The Hollow
Encyclopedia
The Hollow is a work of detective fiction
by Agatha Christie
and first published in the US
by Dodd, Mead and Company
in 1946
and in the UK
by the Collins Crime Club
in November of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.50 and the UK edition at eight shillings and sixpence
(8/6). A paperback edition in the US by Dell books in 1954 changed the title to Murder after Hours.
The novel is a fine example of a "country house mystery" and was the first of her novels in four years to feature Christie's Belgian
detective
Hercule Poirot
—one of the longest gaps in the entire series. Christie, who often admitted that she did not like Poirot (a fact parodied
by her recurring novelist character Ariadne Oliver
), particularly disliked his appearance in this novel. His late arrival, jarring, given the established atmosphere, led her to claim in her Autobiography
that she "ruined [the novel] by the introduction of Poirot".
The next day, Poirot arrives at the house to witness a scene that seems strangely staged. Gerda is standing with a gun in her hand above the body of John, who is bleeding into the swimming pool. Standing, seemingly transfixed, are Lucy, Henrietta, and Edward. John's last word, in a note of urgent appeal, is "Henrietta".
It seems cut and dried that Gerda is the murderess, but in taking the revolver from her hand Henrietta apparently fumbles and drops it into the swimming pool, destroying any evidence. Later, however, it is discovered that the pistol that Gerda had been holding was not the pistol with which John had been shot. None of the witnesses has actually seen Gerda shoot John, and it seems difficult to build a case against any of the other potential suspects. At first Lucy herself seems to be a strong suspect, when it is discovered that she had kept a pistol concealed in her basket of eggs, but the pistol seems to be of the wrong calibre. Henrietta is also implicated, not least by the leaving of an unusual doodle in the pavilion, apparently at the time that John had been killed. When the murder weapon turns up in Poirot's hedge, it has fingerprints on it that match none of the suspects.
These are all pieces of deliberate misdirection
on the part of the family. They know in fact that Gerda is indeed the murderess, and are attempting to avoid her imprisonment. As it happens, the murder, with a motive of jealousy, was planned, in that she had taken with her two pistols, planning to be discovered with a pistol in her hands that would later be discovered to be the wrong weapon. Henrietta, who says that John asked her to help Gerda when he said her name, destroys the evidence of the first weapon instinctively, and later goes back and retrieves the second weapon. She hides it in a clay sculpture of a horse in her workshop, then gets it handled by a blind match-seller, and places it in Poirot’s hedge.
There is a romantic subplot in the novel. Midge is in love with Edward, but Edward has always been in love with Henrietta and Henrietta had refused several times his marriage proposals. Besides, she is now deeply in love with John Christow. During the course of the novel, Edward realises that Henrietta is not anymore the Henrietta he used to love and begins to stop seeing Midge as "little Midge". Therefore, he asks her to marry him. During a walk to an area where Edward has walked with Henrietta, Midge believes that he is too deeply in love with Henrietta still, and she calls off the wedding. Edward who does not know that she loves him, misunderstands her decision and later that night, he attempts suicide by putting his head in a gas oven but he is saved by Midge. With this rather dramatic proof of his need for her, she relents and the wedding is on again.
With all the evidence apparently destroyed, the family believe that they have saved Gerda, but there is one final clue: the holster in which the murder weapon was kept. Gerda has cut this up and placed it in her workbag. When Henrietta attempts to retrieve it in order to destroy the final means of proving Gerda's guilt, Poirot arrives and prevents her from drinking tea that Gerda has poisoned. Gerda herself accidentally drinks the poisoned tea and escapes justice by this means.
Henrietta who, along with Lucy, has emerged as an attractive and well-characterised heroine throughout the book, ends it by visiting in hospital one of John's patients who now has little hope of a cure but still shows a resilient spirit. Leaving the hospital, she reflects that there is no happy end for her, but she resolves to embark on a sculpture of herself as Grief.
wrote briefly, "Agatha Christie has staged, against her smartiest, most hyper emotional background so far, the shooting of a philandering doctor. Solution by a rather subdued Poirot. Good double-bluff surprise."
