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Author: Christie, Agatha Publication: 1933 ( in Great Britain)
Main Characters: Hercules Poirot, he is a Belgian detective. He intimates of his intellect and his instinct.
Lady Edgwares: She is a world famouse actor. She seems very naive but she is not.
Message: You can´t fool Hercules Poirot!!
Quotations: "She would kill as easily as she would drink her morning tea", p. 31
"Do you think they would put me into Madame Tussauds?", p. 219
Personal statement: I enjoyed reading this book. I am a fan of Agatha Christie, but it is not her best book.
Short summary: The story is about the murder of Lord Edgwares. His wife seems to be guilty but Poirot believes in her innocence.
One day Hercules Poirot and his friend Hastings get to know Lady Edgwares, who is the wife of Lord Edgwares. Lady Edgwares asks Hercules Poirot for help because she wants to get a divorce. She explains to him that she loves another man but her husband doesn`t agree to a separation. She also says she wants to kill him. The Belgian detective promises to speak with Lord Edgwares. Some days later Poirot and his friend visit the Lord to speak about the problem. He is very surprised when he hears what Poirot tells him. Lord Edgwares says that he agrees with seperation and he has written a letter six months before with his decision. Poirot is very astonished and murmurs that it is very courios. Then the former Belgian policeman and Hastings say good bye to Lord Edgwares.
On the following day Inspector Japp meets Poirot and Hastings. Japp tells them that Lord Edgwares was murdered the day before by his wife Jane Wilkinson, what is her maiden name. Poirot cannot believe that and asks Japp why he knows that it was Lady Edgwares. Japp explains that Lord Edgwares´s butler recognizes her. She stabbed him in the library. Then Poirot speaks with Jane Wilkinson and she tells him that she didn´t stab her husband because she was at a party yesterday she also says that there was a mysterious phone call for her but nobody spoke.
Then Poirot wants to speak to Charlotta Adams, a friend of Lady Edgwares, who was at the party too. But when Poirot arrives at Charlotta´s flat she is dead. She has taken an overdose of a sleeping draught. Poirot cast suspicions on Lord Edgwares daughter and his nephew. Because his daughter says that she hates his father and his nephew has financial difficulties. Some days later Japp tells Poirot that Donald Ross has been murdered. He was also at the party and has seen Lady Edgwares.
By pure chance Poirot finds out that Jane Wilkinson was not at the party as she claimed. She had changed her clothes with Charlotta Adams before the party started. Then Lady Edgwares did the mysterious phone call and drove to her husband´s house and stabbed Lord Edgwares. The people at the party didn´t know that Jane Wilkinson was in reality Charlotta Adams. She also killed Charlotta Adams who wrote her sister what had happened. Donald Ross was stabbed by Jane Wilkinson because he found out that she had not been at the party, but Charlotta Adams. The motive for her crimes is that she wants to marry a man who is a very religious anglocatholic man. He is a man with fanatical principles. He would not dream of marrying a woman whose husband is alive.
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