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What are the true circumstances of the death of Claudia Hardcastle

08 Mar 09 7:46AM

SPOILER WARNING!  THIS ESSAY CONTAINS SPOILERS TO THE SOLUTION OF ENDLESS NIGHT.  DO NOT READ THIS ESSAY IF YOU HAVE NOT READ ENDLESS NIGHT!!!

Endless Night is widely considered to be one of the best novels from the later years of Christie’s career.  Christie and her husband, Max Mallowan, both ranked Endless Night as one of their favorite books, and many critics share this sentiment.  There are many reasons to support this assessment.  Both plotwise and thematically, Endless Night is very different from most of Christie’s other mysteries, and it also contains well-developed central characters and particularly intriguing psychological sketches.  Unfortunately, the book is marred by one crucial flaw that muddies the clarity of the solution.  That plot hole revolves around the death of Claudia Hardcastle.

The untimely demise of Claudia is what alerts the authorities to how Ellie Goodman Rogers actually died.  As the denouement reveals, Ellie was murdered by her husband, Michael Rogers, and his mistress, Greta Andersen, who is also Ellie’s fickle best friend.  Michael and Greta, seeking to inherit Ellie’s vast fortune, placed cyanide into Ellie’s allergy medicine capsules. Ellie took the poisoned capsules at breakfast, which were timed to release their deadly contents after about an hour or so, when Ellie went riding in the countryside.  The killers correctly planned that Ellie would succumb to the poison, fall off her horse, and lie dead in the open air for several hours.  By the time her body was discovered, the smell of cyanide should have dissipated from her mouth, and there would be no reason to consider her death anything other than an unfortunate accident. 

The plan went off without any hitches, until soon afterwards, when Ellie’s friend Claudia Hardcastle died in exactly the same manner as Ellie.  This time, however, the authorities found her body soon after she died, and the smell of cyanide was clearly detectable.  Major Phillpot deduced that that Ellie had been murdered in the same manner, although he didn’t have any evidence to convict either Michael or Greta for the murder until after Michael committed one last impulsive crime and made a full confession.  Phillpot reasoned that the cyanide that had killed Ellie must have been in her allergy capsules, since that was the only medium that could release the poison when an extended period of time had elapsed after consumption.   Michael and Greta hadn’t meant to kill Claudia, but by a freak coincidence, one of the poison capsules meant for Ellie must have fallen into Claudia’s possession.  Since Ellie and Claudia shared similar schedules (first breakfast, with horseback riding immediately afterwards), it’s not too much of a coincidence that they both died in the manner that they did.  The problem that Christie never properly explains revolves around how Claudia came into possession of the capsule in the first place.

Michael muses that he and Greta filled up “one or two” capsules in the little summerhouse on the property, and set them aside until the fatal morning.  Michael’s vagueness over the number of capsules he had poisoned is unusual, given that he ought to remember all of the details of such a carefully planned murder, although given his state of mental unraveling at that point in the book, it’s perhaps understandable that his memory is faulty.  What is not understandable is his explanation of how a poisoned capsule fell into Claudia’s hands.  Michael suggests that he and Greta must have carelessly dropped a capsule, and that Claudia must have discovered it later and subsequently swallowed it.

This solution makes no sense.  Michael might arguably have been so careless as to drop a poisoned capsule, but Greta, who was murderously clear-headed and a ruthless plotter, would never have left a potentially incriminating piece of evidence just lying on the summerhouse floor.  Had a poisoned capsule been discovered, it would have been almost as damaging as a confession.  No, it seems that Greta wouldn’t have just abandoned a dropped deadly capsule. 

In any case, the idea that Claudia might one day have been wandering about her dead friend’s property, somehow spotted a capsule on the floor, thought “Hey!  Free allergy medicine!” and picked it up and consumed it later, is laughable.  Claudia was well-off financially, she had no need to scrounge for medicine by appropriating a pill that had been lying on the dirty ground for who knows how long.  No, the proposition that the deadly capsule was dropped, abandoned, and discovered by Claudia, does not hold under scrutiny.

How then, did Claudia meet her death?  Could someone else have killed her?  After all, Michael noted that he and Greta discussed some plans in the folly on their property.  Could a third party have overheard their ideas for killing Ellie and then appropriated them for his own ends later?  There was one person with a potential motive for killing Claudia: her ex-husband Stanford Lloyd.  Could he possibly have overheard and then stolen Michael and Greta’s murder plans, duplicating them to the last detail?

The suggestion that Claudia was murdered by someone else who appropriated Michael and Greta’s poisoning plan is intriguing, but to accept such a presumption means that Christie didn’t know who had really killed one of her characters.  Due to Christie’s habits of tight plotting and scrupulous tying up of loose ends, it seems wrong to insinuate that she made an error in this case.  If we accept Christie’s complete authority over her own solutions, then we must also accept the assertion that Claudia met her death due to a capsule poisoned by Michael and Greta.  However, we do not need to accept Michael’s theory of him dropping a capsule and Claudia picking it up some time later and swallowing it.  Unlike when Poirot or Miss Marple explains the solution to a mystery and their conclusions are invariably right in every respect, Michael’s rundown mental state and his clear lack of knowledge as to how Claudia came by the capsule mean that his theories need not be accepted as gospel truth.

