‘Clonakilty, God help us,’ my Irish mother would say automatically when we drove into the town, in pious remembrance of those who had died there during the famine. Clonakilty acquires another corpse in Closed Casket, Sophie Hannah’s second novel to feature Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, which is set mainly in a country house nearby.
The continuing success of the Christie brand is one of the marvels of the modern entertainment industry. Estimates of her global book sales start at two billion. Only last August, the BBC announced that it had commissioned seven new Christie adaptations over the next four years. So it’s scarcely surprising that Agatha Christie Ltd and her publisher should want to exploit the potential of the lucrative market for continuations and sequels.
The year is 1929. Poirot and his respectful young friend Inspector Catchpool are invited to stay at the home of Athelinda, the dowager Viscountess Playford, who has grown rich beyond the dreams of avarice by writing a series of detective stories for children.
Hours before they arrive in County Cork, Athie (as she is known) changes her will and leaves everything to her secretary, Joseph Scotcher, who is expected to die at any moment from Bright’s Disease. Athie’s children — Harry, the present viscount, and his sister Claudia — are understandably peeved. The household is completed by a brace of lawyers; a tightlipped butler; a maudlin housemaid; an outspoken cook; Claudia’s fabulously wealthy pathologist fiancé; the viscount’s ungracious wife; and Scotcher’s nurse (who naturally is in
love with her dying patient, as is the maudlin maid).
At dinner, Athie announces to the party that she’s disinheriting her children in favour of her dying secretary. It’s almost as if she is trying to provoke a murder.
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