They Do It With Mirrors
A review of They Do It With Mirrors by Agatha Christie – 230712
One of the problems with picking up an Agatha Christie novel is that they have been done to death, so to speak, on film, television, and radio that it is difficult to approach them with a fresh and unjaundiced eye. One thing is for sure, though, that if you do decide to read one of her tales, you are guaranteed a light and entertaining read, even if the complexity of the plot might leave a little to be desired. They Do It With Mirrors, the sixth in her Miss Marple series originally published in 1952 and known in the States as Murder with Mirrors, is ideal holiday reading fodder.
Christie employs a slight twist to the country mansion murder by adding a home for delinquent youths in the building adjacent to Stonygates, the home of philanthropists, Lewis Serrocold and Carrie Louise. Carrie Louise is on her third marriage and has a collection of close relatives living with her, her daughter, Mildred Streete, granddaughter, Gina, and her American husband, Walter Hudd, along with the forbidding and austere secretary and companion, Juliet Bellever. Her stepsons, Stephen and Alexis Restarick, are frequent visitors and are there when Miss Marple pays a visit at the behest of Carrie Louise’s sister, Ruth van Rydock, who feels that something is not quite right at Stonygates.
Where Miss Marple gingerly treads, the Grim Reaper is sure to follow and barely has she had time to put her knitting needles down than a series of alarming events occur which lead to the murder of Christian Gulbrandsen, the son of Carrie Louise’s first husband and Mildred’s half-brother, who is a trustee of the fund that is funding the home and is down for a surprise visit. Shortly after a single shot is heard, presumed to be the one that killed Christian, Lewis Serrocold is engaged in mortal combat with Edgar Lawson, a young man with psychotic delusions and paranoid schizophrenia, in a locked room and the assembled company hear two shots, but both emerge unscathed.
To add to the drama, the lights had fused at the vital moments, Walter Hudd leaving the room to sort the fuse out, and Alexis Restarick has just turned up out of the blue. Oh, and there are concerns that Carrie Louise is being poisoned, the icing on the cake being the arrival of a box of chocolates into which poison has been injected. Alexis’ card is in the box.
Anyone feeling cheated, after all there are usually three murders in a Miss Marple story, need not worry as towards the end Alexis Restarick and Ernie Griggs, a youth in the facility who made the mistake of boasting about what he had seen, are killed in an “accident” in a barn and Lewis Serrocold is drowned in a vain attempt to save Edgar Lawson from a sinking boat. The latter four deaths are dealt with in a rather hasty and summary fashion by way of a letter from Gina detailing the extraordinary goings on at Stonygates.
Although for Christie murder most foul is foremost and central to her stories, the gruesome details of death are sanitized for the reader and this along with her highly engaging style is a major factor that contributes to her success. There is no gritty realism to be found in her pages. She constructs the cosiest of cosy murder mysteries and while a seasoned reader of detective fiction can easily discard the chaff and work out whodunit and how and possibly even why, the lack of mindboggling mystery does not detract from the pleasure of the book.
If you had not come across the story before, the title which refers to the legerdemain of magicians rather gives the game away.