It’s too much of a coincidence to suggest that someone without intimate knowledge of the original plan would have poisoned Claudia with cyanide, and there’s no reason to suspect suicide.  Could Greta have laced Claudia’s allergy medication deliberately for some reason?  Could Claudia have suspected something, and Greta killed Claudia to silence her?  This is a real possibility, except for one thing.  It would have been stupid for Greta to kill Claudia in exactly the same manner as Ellie.  It would only have drawn attention to the earlier crime, and then Greta would very likely have been arrested for both murders.  Clearly, Greta did not lack imagination, as evidenced by her elaborate plan to build up the myth of Gypsy’s Acre, and that she managed to devise a completely different plan to kill Mrs. Lee by pushing her off a cliff and making it look like an accident.  No, if Greta had killed Claudia deliberately, she would have found a new, different way to make it look like an accident.

Perhaps the true solution is very close to what Michael suggests in the book, with a few alterations.  Michael and Greta poisoned two allergy medicine capsules with cyanide, and kept them carefully until the fatal day.  Ellie eats breakfast, but she doesn’t take both capsules.  She only swallows one.  Why just one?  Perhaps her allergies weren’t bothering her too much, and she didn’t want to take more medication than she needed.  After all, it was the seventeenth of September, when colder weather might theoretically have killed off some of the offending allergens.  Or perhaps– and psychologically this may be more likely– Ellie suspected something was wrong.  She might have seen some sort of warning sign in Michael’s face.  Perhaps he looked at the capsules and then at her in some odd manner.  Ellie may have sensed the darkness in Michael, as evidenced by her reaction to him when she sang the song “Endless Night,” but she loved him too much to believe him capable of real evil.  Ellie’s instincts may have told her to not take the capsules, but her love for Michael told her she had nothing to fear.  Perhaps Ellie, torn between her intuition and her emotion, split the difference.  She swallowed one capsule and returned the other to the bottle.

One capsule full of cyanide would have been enough to kill Ellie.  Michael describes her as “quite a lightweight.”  It is not credible to contend that Claudia ate medicine that she picked off the filthy ground, but it’s not too much of a stretch to suppose that Claudia visited the house after Ellie’s death, saw the bottle of allergy pills, and thought, “Well, she can’t use these any more, but I can.”  Taking medicine from a clean, clearly marked bottle is a different matter entirely.  Claudia then helped herself to Ellie’s allergy medicine after her own prescription had run out, eventually taking the other cyanide-laced capsule.  Claudia died, perhaps due to the invisible hand that dictates that “murder will out.” 

In this theory of events, Michael and Greta are still culpable for Claudia’s murder, but the way that Claudia obtained the poison is much more credible than Michael’s muddled logic.

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6 comments

ramloser 21 Jun 10 at 7:43p.m.

I agree with Nofret, but still the publishers made some bad judgement,not only in this case, but in other cases, too. It would be great if Chris made an essay of the subject: Why did publishers misjudge some of the Christie stories?

Miss_Eylesbarrow 14 Jun 10 at 9:50a.m.

I'm with you Nofret, it always seemed plausible to me that Ellie & Claudia could discuss the various merits of their allergy relief and Ellie could easily have innocently passed on one of her capsules. I first read this one as a teenager and it scared the stuffing out of me! I have re-read it recently and although it wasn't as scary I still enjoyed it.

Nofret 08 Jan 10 at 3:45p.m.

Definitely one of my favourite Christies - a superb study of a psychotic personality.
Having read "Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks", it seems that her publishers insisted on her padding out the ending of the book, so against her better judgement she added some extra details.
It always seemed to me an implausible and irrelevant detail to reveal at the end that Claudia had been married to Stanford Lloyd. However, I accepted her possession of the poison capsule.
As I interpreted the sequence of events, Michael and Greta had doctored one capsule and placed it in the bottle. Ellie and Claudia then discuss the latter's allergy, and Ellie gives her the poisoned tablet. For some reason, Claudia forgets about it or temporarily mislays it. The plotters therefore have to tamper with another capsule, which Ellie takes.
Later, no suspicion being attached to Ellie's death, Claudia finds the capsule again (in a pocket) and takes it, resulting in her death.

InspectorGrant 18 Mar 09 at 3:51p.m.

I liked this novel very much indeed - aside from the Claudia Hardcastle 'problem' (interestingly they left this out of the excellent film based on the book with Hywel Bennett & Hayley Mills). I found that the plot was very much like 'Death On The Nile' except that it was told from a different perspective. Simon married a rich girl for her money with another 'best friend' on the side who was the real love of his life just as Michael did, only we as readers are erroneously led into believing that both Jacqueline/Greta are a couple of complete pests who will not leave the newly wed couple alone and who the male lead pretends to despise.

Had Simon from 'Death On the Nile' written the story in the first person, it may not have differed all that much from 'Endless Night' with the exception of the ending when Michael, unlike Simon, discovered - too late! - that he had really loved Ellie all the time.

In any case, I consider 'Endless Night' to be one of Agatha Christie's best novels - I really enjoyed her psychological insights which went a long way to proving that she was not just a writer of good plots with cardboard characters.

lava 11 Mar 09 at 6:26a.m.

I really liked this book. however claudia's death was not required.

Tommy_A_Jones 09 Mar 09 at 3:46p.m.

I found this book a real struggle to finish, I found it hard to like the Characters and have sympathy for the Victim, I longed for a Character with Charisma (the word pulse is a bit harsh) but was very dissapointed I have read that AC was trying to see if she could write a Psychological book, I wish she hadn't and if she had do I wish it hadn't been written in the 1st person as a technique AC has used but perhaps it would have been better to not use it in a book where she was experimenting.