Maria breathes deeply. A smile lights up her face. “Well, stories are still with us. And so I come to the solution, to Agatha Christie.”
She leans over and brings up from the bag at her feet handfuls of books with which Eusebio is familiar: The Man in the Brown Suit, The Mystery of the Blue Train, The Seven Dials Mystery, The Murder at the Vicarage, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? Three Act Tragedy, Murder in Mesopotamia, Death on the Nile, The Mysterious Mr. Quin, The ABC Murders, Lord Edgware Dies, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Thirteen Problems, The Hound of Death, The Sittaford Mystery, Murder on the Orient Express, Dumb Witness, Peril at End House. They all end up on his desk, so many brightly jacketed hardcovers, except for a few that fall with a thud to the floor.
“The thought first struck me as I was rereading Murder on the Orient Express. I noticed how the train comes from the East. There are thirteen passengers at the heart of the story, one of whom is a monster, a Judas. I noticed how these passengers come from all walks of life and all nationalities. I noticed how one of the investigators, a helper of Hercule Poirot, is a Dr. Constantine. Isn’t the story of Jesus an Eastern story made popular by another Constantine? Did Jesus not have twelve disciples, with a Judas among them? Was Palestine not a mixed Orient Express of nationalities? The foreignness of Hercule Poirot is often remarked upon. Time and again he saves the day. The foreigner whose intervention is salvific — isn’t that one way of seeing Jesus? These observations led me to examine the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie in a new light.
“I began to notice things in a jumble. There is meaning in every small incident — Agatha Christie’s stories are narratives of revelatory detail, hence the spare, direct language and the short, numerous paragraphs and chapters, as in the Gospels. Only the essential is recounted. Murder mysteries, like the Gospels, are distillations.
“I noticed the near total absence of children in Agatha Christie — because murder is a decidedly adult entertainment — just as they are largely absent from the Gospels, which also address an adult sensibility.
“I noticed how those who know the truth are always treated with suspicion and disdain. That was the case with Jesus, of course. But look at old Miss Marple. Always she knows, and everyone is surprised that she does. And the same with Hercule Poirot. How can that ridiculous little man know anything? But he does, he does. It is the triumph of the meek, in Agatha Christie as in the Gospels.
“The gravest sin — the taking of a life — is always at the core of an Agatha Christie story — as it is at the core of the story of Jesus. In both narratives numerous characters are briefly introduced and for the same purpose: the parading of all the suspects, so that the reader can see who gives in to the temptation of evil in contrast to who does not. Fortitude is set next to weakness, both in the Gospels and in Agatha Christie. And in both, the light of understanding comes in the same way: We are given facts, neutral in themselves, then we are given an interpretation that imprints meaning upon these facts. So proceed the parables of Jesus — exposition, then explanation — and so proceeds the Passion of Jesus; his death and resurrection were explained, given meaning to, by Paul, after the fact. And so proceed the denouements of the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie: Hercule Poirot summarizes all the facts before he tells us what they mean.
“Notice the vital role of the witness. Neither Jesus nor Hercule Poirot cared to pick up a pen. Both were content to live in the spoken word. The act of witness was therefore a necessity — how else would we know what they said and did? But it was also a consequence. Each man, in his own sphere, did such amazing things that people felt compelled to bear witness. Those who met Jesus spent the rest of their lives talking about him to family, friends, and strangers, until what they said reached the ears of Paul, and later of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And the same with Arthur Hastings, the Watson-like narrator of many of the Hercule Poirot stories, a narrator no less loyal than the narrators of the Gospels.
“But every witness is to some degree unreliable. We see that clearly with Arthur Hastings, who is always a few steps behind Hercule Poirot until Poirot helps him catch up with lucid explanations. We realize then that it is not only Arthur Hastings who is obtuse. We too have missed clues, misunderstood import, failed to seize the meaning. We too need Hercule Poirot to help us catch up. And so with Jesus. He was surrounded by so many Arthur Hastingses who were perpetually missing clues, misunderstanding import, failing to seize the meaning. He too had to explain everything to his disciples so that they might catch up. And still the disciples got it wrong, still they couldn’t agree on what Jesus said or did. Look at the Gospels: four of them, each a little different from the others, each inconsistent with the others, as always happens with the testimony of witnesses.
“In an Agatha Christie mystery, the murderer is nearly always a figure closer than we expected. Remember The Man in the Brown Suit and The Seven Dials Mystery and Three Act Tragedy and The ABC Murders and especially The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, to name just a few. Our vision of evil far away is acute, but the closer the evil, the greater the moral myopia. The edges become blurred, the centre hard to see. Thus the reaction when it is revealed who did it: ‘Et tu, Brute?’ The disciples must have reacted in this way when Judas, good Judas Iscariot, our dear friend and travelling companion, proved to be a traitor. How blind we are to evil close-by, how willing to look away.
“Speaking of blindness, there is this curious phenomenon. We read Agatha Christie in the grip of compulsion. We must keep on reading. We want to know who did it, and how, and why. Then we find out. We’re amazed at the complexity of the crime’s execution. Oh, the coolness of the murderer’s mind, the steadiness of his or her hand. Our devouring curiosity satisfied, we put the book down — and instantly we forget who did it! Isn’t that so? We don’t forget the victim. Agatha Christie can title her novels The Murder of Roger Ackroyd or Lord Edgware Dies without any fear of losing her readers’ interest. The victim is a given, and he or she stays with us. But how quickly the murderer vanishes from our mind. We pick up an Agatha Christie murder mystery — she’s written so many — and we wonder, Have I read this one? Let me see. She’s the victim, yes, I remember that, but who did it? Oh, I can’t remember. We must reread a hundred pages before we recall who it was that took a human life.
“We apply the same amnesia to the Gospels. We remember the victim. Of course we do. But do we remember who killed him? If you went up to your average person on the street and said ‘Quick — tell me—who murdered Jesus?’ my guess is that the person would be at a loss for words. Who did murder Jesus of Nazareth? Who was responsible? Judas Iscariot? Bah! He was a tool, an accessory. He betrayed Jesus, he gave him up to people who sought him, but he did not kill him. Pontius Pilate, then, the Roman procurator who sentenced him to death? Hardly. He just went along. He found Jesus innocent of any wrongdoing, sought to have him released, preferred to have Barabbas crucified, and yielded only in the face of the angry crowd. Pilate chose to sacrifice an innocent man rather than have a riot on his hands. So he was a weak man, another accessory to murder, but he was not the actual murderer.