Robert Barnard
: "Notable specimen, with more complex characterization than usual, and occasionally rising to wit (especially on the subject of cooking). Illustrates vividly one dilemma of the detective writer: if you establish characters of some psychological complexity, how do you prevent the routine detection stuff coming as an anticlimax? Christie records that her daughter protested against her decision to dramatize the book, and the instinct was probably right: most of the interest here, unusually, is internal, and difficult to present via Christie's rather old-fashioned stage techniques. Definitely among the top ten, in spite of the falling-off in the second half."
Modern French
novelist Michel Houellebecq
is an admirer of the book, and in his 2001 novel Platform
described it as "a strange, poignant book; these are deep waters [she writes about], with powerful undercurrents."
In 2004, the novel was broadcast as a television movie
featuring David Suchet
as Poirot, Sarah Miles
as Lady Angkatell and Megan Dodds
as Henrietta Savernake, as part of the series Agatha Christie's Poirot
. Some details are omitted; the drawing of the card representing death and Edward's attempted suicide, for example. Others - such as the dénouement involving poisoned tea - are altered (Gerda instead injects herself with potassium cyanide
), but overall this adaptation is much more faithful to the book on which it is based than are many others in the series.
The US serialisation of this story was a four-part shortened version in Collier's Weekly
between May 4 (Volume 117, Number 18) and May 25, 1946 (Volume 117, Number 21) under the title of The Outraged Heart with illustrations by Mario Cooper.
With apologies for using their swimming-pool as the scene of a murder
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
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
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 1946
1946 in literature
The year 1946 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*November 7 - Walker Percy marries Mary Bernice Townsend.*Launch in the United Kingdom of Penguin Classics under the editorship of E. V...
and in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
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...
in November of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.50 and the UK edition at eight 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....
(8/6). A paperback edition in the US by Dell books in 1954 changed the title to Murder after Hours.
The novel is a fine example of a "country house mystery" and was the first of her novels in four years to feature Christie's Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
detective
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
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...
—one of the longest gaps in the entire series. Christie, who often admitted that she did not like Poirot (a fact parodied
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
by her recurring novelist character 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,"...
), particularly disliked his appearance in this novel. His late arrival, jarring, given the established atmosphere, led her to claim in her Autobiography
Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
An Autobiography is the title of the recollections of crime writer Agatha Christie published posthumously by Collins in the UK and by Dodd, Mead & Company in the US in November 1977, almost two years after the writer’s death in January 1976. The UK edition retailed at £7.95 and the US edition at...
that she "ruined [the novel] by the introduction of Poirot".
Introduction
On the morning that he and his downtrodden wife, Gerda, are due to travel down to the country to weekend with friends, John Christow allows his little daughter to tell his fortune with cards. When the death card is drawn, he pays no attention, but the appearance of an old flame at The Hollow seems to be the final link in a chain of fatal circumstances.Summary
The charming and eccentric Lucy Angkatell has invited the Christows, along with a number of other members of the extended family. John is already having an affair with Henrietta Savernake, a talented sculptor and, as is demonstrated by what follows, brilliant improviser. He has always remembered with nostalgia an early love, Veronica Cray, who suddenly appears in the house on Saturday night asking to borrow a box of matches. She is living at one of the two nearby cottages, the other of which is currently occupied by Hercule Poirot, who has been invited for lunch on Sunday. Veronica and John go off together, and he returns much too late: at 3 am.The next day, Poirot arrives at the house to witness a scene that seems strangely staged. Gerda is standing with a gun in her hand above the body of John, who is bleeding into the swimming pool. Standing, seemingly transfixed, are Lucy, Henrietta, and Edward. John's last word, in a note of urgent appeal, is "Henrietta".
It seems cut and dried that Gerda is the murderess, but in taking the revolver from her hand Henrietta apparently fumbles and drops it into the swimming pool, destroying any evidence. Later, however, it is discovered that the pistol that Gerda had been holding was not the pistol with which John had been shot. None of the witnesses has actually seen Gerda shoot John, and it seems difficult to build a case against any of the other potential suspects. At first Lucy herself seems to be a strong suspect, when it is discovered that she had kept a pistol concealed in her basket of eggs, but the pistol seems to be of the wrong calibre. Henrietta is also implicated, not least by the leaving of an unusual doodle in the pavilion, apparently at the time that John had been killed. When the murder weapon turns up in Poirot's hedge, it has fingerprints on it that match none of the suspects.
