“A Metaphor and a Motivating Catalyst”. Illuminating the Human Heart: Stolen Jewels in British Crime Fiction
p. 57-68
Résumés
Most 20th century critics of crime fiction agree that “a murder mystery furnishes a far more fascinating raison d’être in a detective novel than does any other crime.” However, in the late 19th century, fictional jewellery theft was so frequent as to represent a sub-genre in itself. In addition, The Moonstone, one of the greatest detective novels, revolves around the theft of a famous diamond which constitues an object of desire for many of the characters. In the twentieth century, although nearly all the major novels in the genre have murders as their principal interest, the crime short story depicts a single jewel theft with implications which go well beyond the strictly financial. Yet, unlike the irreligious Collins, both Chesterton and Christie, while continuing to use these desirable objects as catalysts and metaphors, present via the jewels various theological messages about the soul and spiritual state of those who desire them.
La plupart des critiques de romans policiers du xxe siècle affirment que « le meurtre mystérieux fournit une raison d’être bien plus fascinante dans un roman policier que tout autre crime ». Toutefois, à la fin du xixe siècle, le vol fictif de bijoux était si fréquent qu’il représentait un sous-genre en soi. D’ailleurs, The Moonstone, l’un des plus grands romans policiers, s’articule autour du vol d’un célèbre diamant qui constitue un objet de désir pour de nombreux personnages. Au xxe siècle, bien que presque tous les grands romans policiers aient pour principal intérêt le meurtre, la nouvelle policière décrit un vol de bijou dont les implications vont bien au-delà du strict aspect financier. Pourtant, contrairement à l’irréligieux Collins, Chesterton et Christie, tout en continuant à utiliser ces objets désirables comme catalyseurs et métaphores, présentent, par le biais de bijoux, divers messages théologiques sur l’âme et l’état spirituel de ceux qui les désirent.
Entrées d’index
Mots-clés : vols de bijoux, fiction criminelle, détective, nouvelle, message spirituel
Keywords : Jewel theft, crime fiction, detective, short story, spiritual message
Texte intégral
1Most 20th century critics of crime fiction agree that “a murder mystery furnishes a far more fascinating raison d’être in a detective novel than does any other crime,”1 and P. D. James confidently asserts that “readers are more likely to be interested in which of Aunt Ellie’s heirs laced her nightly cocoa with arsenic than in who stole her diamond necklace.”2 However, this was not the general opinion in the late 19th century, when fictional jewellery theft was so frequent as to represent a sub-genre in itself. In addition, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868), one of the greatest detective novels of all time, recounts the theft of a famous diamond which acts as “a metaphor and motivating catalyst,”3 illuminating the human heart, as well as an object of desire and temptation for many of the characters.
2In the 20th century, although nearly all the major novels in the genre have one or several murders as their principal interest, the crime short story often follows in the footsteps of The Moonstone in depicting a single jewel theft. While many of these jewels are merely what Alfred Hitchcock called “MacGuffins,” in some of the best stories they have implications which go well beyond the strictly financial. However, unlike the irreligious Collins, Christian authors like G. K. Chesterton and Agatha Christie, while continuing to use these desirable objects as catalysts and metaphors, present via the jewels various theological messages about the soul and the spiritual state of those who desire them.
3In 20th century detective fiction, there appears to be a critical consensus that “the more serious the crime, the greater has been the appeal.”4 P. D. James explains this by describing murder as “the ultimate crime for which no human reparation can ever be made,”5 and thus the most appropriate offence for serious mystery novels like her own. However, E. M. Wrong, while admitting the principle that “of the crimes to be detected, murder must always come first,”6 as it is the most mysterious and dramatic of all crimes, acknowledges that “one cannot hold that every detective story must centre round homicide, for that would rule out many of our best stories.”7 It is significant that he chose the word “stories,” rather than “novels.”
