Murder in the Mews

And now on to our second episode, Murder in the Mews.  We start out with a roaring bonfire...and a figure inside it. Ah, a good old burning in effigy!  Turns out it's Guy Fawkes Day.  If you don't know who Guy Fawkes was...well, go look it up!  What am I, a Social Studies teacher?  Poirot, Hastings and Japp are wandering the streets, enjoying the festivities, which include children with sparklers and fireworks.  Ah, the good old days, when children weren't considered too good to lose a finger or two.

Hastings declares it "a jolly good night for a murder."  Which...SHUT THE FUCK UP, HASTINGS!  Ye Gods, man, have you never heard of the concept of tempting fate?  Seriously, mentioning the word "murder" around Poirot ought to be a chargeable offense!  What were you thinking?  Or were you even thinking at all?

It turns out that Hastings was thinking that all the fireworks would mask the noise of a gunshot.  Poirot and Japp point out that the noise wouldn't help if one wanted to commit a strangling or a poisoning, probably because they're both fantasizing about doing such things to Hastings.  Hastings goes off to fetch his car...and steps right into a firework some kids are setting off on the pavement.  Geez, dude, even random children are trying to off you!

We then linger on a sign above the street that says: "Bardsley Garden Mews."  sigh  Great, now I have to look up what a mews is:

mew ¹  (my)

n.

1. A cage for hawks, especially when molting.

2. A secret place; a hideaway.

3. mews (used with a sing. or pl. verb)

a. A group of buildings originally containing private stables, often converted into residential apartments.

b. A small street, alley, or courtyard on which such buildings stand.

Well.  Since I don't see any hawks and most secret places don't have signs announcing their existence, I'm going to go with definition #3.

We cut to the next day in Poirot's office.  Remember how, during the last recap, Poirot was bitching about a spot of grease on his suit?  Well, today he's complaining about his collars, which are starched upright in a rather weird manner.  Perhaps that was the style of the day?  Well, I use the word "style" lightly.  Anyway, apparently Poirot isn't happy with them and he declares that his laundry is in the pay of his enemies.  Yeah...other private detectives have enemies who want to kill them, Poirot's just want to make sure his collars are improperly starched.  Of course, for someone as OCD as Poirot, I suppose it's much the same thing.

Anyway, Japp calls to let Poirot in on an odd coincidence: last night in Bardsley Mews, right where Hastings made his comment about the fireworks covering up the sound of a shot, a shot was fired.  It wasn't murder, however, but suicide.  At least, it looks like suicide, but they're not entirely certain.  Poirot, of course, is like, "pssht, nobody commits suicide when I'm around!"  Okay, he doesn't actually say that, but you know he's thinking it.

Poirot then meets Japp at an apartment in the mews.  The victim, Mrs. Allen, was found by her friend Miss Plenderleith when the latter returned home from the country.  Mrs. Allen was in her room with the door locked and when she didn't answer her friend's knocking, Miss Plenderleith got freaked out enough to call the police who broke the door down and found Mrs. Allen shot through the head.  Japp and Poirot enter the room in question and we see Mrs. Allen--who is quite young and good looking--lying on the floor with the gun in her left hand.  The position of the body is apparently consistent with suicide, but there's a problem with the fingerprints.  The only prints on the gun are those of the dead woman's thumb and forefinger, as if someone pressed the gun into her hand.

Poirot starts sniffing around.  No, literally, he walks around sniffing the air in the most absurd manner.  Japp is doing his job for once, noting that Mrs. Allen is likely to be left handed since she shot herself in the left side of the head.  It also turns out that not only was the door locked, but the window bolted as well.  When Japp asks Poirot for his thoughts, Poirot comments that he's looking at the dead woman's watch.  We then get a close up to show us that she is wearing the watch on her right wrist.  Nowadays some people wear their watch on their right wrist just to be perverse and annoy me, but traditionally, the only people who wore their watch that way were left-handed.  (Oh, for my younger readers, a watch was a device we used before cellphones to tell the time.)

So, evidence of left-handedness, gun in left hand, shot in the left side of the head, door and window locked from the inside....She committed suicide.  Case closed, blog entry complete.  Huh, and much quicker than usual.