These are all pieces of deliberate misdirection
Misdirection
Misdirection is a form of deception in which the attention of an audience is focused on one thing in order to distract its attention from another....
on the part of the family. They know in fact that Gerda is indeed the murderess, and are attempting to avoid her imprisonment. As it happens, the murder, with a motive of jealousy, was planned, in that she had taken with her two pistols, planning to be discovered with a pistol in her hands that would later be discovered to be the wrong weapon. Henrietta, who says that John asked her to help Gerda when he said her name, destroys the evidence of the first weapon instinctively, and later goes back and retrieves the second weapon. She hides it in a clay sculpture of a horse in her workshop, then gets it handled by a blind match-seller, and places it in Poirot’s hedge.
There is a romantic subplot in the novel. Midge is in love with Edward, but Edward has always been in love with Henrietta and Henrietta had refused several times his marriage proposals. Besides, she is now deeply in love with John Christow. During the course of the novel, Edward realises that Henrietta is not anymore the Henrietta he used to love and begins to stop seeing Midge as "little Midge". Therefore, he asks her to marry him. During a walk to an area where Edward has walked with Henrietta, Midge believes that he is too deeply in love with Henrietta still, and she calls off the wedding. Edward who does not know that she loves him, misunderstands her decision and later that night, he attempts suicide by putting his head in a gas oven but he is saved by Midge. With this rather dramatic proof of his need for her, she relents and the wedding is on again.
With all the evidence apparently destroyed, the family believe that they have saved Gerda, but there is one final clue: the holster in which the murder weapon was kept. Gerda has cut this up and placed it in her workbag. When Henrietta attempts to retrieve it in order to destroy the final means of proving Gerda's guilt, Poirot arrives and prevents her from drinking tea that Gerda has poisoned. Gerda herself accidentally drinks the poisoned tea and escapes justice by this means.
Henrietta who, along with Lucy, has emerged as an attractive and well-characterised heroine throughout the book, ends it by visiting in hospital one of John's patients who now has little hope of a cure but still shows a resilient spirit. Leaving the hospital, she reflects that there is no happy end for her, but she resolves to embark on a sculpture of herself as Grief.
Characters in "The Hollow"
- Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective
- Inspector Grange, the investigating officer
- Sergeant Clark, a policeman in the case
- John Christow, a Harley StreetHarley StreetHarley Street is a street in the City of Westminster in London, England which has been noted since the 19th century for its large number of private specialists in medicine and surgery.- Overview :...
doctor. He is passionate about his work and dedicates himself to finding a cure for "Ridgeway's disease" - the aetiology of which bears a marked resemblance to multiple sclerosisMultiple sclerosisMultiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms...
. He is very self-confident, attractive, and has great charisma. - Gerda Christow, John's wife. She is rather plain and stupid. She worries about everything. She idealises John, and blames herself for her problems, even when he is wrong. She inspired a sculpture by Henrietta called "The Worshipper", which is described as being frightening since it has no face.
- Sir Henry Angkatell, the owner of The Hollow.
- Edward Angkatell, a distant cousin of Henry and entaileeFee tailAt common law, fee tail or entail is an estate of inheritance in real property which cannot be sold, devised by will, or otherwise alienated by the owner, but which passes by operation of law to the owner's heirs upon his death...
of the family's beloved house, Ainswick. He has charm but is overshadowed by Christow's dominant personality. He lives in the past and has been devoted to Henrietta for years and years. He despises himself, thinking he is good for nothing. - Lucy, Lady Angkatell, Henry's wife. An unusual character, whose sociable, charismatic veneer hides a very dark side to her personality, occasionally glimpsed by her family.
- Midge Hardcastle, Lucy's young cousin. She is only half an Angkatell. She refuses financial aid from her family, and works in a dressmaker's shop where she has to tolerate rude customers.
- David Angkatell, a student. Bookish, anti-social, and possessor of "modern" ideas regarding the working class. He tries to express an air of superiority.
- Henrietta Savernake, a sculptor. She always knows the right words to say to make someone feel comfortable, albeit sometimes at the expense of the truth. Her art is the core of her being, which, at times, conflicts with her second important characteristic; she loves Christow more than herself.
