Endless Night (novel)

Endless Night

Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
Author Agatha Christie
Cover artist Kenneth Farnhill
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre Crime novel
Publisher Collins Crime Club
Publication date
 30 October 1967
Media type Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages 224 pp (first edition, hardcover)
Preceded by Third Girl
Followed by By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Endless Night is a crime fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 30 October 1967[1] and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year.[2][3] The UK edition retailed at eighteen shillings (18/-)[4] and the US edition at $4.95.[3] It was one of her favourites of her own works and received some of the warmest critical notices of her career upon publication.

Etymology

The title comes from William Blake's Auguries of Innocence:

Every night and every morn,
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night,
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

Plot summary

Michael Rogers, a footloose, seemingly nonchalant, working-class dabbler, narrates the story. He has a close relationship with his friend, Rudolf Santonix, a famous but ailing architect with an interest in one day building a house for Michael. While walking along a village road, Michael meets Fenella "Ellie" Guteman, a wealthy heiress, who yearns for a life outside of her judgmental and pompous inner circle of relatives and advisers. Ellie and Michael form a romantic relationship and decide to marry.

Excited by the prospect of their new life, Ellie is able to fund the building of Gipsy's Acre, their new modern home near the place where they met. Michael requests Santonix to build the house, to which he agrees. The couple come across locals, such as Major Phillpot, the village "God"; Claudia Hardcastle, a woman who shares Ellie's love of horse riding; and Miss Esther Lee, an elderly gypsy who tells Ellie to leave the village or fate will curse her. Matters are made worse when Ellie's attractive secretary/companion Greta Anderson is invited to stay at the house, only to be vigorously disliked by Michael who gets into a heated argument with her.

Ellie begins to become more suspicious of the dangers of Gipsy's Acre and more frightened of Miss Lee's increasing hostility towards her. Then, having been missed for several hours after embarking on a routine morning horse ride, Ellie's dead body is found in the woods. It is thought that a combination of a heart condition and a sudden problem with the horse is to blame. Michael visits Rudolf Santonix in hospital as he is close to death. Santonix, in a flurry of word, screams "Why didn't you go the other way?" before dying in front of Michael. A now melancholy Michael has to travel to America to receive the inheritance of Ellie's will, which she bequeathed to him. While in America, Michael receives a letter from the village, which tells him that the bodies of Miss Lee and Claudia Hardcastle had been discovered, suggesting that Ellie's death was not an accident.

Upon returning to the village, the true nature of Michael's intent is revealed: He had met Greta Anderson in Germany before meeting Ellie, and they had instantly fallen in love. Greedy for the good life, they devised a plan in which Michael would marry Ellie to gain her inheritance, then murder her and marry Greta. Michael murdered Ellie by poisoning the allergy capsule she took before riding her horse. The slow-acting cyanide killed her during the ride. Having paid Miss Lee to frighten Ellie to throw suspicion on the old gypsy, Michael eliminated her as a witness by pushing her into a quarry. The death of Claudia was an accident; she had borrowed Ellie's allergy medicine to be able to ride her horse and so had died in the same way. Santonix had guessed Michael's intents previously, and his seemingly random outburst was in anger that Michael killed Ellie rather than living happily with her.

Even as Michael and Greta celebrate their triumph, Michael begins to break down in remorse and revulsion. He tells Greta of his vision of Ellie while on the road to Gipsy's Acre. Infuriated when Greta scolds him for his sudden weakness, he is further enraged by Greta's disdain for Gipsy's Acre and his regret at the murder of Ellie. He viciously strangles Greta. At the end of the novel, Michael meekly awaits his fate as villagers discover Greta's murder and local officials interview him in his home.

Characters

The following details of the characters are based on the original novel. Backstories, backgrounds, and names vary with differing international adaptations, based on censorship, cultural norms, etc.

Fenella Rogers (née Guteman): Often called Ellie, she is a sweet heiress with a head for business

Michael Rogers: A 'rolling stone', who shifts from job to job

Greta Andersen: Ellie's Scandinavian, blonde companion with a penchant for arranging and often compared with a valkyrie.

Claudia Hardcastle: A young woman in the village who shares Ellie's passion for horse-riding.

Cora Van Stuyvesant: Ellie's stepmother, several times divorced, and a thoroughly unpleasant woman of roughly forty years of age who married Ellie's father for money.

Andrew Lipincott: Ellie's guardian and trustee, a Bostonian with hardly a trace of accent, who resents Greta's 'influence' over Ellie.

Esther Lee: The village gypsy, who enjoys frightening people, especially when money is involved

Stanford Lloyd: Claudia Hardcastle's former husband and one of Ellie's trustees

Frank Barton: The husband of Ellie's aunt, a man who borrows but doesn't return

Rudolf Santonix: A perfectionist architect who 'looks through you' and 'sees right through the other side'. A personal friend of Michael's from the latter's time as a cab driver.

Major Phillpot: The village 'god' who becomes a good friend of Michael

Mrs Rogers: One of the few people who knows Michael well. She worked hard to get her son a proper education since her husband was often drunk.