Unfortunately, Poirot and Japp are not as smart as I am.  (Well, really, who is?)  Poirot comments that there is no sign of a suicide note.   But plenty of suicides don't bother spelling out why they did it.  The only real sticking point is that the key to the room is missing, which makes no sense.

There's a final close-up of the dead woman's head.  The bullet hole is tiny with just a trickle of blood falling across her forehead.  You gotta love tv corpses: no gore, no sign of death convulsions, no evidence of a sudden loss of bladder control.  Just like in real life.  rolls eyes

Next, Poirot and Japp go to talk to Miss Plenderleith.  It turns out that Mrs. Allen was a widow and met Miss Plenderleith while returning to London from India.  She had no financial difficulties and was currently engaged to an MP.  Miss Plenderlieth looks rather sad at one point and Poirot uses his keen deductive skills to point out: "You were very fond of your friend."  Well, yes, Poirot, that's rather what friendship means, isn't it?  What does he think she's going to say?  "No, I hated the bitch, but good roommates are hard to find"?

Japp then asks Miss Plenderleith to confirm that Mrs. Allen was left-handed, but Miss Plenderleith insists that she wasn't.  He shows her a small object he picked up off the floor near the body and asks if she recognizes it.  Miss Plenderleith does not recognize it, but identifies it as half a man's cufflink (does anyone wear those anymore?).

Outside, Poirot finds Hastings fussing about his car and reams him out for not questioning the locals as he was supposed to do.  It turns out that Hastings has found a young boy who witnessed a "military-looking gent" aged around 45 come to visit Mrs. Allen on the night of her death.  The man had been around a couple of times before and this time stayed about half an hour before Mrs. Allen showed him out.  Mrs. Allen was behind the door so the boy never actually saw her and if you don't think this is going to be a plot point then you must never have read a mystery novel in your life.  Japp gives the boy a sixpence and shoos him away when the boy asks if it might get raised to a shilling.  And I swear this crazy British money is going to drive me batshit crazy!

Japp and Poirot then meet with Mrs. Allen's MP fiancee, who is duly shocked at the news of her death and worries about the newspapers getting hold of the news.  It is worth noting that he doesn't seem particularly upset at the news.  He also confirms that Mrs. Allen was right handed.  When out of earshot, Japp terms him a stuffed fish and a boiled owl, which seems to me to be mixing metaphors.  Or maybe Japp just skipped lunch.  But he is now convinced that they are dealing with a murder.

Poirot then takes time out from the case to deal with a much more pressing issue: the starch on his collar.  Poirot dictates a letter to Miss Lemon for her to give to the launderers.  This is apparently not the first letter either.  Unfortunately, as Miss Lemon explains, the launderers don't understand the letters; they're Chinese and don't speak any English.  sigh  Well, some things never change.  Miss Lemon has tried to explain the situation verbally to the boy who delivers the shirts: "Him collar no very good starchy!"  Well, hard to believe that didn't solve the problem!  Poirot suggests that Lemon consult Hastings, since Hastings has actually spent time in China.  Dude, if solving a problem requires consulting Hastings, the problem is not worth solving.  Anyway, it turns out that Miss Lemon already asked Hastings for advice; where do you think she got "Him collar no very good starchy"?  So, by proxy, SHUT THE FUCK UP, HASTINGS!

Hastings then has the gall to suggest that Poirot get some turned down collars.  Which...huh...VERY GOOD IDEA, HASTINGS!  Poirot doesn't see it this way and actually argues that turned down collars are "the first symptom of decay of the grey cells!"  Hey, Herc, when I think you're being too OCD, you may have gone too far.  Actually, now that I think about it, Poirot would probably get along very well with Sheldon Cooper.

Thankfully, at this point, Japp arrives to give Poirot something else to think about it.  It turns out that Miss Plenderleith has been cleared of any involvement in Mrs. Allen's murder, since she spent the entire night playing bridge.  another sigh  What is it with the British middle class and bridge?  Christie has an entire novel that revolves around bridge.  And I suppose I should give her credit, since it's one of my favourite of her books, despite the fact that I don't know the first rutting thing about the game.  But, I ask you, what's wrong with a good game of poker?  And...that just made me wonder, is there such a thing as strip bridge?  That...would be very disturbing.  Let's get back to the murder and avoid the darker recesses of human nature.

