Dead Man's Folly
Encyclopedia
Dead Man's Folly is a work of detective fiction
by Agatha Christie
and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company
in October 1956
and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club
on November 5 of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.95 and the UK edition at twelve shillings and sixpence
(12/6). It features Hercule Poirot
, her famous Belgian detective, and Ariadne Oliver
. The house where the story is set was based on Christie's Devon
home, Greenway House on the Greenway Estate
.
, he is at first concerned that she is wasting his time. But it is not long before he realises that Mrs. Oliver’s fears are fully justified.
The owner of Nasse House is George Stubbs, a wealthy man who has seemingly adopted the false title of Sir
in order to confirm his position in the local community. His much younger wife is the seemingly simple and impressionable Hattie, a young woman who has apparently been introduced to him by Amy Folliat, the surviving member of the family that once owned the house. Now that her sons have been supposedly killed during the War, she is living out her days in the Lodge House. Other visitors at Nasse House include an architect, Michael Weyman, who criticises the siting some years earlier of a folly
in an inappropriate area of the grounds.
On the day of the fête, Hattie learns that a cousin, Etienne de Sousa, is about to visit, and she seems upset by this, referring to him as a killer. At the fete, a local Girl Guide
, Marlene Tucker, is to play the part of the victim, and she waits in the boathouse to play her role when someone approaches her. Poirot observes the movements of some of the visitors to the house. Later, in the company of Mrs. Oliver, he discovers the corpse of Marlene in the boathouse. Moreover, Hattie is discovered to have gone missing. Both the police and Poirot himself are initially baffled.
The investigation focuses on Etienne de Sousa, a wealthy young man who shows no apparent concern at Hattie’s disappearance and has arrived in perfect time to have committed the murder. Another suspect is Amanda Brewis, George’s secretary, who appears to be in love with Sir George and claims to have been sent down to the boathouse by Hattie with refreshments for Marlene at around the time that the girl was killed. This sounds very out of character for Hattie. Further confusion is added by the behaviour of the Legges, who appear to have some sort of shady connection with a young man in a turtle shirt who has been seen in the grounds. (It later comes to light that this red herring is connected with Legge’s career as a nuclear physicist.)
Poirot’s attention is directed to Amy Folliat, who seems to know more than she is saying. After the boatman Merdell dies, Poirot discovers that he was Marlene’s grandfather. Now he puts together several stray clues: Marlene had said that her grandfather had seen someone burying a woman in the woods; Marlene was the type to blackmail, and had in fact received small sums of money prior to her murder; Merdell had commented significantly to Poirot that there would "always be Folliats at Nasse House".
In the denouement
Poirot reveals that George Stubbs is none other than Amy Folliat’s younger son, James, who had gone missing but had not died during the War. Instead, Amy had paired him with the impressionable, but very wealthy, Hattie, enabling him to fleece her of her money and establish his new identity, buying the family house and ensuring the continuity of Folliat possession. Unbeknownst to Amy, however, George/James was already married, and as soon as he had possession of Nasse he killed Hattie, and substituted his first wife, a young Italian, in her place. She was buried in the ground that was later secured by building the folly.
Marlene had guessed the secret from hints dropped by her grandfather, and George and his real wife decided it would be safer to kill her than continue giving her hush money. The day before the day of the murder, "Hattie" began to establish another identity as an Italian hitch-hiker. On the day of the murder, she switched between the two roles, killing Marlene and escaping the grounds as the hitch-hiker, with Hattie’s clothes in her rucksack. The day of the murder had been selected to cast suspicion upon Etienne, who had actually notified them some weeks earlier of his visit.
