A Murder Is Announced gives a snapshot of life among the bourgeoisie in a small country town just after the war. Characters struggle with rationing of fuel and food, and the assistance of the local “lady help” or the temperamental cook from “Mittel Europa”.
The plot centres on the inhabitants of Little Paddocks, home of elderly Letitia Blacklock; her companion Dora Bunner; two young cousins, Patrick and Julia; a lodger, Philippa, who’s working as a gardener; and Mitzi the cook. One morning everyone in the village receives an invite to a “murder”, and the complicated story unfolds.
Despite the perils of living in Mayhem Parva, there is a lot of humour scattered about. The vicar’s wife explains it’s easier to clean a large room: “In a small one your behind keeps getting in the way of the furniture!”. An elderly gardener holds forth on fake jewellery and “Roman pearls” (it’s a clue). Mrs Swettenham complains about the way everybody is breeding Dachshunds now. What happened to good old Manchester Terriers? Other belittled modern fashions include “psychological jargon” and “atom research stations”. Mrs Swettenham, who resembles Mrs Nickleby, complains that they shouldn’t be built near people as “the radioactivity might get loose”. There’s a sympathetic portrayal of a lesbian couple who address each other as “Hinchcliffe” and “Murgatroyd”.
Two Golden Age clichés make an appearance: Nobody reads Tennyson any more, and the shifty gaze is the one that aims straight for your eyes, unblinking.
But really, was Agatha Christie anti-Semitic? I’ve defended her in the past, but in this book there is a character who is “coded” as Jewish, for whom nobody has a good word. She's treated as a figure of fun.
This is Mitzi, the “temperamental foreign help”. Everyone calls her a liar. (Though this could be Christie’s cleverness. Can Mitzi be believed after all?). She wears her hair in “greasy” dark plaits, and sports a bright purple jersey with a jade-green skirt – “not becoming to her pasty complexion”. Despite the plaits, sometimes her hair is “tousled” and “falls over her eyes”. She claims to have an economics degree, though she’s a very good cook.
Mitzi is disturbed by the murder announcement and foretells dire consequences. (Literary foreshadowing, of course.)
‘Yes, I am upset,’ said Mitzi dramatically. ‘I do not wish to die! Already in Europe I escape. My family they all die—they are all killed—my mother, my little brother, my so sweet little niece—all, all they are killed. But me I run away—I hide. I get to England. I work. I do work that never—never would I do in my own country—I—’
Later she says that her brother was shot before her eyes. The English characters can’t seem to take all this on board. They must know – Patrick was in the army – that such things happened. But to them it is just Mitzi’s “lies” and exaggerations. Miss Blacklock explains this to Inspector Craddock, though she does add “But in spite of it all, I really am sorry for her.” This is about the only nice thing anybody says about Mitzi in the entire book.
During the first murder, orginally thought to be a joke, Mitzi gets shut in the dining room and screams when the lights go out. “A touch of comedy was introduced by the fact that she had been engaged in cleaning silver and was still holding a chamois leather and a large fish slice.” Edmund Swettenham slaps her to stop her screaming. Patrick later remarks that as a joke he’d “sent Mitzi a postcard saying the Gestapo was on her track”. Some joke.
After many more prejudiced remarks about “aliens” from the police and others, Mitzi bravely risks her life to help unmask the murderer, after being buttered up by Miss Marple. But even Miss M can’t resist adding a sideswipe at the poor girl: “I worked on her, my dear. She thinks far too much about herself anyway, and it will be good for her to have done something for others.” At least Julia adds: ‘She did it very well.’
At the end of the book the Little Paddocks ménage is broken up, and Mitzi gets a job in Portsmouth. The characters agree that she will dine out on her bravery and the story will improve in the telling. Mitzi’s reputation for lying and embroidering, “but she may really know something” is also a clue. Who done what and why? Read it yourselves!
More here, and links to the rest.
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