Japp finally gets around to asking Poirot what he was sniffing at the crime scene and Poirot tells him that it was cigarette smoke.  Japp claims not to have smelled any smoke and Poirot agrees with him.  Japp observes that their were nine cigarette ends in the ashtray, six gaspers, three turkish...whatever the heck that means.  Poirot comments that there was both something missing from and something added to the murder scene.  Well, yes, that's basically the whole concept of CSI: every murderer leaves something of himself at the scene and takes something from the scene with him.  By the way, there was a CSI type detective in Murder on the Links (the novel; I can't remember if he was in the movie) and Poirot was utterly disdainful of him.  After all, who needs actual evidence when one has "the leetle grey cells"?  Poirot would not do well in the modern police force.

Poirot and Japp head off to have another conversation with Miss Plenderleith.  On the way, they discuss the fact that Mrs. Allen had taken 200 pounds from the bank the Monday before her death and another 200 pounds three months earlier and that none of this money was found in her house.  And I'm just relieved to hear a type of British money I actually recognize.

When they arrive at Miss Plenderleith's, they inform her that the case is now being treated as a murder.  She seems quite taken aback by this information, but she admits it could be possible.  And, frankly, her shock at this possibility strikes me as just a tad overplayed.  I mean, come on, your roommate--who you yourself said was not depressed and had no reason to kill herself--is found shot in the head--with the gun in the wrong hand, no less--and the idea of murder never occurs to you?  I call shenanigans!

Japp describes the man seen visiting Mrs. Allen on the night of her death, and Miss Plenderleith identifies him as a Major Eustace, a man Mrs. Allen had known in India and who had recently reappeared in her life.  When Japp suggests that perhaps Major Eustace was blackmailing Mrs. Allen, Miss Plenderleith appears thunderstruck and exclaims that of course that's the case and she should have realized it earlier.  And either this woman is the most easily shocked person on Earth or she's overacting again.

Upon looking around, Japp discovers a cupboard under the stairs and asks Miss Plenderleith to unlock it for him.  She claims not to have the key until Japp threatens to break it open at which point she remembers the key is upstairs and retrieves it.  Strange how that sort of thing happens.  Apparently, the women kept it locked to protect their precious umbrellas and such.  There's not much in it other than a set of golf clubs and a briefcase, which interests Japp but doesn't yield anything.  And it's worth noting that I don't see a single umbrella in need of protecting.

Poirot and Japp then go to see Mrs. Allen's fiancee, who asks if they've figured out why Mrs. Allen killed herself.  And, I swear, he actually refers to her as "Mrs. Allen".  Who the fuck refers to their fiancee by her last name?  Well, okay, Chase and Cameron did it on House, but at least they left out the honorifics.  Plus they had last names that sounded like first names anyway.  At any rate, the fiancee is also shocked, but in a much more low-key manner, at the suggestion of murder and claims he cannot think of anyone who would have wanted Mrs. Allen dead.  It also turns out that he had met Captain Eustace and did not have a high opinion of him, though at this point I would consider that a mark in Eustace's favour.  The fiancee gets a little more heated when asked to provide an alibi for the night of the murder.  He doesn't really have one; he pretty much just walked around.  However, it turns out that Japp finds that the very weakness of the alibi lends it credibility and he doesn't consider Mrs. Allen's fiance to be much of a suspect.  I tend to agree.  At the very least, if he did kill her it clearly wasn't a crime of passion.

Japp (sans Poirot) then pays a visit to Captain Eustace...who is in the weirdest frakking place I have ever seen.  (Though I'll grant you I don't get out much.)  It's some sort of club that seems to be pretending to be in Asia?  The servers wear those triangular straw hats and there's a very scantily clad singer (also in one of the hats) crooning about some place called Hindustan.  It seems like the kind of club one would find in the far East that would cater to British expats.  Except it's in London.  Catering to former expats who miss the far East?  That is weird on so many levels.  And it's enough to make me suspicious of anyone who would hang out there.