4While it is true that it is hard to think of a great 20th century crime novel without a murder—even Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night, the most frequently cited example, has a violent attack which may be perceived as an attempted murder8—several 19th century works come immediately to mind. Nearly all of these involve the theft of one or many valuable jewels. In fact, Jennifer Filion considers that, in late Victorian fiction, jewel theft is “one of the categories of crime that appear frequently enough to constitute a sub-genre.”9 Moreover, in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, which T. S. Eliot famously described as “the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels,”10 although the criminal is murdered right at the end, the plot is principally concerned with the theft of the valuable, titular diamond. However, the monetary value of the diamond is of little importance in the story and, as Aviva Briefel, among others, has pointed out, “the metaphorical, emblematic significance of the Moonstone takes precedence over its status as an actual, economically valued object.”11 In fact, the flawless diamond, violently stolen from a Hindu temple, acts as a metaphor for colonialism and for female innocence, while also serving as an instrument for both vengeance and healing. According to Mark Hennelly, it is also “a motivating catalyst,” which “partially illuminates each mysterious human heart.”12 Some desire the jewel for spiritual reasons which lead them to self-sacrifice, others out of love or because they admire its beauty. On the other hand, the main criminal’s description of it as “carbon […] mere carbon”13 reveals his materialistic outlook, incapable of perceiving the mystical value or even the supreme beauty of the stone. He desires it merely for its monetary value, just as he desires to marry Rachel Verinder for hers.
5The fact that Wilkie Collins is known to have been reading C. W. King’s The Natural History of Precious Stones (1865) while he was writing The Moonstone14 is one indication that he took the diamond and its role in the novel seriously, but this was not unusual at the time. Literary critic Carole Slade considers that many Victorians regarded “diamonds as supernatural entities, both divine and demonic,”15 and that, as a result, “writers presented the magical powers of diamonds with personification.”16 This was not only the case in crime fiction. Thackeray’s The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond (1841) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Rajah’s Diamond (1878) both illustrate this tendency. In addition, Thomas Carlyle, not known for his romantic approach, even referred to diamonds as “actors in the romance, or fiction, of history”17 and a more recent, German, historian, Yvonne Hackenbroch, in her comprehensive study of Renaissance jewellery, asserts that, until quite recently, “the fascination of jewels [was] rooted not only in their ability to please the eye, but also in their power to express the range of human emotions and ambitions—love, friendship, religious devotion, superstition, dynastic pride.”18
6However, these undoubtedly frequent attitudes during the Victorian age do not mean that all jewels in 19th century crime fiction are important in themselves. Sometimes they are no more than what Alfred Hitchcock described as MacGuffins, objects which “though apparently of deep significance” are merely “a pretext for establishing the mystery and initiating the process of detection.”19 For example, the famous jewel in the Sherlock Holmes short story “The Blue Carbuncle” (1892) could be replaced by any other small but valuable object without changing the plot in any way. Although Holmes holds forth on jewels in general, describing them as “the devil’s pet baits,”20 and explaining that this rare blue carbuncle has already been the cause of “two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide and several robberies,”21 it is clear that any other precious object could have led to the same chain of events, especially as the thief was motivated entirely by “the temptation of sudden wealth”22 rather than by any more personal or esoteric enticement.
7By the turn of the century, the wave of jewel thefts in British detective novels like The Moonstone, Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds (1871) and Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four (1890) had come to an end. Although stolen jewels do occasionally appear in Golden Age detective novels, such as Agatha Christie’s Cat among the Pigeons or Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Nine Tailors, they only play a peripheral role in plots more concerned with one or more mysterious deaths. However, in short stories, throughout the 20th century, murder-free plots and stolen jewellery remain frequent. In fact, in nearly all collections of short stories by the great Golden Age crime authors, jewel thefts are remarkably prominent. For example, over half of the thirteen stories in Margery Allingham’s short story collection Mr Campion and Others (1939) and five of the twelve stories in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Views the Body (1928) contain some kind of jewel theft, even if it is not always the only crime. The short detective story, by its very nature, seems better able to focus on one short event, like the theft of a diamond necklace, than the more complex novel and there is no problem if the mystery is solved relatively quickly with just one twist in the plot. The short story is also well-adapted to the hide-and-seek tale, where the thief is known but the detective and the reader are principally concerned with the whereabouts of the jewel, how and where the thief has managed to conceal it. Such stories typically end, like the biblical lost and found parables, with the relieved owners of the treasure calling on all around them to celebrate: “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost [jewel].”23
8A great many of the jewels in these short stories are clearly MacGuffins, sparkling pretexts for a puzzle-type mystery with little or no serious context. The pearl necklaces in Agatha Christie’s “The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan” (1923) and Dorothy L. Sayers’ “The Necklace of Pearls” (1932) come into this category. They are desired merely because they are valuable and the thieves would have been just as happy with diamonds, rubies or banknotes—the desire is not for the jewel itself, but for the wealth it represents. The clever hiding place in the Sayers story would only work for pearls, justifying the title, but Christie’s thieves would have operated in the same way with any expensive object and in neither case do the pearls have any significance beyond their monetary value or reveal anything about those who own or steal them.
