Hallowe'en Party

“Because I didn’t know it was a murder when I saw it. It wasn’t really till a long time afterwards, I mean, that I began to know it was a murder. Something that somebody said only about a month or two ago suddenly made me think: Of course, that was a murder I saw.”

The falseness of Joyce’s statement—something that the characters know but which Poirot and the readers must gradually discover—foreshadows the reveal of Miranda as the true witness of a murder. These contrasts between the right information and the wrong character muddles Poirot’s investigation. Ultimately, however, the overall cause and effect that is set up in the opening chapter plays out: A child brags about witnessing a murder and is killed to protect this knowledge. This linearity keeps the mystery more in line with a detective novel than the thriller or horror narrative proposed by characters who believe Joyce’s death to be the work of a random, deranged killer.

“His mind, magnificent as it was (for he had never doubted that fact) required stimulation from outside sources.”

Agatha Christie’s use of Poirot’s third-person limited point of view highlights Poirot’s characterization as vain and self-aggrandizing as well as his method as a detective. Poirot’s confidence in his own abilities annoys other characters, particularly Mrs. Oliver, who wish him to be less rigid and more opaque in his mannerisms. Poirot’s methodology, which relies on his “little grey cells”—intellectual deduction over the unearthing of physical evidence or catching someone in the act—to solve crimes remains consistent throughout Christie’s Poirot series (Christie, Agatha.