Anyway, it's always kind of interesting to see Japp actually doing his job on his own, since most of the time you'd think he couldn't find his way to the crime scene without Poirot's assistance.

Eustace, it turns out, is a rather slimy looking figure who smokes both turkish cigarettes and gaspers.  Well, at least we can make a pretty good guess how this guy's going to eventually kick the bucket.

Japp asks Eustace about Mrs. Allen and he confirms not only that he knew her in India, but also that he went to see her on the night she died, apparently to give her advice about investments.  Oh, is that what the kids are calling it these days?  My mother always warned me about guys who would invite me inside to have a look at their investment portfolios.  Anyway, Eustace's account of his parting conversation with Mrs. Allen doesn't match up with that of the eye witness and when Japp mentions the 200 pounds and the possibility that it could be traced, Eustace gets very, VERY agitated.  He denies the accusation of blackmail and says that he and Mrs. Allen just sat in the sitting room and talked.  And smoked?

Eustace: Yes, and smoked.  Anything wrong with that?

Ask me that again in 20 years when you're toting an oxygen tank around.  Seriously, turks and gaspers?  I ask you!

Eustace denies having been in Mrs. Allen's room, but when Japp checks his cufflinks, he discovers that one is broken and it matches the piece that was found in Mrs. Allen's room.  Eustace accuses Japp of trying to frame him.  He reminds Japp that there was a witness who saw him talk to Mrs. Allen as he was leaving and Japp points out that the witness never saw or heard Mrs. Allen and Eustace could totally have been just pretending to have a conversation with her to cover up the fact that he'd already murdered her.  Hah!  I told you that was going to be a plot point!  The conversation ends with Japp asking Eustace to accompany him to the station, which pretty seriously takes the wind out of Eustace's sails.

We cut to Poirot, who has gone back to the crime scene to see Miss Plenderleith again.  Only she's not there.  An elderly woman (the cleaning lady?  You know people like Miss Plenderleith and Mrs. Allen never washed a dish in their lives) tells Poirot that Miss Plenderleith has gone off golfing.

Woman: And that poor Mrs. Allen still lying cold down at the mortuary.

Still?  Did you expect her to get up at some point?

Fortunately for Poirot, the woman has heard of him and he is able to talk his way into the house.  Poirot takes a look inside the cupboard of valuable umbrellas and discovers that the golf clubs and the briefcase seen there before are now gone.

Poirot is thus off to stalk Miss Plenderleith on the golf course, where she is wearing the most utterly ridiculous outfit complete with...ugh...plaid socks.  shudders  First starched collars and now this?  Poirot, dressed in his usual three-piece suit and patent leather shoes, and Hastings follow Miss Plenderleith through the course, but since she has an hour and a half head start on them and since Hastings apparently sucks as badly at golf as he does at everything else ever, it's taking awhile.  And it doesn't help that Poirot keeps stopping to root around in all the dustbins.  His quest is not for nothing though as he keeps finding...golf clubs.  Apparently Miss Plenderleith is out to dispose of all her dastardly golf clubs (perhaps they were threatening the umbrellas?) in the one place she supposed they would not be remarked upon.  Holding one of the clubs triumphantly, Poirot announces that Major Eustace is not guilty of murder.  Maybe not, but I bet he's guilty of something.  Horrible taste in music and cigarettes, if nothing else.

Poirot and Hastings finally catch up to Miss Plenderleith who ducks off the main course and through the underbrush to a pond or water trap or what have you.  Poirot and Hastings follow her--in the most skulking, obvious manner imaginable--and watch as she throws the briefcase from the cupboard into the water.  She then takes the rest of the golf clubs and heads off.  Poirot informs Hastings that they've seen all they need to see.

So, the next day--presumably--we see Miss Plenderleith arrive at Poirot's building.  Inside, Japp is examining the ruined briefcase and wondering why any sane person would throw away an expensive briefcase, which contained nothing but some magazines.  Hastings is pondering why anyone would want to destroy perfectly good golf clubs.

Japp: I don't mind telling you I lay away last night worrying about it.

I honestly cannot tell if he's being sarcastic. 

