation journalist. We tend to forget that Hastings, as narrator, is actually making fun of himself in these stories and that his tendency to leap to all the wrong conclusions within the plot is rather nicely mirrored by his role as the skilful retrospective assembler of these details into a readable story. All in all, Hastings’s grasp of dramatic possibility may hinder his ability to become a good private investigator, but it also accurately reflects his purported role as the chronicler of Poirot’s investigations. As I said at the beginning of this post, it’s all intriguingly ‘meta’.
Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan (1993) (TV)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot, Series 5, Episode 8 (50 mins)
Screenplay by Anthony Horrowitz, Directed by Ken Grieve
Cast: David Suchet as Poirot, Hugh Fraser as Hastings, Philip Jackson as Chief Inspector Japp, Pauline Moran as Miss Lemon
Only the second Poirot short story to be published, this was the last to be filmed for TV. Suffice to say, the short episodes didn’t go out on a high. The original story excels is in its economy, providing enough detail to establish an interesting context in which the central mystery plot can unfold, together with a few character moments charming enough to stop it being simply a dramatised logic puzzle. Unfortunately, the TV version extends the mystery plot in a way that doesn’t really work, whilst adding so much extraneous background material that the main interest of the episode (the central puzzle of the missing pearls) is in danger of being swamped. The regular cast are as fine as ever. My favourite instance of this is Japp’s embarrassment at having won a teddy bear at the local fairground (‘Is that for your little boy, Inspector?’ ‘Erm… yes.’) As I said though, the embellishments to the story just don’t work for me and even the wonderful production values and the entertaining turns from the regular and guest cast can’t stop this being something of a chore to watch.
The episode begins with newsreel footage (again) which establishes the fact that these aren’t just any pearls, but a gift from a Tsar to a famous dancer. Mr Opalsen is not just another businessman here either, but a theatrical impresario, while his wife is a waspish amateur on the stage, rather than the affable ‘Greek chorus’ of the original story. The pearls are to be the star of Opalsen’s new play Pearls Before Swine. The subtext is more than obvious. Garish Mr. Opalsen has purchased the pearls with his ‘new money’ in order for them to feature in a tacky dramatic presentation.
Having little idea of their ‘true’ value, he treats the great pearls just as he will later treat the great Belgian detective – merely as a source of publicity. Indeed, we soon learn that Opalsen has bought the play outright from its disgruntled writer and totally rewritten it into the sub-par cliché it now resembles. Opalsen’s ‘casting’ of the pearls in the play echoes his devaluation of the play itself: once more, he has taken something that had intrinsic value beyond the mere financial and forced it into the strictures of a squalid entertainment industry that waters that value down into the most basic terms. The play and the pearls that feature in it have alike been ‘cast before swine’. Eventually, he is hoist by his own petard when Poirot has him falsely arrested for insurance fraud, before snidely suggesting that the impresario should be pleased at the free publicity this has afforded the play.
A more amusing subplot involves Poirot frequently being mistaken by newspaper readers for ‘Lucky Len’ in expectation of a £5 prize. The two new additions (‘Lucky Len’ and the theatre setting) are actually intrinsically linked – both are critiques of popular media forms (the tabloid newspaper and the pier’s-end drama) that inevitably dilute high art in the name of profit and mass-entertainment. Indeed, as the episode plays out, it transpires that the culprits plan to conceal the pearls amongst the scenery and props of Opalsen’s play as a means of smuggling them into the American market. Within the story itself, that is, the play disguises the pearls’ value in a monetary sense, in a way that literalises the underlying metaphor – Opalsen’s acquirement of the pearls for purely financial reasons means that the play also acts as a means of disguising their ‘true’ aesthetic value from their new owner.
This idea of ‘true’ greatness, which the tasteless bourgeois is unable to apprehend, is paralleled at the end of the episode when Poirot meets the real ‘Lucky Len’, whose luxurious moustache impresses the Belgian. Because of the spate of wrongly identified Lens, the newspaper has sacked the unfortunate character from their staff on the grounds that he has too ‘common’ a face. Poirot disagrees, informing him knowingly that he has the face of a great man. Once again, the institution controlling the way in which popular culture is circulated – the newspaper in this case – doesn’t know ‘true’ greatness when it sees it. Little wonder then that the newspapers, like Mr Opalsen, value Poirot not for his transcendent, timeless greatness, but for his ability to provide them with publicity – to help them in their continual quest for the next, new, fashionable ‘big thing’.
As I see it, the adaptation uses Christie’s story to critique the assumption (which Opalsen embodies) that the most profitable endeavour is always necessarily the most valuable. I have no problem with criticising this idea, but I’m not sure I like the way the episode offers Poirot and the pearls as contrasting embodiments of ‘true’ greatness, ‘true’ value. Troublingly, the episode locates both of these within an old-fashioned idea of ‘class’ – faces that are not ‘common’, jewels owned by Russian aristocrats. Yes, ‘common’ could well be taken simply to mean ‘usual’ or ‘ordinary’ here, but ‘common’ is also a word fraught with prejudicial associations and part of the joke underlying the punchline of the ‘Lucky Len’ subplot is the fact that he has an uexpectedly ‘posh’ accent that is quite at odds with the cockney strains possessed by those who recognise him. Similarly, Poirot’s revenge on Opalsen (in which the possibility that the pearls might not have belonged to the Tsar after all prompts them to lose their monetary value) draws attention to the apparently inevitable relationship between monetary value and class.