George/James is not seen at the end of the novel, which instead focuses on the despair of his mother.
began his review column in the Times Literary Supplement of December 21, 1956, by saying, "Miss Agatha Christie's new Poirot story comes first in this review because of this author's reputation and not on its own merits, which are disappointingly slight. They consist almost wholly in the appearance yet once more of certain profoundly familiar persons, scenes and devices. Poirot is on hand with his superb English, based, one supposes, on the middle line in the French lessons in the Children's Encyclopaedia, but the little grey cells are rather subdued." He set up the basics of the plot and then continued, "The solution is of the colossal ingenuity we have been conditioned to expect but a number of the necessary red herrings are either unexplained or a little too grossly ad hoc. People are never candid about their vices so there is no need to take seriously the protestations of detective addicts about their concern with the sheer logic of their favourite reading. What should be the real appeal of Dead Man's Folly, however, is not much better than its logic. The scene is really excessively commonplace, there are too many characters and they are very, very flat."
The anonymous review in The Times
of November 15, 1956, was also somewhat damning; "Dead Man's Folly is not Miss Agatha Christie at her best. The murder and the solution of it are ingenious, but then, with Miss Christie, they always are, and it is pleasant to watch M. Hercule Poirot at work again. The character drawing is flat and facile, however, and the dialogue, always Miss Christie's weak point, disastrous."
Maurice Richardson of The Observer
of November 18, 1956, pointed out the similarity between the house portrayed in the book and Christie's own and summed up, "Stunning but not unguessable solution. Nowhere near a vintage Christie but quite a pleasing table-read."
Robert Barnard
: "Highly traditional recipe, but not done with the same conviction as in the 'thirties. Nobody much is what they seem, and old sins cast long shadows. Mrs Oliver looms large here, as she was frequently to do from now on, both in Poirot books and in others."
and Jean Stapleton starring as Poirot and Oliver in a 1986 adaptation set in the present-day. It was shot largely on location at West Wycombe Park
in Buckinghamshire
, England
.
John Moffatt
starred as Poirot in the BBC Radio 4
dramatisation broadcast in 2007, with Julia McKenzie
as Oliver.
The novel will be adapted in 2012 with David Suchet
as Poirot, as part of the final series of Agatha Christie's Poirot
.
The novel was first serialised in the US in Collier's Weekly
in three abridged instalments from July 20 (Volume 138, Number 2) to August 17, 1956 (Volume 138, Number 4) with illustrations by Robert Fawcett.
In the UK the novel was first serialised in the weekly magazine John Bull
in six abridged instalments from August 11 (Volume 100, Number 2615) to September 15, 1956 (Volume 100, Number 2620) with illustrations by "Fancett".
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
by Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company
Dodd, Mead and Company
Dodd, Mead and Company was one of the pioneer publishing houses of the United States, based in New York City. Under several names, the firm operated from 1839 until 1990. Its history properly began in 1870, with the retirement of its founder, Moses Woodruff Dodd. Control passed to his son Frank...
in October 1956
1956 in literature
The year 1956 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Writing under the pseudonym of Emile Ajar, author Romain Gary becomes the only person ever to win the Prix Goncourt twice.*Iris Murdoch marries John Bayley....
and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club
Collins Crime Club
The Collins Crime Club was an imprint of UK book publishers William Collins & Co Ltd and ran from May 6, 1930 to April 1994. Customers registered their name and address with the club and were sent a newsletter every three months which advised them of the latest books which had been or were to be...
on November 5 of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.95 and the UK edition at twelve shillings and sixpence
British sixpence coin
The sixpence, known colloquially as the tanner, or half-shilling, was a British pre-decimal coin, worth six pence, or 1/40th of a pound sterling....
(12/6). It features Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.Poirot has been portrayed on...
, her famous Belgian detective, and Ariadne Oliver
Ariadne Oliver
Ariadne Oliver is a fictional character in the novels of Agatha Christie. She is a mystery novelist and a friend of Hercule Poirot.-Profile:Mrs. Oliver often assists Poirot in his cases through her knowledge of the criminal mind. She often claims to be endowed with particular "feminine intuition,"...
. The house where the story is set was based on Christie's Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
home, Greenway House on the Greenway Estate
Greenway Estate
Greenway is an estate on the River Dart near Galmpton in Devon, England. It was first mentioned in 1493 as "Greynway", the crossing point of the Dart to Dittisham. In the late 16th century a Tudor mansion called Greenway Court was built by the Gilbert family. Greenway was the birthplace of Humphrey...
