I read all of Ordeal By Innocence (1958) on a long coach journey, and what better way to make the hours go by than with Agatha?
I didn’t know anything about this Christie, nor had I seen the TV adaptation from a few years ago, so it was quite fun to go in totally blind.
It opens with a man called Arthur Calgary going to visit a family in a house called Sunny Point (though built on land traditionally called Viper’s Point). He has a strange mission. He has come to tell them that Jack, one of the sons of the house, is not a murderer. He is just a couple of year’s late.
There is some convoluted backstory that we can swallow in order to get on with the story. Essentially, Calgary could have given Jack an alibi for a murder he was jailed for – and where he died of pneumonia, a few months into his sentence. The murder? Jack’s mother, blugeoned to death in her study.
Calgary thinks he is bringing good news by clearing Jack’s name – but really he has thrown the cat among the pigeons. Now they know the murderer is still among them. And everyone suspects each other.
I’m not even going to go through the characters in detail, because really it’s that central idea that sets the novel apart. We have a family of adopted children, now adults, all of whom seem to resent their murdered mother for her benificence. There is her widower – and the secretary he is close to. There are various other in-laws and staff milling about to complete the picture, though Christie considerately left most characters unmarried, to limit our canvas.
But it is that idea that really strikes through the novel – that, actually, the ones who suffer most are the innocents who are under suspicion, and who suspect others. It could be true in almost any of her novels, but it’s here that she really explores the idea, and I think she does it well. Perhaps it is this psychological angle that made it one of Christie’s own favourites.
Without Poirot or Marple at the helm, it helps that Calgary is enjoyable company – resolute on finding the culprit of this cold case, perhaps to atone for his inadvertent opening of old wounds. There are a lot of red herrings and directions the story could go in that it doesn’t. The ultimate solution is satisfying enough, but – perhaps unusually for Christie – I found the journey more interesting than the denouement.
I wonder why it isn’t more popular. Perhaps the lack of her superstar detectives, or perhaps some rather dated language and use of race, disability and adoption along the way. But, with those misgivings acknowledged, I think this is one of the more interesting Christies I’ve read, and an excellent accompaniment to a long journey.