There is an attempt to subvert this, certainly, by showing the actual criminals to be much better read than Opalsen himself, adopting a ruse inspired by Oscar Wilde rather than by the vulgar sensationalism of Opalsen’s play. They are also better actors than anyone in Opalsen’s troupe. The idea of ‘recognition’ as a marker of taste is also carried through: Grace Saunders knows the game is up when she recognises Poirot and the ‘Oh Gawd’ that signals this recognition implies that the outward signs of class (accent, dress, manners etc) are not intrinsically linked to the ability to display ‘real’ taste. Moreover, her arrest also indicates that an appreciation of ‘true’ value does not exampt one from adherence to the rule of law.
This is all very well, but the resolution, in which Opalsen is taught a lesson about ‘true’ value while Mr and Mrs Saunders are punished for seeking a way out of their servitude, is still pr
oblematic. Obviously the Saunders couple are ostensibly punished for trying to steal valuable property but, following a Marxist reading to its conclusion, this might be a possible subtext to the episode – that those in charge of the means of production need to be educated, lest an economy based on rewarding the most intelligent or tasteful members of society should take its place (the latter solution, incidentally, being Oscar Wilde’s own suggestion).
Yet, even putting Marxism to one side (and, let’s face it, Christie herself would probably prefer that we did), it’s still a bit rich that an adaptation that adds a chase at a racing course purely to extend the running time makes fun of popular entertainment. It smacks of biting the hand that feeds. The original short story is just breezy fun with likeable (if superficially drawn) characters and an intriguing central puzzle. I have no objections to the TV versions adding or embellishing such stories, but the embellishments here fail on their own terms. For example, having introduced the idea that popular theatrical clichés distract from more culturally valuable artefacts, the adaptation itself ends with a stupidly clichéd denouement in which the culprit appears to have donned a disguise for no other reason that to facilitate its removal at the appropriate dramatic moment.
Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with enjoying formulaic crime drama, nor with pointing out the merits of such on their own terms. Nor is there anything wrong with critiquing such drama. But I do think that the last place you should be critiquing it is within… a boring formulaic crime drama.
One that palpably fails on its own terms (in the eyes of this viewer, at least). At one point, asked by the producer of Pearls Before Swine whether he had solved the mystery before the end of the third act, Poirot retorts that the problem had ceased to occupy him long before the end of the first. Unfortunately, this is exactly how I feel about this episode.
The Jewel Robbery At The Grand Metropolitan (Book)
This was Christie’s second published short story. It first appeared in The Skecth under the delightfully mundane title ‘The Mysterious Disappearance of the Opalsen Pearls’ and was later reprinted as the seventh story in Poirot Investigates (1924) (which, incidentally, is probably my favourite Agatha Christie short story collection with the possible exception of The Mysterious Mr Quin). Until now, I’d always found this tale more than a little dull and easily the weakest story in Poirot Investigates. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that it really isn’t as bad as I remember.
Unlike ‘The Affair at the Victory Ball’, this story is all about showing rather than telling. It begins with a brief but charming dialogue between Hastings and Poirot, in which Hastings offers to take Poirot away on holiday to Brighton for the weekend at his own expense, having won some money on the stock market. Yes, I know. Let’s just call it a sign of a more rampantly homosocial era – one in which a married woman shares her bedroom with her maid rather than with her husband – and leave it at that. This immediate recourse to a more dramatic presentation of character, is a sign of things to come, as Hastings and Poirot take a much more active role in the action than in ‘Victory Ball’. Gone is the previous tale’s lengthy and awkward infodump of a setup. In this story, Hastings and Poirot are immediately immersed in the very social milieu to which they are somehow other in ‘The Affair at the Victory Ball’. Here, not only are ‘All the world and his wife’ at Brighton, but so are Poirot and Hastings, up to their eyeballs in a fashionable society of which they are indisputably a part, rather than having to read about it in the newspapers the next day. In short, while they are not present at the ‘Victory Ball’ of the previous story, this tale sees them in the very thick of the eponymous ‘Jewel Robbery’. This is only the third Poirot story after Styles and, thankfully, it is once again recognisably the work of the same writer.
This leads me to think that I was wrong to view these stories as nothing more than mere ‘sketches’ or plot outlines barely fleshed out. This is true of some of them, certainly, but I think the fact that ‘Victory Ball’ is one of my all time least favourite Christie stories, but the first I re-read, led me to tar all that followed with the same brush. Not only is the solution to the way the jewels are stolen really ingenious (if it feels underwhelming it’s because, as every fan of Jonathan Creek knows, the solution to an apparently magical feat always is) but the way the story is unfolded here has a pleasant structural and stylistic economy that makes it suited to this short form. It is this, I feel that is key to Christie’s success as a storyteller and it’s very much on display here.
