Sad Cypress is a mystery novel by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in March 1940 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at eight shillings and threepence (8/3) – the first price rise for a UK Christie edition since her 1921 debut – and the US edition retailed at $2.00.
The novel was the first in the Poirot series set at least partly in the courtroom, with lawyers and witnesses exposing the facts underlying Poirot's solution to the crimes. The title is drawn from a song in William Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night.
The novel was well received at publication. One reviewer remarked "it is economically written, the clues are placed before the reader with impeccable fairness, the red herrings are deftly laid and the solution will cause many readers to kick themselves." Another reviewer found the story to be well told, but did not like that the plot "turns on a legal point" that is misconceived. A later review described it as "Elegiac, more emotionally involving than is usual in Christie, but the ingenuity and superb clueing put it among the very best of the classic titles."
Contents
Plot summary
Elinor Carlisle and Roddy Welman are engaged to be married when she receives an anonymous letter claiming that someone is sucking up to their wealthy aunt, Laura Welman, from whom Elinor and Roddy expect to inherit a sizeable fortune. Elinor is niece to Mrs Welman and Roddy is nephew to her late husband. Elinor suspects the topic of the anonymous letter to be Mary Gerrard, the lodgekeeper's daughter, whom their aunt likes and supports. Neither guesses who wrote the letter, which is burned. They visit their aunt at Hunterbury and Roddy sees Mary Gerrard for the first time for a decade. Mrs Welman is partially paralyzed after a stroke and dislikes living that way. She tells both her physician, Peter Lord, and her niece how much she dislikes living without full health, wishing the doctor might end her pain, which he refuses to do. Roddy falls in love with Mary, which provokes Elinor to end their engagement. After a second stroke Mrs Welman asks Elinor to make provision for Mary. Elinor assumes there is a will her aunt wants modified. Mrs Welman dies before Elinor can call the solicitor. There is no will. She dies intestate, so her considerable estate goes to Elinor outright as her only known surviving blood relative.
Elinor settles two thousand pounds on Mary, which Mary accepts. Elinor sells the house she inherited. After an impromptu lunch at Hunterbury – after Elinor, at the house, and Mary with Nurse Hopkins, at the lodge, clear out private possessions – Mary dies of an overdose of morphine. Everyone at the house had access to a tube of morphine Nurse Hopkins claimed to have lost at Hunterbury while Mrs Welman was ill. Elinor is arrested. Later, after Mrs Welman's body is exhumed, it is learned that she also died of morphine poisoning. Peter Lord, in love with Elinor, brings Poirot into the case. Poirot speaks to everyone in the village. He uncovers a second suspect when Roddy tells him of the anonymous letter - the writer of that letter. Poirot then focuses on a few elements. Was the poison in the sandwiches made by Elinor, which all three ate, or in the tea prepared by Nurse Hopkins and drunk by Mary and Hopkins but not by Elinor? What is the secret of Mary's birth? Is there any significance in the scratch of a rose thorn on Hopkins's wrist? The denouement is revealed mainly in the court, as the defence lawyer brings witnesses who reveal what Poirot uncovers.
A torn pharmaceutical label that the prosecution says is from morphine hydrochloride, the poison, is rather a scrap from a label for apomorphine hydrochloride, an emetic, made clear because the m was lower case. The letters Apo had been torn off. Nurse Hopkins had injected herself with the emetic, to vomit the poison that she would ingest in the tea, explaining the mark on her wrist – not from a rose tree, which was a thornless variety, Zephirine Drouhin. She had gone to wash dishes that fateful day for privacy as she vomited, looking pale when Elinor joined her in the kitchen. The motive was money. Mary Gerrard was the illegitimate daughter of Laura Welman and Sir Lewis Rycroft. Had this been discovered sooner, she would have inherited Mrs Welman's estate. Nurse Hopkins knows Mary's true parents because of a letter from her sister Eliza some years earlier. When Hopkins encouraged Mary Gerrard to write a will, Mary named as beneficiary the woman whom she supposes to be her aunt, Mary Riley, the sister of Eliza Gerrard, in New Zealand. Mary Riley's married name is Mary Draper. Mary Draper of New Zealand it turns out is Nurse Hopkins in England, as two people from New Zealand who knew Mary Draper both confirm in court. Hopkins leaves the courtroom before the judge can recall her.
