Dame Agatha Christie and Her Peers
BOOK/Short Story 23
In Otto Penzler's collection entitled "The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time", I ran across this 1922 publication. How can one not read this, given the title?
CAST - 2: A Mr. Hutton comments on the ugliness of a parlormaid then admires himself in a mirror. Shortly, Hutton criticizes the appearance of a Miss Spence. Dr. Libbard enters the story and Hutton criticizes this doctor because he wasted "a great deal of time sitting at the bedside of his patients". But you'll remember no one in this story as it's all about a certain smile.
ATMOSPHERE - 2: There is an "Eton and Harrow [rugby] match, a funeral, a boudoir: we're in England. But this story could take place anywhere in the world, at any time during the past few centuries.
PLOT - 3: A smile is interpreted/misinterpreted: when one places too much importance on appearance, you know bad things are going to happen. Like a murder.
INVESTIGATION- 2: Short and swift. There is suspicion, and automatically an inquest, because have you ever heard or read of a crime story in which there is NOT an inquiry/inquest before a trial. Automatically? Because information is, first and foremost, important?
RESOLUTION- 3: The author takes us from judging people based on their looks (and nothing else) to judging people based purely on their ancestry (and nothing else, not even there looks). And, yes, someone decides to rectify these mistakes via a good twist at the end of the story.
SUMMARY - 2.2: Mona Lisa's mysterious smile will never be understood, and I think Huxley's point is that it really doesn't matter anyway. That might be true, but I'd still like to know what the artist and model were presenting. This IS an interesting story, more so because it is Huxley's only crime short story (according to Penzler.) But is this one of the greatest mysteries ever because it's 1) so outside of Huxley's famous work or 2) an explanation of that mysterious smile or 3) a great mystery story in and of itself or 4) all of the above? I'm really not sure at all. Huxley evades; a mystery is made; and this reader is still, simply, puzzled by it all. I think if this had been written by an author not so famous, it may have disappeared quickly. But I'm going to read it again, maybe I missed something.