Plot introduction
In spring 1944 during World War II, Gordon Cloade marries a widow he meets on board ship to New York, Rosaleen Underhay. A few days after arriving in London with his new wife, his London home is bombed, killing all but two people: Rosaleen and her brother, David Hunter. Gordon did not write a new will upon arrival, and his existing will is invalidated by the marriage. Rosaleen inherits Gordon's fortune. A day or so later, during another raid, Poirot sits in a shelter with people from the Concordia club in London and listens to a story about Major Porter's friend Robert Underhay in Africa, about his unhappy marriage and how Underhay may not be dead, told after reading out the news that Gordon Cloade, the second husband of Underhay's widow, was killed by enemy action.
The death of Gordon Cloade brings unexpected change to his siblings and their families. Gordon gave them capital to start a venture, to handle unexpected expenses, encouraged them not to save, and promised his fortune would be split among them when he died.
Plot summary
In spring 1946, Lynn Marchmont, a Wren during the war, settles again in her mother's home in the village of Warmsley Vale in peacetime, at first happy to be home, then finding life dull. She has been engaged to farmer Rowley Cloade since before the war.
David guards his sister and her fortune. Mrs Marchmont gets up the courage to ask Rosaleen for five hundred pounds when David is away, and Rosaleen writes a cheque. David angrily turns down a request from Frances Cloade, whose family is in desperate need of money.
A man calling himself Enoch Arden arrives at the village inn The Stag, and attempts to blackmail David by saying he knows how to find Rosaleen's first husband, Robert Underhay. Their conversation is overheard by the landlady, who tells Rowley Cloade. A few days later, a maid finds Arden's body in his room with his head smashed in. That same day, David was down from London. He met Lynn on his dash to catch the last train to London, and evidently telephoned her from the London flat shortly after 11 pm, arguing first that he loves her and then that he cannot be good for her. As the murder is believed to have happened before 9 pm, he had enough opportunity and motive and he is arrested.
Rowley Cloade appeals to the detective Hercule Poirot to find the true identity of the dead man. Poirot asks Major Porter. Rosaleen sees the body and says she does not know the man at all. At the inquest, Porter says that Arden was indeed Robert Underhay, and the coroner's jury votes against advice to believe him, voting wilful murder by David. The estate will revert to the Cloades, if the jury's decision holds, as it means Rosaleen's second marriage was not valid.
Poirot talks to people in the village, including Mrs Leadbetter, a guest at the inn who saw a 'hussy', a heavily made-up woman wearing slacks and an orange scarf, enter the room assigned to the dead man after 10 pm on the fateful evening. As the police believe that David was on the train to London at that time, they let him go, and look more seriously at women. Poirot learns how the death occurred, with a fall on the marble fender of the fireplace. He proposes it was accidental death, not intentional murder.
Lynn is falling in love with David. Major Porter commits suicide in London but leaves no note. Poirot realises from a photo at the home of Frances Cloade that Arden was related to her; she admits Arden was Charles Trenton, her second cousin. She came up with the plan to blackmail Rosaleen after hearing Major Porter's story about Underhay. This explains Arden's true identity, but nothing else. Frances denies bribing Major Porter.
When Poirot and Lynn visit Rosaleen at home, the maid realises she does not respond. Poirot sees that Rosaleen has died in her sleep. The doctor identifies the harmless sleeping powder she took, at her bedside table. Superintendent Spence, the investigating officer, suggests that she was the murderer. Rosaleen died from too much morphine; where did she get it?
Lynn tells Rowley that she wishes to marry David Hunter and he explodes in anger. Rowley is strangling Lynn when Poirot enters the house, and Rowley stops. David arrives shortly, and Poirot explains everything. Rowley visited Arden, and seeing the resemblance to Frances, reacted angrily to the deception. Punched by Rowley, Arden fell against the marble fireplace fender and died. Rowley saw the opportunity to incriminate David. He smashed in Arden's head with fire tongs and left David's lighter at the scene. Rowley persuaded Porter to give the false identification by offering him money. Then Rowley employed Poirot, who would be sure to go to Porter. Porter's guilt led him to commit suicide, leaving a note that Rowley destroyed. David was about to pay the blackmail to Arden; upon discovering Arden's body, David ran for the late train but missed it. David then backtracked to The Stag, disguised himself as a woman, and played out the scene, heard by Mrs Leadbetter, which established the later time of death. Then he called Rosaleen, who placed a call to Lynn that was delivered by the operator but then cut off. A minute later, David called Lynn from a local call box, giving her the impression that he was calling from London. He returned to London on the early morning milk train the next day.
Of the three deaths, Poirot says one is accidental, one is a suicide, and one is murder. The true murder victim was Rosaleen. The woman known as Rosaleen was not David Hunter's sister; his sister was killed and the housemaid Eileen Corrigan had survived the bombing. Poirot sent to Ireland for a photo of Eileen, which explained the truth of what happened during the war. David persuaded her to be Rosaleen. Now he could kill this accomplice with a morphine pill and marry Lynn, whom he loved. Poirot knows all these details but only some of them are known to the police. Rowley feels guilty about the deaths of Trenton and Porter. The police focus on David killing Rosaleen/Eileen, and proving all of that case. After a while, Lynn returns to Rowley, realising she does love him, especially after his show of force. Life will not be dull with him.
Literary significance and reception
For once, Maurice Richardson, in his review of the 21 November 1948 issue of The Observer , was slightly unimpressed: "Agatha Christie has, if not a whole day off, at least part of the afternoon. The killing of the blackmailing Enoch Arden, who puts up at the local to harry the already embarrassed Cloade family, the murder that follows, and Poirot's doubly twisted solution are ingenious enough, but the characterisation is a little below par. The quintessential zest, the sense of well-being which goes to make up that Christie feeling, is missing." [3]
An unnamed reviewer in the Toronto Daily Star of 10 April 1948 said, "Hercule Poirot, whose eggshaped cranium is crammed with lively gray cells, proves himself a bit of a mug before he sorts out all the details of [Enoch Arden's] death and other even more baffling mysteries. But he does it with all the acumen that has endeared him to Agatha Christie fans. Fantastic and topping." [4]
Robert Barnard summarised the plot of the novel as an "Elderly man married to a glamorous nitwit of dubious social background [which] is a common plot-element in Christie. Here she is widowed (in an air-raid – this is one of the few Christies anchored to an actual time), and burdened by financially insatiable relatives, both of blood and in-law. But who exactly is dead, and who isn't? And who is what they seem, and who isn't?" His commentary is favourable on the title, more cryptic on the novel itself, as he said it was a "Compulsive reworking of Tennysonian and Christiean themes, and pretty high up in the range of classic titles." [5]