.
Plot introduction
When Ariadne Oliver, the mystery novelist, summons Poirot to join her at a country house in Devon, he is respectful enough of her “intuition” to do so immediately. When she tells him, however, that she is at Nasse House to stage a Murder Hunt at a fêteFête
Fête is a French word meaning festival, celebration or party, which has passed into English as a label that may be given to certain events.-Description:It is widely used in England and Australia in the context of a village fête,...
, he is at first concerned that she is wasting his time. But it is not long before he realises that Mrs. Oliver’s fears are fully justified.
Plot summary
En route to Nasse House, Poirot gives a lift to two female hitch-hikers – one Dutch and one Italian – who are staying at the youth hostel adjoining the Nasse House grounds. When he arrives, Mrs. Oliver explains that she feels that her plans for the Murder Hunt have been, almost imperceptibly, influenced by the advice that she has been given by people in the house, until it is almost as though she is being pushed into staging a real murder.The owner of Nasse House is George Stubbs, a wealthy man who has seemingly adopted the false title of Sir
Sir
Sir is an honorific used as a title , or as a courtesy title to address a man without using his given or family name in many English speaking cultures...
in order to confirm his position in the local community. His much younger wife is the seemingly simple and impressionable Hattie, a young woman who has apparently been introduced to him by Amy Folliat, the surviving member of the family that once owned the house. Now that her sons have been supposedly killed during the War, she is living out her days in the Lodge House. Other visitors at Nasse House include an architect, Michael Weyman, who criticises the siting some years earlier of a folly
Folly
In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs...
in an inappropriate area of the grounds.
On the day of the fête, Hattie learns that a cousin, Etienne de Sousa, is about to visit, and she seems upset by this, referring to him as a killer. At the fete, a local Girl Guide
Girlguiding UK
Girlguiding UK is the national Guiding organisation of the United Kingdom. Guiding began in the UK in 1910 after Robert Baden-Powell asked his sister Agnes to start a group especially for girls that would be run along similar lines to Scouting for Boys. The Guide Association was a founder member of...
, Marlene Tucker, is to play the part of the victim, and she waits in the boathouse to play her role when someone approaches her. Poirot observes the movements of some of the visitors to the house. Later, in the company of Mrs. Oliver, he discovers the corpse of Marlene in the boathouse. Moreover, Hattie is discovered to have gone missing. Both the police and Poirot himself are initially baffled.
The investigation focuses on Etienne de Sousa, a wealthy young man who shows no apparent concern at Hattie’s disappearance and has arrived in perfect time to have committed the murder. Another suspect is Amanda Brewis, George’s secretary, who appears to be in love with Sir George and claims to have been sent down to the boathouse by Hattie with refreshments for Marlene at around the time that the girl was killed. This sounds very out of character for Hattie. Further confusion is added by the behaviour of the Legges, who appear to have some sort of shady connection with a young man in a turtle shirt who has been seen in the grounds. (It later comes to light that this red herring is connected with Legge’s career as a nuclear physicist.)
Poirot’s attention is directed to Amy Folliat, who seems to know more than she is saying. After the boatman Merdell dies, Poirot discovers that he was Marlene’s grandfather. Now he puts together several stray clues: Marlene had said that her grandfather had seen someone burying a woman in the woods; Marlene was the type to blackmail, and had in fact received small sums of money prior to her murder; Merdell had commented significantly to Poirot that there would "always be Folliats at Nasse House".
In the denouement
Detective denouement
The detective dénouement is a variant on the literary dénouement common to mystery stories. It was first popularised by the Sherlock Holmes novels, but is present in many stories, such as the works of Agatha Christie or in Ellen Raskin's young adult novel The Westing Game.In detective stories, the...
Poirot reveals that George Stubbs is none other than Amy Folliat’s younger son, James, who had gone missing but had not died during the War. Instead, Amy had paired him with the impressionable, but very wealthy, Hattie, enabling him to fleece her of her money and establish his new identity, buying the family house and ensuring the continuity of Folliat possession. Unbeknownst to Amy, however, George/James was already married, and as soon as he had possession of Nasse he killed Hattie, and substituted his first wife, a young Italian, in her place. She was buried in the ground that was later secured by building the folly.
