After the Funeral (1953)
1953 Collins blurb:
RICHARD ABERNETHIE died a very
wealthy man. All the relatives who attended his funeral benefited
by his death. Although the newspaper announcements of his death
said: suddenly at his residence,
there was no reason to suspect that his death was anything but a
natural one—or was there? One person certainly thought so,
and old Mr. Entwhistle, the family lawyer, was made uneasy. He
began to consider the various members of the Abernethie family.
Though outwardly prosperous, how badly did they need the money old
Richard's death brought them? Succeeding events deepened Mr.
Entwhistle's uneasiness into active alarm. How best could he
serve the interests of the Abernethie family, and what would his dead
friend Richard Abernethie wish him to do?
Entwhistle goes for help to Hercule Poirot, an old friend of his, and
the little Belgian solves things in his own inimitable way, making
sense out of apparent nonsense; piecing things together from such
widely different clues as a piece of wedding cake and a bouquet of wax
flowers.
If there is one thing better than an Agatha Christie without Poirot, it
is an Agatha Christie with
Poirot. After the Funeral
shows this happy partnership at its unbeatable best.
My review:
Christie's last classic performance, playing (as she did in the
1930s) on the genre's conventions. Here, a wealthy old man is
cremated without any suspicion of foul play arising until his sister
demands 'He was murdered, wasn't he?' Whereupon she is battered
to death. The family lawyer calls in Poirot, who appears late,
but functions very effectively. Clueing top-notch standard job,
including two brilliant devices (the mirror and the wax flowers)
dangled lovingly (yet tantalisingly out of reach) before the reader's
very nose. Murderer's identity as brilliant as the plot used to
camouflage the murder, and, as a character, ranks with the villains of Lord Edgware Dies and Five Little Pigs.