Description

Cat Among the Pigeons - Agatha Christie

The story flashes back three months to Ramat, a kingdom in the Middle East, where a revolution is about to take place. Prince Ali Yusuf gives a fortune in jewels into the safekeeping of Bob Rawlinson, his pilot and the only person he trusts to take them out of the country. Rawlinson conceals the jewels in the luggage of his sister, Mrs Joan Sutcliffe, travelling with her daughter, Jennifer. He is seen doing this by a rather sinister woman via a handheld mirror on her balcony in the next room. Soon after, both Ali Yusuf and Bob Rawlinson are killed in an aeroplane crash after a flight mechanic sabotages their plane. British Intelligence among others get onto the trail of the jewels. Their attention focuses on Meadowbank School, where not only Jennifer, but also the prince's cousin, Shaista, are studying.

This term at Meadowbank includes both old and new staff. Miss Chadwick helped Miss Bulstrode found the school. Miss Vansittart has been teaching there for several years, and Miss Rich for 18 months. Miss Johnson is the girls' matron. The new staff include Angèle Blanche (French teacher), Grace Springer (gym teacher), Ann Shapland (Miss Bulstrode's new secretary), and Adam Goodman (gardener). Miss Bulstrode is nearing retirement, and is deciding whom to appoint as her successor. Many assume Vansittart will be the successor. But Bulstrode is also considering Rich, who is young and has lots of ideas. She is not considering Chadwick, whom she believes to be too old. These deliberations are cut short when Miss Springer is shot dead in the Sports Pavilion late at night. Johnson and Chadwick discover her body.

Inspector Kelsey interviews everyone and Adam Goodman reveals his true identity (undercover British agent posing as a gardener) to Miss Bulstrode. Jennifer Sutcliffe, an expert tennis player, complains that her racquet feels unbalanced and writes to her mother asking for a new one. Meanwhile, she swaps racquets with Julia Upjohn, who prefers Jennifer's as it was refurbished recently. Later a strange woman arrives and gives Jennifer a new racquet, saying it is a gift from her Aunt Gina. The woman takes the old racquet (actually Julia's racquet). Julia later realises that Aunt Gina would have known that Jennifer's racquet had been refurbished and restrung recently, so she would not have assumed the problem is in the strings. Soon enough, Jennifer's aunt writes that she did not send the new racquet.

One weekend, Shaista is kidnapped by a chauffeur posing as the one sent by her uncle to take her home. That night there is another murder in the Sports Pavilion, where Miss Vansittart is found dead, having been coshed. Many of the girls go home, but the resourceful Julia, who has been pondering the exchange of the racquets, takes her racquet back to her room and discovers gems in the hollowed-out handle. She hears someone at the door who quietly turns the knob and attempts to enter. Julia places furniture against the door to prevent entry and is ready to scream out loud but the person who turned the knob leaves, identity unknown. The following day Julia flees the school to tell her story to Hercule Poirot, of whose career she learned from a friend of her mother. The police focus on the newcomer, Miss Blanche, who knows the identity of the murderer. She is killed for attempting blackmail. With three unsolved murders and the school hemorrhaging fearful students, Poirot arrives.

Poirot explains that Princess Shaista is an impostor: the real Shaista had been kidnapped earlier in Switzerland, and the apparent abduction was the impostor's escape from the school. She is the representative of a group of interests but did not know where the gems had been concealed. The murderer knew where the jewels were concealed, having been in Ramat to see Bob Rawlinson hide them. Eileen Rich, who was thought to be sick at the time, was in Ramat. Jennifer thought she had recognised her, although the woman she saw was far heavier. (Miss Rich had been in Ramat for the delivery of an illegitimate child, who was stillborn.) Just as it seems that Miss Rich is becoming a suspect, Mrs Upjohn enters the room and identifies the woman whom she had known fifteen years earlier in her intelligence work: Ann Shapland, known in intelligence circles as "Angelica", a ruthless espionage agent and a mercenary. It was Shapland who had had the room next to Bob Rawlinson and had seen him put the gems in the handle of the tennis racket.

Christie describes what happens then: "Inspector Kelsey was quick and so was Adam, but they were not quick enough. Ann Shapland had sprung to her feet. In her hand was a small wicked-looking automatic and it pointed straight at Mrs Upjohn. Miss Bulstrode, quicker than the two men, moved sharply forward, but swifter still was Miss Chadwick. It was not Mrs Upjohn that she was trying to shield, it was the woman who was standing between Ann Shapland and Mrs Upjohn." Chadwick is fatally wounded.

Shapland had murdered Springer, who had caught her while she was searching the Sports Pavilion for the jewels. She also murdered Mademoiselle Blanche, the would-be blackmailer. But she did not kill Miss Vansittart, and has a perfect alibi for that night. Vansittart was killed by Chadwick, in an unpremeditated fit of passion. Chadwick had found Vansittart, whom she disliked, in the Sports Pavilion the second night, kneeling in front of Shaista's locker. Chadwick was carrying a sandbag for protection, and there was Vansittart in a perfect position to be coshed. Chadwick apparently suffered a psychotic break and bludgeoned Vansittart. The same murderer committed the first and third murders, while the second and third murders were by the same method (a sandbag); Shapland had used the sandbag only to make it seem that the second and third murders were linked.

Dying, Chadwick confesses she imagined the removal of the widely presumed successor (Vansittart) would make Bulstrode change her mind about retiring. Bulstrode comforts her and Chadwick dies.

Miss Bulstrode reconfirms her decision to make Miss Rich her eventual successor, and together they determine to help rebuild Meadowbank. Poirot turns over the gems to the enigmatic “Mr. Robinson” who, in turn, delivers them to the English woman who had been secretly married to Prince Ali Yusuf when he was a student. She gives Julia Upjohn one emerald as a reward.