Last year, I bought a Miss Marple calendar, and every month, I read the book pictured for the month. This year, I purchased a 2024 Poirot Wall calendar with a lovely illustration of a Hercule Poirot mystery for each month and notable dates related to Agatha Christie’s publications. It is a fun novelty that hangs in my office. Since it only covers twelve Poirot books, the back cover previews the 2025 calendar, featuring twelve new Poirot mysteries. This calendar will be a lovely collectible that will be the first in a series, so if you want one, you can pick it up from Amazon. You can read along with me throughout 2024, and together, we can enjoy Hercule Poirot all year.
Dumb Witness, Hercule Poirot’s seventeenth mystery, kicks off the year with a fun romp. The Arundell family, matriarch Emily Arundell, her handsome and slippery nephew, Charles Arundell, Charles’ vain and exquisitely turned out sister, Theresa Arundell, Emily’s bland boring niece Bella Tanios, whose sole devotion is her two children, and her charming Greek husband, Jacob Tanios have all gathered at the family home the last weekend in April and again the first weekend in May. They have ostensibly gathered to celebrate Easter, but the young Arundell brood has one thing on mind: money. Each contingent of Emily Arundell’s family plies her, hoping she will fund their lifestyles with her vast fortune. Emily Arundell, a strong-willed and sharp-tongued woman, is not easily hoodwinked and denies them each. She believes them patient enough to wait until her death, but the first weekend of her visit, she slips on her dog, Bob’s little ball, and falls down the stairs. She is badly hurt but not killed.
As Emily Arundell recovers, she becomes convinced that someone in her family placed Bob’s ball on the landing and intended her to trip and fall to her death. She writes a long, frantic letter addressed to Hercule Poirot and mails it, imploring him to come to her estate and investigate. She also destroys her will, disinheriting her family, and leaves her fortune to her companion, Wilhemina (Minnie Lawson), to the future chagrin of her family.
Emily Arundell waits for a response from Hercule Poirot, but one never comes, and she is stricken with illness and dies. Her physician, Dr. Granger, chalks up her death to the chronic liver problems that plagued her, and the matter is forgotten. Emily Arundell’s family is angry about her last will but cannot challenge it. Several weeks later, Emily Arundell’s letter, which had been lost in the post, finally reaches Poirot and Captain Hastings. When Poirot inquires about the state of Emily Arundell, he learns that she is dead and becomes suspicious.
He and Captain Hastings travel to Berkshire, where Emily Arundell lives, and secretly interrogate her friends, family, and physician using various ruses such as pretending to write a book or doing research about bygone wars Emily’s father was in to provide a cover for their presence in the village.
However, the more Poirot digs, he becomes sure that Emily Arundell was murdered. Bob, the dog, is the only witness to the crime without a motive. Hercule Poirot must root out the murderer like a dog on the hunt.
The Review
Dumb Witness, initially published in 1937,in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club, and titled Poirot Loses A Client, in America opens with a novel conceit for Christie’s Poirot: has a crime even been committed, and if so, how will Hercule Poirot investigate to prove his theory? Famously an armchair detective, Poirot’s deductive powers are shown in a new light as he and Captain Hastings travel to Berkshire to gather clues and discover motives that will help them decide if her death was murder or a consequence of failing health.
One thing this book superbly demonstrates is that Hercule Poirot is terrible at concealing his identity either through constructed alter egos or through his desire to reveal how great of a detective he is- his bizarre cover stories fool very few and even cause more than a few eyebrows raises from Captain Hastings as he tries to be an excellent wingman to Poirot’s madcap capering. Old friends, Captain Hastings and Hercule Poirot, have a great relationship with plenty of funny banter and deep affection.
I was a big fan of seeing Hercule sleuthing and collecting clues to an incident he was not initially confident about was murderous. He is also a shade more immoral than he typically is, lying without compunction and happily inserting himself into the remaining Arundell household without compunction.
Christie relishes in the characters and family life of the Arundells and makes them all seem innocent and black with suspicion in equal measure. Since they all have the same motive: greed for money, she can take her time languishing in the psychology of each character. It gives the book a slow, leisurely pace of a Miss Marple book.
As Dumb Witness plows on, the coziness is slowly stripped away as Hercule Poirot discovers that a nail painted brown with floor varnish along with a taught string did trip Miss Arundell. Her various family members admit to more minor crimes, and tension slowly builds as the old companion, Minnie, outright accuses someone with an outrageous story,
Dumb Witness reaches a fever pitch when Bella Tanios, frail and frightened by her husband, appears to be a victim of domestic violence and flees with her children to a hotel with only Minnie as her ally. Hercule Poirot, embroiled in the Arundell family drama, gathers everyone together and reveals the truth about who is behind Emily Arundell’s murder with characteristic drama and flourishing.
Dumb Witness is an excellent slow burn with a clever reveal at the end, which forgets the weak mechanics of how the murder was committed. Dumb Witness is pleasurable, with striking characters and an excellent climatic reveal. It is a good yarn, and I recommend it.
Golden Age of Detective Fiction 
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