Marlene had guessed the secret from hints dropped by her grandfather, and George and his real wife decided it would be safer to kill her than continue giving her hush money. The day before the day of the murder, "Hattie" began to establish another identity as an Italian hitch-hiker. On the day of the murder, she switched between the two roles, killing Marlene and escaping the grounds as the hitch-hiker, with Hattie’s clothes in her rucksack. The day of the murder had been selected to cast suspicion upon Etienne, who had actually notified them some weeks earlier of his visit.
George/James is not seen at the end of the novel, which instead focuses on the despair of his mother.
Characters in "Dead Man's Folly"
- Hercule Poirot, the Belgian private detective
- Ariadne Oliver, the celebrated author
- Inspector Bland, the investigating officer
- Sergeant Frank Cottrell, a policeman in the case
- Constable Bob Hoskins, a policeman in the case
- Sir George Stubbs, owner of Nasse House
- Hattie, Lady Stubbs, George’s wife
- Etienne de Sousa, Lady Stubbs’s cousin
- Amanda Brewis, George’s secretary
- Amy Folliat, whose family previously owned Nasse House
- Mr. Masterton, member of Parliament
- Mrs. Masterton, his wife
- Captain Jim Warburton, agent for Mr. Masterton
- Michael Weyman, an architect
- Alec Legge, an atomic physicist
- Sally Legge, his wife
- Marlene Tucker, a Girl Guide
- Marilyn Tucker, Marlene’s younger sister
- Mrs. Tucker, Marlene’s mother
- Merdell, the boatman
- Henden, the butler
- A female Italian hitch-hiker
- A female Dutch hitch-hiker
- A young man in a shirt with turtles on it
Literary significance and reception
Anthony QuintonAnthony Quinton, Baron Quinton
Anthony Meredith Quinton, Baron Quinton was a British political and moral philosopher, metaphysician, and materialist philosopher of mind.-Life:...
began his review column in the Times Literary Supplement of December 21, 1956, by saying, "Miss Agatha Christie's new Poirot story comes first in this review because of this author's reputation and not on its own merits, which are disappointingly slight. They consist almost wholly in the appearance yet once more of certain profoundly familiar persons, scenes and devices. Poirot is on hand with his superb English, based, one supposes, on the middle line in the French lessons in the Children's Encyclopaedia, but the little grey cells are rather subdued." He set up the basics of the plot and then continued, "The solution is of the colossal ingenuity we have been conditioned to expect but a number of the necessary red herrings are either unexplained or a little too grossly ad hoc. People are never candid about their vices so there is no need to take seriously the protestations of detective addicts about their concern with the sheer logic of their favourite reading. What should be the real appeal of Dead Man's Folly, however, is not much better than its logic. The scene is really excessively commonplace, there are too many characters and they are very, very flat."
The anonymous review in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
of November 15, 1956, was also somewhat damning; "Dead Man's Folly is not Miss Agatha Christie at her best. The murder and the solution of it are ingenious, but then, with Miss Christie, they always are, and it is pleasant to watch M. Hercule Poirot at work again. The character drawing is flat and facile, however, and the dialogue, always Miss Christie's weak point, disastrous."
Maurice Richardson of The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
of November 18, 1956, pointed out the similarity between the house portrayed in the book and Christie's own and summed up, "Stunning but not unguessable solution. Nowhere near a vintage Christie but quite a pleasing table-read."
Robert Barnard
Robert Barnard
Robert Barnard is an English crime writer, critic and lecturer.- Life and work :Born in Essex, Barnard was educated at the Colchester Royal Grammar School and at Balliol College in Oxford....
: "Highly traditional recipe, but not done with the same conviction as in the 'thirties. Nobody much is what they seem, and old sins cast long shadows. Mrs Oliver looms large here, as she was frequently to do from now on, both in Poirot books and in others."