Characters
Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective, who gives evidence in the trial of Elinor Carlisle.
The Victims:
Mrs Laura Welman, wealthy widow who owns Hunterbury, an estate near Maidensford. She is proud, by her own description.
Mary Gerrard, a beautiful young woman of 21 years, her protégée, and unacknowledged illegitimate daughter with Sir Lewis Rycroft
In the village
Elinor Carlisle, Mrs Welman's niece, a beautiful, well-educated young woman of strong emotions.
Roderick 'Roddy' Welman, nephew to the late Mr Welman.
Dr Peter Lord, Mrs Welman's doctor, new to this practice.
Nurse Jessie Hopkins, the District Nurse, known in New Zealand as Mary Riley Draper, sister to the late Mrs Gerrard. She did receive the letter to be sent to Mary, when living in New Zealand. She befriended Mary Gerrard.
Nurse Eileen O'Brien, Mrs Welman's nurse since her stroke.
Mr Seddon, Mrs Welman's solicitor who acts for Elinor first by making her will after Mrs Welman died and in her trial by securing the services of Mr Bulmer.
Mrs Bishop, Mrs Welman's housekeeper for 18 years.
Horlick, the gardener for Mrs Welman's estate.
Ephraim 'Bob' Gerrard, the lodge keeper and Mary's legal father, by marrying Eliza Riley, the woman who claimed to be Mary's mother, after Mary was born. He dies after the two poison victims; Nurse Hopkins claims to find a letter to be sent to Mary upon his wife's death among his things, which she shows to Poirot.
Title
The title comes from a song from Act II, Scene IV of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night which is printed as an epigraph to the novel.
Narrative voice and structure
The novel is written in three parts: in the first place an account, largely from the perspective of Elinor Carlisle of the death of her aunt, Laura Welman, and the subsequent death of Mary Gerrard; secondly Poirot's account of his investigation in conversation with Dr Lord; and, thirdly, a sequence in court, again mainly from Elinor's dazed perspective.
Literary significance and reception
Maurice Percy Ashley in The Times Literary Supplement gave a positive review to the book in the issue of 9 March 1940: "In recent years the detective story-reading public has been so profusely drenched with thrills, 'wisecracks' and perverted psychology that one sometimes wonders whether there is still room for the old-fashioned straight-forward problem in detection. There are, however, a few first-class exponents of this art with us – though now that Miss Sayers has, for the moment at any rate, turned moralist and others have entered the easier field of thriller writing there seem to be increasingly few. Mrs Christie in particular remains true to the old faith; and it is pleasant to be able to record that her hand has not lost its cunning". The reviewer regretted that Poirot had lost some of his 'foibles' and Hastings no longer featured in the plots but he ended on a high note: "Like all Mrs Christie's work, it is economically written, the clues are placed before the reader with impeccable fairness, the red herrings are deftly laid and the solution will cause many readers to kick themselves. Some occasional readers of detective stories are wont to criticize Mrs Christie on the ground that her stories are insufficiently embroidered, that she includes, for instance, no epigrams over the college port. But is it not time to state that in the realm of detective fiction proper, where problems are fairly posed and fairly solved, there is no one to touch her?"
In The New York Times Book Review of 15 September 1940, Kay Irvin concluded, "The cast of characters is small, the drama is built up with all this author's sure, economical skill. Sad Cypress is not the best of the Christie achievements, but it is better than the average thriller on every count."
In reviewing several crime novels in The Observer's issue of 10 March 1940, Maurice Richardson began, "An outstanding crime week. Not only is Agatha Christie shining balefully on her throne, but the courtiers have made an unusually neat artistic arrangement of corpses up and down the steps." Concentrating on Sad Cypress specifically, Richardson concluded, "Characterisation brilliantly intense as ever. In fact, Agatha Christie has done it again, which is all you need to know."
The Scotsman's review in its issue of 11 March 1940 concluded, "Sad Cypress is slighter and rather less ingenious than Mrs Christie's stories usually are, and the concluding explanation is unduly prolonged. But it is only with reference to Mrs Christie's own high level that it seems inferior. By ordinary standards of detective fiction it is a fascinating and skilfully related tale."