9However, in a small minority of 20th century short detective stories, the stolen jewels do hold a more profound significance and, as in The Moonstone, allow certain aspects of the characters’ psychology to be revealed. In particular, these jewels are often found in stories by Christian authors who use them like parables to convey a spiritual message. For instance, both G. K. Chesterton and Agatha Christie, although they also include MacGuffins in some of their stories, sometimes create sparkling objects of desire which lay bare the deepest motivations of the human soul.
10Dorothy L. Sayers famously congratulated G. K. Chesterton on being the first to “bring the name of God into a detective story without making it sound like a blasphemy.”24 He did this particularly in his Father Brown stories, including numerous cases of jewel theft. Even when the name of God is not explicitly mentioned, as Anya Morlan and Walter Raubicheck point out, Father Brown detects crime “through his insights into the effects of Original Sin on the human soul.”25 In the very first Father Brown story, “The Blue Cross” (1910) the priest detective pronounces on the morality of jewel theft, quoting from the Ten Commandments:
Look at those stars. Don’t they look as if they were single diamonds and sapphires? Well, you can imagine any mad botany or geology you please. Think of forests of adamant with leaves of brilliants. Think the moon is a blue moon, a single elephantine sapphire. But don’t fancy that all that frantic astronomy would make the smallest difference to the reason and justice of conduct. On plains of opal, under cliffs cut out of pearl, you would still find a notice-board, “Thou shalt not steal.”26
11However, it is in the framing narratives to the fourth volume of Father Brown stories, The Secret of Father Brown (1927), which contains three cases of jewel theft, that Chesterton’s hero explains in detail what sort of person is tempted to steal jewels. At the same time, his friend, the former jewel thief Flambeau, explains his own conversion by saying that Father Brown “told me that he knew exactly why I stole; and I have never stolen again.”27 Flambeau had, in fact, always perceived himself not as a vulgar criminal, but as an artist:
I had always attempted to provide crimes suitable to the special season or landscapes in which I found myself, choosing this or that terrace or garden for a catastrophe, as if for a statuary group. Thus squires should be swindled in long rooms panelled with oak; while Jews, on the other hand, should rather find themselves unexpectedly penniless among the lights and screens of the Cafe Riche.28
12Father Brown admires the artistry in his final crime, even calls him a poet, but still reproaches him with “doing something mean,”29 because an innocent man will be suspected of his crime. He prophesies that Flambeau will do even meaner things in future, because crime is a slippery slope downwards. At this point the jewel thief realises that he is not Robin Hood, but merely a criminal.
13While Flambeau is a romantic robber, whose thefts are works of arts with jewels as the glittering décor, most jewel thieves are, in Father Brown’s opinion, even rather more prosaic. In The Secret of Father Brown, the theme of the sort of person who desires jewels which do not belong to him runs through the whole volume with two short stories, “The Red Moon of Meru” (1927) and “The Man with Two Beards” (1925) as case studies.
14In all three of these stories, Father Brown observes that the jewel thefts are “commonplace crimes,”30 usually committed by small-minded, literal people who take the jewels “at their market value”31 and are not interested in the aesthetic, historical or religious value of the stones. Such people are “always quite conventional,”32 and unlikely to have eccentric hobbies, for their chief interests are monetary and social. For example, in “The Red Moon of Meru,” there is once again, as in The Moonstone, a sacred jewel—this time a ruby—which was once the eye of an Eastern god. The thief is not the Indian prophet, an idealistic mystic who does not desire the jewel, but whose temptation is rather “to take credit for miracles that didn’t belong to him any more than the jewel.”33 In other words, his true desire is for fame not jewels. On the other hand, the thief, Tommy Hunter, is a traditionally dressed man with perfect society manners who wants to expose the prophet as a fraud. In fact, he is “always going about showing up adepts,” to the extent that his aunt believes he would have “tried to show up Buddha or Moses.”34 His desire is therefore to make others look ridiculous. For Father Brown, and presumably also Chesterton, this sort of person who despises any and every spiritual value and enjoys making other people look stupid is just the type of person to be tempted to steal his eccentric uncle’s sacred ruby and throw the blame on someone else.