Miss Plenderleith is shown in, having just come from Mrs. Allen's funeral.  She's heard about Major Eustace being arrested.

Miss Plenderleith: It was murder then?
Poirot: Oh, yes, the willful destruction of one human being by another human being.

Poirot then takes a seat and tells Mrs. Plenderleith that he shall explain to her how he arrived at the truth of the matter.  Because Poirot can never, EVER just get to the point of anything.

Japp: He has his methods.  I humour him, you know.

You and me both, Japp.

Poirot starts with the fact that the room in which Mrs. Allen's body was found did not smell of cigarette smoke, despite the fact that there were nine cigarettes in the ashtray.  Then he mentions that Mrs. Allen's wristwatch was worn on the right wrist, rather than the left.  Then there's the fact that the top of the blotter on Mrs. Allen's writing bureau was clean, despite the fact that she had been seen to post some letters earlier that evening.  Also, the pens were on the left side of the writing bureau, rather than the right where they would have been more convenient for a right-handed person.

Yeah, dude, you had me with the wristwatch.

Poirot then tells the story as he imagines it: Miss Plenderleith comes home and finds her friend lying dead on the floor of her unlocked room with the gun clasped in her dominant left hand and a note left on the writing bureau explaining that she has been driven to suicide by blackmail.  The blackmailer being, of course, Major Eustace.  Miss Plenderleith decides that Eustace should be punished for his hand in her friend's death, so she destroys the note and plants the ashtray and a piece of his cufflink in Mrs. Allen's room to make it look as though he was up there with her.  She then takes the gun from Mrs. Allen's clasped hand, wipes it clean and places it back in her hand.  Finally, she bolts the window and locks the door so no one will suspect she was in the room.

Poirot proclaims the affair a very clever murder.

Poirot: For that is what it was: the attempted murder of Major Eustace!

Actually, Poirot, there's a pretty big difference between murder and attempted murder.  I think Sideshow Bob said it best: "I mean, Attempted Murder!  Now, honestly, what is that?  Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted Chemistry?  Well, do they?"

I would also point out that Miss Plenderleith's actions only qualify as attempted murder because of the use of the death penalty in 1930s England.  I know people argue about whether or not the death penalty is a deterrent to crime, but I must say this is the first time I've heard of it being the motive for a crime!

Miss Plenderleith disagrees with Poirot's interpretation of her actions, arguing that what she did was perfectly just since Eustace was, in fact, responsible for Mrs. Allen's death.  It turns out that back in India Mrs. Allen had an affair with a married man and bore his child.  When the child died, she returned to England.  Yeah, that's sucky enough without some douche like Eustace blackmailing her over it.  According to her suicide note, Mrs. Allen apparently felt that as much as she loved her fiance--whom Miss Plenderleith calls "a pompous little tit" hee--she could not marry him and was therefore taking the best way out.

Poirot still argues that it was murder and finally gets Miss Plenderleith to admit that she doesn't really want Eustace dead...although she wishes that she did.

At this point, Japp arrests Miss Plenderleith and....Oh no, wait, he doesn't.  In fact, the three men remain sitting as Miss Plenderleith gets up and leaves the building.  So...what the fuck?  Sure, Poirot's charge of attempted murder might be a bit of a stretch, but I'm pretty sure what she did was criminal.  And, yeah, Major Eustace was a first class dick, but he deserves a jail term for the blackmail he committed and not the death penalty for a murder he didn't.  And they're just going to let Miss Plenderleith walk away?

Hastings: Well, I'm jiggered.

SHUT THE...you know what, it's not even worth it.  Also, "jiggered" is not a word.

Japp: Not murder disguised as suicide, but suicide made to look like murder.

Well, thank you Chief Inspector Obvious.  Why don't you take a break from being the narrator and do your damn job!

Hastings then asks about the ruined suitcase and golf clubs.  Turns out the golf clubs were Mrs. Allen's and would have shown that she was left-handed.  The suitcase was just a red herring Miss Plenderleith used to try and distract them from the golf clubs.

And that, as they say, is that.

Poirot: And now, my friends, it is time for me to take you to lunch.

The stuffed fish or the boiled owl?