The Mystery of Mrs. Christie

First introduced in the Prologue, the letter that Agatha leaves for Archie serves multiple functions within the novel, highlighting various conventions of the mystery genre. The letter serves, at various points, as a clue, a red herring, and an organizing logic that determines the arc of Archie as a suspect. Though some of the text of Agatha’s letter is disclosed in “The Beginning,” the “instructions” that this excerpt references are never explicitly laid out in their entirety. Leaving parts of the letter shrouded in mystery allows it to serve as an apparent clue to readers as they learn more and more about Agatha’s disappearance. Ultimately, it does serve as an actual clue to readers (when they learn that Agatha sent the letter and orchestrated her own vanishing), whereas to the police the letter becomes a “red herring,” a term used in mystery writing to refer to something that seems like a clue but is ultimately a misdirect.

The most complex function of the letter in the novel, however, is as a guide to Archie. By the end of the novel, the letter is known to instruct Archie to cooperate with the police and not to reveal outright that he knows that Agatha had anything to do with her own disappearance. Archie frets incessantly about the consequences of obeying the letter: “He has no choice. If he is to survive this catastrophe intact, he must stay the course on the letter. In fact, the letter itself mandates he remain silent on its contents” (128). Yet, as the case develops, the logic of choosing to obey the letter becomes more and more questionable. While Archie longs to keep his reputation intact, he risks being arrested for murder—which would logically seem a far more serious offense—even after his affair with Nancy Neele is made public. Archie’s commitment to following the letter long after it would seem to make sense adds to the sense, of which readers are regularly reminded, that this is a mediated text, in which truth is less important than narrative, illustrating the theme of Differentiating Fact From Fiction.