Literary significance and reception

The novel - which recycles ploys and characters Christie had used in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Death on the Nile - is dedicated "To Nora Prichard from whom I first heard the legend of Gipsy's Acre." Nora Prichard was the paternal grandmother of Mathew, Christie's only grandson. Gipsy's Acre was a field located on a Welsh moorland. The Times Literary Supplement of 16 November 1967 said, "It really is bold of Agatha Christie to write in the persona of a working-class boy who marries a poor little rich girl, but in a pleasantly gothic story of gypsy warnings she brings it all off, together with a nicely melodramatic final twist."[5]

The Guardian carried a laudatory review in its issue of 10 November 1967 by Francis Iles (Anthony Berkeley Cox) who said, "The old maestrina of the crime-novel (or whatever is the female of 'maestro') pulls yet another out of her inexhaustible bag with Endless Night, quite different in tone from her usual work. It is impossible to say much about the story without giving away vital secrets: sufficient to warn the reader that if he should think this is a romance he couldn't be more mistaken, and the crashing, not to say horrific suspense at the end is perhaps the most devastating that this surpriseful author has ever brought off."[6]

Maurice Richardson in The Observer of 5 November 1967 began, "She changes her style again and makes a determined and quite suspenseful attempt to be with it." He finished, "I shan't give away who murders whom, but the suspense is kept up all the way and Miss Christie's new demi-tough, streamlined style really does come off. She'll be wearing black leather pants next, if she isn't already."[7] The poet and novelist Stevie Smith chose the novel as one of her Books of the Year in the same newspaper's issue of 10 December 1967 when she said, "I mostly read Agatha Christie this year (and every year). I wish I could write more about what she does for one in the way of lifting the weight, and so on."[8]

Robert Barnard: "The best of the late Christies, the plot a combination of patterns used in Ackroyd and Nile (note similarities in treatment of heiress/heroine's American lawyers in Nile and here, suggesting she had been rereading). The murder occurs very late, and thus the central section seems desultory, even novelettish (poor little rich girl, gypsy's curse, etc.). But all is justified by the conclusion. A splendid late flowering."[9]

Adaptations

The Case of the Caretaker

A short story collection by Agatha Christie, titled Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories, published on October 1979, features a short story called The Case of the Caretaker whose overall plot is the same as Endless Night, although the character names are different.

Endless Night (1972 Film)

A 1972 film was made, starring Hayley Mills, Britt Ekland, Per Oscarsson, Hywel Bennett and George Sanders (who committed suicide before the film's release). Christie reportedly had some reservations about the use of sex scenes to enliven the plot.

Saturday Theatre (BBC Radio 4)

Endless Night was presented as a one-hour radio play in the Saturday Theatre strand on BBC Radio 4 on 30 August 2008 at 2.30 pm. The play's recording took place at Broadcasting House and had an original score composed by Nicolai Abrahamsen.

Adaptor: Joy Wilkinson
Producer/Director: Sam Hoyle
Cast:
Jonathan Forbes as Mike
Lizzy Watts as Ellie
Sara Stewart as Greta
Joan Walker as Cora/Mike's Mother
Victoria Lennox as Mrs Lee
Chris Pavlo as Mr Constantine/Auctioneer/Policeman/Assistant
John Rowe as Philpott/Lippincott
Joseph Tremain as Young Mike/Army Boy
Dan Starkey as Santonix/Frank
Thomas Brown-Lowe as Oscar

Graphic novel adaptation

Endless Night was released by HarperCollins as a graphic novel adaptation on 3 November 2008, adapted by François Rivière and illustrated by Frank Leclercq (ISBN 0-00-727533-1).

Agatha Christie's Marple adaptation

Although the book did not feature Miss Marple, it is part of the sixth series of Agatha Christie's Marple, starring Julia McKenzie. It aired first on Argentina's Film&Arts on Wednesday 20 November, Australia's ABC on Sunday 22 December 2013, and aired on ITV on Sunday 29 December 2013. This adaptation by Kevin Elyot remains fairly faithful to the book, although, in addition to adding Miss Marple, it identifies the boyhood friend murdered for his wristwatch by Rogers with the architect's brother, who does not appear in the original novel. The architect (named Robbie Hayman in this TV adaption) ends up burning down the house he has designed for Rogers after discovering his brother's watch in Rogers' desk drawer.

Publication history

In the US, the novel was first serialised in two parts in The Saturday Evening Post from 24 February (Volume 241, Number 4) to 9 March 1968 (Volume 241, Number 5) with illustrations by Tom Adams.

References

  1. ↑ The Observer, 29 October 1927 (p. 26)
  2. ↑ John Cooper and B.A. Pyke. Detective Fiction – the collector's guide: Second Edition (pp. 82, 87) Scholar Press. 1994; ISBN 0-85967-991-8
  3. 1 2 "American Tribute to Agatha Christie". insightbb.com.
  4. ↑ Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club – A checklist of First Editions. Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15)
  5. ↑ The Times Literary Supplement 16 November 1967 (p. 1092)
  6. ↑ The Guardian. 10 November 1967 (p. 7).
  7. ↑ The Observer 5 November 1967 (p. 27)
  8. ↑ The Observer, 10 December 1967 (p. 9)
  9. ↑ Barnard, Robert. A Talent to Deceive – an appreciation of Agatha Christie – Revised edition (p. 193). Fontana Books, 1990; ISBN 0-00-637474-3

External links

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