15The same reasoning applies in “The Man with Two Beards” (1925). The thief, John Bankes, both “jeer[s] at his sister’s psychic fancies”35 and runs off with his mother’s emerald necklace. It is no coincidence that his sister’s name is Opal—she too may be seen as a precious jewel that her brother is incapable of appreciating at her true worth. Father Brown attributes the thief’s lack of moral values to his being a “rather brutal sort of businessman” with “no social ideal, let alone religion.”36 The fact that such people have “neither the gentleman’s traditions nor the trade unionist’s class loyalty”37 makes it harder for them to desire the right things. Hunter’s and Bankes’s values are similar not only to each other’s, but also to those of John Herncastle in The Moonstone, who not only does not hesitate to steal the diamond from a Hindu temple in the first place, but when he discovers the diamond may bring bad luck, amiably leaves it to his sister’s blameless daughter to inherit on her eighteenth birthday.
16A more detailed analysis of the role played by jewels in two short stories by Agatha Christie shows how the author uses them to present her own moral and spiritual values, which are in many ways similar to Chesterton’s. In “The Adventure of the Western Star” (1923), the stolen diamond enables Hercule Poirot to discover what two couples truly care for. In this story Christie’s villains, like Chesterton’s, not only value a precious jewel for the wrong reasons, but also have the wrong attitude to family ties. The spiritual message is even more explicit in “The Apples of the Hesperides” (1940). As Poirot successfully recovers the jewel-encrusted goblet, he also sees the perils of wealth and calls on the rich owner to restore the coveted object to those who will care for it for the right reasons.
17The criminal in « The Adventure of the Western Star » deliberately copies elements of The Moonstone in order to add credibility to his fraud. An article of fake news in the fictional magazine Society Gossip declares that the Yardly family’s diamond, named The Star of the East, was brought back from China by one of Lord Yardly’s ancestors and was originally “the right eye of a temple god.”38 The article also claims that the film star Mary Marvell’s diamond, called The Western Star, had formed the other eye and that both diamonds would one day be stolen and returned to the god. As the plot unfolds, the attitudes of Lord and Lady Yardly to the diamond and those of Mary Marvell and her husband Gregory Rolf reveal their true characters and values.
18Lord Yardly is a repentant sinner. He confesses to Poirot that he “has made rather an ass of [him]self in many ways,”39 including living beyond his means and marital infidelity, and is now both sorry and very short of money. However, he is fond of his two daughters and wants to save the family home for them by selling the diamond. Any British reader of the time would have agreed that this is a moral decision. Having no son to inherit, the law of primogeniture does not apply and Lord Yardly would almost certainly wish to leave everything to his two girls equally. Leaving a house which is big enough for them both to live in, divide into two homes or sell and share the proceeds is obviously fairer than leaving a diamond which only one of them can wear at a time and may cause conflict. The diamond, though beautiful, valuable and desirable in itself, is above all for Lord Yardly a means of fulfilling his desire to provide for his children.
19Lady Yardly, like her husband, has made mistakes in her past and laid herself open to blackmail. Getting back the real diamond, for there is in fact only one diamond not two, is a means for her to save her marriage and avoid being separated from the children she adores. Sympathising with Lady Yardly, whom he considers to be “une bonne mère,”40 Poirot is prepared to do his utmost to help her. Lady Yardly desires the diamond, but not for its monetary value. Recovering the diamond will keep the family together and save her daughters from the pain of separation.
20While the crisis with the diamond brings out the best in the Yardlys, it shows Mary Marvell and Gregory Rolf in a much less favourable light. Mary, who is the sort of film star who likes being followed around by “a bevy of admirers,”41 desires to keep her diamond, but not enough to put it into safe-keeping until the crisis has passed. She does not believe that “Lady Yardly’s diamond is anything like as good as [hers]”42 and insists on comparing them, even at the risk of losing the stone. In fact, the jewel is a means for her to show off and make other women jealous. For this reason, when her diamond is stolen, Poirot is unsympathetic, considering that the theft has given Mary “a magnificent advertisement” and “that is all she cares for.”43 Her husband’s attitude to the jewel is even less admirable. He obtained it by blackmail from Lady Yardly, substituting a paste replica for her real diamond, thus obtaining a free and flashy wedding present for his bride. Gregory’s own values are clearly revealed as he shows himself willing both to ruin Lady Yardly and to give Mary a status symbol which cost him nothing at all as a sign of their marriage. Not surprisingly, Poirot does not hesitate to take the diamond from him. Although both the couples are outwardly rich and famous and have indulged in extravagant celebrity lifestyles, their contrasting attitudes to the diamond show how much the Yardlys regret their past errors and are now ready to live responsible lives, while Gregory and Mary continue to value the superficial and seek fame and show above lasting happiness.
