Was Agatha Christie Anti-Semitic? Part 2

A commenter on my previous post on this subject challenged me to look at page one of The Mystery of the Blue Train, so I ordered a 1930 copy. (Look out for spoilers.)

"It was close on midnight when a man crossed the Place de la Concorde. In spite of the handsome fur coat which garbed his meagre form, there was something essentially weak and paltry about him.

A little man with a face like a rat. A man, one would say, who could never play a conspicuous part, or rise to prominence in any sphere. And yet, in leaping to such a conclusion, an onlooker would have been wrong. For this man, negligible and inconspicuous as he seemed, played a prominent part in the destiny of the world. In an Empire where rats ruled, he was the king of the rats.

Even now, an Embassy awaited his return. But he had business to do first - business of which the Embassy was not officially cognizant. His face gleamed white and sharp in the moonlight. There was the least hint of a curve in the thin nose. His father had been a Polish Jew, a journeyman tailor..."

He arrives at his rendezvous, a "tawdrily furnished sitting-room. The electric light was shaded with dirty pink festoons, and it softened, but could not disguise, the girl's face with its mask of crude paint. Could not disguise, either, the broad Mongolian cast of her countenance. There was no doubt of Olga Demiroff's profession nor of her nationality."

Later in the book, however, Poirot goes for help to his theatrical friend Joseph Aarons, who is shown as a cheery fellow, full of industry gossip, and fond of stodgy English cooking.

The elderly Mr Papopolous is referred to both as a "wily Greek" and a "patriarch". Poirot calls in a favour:

"I believe that I am right in saying, Monsieur, that your race does not forget."
"A Greek?" murmured Papopolous, with an ironical smile.
"It was not as a Greek I meant," said Poirot.
There was a silence, and the old man drew himself up proudly.
"You are right, M. Poirot," he said quietly. "I am a Jew. And as you say, our race does not forget."

On reflection, later editors' quiet removal of racism – either expressed by Christie or more often by her characters – has partly deprived at least two of her creations of their identity and their role in a complex plot.

They are Oliver Manders (Three-Act Tragedy) and Jim Lazarus (Peril at End House). Manders is a young man who deliberately alienates the other characters, some of whom treat him as an outsider. We're told he is illegitimate, but without the references to his origins, he has less of a reason for his inferiority complex. Jim Lazarus is a London picture dealer, the lover of a drug addict separated from her husband. In the original text he is referred to as "a Jew – but a fearfully decent one".

Both Manders and Lazarus are murder suspects, and the regular 1930s reader of detective stories might expect a Jewish character to be revealed as the villain, but Christie pulls the rug from under our feet, and they both turn out to be "fearfully decent" after all.

More here.