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Hallowe'en Party
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Chapters 14-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary
Poirot returns to Apple Trees to meet Mrs. Drake. While he waits, he observes her garden, which is orderly and unartistic. Mrs. Drake arrives after a planning meeting for a Christmas fete; she seems irritated that other committee members want to interfere with her plans. Poirot asks if Mrs. Drake has even “a half-formed idea” about Joyce’s murder (154), then asks what caused Mrs. Drake to drop the vase, as Miss Whittaker reported. Mrs. Drake says she found the vase empty and filled it up, but denies being “startled” into dropping it. She denies seeing anyone leave the library, but Poirot doesn’t believe her. (In Chapter 21, she admits to seeing Leopold Reynolds and thinking him his sister’s murderer.)
Poirot thinks Mrs. Drake the “type” of person “to make excuses for the young criminal” (157). He muses if she saw a young person coming out of the library, she might lie to protect them since she advocates for “proper remedial treatment” instead of imprisonment to help young people who break the law (160). Poirot believes justice is more important.
Mrs. Drake confesses the sense of responsibility she feels for her husband’s death in a car accident, believing that she should have been present to help him get out of the way, given his disability. The true culprit, who drove a common car that had been stolen, was never found. She describes his death as an accident, not intentional violence. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, her aunt, died shortly thereafter.
Mrs. Drake contends that “someone mentally disturbed” must have killed Joyce, though Poirot advocates for a “simpler explanation” (162); he believes the murderer sought to silence a witness to a previous crime, given Joyce’s boast. Mrs. Drake suggests that Poirot re-interrogate Miss Emlyn, calling her a “natural psychologist” who may “just [know]” who might be a good suspect (163). Regarding the au pair, Mrs. Drake sees “no doubt” that Olga forged the will, citing Olga’s association with Lesley Ferrier.
Poirot leaves and walks to a cemetery. He finds Hugo Drake’s gravestone; a nearby gardener comments on Drake’s kindness and how the man struggled with paralysis after contracting polio as an adult. He considers Mrs. Drake “devoted,” but muses that she may likely leave the area to find another place to do her “good works.” The gardener considers Mrs. Drake “good” but not likable.
Chapter 15 Summary
Poirot interviews Nicholas Ransom and Desmond Holland, two teenage boys who attended the party. Poirot is suspicious of the notion that these boys, who helped prepare for the party, are viable subjects because of their age and gender. The boys explain their role in helping with party preparations and produce the “spirit photographs” they created for the game where the girls looked in mirrors to see their supposed future husbands. They recount the people who attended the party preparations and insist Ann Reynolds acts snobby and superior.
They claim to have been occupied elsewhere when Joyce bragged about witnessing a murder, which Nicholas calls “a vision” of her own murder. Desmond dismisses this idea as unscientific. When pressed, Nicholas names Miss Whittaker as a suspect on “purely psychological grounds,” calling her “sex-starved” (175). He theorizes that Miss Whittaker is a lesbian who was in love with Nora Ambrose, the murdered schoolteacher, and that Miss Whittaker murdered Nora out of jealousy. His theory continues that Miss Whittaker overheard Joyce bragging about having witnessed a murder and killed her to cover up the original crime.
Desmond contends that the curate might be “a bit barmy” and that the Snapdragon game reminded him of “hell fire” which led to a religiously motivated crime (176).
Chapter 16 Summary
Poirot interviews Mrs. Goodbody, who played a witch at the party. She laughs over young people’s trends and scorns the idea that evil has a basis in magic. Instead, she cites the Christian devil as the motivator of crimes by and against children. Mrs. Goodbody characterizes Joyce as a liar, Ann as self-important, and Leopold Reynolds as clever. She quotes a nursery rhyme about a boy putting a cat in a well to illustrate her belief that Olga died.
Chapter 17 Summary
A woman named Mrs. Leaman approaches Mrs. Oliver. She explains that she once worked for Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe and served as a witness to the codicil that left money to Olga. She watched Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe put the envelope in a book, which she returned to her bookshelf. When Mrs. Leaman looked at the paper the next day, she saw that the document left everything to Olga. When the codicil was contested, Mrs. Leaman explains, she was uncertain how to proceed and did nothing.