21Whereas in “The Adventure of the Western Star,” the jewel reveals the characters’ moral values, “The Apples of the Hesperides” carries a more specifically religious message. Although Christie named the story “The Apples of the Hesperides” in order to make it fit into her short story cycle The Labours of Hercules, the stolen goblet in the story, encrusted with rubies and emeralds, could equally well represent the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from the biblical book of Genesis: “The design represents a tree round which a jewelled serpent is coiled and the apples on the tree are formed of very beautiful emeralds.”44 Like the fruit on the tree in the Garden of Eden, the bejewelled goblet, which had once belonged to Pope Alexander VI (Roderigo Borgia), is an object of desire. Not only do professional burglars want to steal it for its monetary value, but two rich, rival businessmen’s “animosity culminated in rivalry over the Borgia goblet,”45 as each of them “was determined to possess it”46 and was not too scrupulous about the methods used. Even after his goblet has been stolen on the very day he managed to buy it, Emery Power allows Poirot to name his own fee for recovering it, as he will not accept defeat, but is determined to possess it.
22Poirot eventually finds the goblet on the altar in a rural Irish convent, “a place where ordinary material values did not apply,”47 where the nuns thought it was a chalice and used it as such. The original thief’s daughter had found it hidden in her father’s house after his death and, not knowing its origin or value, had taken it with her, “to be used for the glory of God,”48 when she joined the convent. When the rich financier sees it again, his reaction is almost one of relief, he reaches out for it and says: “Mine!”49 He has obtained his desire. However, Poirot asks him to return it to the convent where it “has dwelt in peace for nearly ten years.”50 Poirot tells Power, whose name is significant, that he only wants the goblet “to sustain [his] pride”51 and tries to convince him that he desires something else in life beyond material possessions: peace, absolution and purification, things he may yet find if the nuns pray for him and say masses for his soul. There are echoes here of the rich young ruler in the biblical parable52 who is told to “sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Unlike the rich young ruler, Emery Power agrees to donate the thirty thousand pound goblet to the convent, seeing it as an investment, “perhaps the best one [he] ever made.”53
23Poirot, in calling Power to desire spiritual goods above jewels, is surely echoing Christie herself. As Nick Baldock has pointed out, “the world of Agatha Christie was a Christian world. The assumptions, morality, and society are Christian.”54 It is not that she is incapable of appreciating the attraction of beautiful jewellery, and she is, in fact, very understanding of the weaknesses of her character, the charming Countess Vera Rossakoff who has a “Magpie complex”55 and steals “glittering things” but “never money.” However, in “The Apples of the Hesperides,” Christie is clearly writing a modern parable in which she consciously gives her detective a hieratic, almost prophetic, function. Poirot explains to Mother Superior that Power is “so unhappy that he does not know what happiness means. So unhappy that he does not know that he is unhappy.”56 The nun understands that it is his wealth that has brought about this situation. It is Power’s reaction to the bejewelled goblet that enables Poirot to understand him and to find an answer not only to the criminal mystery, but also to the rich man’s spiritual poverty.
24As E. M. Wrong remarks, in 20th century detective novels “time […] exalted murder, which used to be only one of several offences, to a position of natural supremacy,”57 often for the highly debateable reason that many thought that “from an aesthetic point of view, the theft of the Rajah’s diamond remains a base act, on a par with the pilfering of a string of Ciro pearls.”58 However, in the detective short story, thought by some, including Ellery Queen, to be “the original, ‘legitimate’ form”59 of detective fiction, the jewel theft remained a frequent crime. In such short narrations, it was easier for Christian authors to write stories, sometimes resembling the biblical parable or, more specifically, the lost and found narrative, where the stolen jewels act as metaphors or catalysts, revealing the spiritual state of those who come into contact with them.
Notes de bas de page
1 Wright, W. H., “The Great Detective Stories” [1927], in H. Haycraft (ed.), The Art of the Mystery Story [1946], New York, Carroll & Graf, 1992, p. 70.
2 James, P. D., Talking About Detective Fiction, Oxford, The Bodleian Library, 2009, p. 17.
3 Hennelly, M. M., Jr., “Detecting Collins’ Diamond: From Serpentstone to Moonstone,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 39.1, June 1984, p. 40.
