Agatha Christie's "Endless Night" - A Review

It’s hard to describe Agatha Christie’s Endless Night without worrying about slipping up and spoiling the ending.  So I am not going to even try. 

 So, um, if you don’t want spoilers, don’t read this.

Are you still here?

I’m serious.  In just a minute I’m going to open a heaping can of spoilers all over this blog.

Alright, don’t say I didn’t warn you….

The narrator did it.

I’m not even kidding.  Mike Rogers, chauffer, wanderer, gambler, and ne’erdowell whose ambitions outpace his social status and work ethic, meets and marries Frenella “Ellie” Gutman, a credulous American heiress in a whirlwind romance.  They buy the typical English Countryside Estate That May Or May Not Be Cursed, have the cursed mansion torn down, and have their dream house built by Mike’s only friend, a dying architect named Santinax.  They call their house Gypsy’s Acre after the regional nickname, just to show that they don’t believe in the curse.  Except perhaps they do.  Ellie continually is haunted by the mysterious gypsy woman who is always issuing cryptic warnings, perhaps threats.  Ellie’s American relatives care only for her money, not her, and circle around her like vultures.  And then there’s Greta, the hyper-competent secretary-companion that Mike’s rival for Ellie’s affection…and also happens to be the most gorgeous woman in the book.

Thus far Christie has, essentially, been cheating the reader.  Because that is not exactly what happened.  Even though it is in first person narrative, and the narrator is writing something of a confession, the first part of the story is written as an elaborate con, leaving out significant details and almost utterly devoid of clues.  But it is here, with Greta’s gorgeousness and overpreparedness, that I figured out what had happened.  And the last few chapters of the book proved me right.

Ellie, in what seems to be a freak accident of past heart disease and a horse-riding accident, dies.  Mike inherits all her money.  He goes to America to have his affairs explained and all the paperwork signed.   He visits Santinax in New York on his deathbed.  And he goes home.  Home to Gypsy’s Acre, his dream home, and…to Greta.

This came as no shock to me.  Mike always seemed to hate Greta, even before he met her and Ellie spoke in such glowing terms about her.  When he met her, he still disliked her, displayed jealousy, and fought with her in a very public way in front of Ellie.  It was flat, stilted, and much as Mike claims in the last pages to be a good actor, I could tell it was fake. 

As I’d deduced from this Major Clue, the real story goes like this: Mike and Greta met in Germany and fell in love.  The beautiful, heartless, but capable woman and the ambitious, handsome, quick-on-his-feet cad.  They were made for each other.  But both longed for a bigger life, and Mike in particularly lusted after things, for property, for ownership.  The high life on easy street.  And he didn’t want to work for it.  He wanted it fast.  So Greta came up with a plan.  They orchestrated his meeting with her employer Ellie, the marriage, and everything.  Then a bit of poison in her allergy pill, and all the money was Mike’s.

I wouldn’t say that this is a mystery, though that’s how it’s labeled in my local library.  Unlike most Christie novels, this narrative takes place in just one man’s faulty perspective, and in general it is much more along the genre of Noir like The Postman Always Rings Twice.  This book upset me very much, not so much because of the content but because of the style.  So much of the book is taken up by nothingness.  Foreshadowing hat never comes to fruition, Chekhov’s Guns that never go off, flat characters are never fleshed out, and motives never explained.  Much of this is due to the single first-person narrative that was never reliable to begin with. 

But since I’ve spoiled this much, I might as well go all-in:

Mike’s gotten everything he’s wanted.  He drives home along the crooked, accident-prone road back to Gypsy’s Acre, anticipating his triumphant reunion with Greta.  He doesn’t crash, though Christie has sneakily been foreshadowing that.  But he does see Ellie.  Ellie is a ghost, and doesn’t see him.  With that experience, whether supernatural or imagined, Mike realizes how far he’s gone into “Endless Night,” and that Ellie was the epitome in goodness in his life.  Because she is gone, there is only darkness and evil remaining to him.  And because he is evil, and she is good, they are forever separated.

He gets back to Gypsy’s Acre.  He celebrates with Greta.  And then, in a revelation of how wicked she is, and how much he enjoys giving in to his lust for death, he strangles her.  He is caught by the authorities.  And, from the garbled ending of the book, he goes quite mad.  He’ll probably be hanged.  But he doesn’t seem to mind this.  As far as he’s concerned, his life died the same day he killed Ellie.

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Though I didn’t enjoy this book as much as most other Christie mysteries, it was quite thought-provoking.  Especially if it’s viewed not as a Noir, but almost as an allegory of Good vs. Evil.  At what point does pretending to love Goodness transform into a true love for it?  Evil is often more crafty, seemingly more brilliant and sensible.  But in the end it reveals itself to be vulgar and betraying, ultimately costing all sanity, light, and freedom to the one who gives in to its lures.