Mrs. Leaman has come forward now because the rumors that Joyce witnessed a murder have made her wonder if Olga killed Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe in order to get the older woman’s money. Mrs. Leaman insists she did not intend to behave dishonestly and asks Mrs. Oliver to help her speak to relevant legal parties about witnessing the codicil. Mrs. Leaman leaves just as Poirot returns.
Chapter 18 Summary
Poirot complains about sore feet and Mrs. Oliver chastises him for privileging appearance over comfort. Mrs. Oliver, having lost her taste for apples, eats dates, which causes Poirot to muse on the importance of timeline to the case. While they both allow for the possibility that the common view (that Joyce was killed by “some mentally disturbed nut” [196]) is true, they find it unlikely. They both believe Joyce was killed because she witnessed a murder—or at least because the murderer believed this plausible.
Poirot contends that Joyce very likely did not witness a murder. He thinks Joyce’s death, Olga’s disappearance, the possibly forged will, and Lesley’s murder are all likely connected. He gets a sudden idea (later implied to be the threat against Miranda, though not clearly discussed), which leads him to ask if Mrs. Oliver might be able to house someone in her London home temporarily if it made that person safe from a potential future murder. He quickly diverts to talking about how well Mrs. Oliver knows Mrs. Butler and whether she puts people she knows in her novels, which Mrs. Oliver denies, though she admits that she is inspired by strangers she sees. Getting to know these people would “ruin” her literary plotting.
Mrs. Oliver admits that she was initially interested in Mrs. Butler due to a sense that she was “mixed up in some interesting drama” (201). Poirot tells her that he does not yet want her to invite the Butlers to London, as he is still muddling over a “little idea.” Mrs. Oliver explains what Mrs. Leaman told her about witnessing the codicil.
Chapter 19 Summary
Poirot wonders about the lawyers’ insistence that there was a forged codicil; Mrs. Oliver contends that both real and forged documents existed, postulating that Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe made such a codicil, then changed her mind. Olga then forged a document that mimicked the original to secure the money after her employer’s death.
Poirot contacts Fullerton, who explains that the forged codicil was not witnessed by Harriet Leaman, but rather by Mary Doherty, another of Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe’s employees, now deceased. Poirot anticipates information about Olga from a correspondent in Herzegovina. Mrs. Oliver asks about Miss Whittaker and offers that she “wouldn’t put it past her to have thought up a murder” (206).
Chapter 20 Summary
Poirot leaves the Butlers’ home via a gap in the bushes that Miranda showed him. It seems wider than a child would need, indicating someone else has used the path recently (implied, but never clearly stated, to be Michael Garfield, going to see Mrs. Drake). He finds the quarry “haunted.” As he walks, he encounters Miranda Butler and Michael Garfield. Garfield is sketching Miranda, and Poirot admires the artistry of the drawing.
Miranda explains she is searching for a fabled wishing well, though Mrs. Goodbody claims it was sealed up after a child fell in. Michael dismisses this as a rumor, claiming a cat fell in instead. Miranda quotes the same nursery rhyme that Mrs. Goodbody cited in Chapter 16. When Miranda leaves, Michael confirms the existence of a sealed well, though he does not know if it was ever considered a wishing well.
Michael considers leaving the village despite his comfortable living. He seeks more artistic freedom than he thinks he will receive locally. He claims a lifelong restlessness that has led him to move frequently. Poirot asks Michael about Lesley Ferrier; Michael confirms that Lesley and Olga had a romantic involvement, though Lesley had many other simultaneous entanglements. Michael does not think Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe knew about the affair between them.
Michael calls Lesley’s past as a forger “hearsay.” Poirot contends that Lesley and Olga conspired to forge the codicil. Michael quotes the Christian Bible, telling Poirot to take his talk of murder away from the idyllic garden (with a slight error; Michael says “Get thee beyond me, Satan” [218] while common Biblical translations offer the line “Get thee behind me, Satan” in Mark 8:33 and Matthew 16:23).
Chapter 21 Summary
Poirot, exhausted, arrives at Elspeth McKay’s house; Spence has been called away. Elspeth gives Poirot a letter that confirms that Olga Seminoff never returned to her hometown after her position with Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe. In her final letters, Olga alluded to a romance with an unnamed man that she thought might end in marriage. Elspeth offers that there were “never any rumors” about Lesley and Olga (221).