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
First adapted to film with Peter UstinovPeter Ustinov
Peter Alexander Ustinov CBE was an English actor, writer and dramatist. He was also renowned as a filmmaker, theatre and opera director, stage designer, author, screenwriter, comedian, humourist, newspaper and magazine columnist, radio broadcaster and television presenter...
and Jean Stapleton starring as Poirot and Oliver in a 1986 adaptation set in the present-day. It was shot largely on location at West Wycombe Park
West Wycombe Park
West Wycombe Park is a country house near the village of West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England, built between 1740 and 1800. It was conceived as a pleasure palace for the 18th century libertine and dilettante Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Baronet. The house is a long rectangle with four façades that...
in Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
John Moffatt
John Moffatt (actor)
John Moffatt is an English actor and playwright, perhaps best known for his portrayal of Hercule Poirot on BBC Radio....
starred as Poirot in the BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
dramatisation broadcast in 2007, with Julia McKenzie
Julia McKenzie
Julia McKenzie is an English actress, singer, and theatre director. She is best-known for her performance in Fresh Fields, but to current television audiences, she is best known for her role as Miss Marple in Agatha Christie's Marple...
as Oliver.
The novel will be adapted in 2012 with David Suchet
David Suchet
David Suchet, CBE, is an English actor, known for his work on British television. He is recognised for his RTS- and BPG award-winning performance as Augustus Melmotte in the 2001 British TV mini-drama The Way We Live Now, alongside Matthew Macfadyen and Paloma Baeza, and a 1991 British Academy...
as Poirot, as part of the final series of Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot is a British television drama that has aired on ITV since 1989. It stars David Suchet as Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot. It was originally made by LWT and is now made by ITV Studios...
.
Video game adaptation
On October the 15th of 2009, the I-play company released a downloadable hidden object game based on Agatha Christie's book "Dead Man's Folly" (see the external links).Publication history
- 1956, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), October 1956, Hardback, 216 pp
- 1956, Collins Crime Club (London), November 5 1956, Hardback, 256 pp
- 1957, Pocket BooksPocket BooksPocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books.- History :Pocket produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in America in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing industry...
(New York), Paperback, 178 pp - 1960, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollinsHarperCollinsHarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
), Paperback, 192 pp - 1966, Pan BooksPan BooksPan Books is an imprint which first became active in the 1940s and is now part of the British-based Macmillan Publishers owned by German publishers, Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group....
, Paperback, 189 pp - 1967, Ulverscroft Large-print Edition, Hardcover, 205 pp
The novel was first serialised in the US in Collier's Weekly
Collier's Weekly
Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....
in three abridged instalments from July 20 (Volume 138, Number 2) to August 17, 1956 (Volume 138, Number 4) with illustrations by Robert Fawcett.
In the UK the novel was first serialised in the weekly magazine John Bull
John Bull (magazine)
John Bull Magazine was a weekly periodical established in the City, London EC4, by Theodore Hook in 1820.-Publication dates:It was a popular periodical that continued in production through 1824 and at least until 1957...
in six abridged instalments from August 11 (Volume 100, Number 2615) to September 15, 1956 (Volume 100, Number 2620) with illustrations by "Fancett".
International titles
- Dutch: Zoek de moordenaar (Seek the murderer)
- German: Wiedersehen mit Mrs. Oliver (Mrs. Oliver revisited)
- Hungarian: Gloriett a hullának (Folly for the Dead Body)
- Italian: La sagra del delitto (The Crime Party)
- Russian: Причуда (=Prichuda, A Folly), Причуда мертвеца (=Prichuda mertvetsa, Dead Man's Folly), Конец человеческой глупости (=Konets chelovecheskoy gluposti, End of Human Foolishness)
- Spanish: El Templete de Nasse House (The Pavilion of Nasse House)
- French: Poirot joue le jeu (Poirot plays the game)
- Indonesian: Kubur Berkubah (Domed Tomb)
External links
- Dead Man's Folly at the official Agatha Christie website
- Agatha Christie: Dead Man's Folly game at I-Play web site