- Veronica Cray, an actress. She is very beautiful and abnormally egotistical. She wanted Christow to abandon everything to follow her to Hollywood, but he rejected her; she found this unbearable.
- Gudgeon, the butler.
- Beryl Collins, John's secretary.
- Mrs. Crabtree, a patient of John's, a victim of Ridgeway's Disease.
- Terence, John's young son.
- Zena, John's young daughter.
Literary significance and reception
Maurice Richardson, in the December 1, 1946 issue of The ObserverThe 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,...
wrote briefly, "Agatha Christie has staged, against her smartiest, most hyper emotional background so far, the shooting of a philandering doctor. Solution by a rather subdued Poirot. Good double-bluff surprise."
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....
: "Notable specimen, with more complex characterization than usual, and occasionally rising to wit (especially on the subject of cooking). Illustrates vividly one dilemma of the detective writer: if you establish characters of some psychological complexity, how do you prevent the routine detection stuff coming as an anticlimax? Christie records that her daughter protested against her decision to dramatize the book, and the instinct was probably right: most of the interest here, unusually, is internal, and difficult to present via Christie's rather old-fashioned stage techniques. Definitely among the top ten, in spite of the falling-off in the second half."
Modern French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
novelist Michel Houellebecq
Michel Houellebecq
Michel Houellebecq , born Michel Thomas, 26 February 1958—or 1956 —on the French island of Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French author, filmmaker and poet. To admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire;...
is an admirer of the book, and in his 2001 novel Platform
Platform (novel)
Platform is a novel by French writer Michel Houellebecq . It has received both great praise and great criticism, most notably for the novel's apparent condoning of sex tourism and anti-Muslim feelings...
described it as "a strange, poignant book; these are deep waters [she writes about], with powerful undercurrents."
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
Christie adapted the book into a highly-successful stage play in 1951 but omitted Poirot from the narrative.In 2004, the novel was broadcast as a television movie
Television movie
A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...
featuring 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, Sarah Miles
Sarah Miles
-Early life and career:Sarah Miles was born in the small town of Ingatestone, Essex, in South East England.She first attended Roedean but at the age of 15 she enrolled at RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art...
as Lady Angkatell and Megan Dodds
Megan Dodds
Megan Lynne Dodds is an American stage and television actress.-Biography:Megan Dodds was born in Sacramento, California, and after High School she enrolled in a community college where she was cast as Bananas in John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves...
as Henrietta Savernake, as part of the series 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...
. Some details are omitted; the drawing of the card representing death and Edward's attempted suicide, for example. Others - such as the dénouement involving poisoned tea - are altered (Gerda instead injects herself with potassium cyanide
Potassium cyanide
Potassium cyanide is an inorganic compound with the formula KCN. This colorless crystalline compound, similar in appearance to sugar, is highly soluble in water. Most KCN is used in gold mining, organic synthesis, and electroplating. Smaller applications include jewelry for chemical gilding and...
), but overall this adaptation is much more faithful to the book on which it is based than are many others in the series.
Publication history
- 1946, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), 1946, Hardback, 279 pp
- 1946, Collins Crime Club (London), November 1946, Hardback, 256 pp
- 1948, 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 (Pocket number 485) - 1950, 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, 239 pp (Pan number 119) - 1957, 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, 189 pp - 1974, Ulverscroft Large-print Edition, Hardcover, 431 pp ISBN 0854563016
The US serialisation of this story was a four-part shortened version 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....
between May 4 (Volume 117, Number 18) and May 25, 1946 (Volume 117, Number 21) under the title of The Outraged Heart with illustrations by Mario Cooper.
Dedication
For Larry and DanaeWith apologies for using their swimming-pool as the scene of a murder
International titles
- Dutch: De Laagte (The Hollow)
- German: Das Eulenhaus (The Owl House)
- Hungarian: Hétvégi gyilkosság (Weekend Murder)
- Italian: Poirot e la salma (Poirot and the Dead Body)
- Spanish: Sangre en la Piscina (Blood in the Swimming Pool)
- Polish: Niedziela na wsi (Sunday in the Countryside)
External links
- The Hollow at the official Agatha Christie website