Poirot finds Mrs. Drake awaiting him at his boardinghouse. She reports that someone has killed Leopold Reynolds, Joyce’s younger brother. He was found drowned in a river. Mrs. Drake explains that she lied about seeing someone in the library; she saw Leopold and thought he had murdered Joyce. She now assumes that he found Joyce’s body and was acting strangely due to shock. Poirot cites references to Leopold’s sudden influx of money and contends that they will soon know who was paying him for his silence (later revealed to be Mrs. Drake).
Chapters 14-21 Analysis
In this section of the novel, Christie uses Poirot’s investigative methods to highlight the novel’s thematic interest in The Value of Community Knowledge. She incorporates repetitive dialogue that illustrates Poirot’s thought process as he continues to quiz different characters about their perceptions of each other, the past crimes in Woodleigh Common, and their suspicions about who might have killed Joyce Reynolds—and, eventually, Leopold Reynolds, Olga Seminoff, and Lesley Ferrier. While different characters have different levels of knowledge—and different levels of trustworthiness—Christie plays upon another common feature of her novels by showing elderly women as possessing keen, valuable insight into human psychology, even—and sometimes especially—when they have experienced life in small villages. Christie’s other famous detective, Miss Jane Marple, falls into the category of old ladies with a keen eye for justice, a role that is here paralleled by Mrs. Goodbody and Miss Emlyn.
Christie does not offer a clear indication of how these two women—Miss Emlyn in particular—gain their knowledge, but rather offers an implied intertextuality to go along with the overt references made to other Christie novels. While Hallowe’en Party itself lacks an explanation behind Miss Emlyn’s confidence in the identity of the murderers, long-term Christie fans may see Miss Emlyn’s role as analogous to that of Miss Marple—in possession of a wealth of knowledge that comes from a lifetime of watching the minutiae of village life. As Miss Marple frames it, “There is a great deal of wickedness in village life” (“Miss Marple - Characters.” Agatha Christie). Miss Emlyn thus emerges as another tie between Hallowe’en Party and the golden age detective fiction subgenre—reinforcing the way the novel frames Christie’s canon as having an interconnected history.
Christie develops the novel’s thematic interest in the connection between Modernity and Social Decline through the perspectives of the Woodleigh Common residents. Through Poirot’s investigation, Christie indicates that, in the age of modernity, the idea of what motivates a crime has entered into the cultural zeitgeist. Poirot’s interview with Nicholas Ransom and Desmond Holland shows that the boys expect that crimes are “always” motivated by sex, whether due to sexual deviance or repression. Though the novel does not uphold Nicholas and Desmond’s assessment of the crime, it does suggest that this very knowledge—held by young men who are ultimately framed as being trustworthy and even heroic—is a sign of moral decline. Teenagers, the text implies, shouldn’t have knowledge of sexual deviancy, nor the brazenness to discuss it so flippantly in front of a stranger—a perspective that reflects the conservative moral lens of the period.
The depictions of Quarry Garden in Chapter 20, as well as Poirot’s conversations there, draw upon imagery of and allusions to the Garden of Eden from the Christian Bible. Michael Garfield feels drawn to natural splendor in a way that becomes an obsession. His desire to cultivate a Greek island into his ideal garden has an implied and ultimately unresolved tension: He wants things to remain wild, something he contrasts with nature being “preserved,” but he also wants to cultivate an island that is wild according to his artistic vision. Christie ultimately frames these desires as self-centered, indicative of moral failing and the catalyst for several of the novel’s central crimes—positioning them in stark contrast to the utopic view of the biblical Eden.
The character of Michael represents a twist in this Edenic imagery. After he quotes the New Testament in Chapter 20, likening Poirot to Satan for bringing worldly discord into his Quarry Garden Eden, Poirot realizes that this inverts their true positions. He comes to view Michael as the Satan in this metaphor, which convinces him of Michael’s culpability in each of the novel’s central deaths. Michael himself is both the temptation in the garden (as pertains to drawing Mrs. Drake into his crimes) and tempted by the garden itself, which the text eventually determines makes him “mad.” His determination to build a bigger, wilder, more extravagant garden becomes fanatical, which leads him to attempt to kill Miranda in a pseudo-religious ceremony. As Michael dies by suicide when his murderous attempts are subverted by Nicholas and Desmond, the legitimacy of his convictions is never interrogated.
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By Agatha Christie