4 Wright, W. H., “The Great Detective Stories,” op. cit., p. 70.
5 James, P. D., op. cit., p. 17.
6 Wrong, E. M., “Crime and Detection” [1926], in H. Haycraft (ed.), The Art of the Mystery Story [1946], New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992, p. 25.
7 Loc. cit.
8 Josephine Tey’s The Franchise Affair is perhaps the only classic where no one dies, pretends to die or even nearly dies. Among the lesser-known Golden Age works, Henry Wade’s tale of kidnapping and ransom, The Litmore Snatch, is a rare example of a crime novel with no death.
9 Filion, J., “Poisoners, Larcenists and the Mad Chambermaid: Villainy in Late Victorian Detective Fiction,” Master’s Theses and Doctoral Dissertations, Paper 194, East Michigan University, 2008, p. 51.
10 Eliot, T. S., Introduction to Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, London, Oxford UP, 1928, p. v.
11 Briefel, A., “Tautological Crimes: Why Women Can’t Steal Jewels,” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 37.1/2, Fall 2003-Spring 2004, p. 154.
12 Hennelly, M. M., “Detecting Collins’ Diamond…,” op. cit., p. 40.
13 Collins, W., The Moonstone, Ware, Wordsworth Classics, 1993, p. 68.
14 See Hennelly, M. M., “Detecting Collins’ Diamond…,” op. cit., p. 29.
15 Slade, C., “The Value of Diamonds in English Literature,” in G. E. Harlow (ed.), The Nature of Diamonds, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1998, p. 173.
16 Loc. cit.
17 Loc. cit.
18 Hackenbroch, Y., Jewels of the Renaissance [1979], New York, Assouline, 2015, presentation page (no number).
19 Hennelly, M. M., “Detecting Collins’ Diamond…,” op. cit., p. 27.
20 Doyle, A. C., “The Blue Carbuncle” [1892], The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2008, p. 157.
21 Loc. cit.
22 Ibid., p. 166.
23 Luke 15: 6, 9.
24 Sayers, D. L., Great Tales of Detection, London, Everyman, Dent, 1936, p. xiii.
25 Morlan, A., and W. Raubicheck, Introduction to Christianity and the Detective Story, Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013, p. xxii.
26 Chesterton, G. K., “The Blue Cross,” The Innocence of Father Brown [1911], London, Penguin, 1987, p. 25.
27 Id., “The Secret of Father Brown,” The Secret of Father Brown [1927], London, Penguin, 1986, p. 175.
28 Id., “The Flying Stars,” The Innocence of Father Brown, op. cit., p. 76.
29 Ibid., p. 91.
30 Id., “The Secret of Father Brown,” op. cit., p. 172.
31 Loc. cit.
32 Ibid., p. 173.
33 Id., “The Red Moon of Meru,” The Secret of Father Brown, op. cit., p. 145.
34 Ibid., p. 133.
35 Id., “The Secret of Father Brown,” op. cit., p. 172.
36 Id., “The Man with Two Beards,” The Secret of Father Brown, op. cit., p. 53.
37 Loc. cit.
38 Christie, A., “The Adventure of the Western Star,” Poirot Investigates [1924], London, HarperCollins, 2001, p. 16.
39 Ibid., p. 24.
40 Ibid., p. 26.
41 Ibid., p. 12.
42 Ibid., p. 16-17.
43 Ibid., p. 39.
44 Christie, A., “The Apples of the Hesperides,” The Labours of Hercules [1947], London, Collins, 1967, p. 217.
45 Ibid., p. 219.
46 Loc. cit.
47 Ibid., p. 229.
48 Loc. cit.
49 Ibid., p. 228.
50 Ibid., p. 230.
51 Loc. cit.
52 Luke 18: 18-23.
53 Christie, A., “The Apples of the Hesperides,” op. cit., p. 231.
54 Baldock, N., “The Christian World of Agatha Christie,” First Things, 4 August 2009. Web: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2009/08/the-christian-world-of-agatha-christie. Accessed 19 July 2020.
55 Christie, A., “The Capture of Cerberus,” The Labours of Hercules, op. cit., p. 240.
56 Id., “The Apples of the Hesperides,” op. cit., p. 231.
57 Wrong, E. M., “Crime and Detection,” op. cit., p. 25.
58 Thomson, H. D., “Masters of Mystery” [1931], in H. Haycraft (ed.), The Art of the Mystery Story, op. cit., p. 135.
59 Queen, E., “The Detective Story: The First Hundred Years” [1941], in H. Haycraft (ed.), The Art of the Mystery Story, op. cit. p. 477.
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