References to other works
Peter Lord says that he has been recommended to consult Poirot by Dr John Stillingfleet on the basis of Poirot's brilliant performance in the case related in the short story, "The Dream", which had been printed two years earlier in issue 566 of The Strand (magazine) and later printed in book form in The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding in 1960 in the UK and in The Regatta Mystery in the US in 1939. The character of Stillingfleet later reappears in Third Girl (1966).
One of the witnesses flown to the trial from New Zealand is named Amelia Sedley, a name borrowed from the novel Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray.
The character of Peter Lord appears to be a reference to the work of Christie's colleague and fellow member of the Detection Club, Dorothy L. Sayers. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey character also drives a Daimler, and in the 1930 novel Strong Poison he falls in love with a woman who is on trial for murder by poisoning.
Adaptations
Radio
The novel was adapted as a five-part serial for BBC Radio 4 in 1992. John Moffatt reprised his role of Poirot. The serial was broadcast weekly from Thursday, 14 May to Thursday, 11 June at 10.00am to 10.30pm. All five episodes were recorded in the week of 16 to 20 March 1992.
Adaptor: Michael Bakewell
Producer: Enyd Williams
Cast:
Eric Allan as Inspector Brill
Jonathan Adams as Mr Wargrave
Barbara Atkinson as Mrs Welman
Margot Boyd as Mrs Bishop
John Church as Dr Garcia, and Clerk
Susannah Corbett as Mary Gerrard
Alan Cullen as the Judge
Keith Drinkel as Policeman
Emma Fielding as Elinor Carlisle
Eamonn Fleming as Ted Bigland
Pauline Letts as Nurse Hopkins
Peter Penry-Jones as Sir Samuel Atterbury
David McAlister as Dr Lord
John Moffatt as Hercule Poirot
Joanna Myers as Nurse O'Brien, and as the singer of the title song
Gordon Reid as Mr Littledale
Charles Simpson as Roddy Welman
Television
British adaptation
The book was adapted by London Weekend Television as a one-hundred-minute drama and transmitted on ITV in the UK on Friday 26 December 2003 as a special episode in their series Agatha Christie's Poirot. The adaptation was quite faithful to the novel, with the time being the only major change. In the end, Nurse Hopkins attempts to kill Poirot with poisoned tea but he pretends to drink it and pours the tea into a sugar bowl.
Adaptor: David PirieDirector: David Moore
Cast:
David Suchet as Hercule Poirot
Elisabeth Dermot Walsh as Elinor Carlisle
Rupert Penry-Jones as Roddy Winter
Kelly Reilly as Mary Gerrard
Paul McGann as Dr Peter Lord
Phyllis Logan as Nurse Hopkins
Marion O'Dwyer as Nurse O'Brien
Diana Quick as Mrs Laura Welman
Stuart Laing as Ted Horlick
Jack Galloway as Marsden
Geoffrey Beevers as Seddon
Alistair Findlay as Prosecuting Counsel
Linda Spurrier as Mrs. Bishop
Timothy Carlton as Judge
Sad Cypress was filmed on location at Dorney Court, Buckinghamshire.
Publication history
1940, Collins Crime Club (London), March, hardcover, 256 pp
1940, Dodd Mead & Co (New York), hardcover, 270 pp
1946, Dell Books, paperback, 224 pp (Dell number 172 mapback)
1959, Fontana Books (imprint of HarperCollins), paperback, 191 pp
1965, Ulverscroft large-print, hardcover, 239 pp
2008, Poirot Facsimile Edition (of 1940 UK first edition), HarperCollins, 1 April 2008, hardback, ISBN 0-00-727459-9
The book was first serialised in the US in Collier's Weekly in ten parts from 25 November 1939 (volume 104, number 22) to 27 January 1940 (volume 105, number 4) with illustrations by Mario Cooper.
The UK serialisation was in nineteen parts in the Daily Express from Saturday, 23 March to Saturday, 13 April 1940. The accompanying illustrations were uncredited. This version did not contain any chapter divisions.