In a narrative lasting less than twenty pages, there’s no time to create whole characters so little pieces of information are deftly planted in order to allow the reader the opportunity to build the picture herself – not so much ‘flat’ characters, but ‘flat-packed’ characters, if you will. Readers would perhaps be expected to recognise these types either from fiction or from their own experiences and thus to assemble the characters from cues in the story. Hence, Mr Opalsen is known slightly to Hastings as ‘a rich stockbroker who made a fortune in the recent oil boom’, while Mrs Opalsen’s introduction serves to set the story’s parameters for the reader.
Most of the description leading up to her appearance concerns itself with the jewels and gems that Hastings and Poirot notice adorning the women around the room. ‘Jewellery words’ dominate, so that it is hardly surprising to find us introduced forthwith to a Mrs Opalsen – we have zoomed in from a room with ‘so many jewels’ to a woman ‘plastered with gems’, finally to discover that her very name speaks of ‘opals’. In fact, Mrs Opalsen’s character is hardwired into her function within the mystery plot and is inseparable from it. She is all of these women and the loss of her pearls stands in for the archetypal example of such a theft. Indeed, she hardly speaks but to mention her lovely pearls and is later described as ‘a sort of Greek chorus’.
A recent TV documentary reported on linguistic research which suggested that Christie used keywords to draw the reader in and keep her hooked (leading to the narrator’s utterance of the marvellously improbable sentence: ‘Could Agatha Christie’s writing stimulate our minds in the way class A drugs can??’). Here is an example of such a technique in action, perhaps the very key to the successful economy of style that typifies Christie at her escapist best.
The Affair at the Victory Ball (TV)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot (Series 3, Episode 10)
Screenplay by Andrew Marshall, Directed by Renny Rye (50 mins)
As with most of the short story adaptations screened by ITV in the 1990s this is a vast improvement on the original text. Being only half the length of their longer adaptations of the Poirot novels, there’s ample scope to flesh out the outlines of Christie’s plots.
As with The Murder on the Links this adaptation restructures the story to avoid unnecessary infodumps, in this case by having Poirot and Hastings in attendance at the ball, conveniently situated for a more hands-on approach to the gathering of evidence. This also helps to rescue Inspector Japp from his thankless role as the Lestrade figure of the original text – here, he and Poirot work together to gather the evidence and solve the case. At the same time, an opening voiceover from Poirot handily explains the concept of the Commedia dell’Arte, a duty that felt rather clumsy in the original story when devolved to Japp.
Elsewhere, the more rounded characterisation takes its cue from notes in the story. Thus the Uncle is almost bankrupt, having spent his money on his massive collection of exotic china (I love this detail – it immediately conjures the ridiculous image of someone murdering their rich nephew in order to fund an unfortunate ebay habit). The BBC setting is a nice addition, indicating the kind of context in which a famous actress like Coco Courtenay would have worked. Mrs Davidson and Chris Davidson’s relationship is also nicely dramatised, with a real sense (missing in the book) of the kind of woman who would cover for Chris. The original story simply assumes that a wife would cover for her husband, but here we are given a more nuanced view of a timid creature
whose need to submit to an unpleasant man earns our pity. The fact that Chris isn’t physically abusive or obviously domineering adds to the subtlety of the portrayal. Wisely, they also get rid of his ‘Curse you! How did you know!’ confession. As might be expected of Andrew Marshall (of 2 Point 4 Children fame) there are also some nice one-liners: ‘No doorman?’ ‘But we’re so backward in England Mrs Mallaby. We still have door handles’. As a researcher of late-Victorian literature and culture the name of the writer of the convoluted potboiler in which Coco Courtenay stars also raised a smile: Desmond Havelock Ellis. Presumably, in this parallel version of the 1930s BBC, the following week would have seen the premiere of the latest thriller from the pen of Malcolm Sigmund Freud.
The characters of Poirot and Hastings are also fleshed out somewhat. Poirot himself is a charming socialite who attends fashionable dances and gossips and chats with Hastings and his friend. This sense of Poirot as a celebrity doesn’t really see its fullest expression in Christie’s writing until Lord Edgeware Dies. It’s indicated by the celebrity of Poirot’s clients and the notoriety of the crimes in which he becomes embroiled, yet Poirot himself remains an outsider: a go-to ‘other’ not often portrayed as a public figure in his own right. At the same time, the idea that Poirot is at once a public celebrity and an isolated introvert is charmingly conveyed by the fact that Hastings has to persuade him to leave his stamp collection and go out dancing. Christie conveys the affectionate working relationship between the two men, but it is undeniably welcome to spend some time with them beyond the confines of the investigation. Conan Doyle gives us quite a few glimpses into Holmes and Watson’s attempts to while away the evenings together when the game isn’t afoot, but it’s largely left to the TV version to do that with Christie – at least in terms of these early stories.