Nemesis

☆☆☆

Reasons for the Poirot Score

The plot holes are considerable, though no worse than many a TV crime drama. Christie’s rigorous intellect is not in evidence. The narrative, though, is innovative: a kind of murder-hunt-whodunnit. Miss Marple is set the challenge, by Mr Rafiel from beyond the grave, to investigate an old murder, but, at the start, she does not know which murder nor why it needs to be investigated. A mediocre whodunnit but a surprisingly good read.

Click here for full review (spoilers ahead)

Trivia

Dedication

To Daphne Honeybone

Christie was over 80 years old when Nemesis was published. She was beginning to find it hard to concentrate. Her husband, Max Mallowan, said of Postern of Fate (published two years later) that writing it nearly killed her. Mrs Daphne Honeybone, who lived close to Christie in Wallingford, did typing for both Mallowan and Christie. For Christie’s last novels she also performed some light editing. The help of Daphne Honeybone is also acknowledged by Mary Acton for her book on modern art published over 30 years later than Nemesis  in 2004.

Blenheim

They stopped for lunch at a pleasant riverside hotel, and the afternoon sight-seeing was given over to Blenheim. Miss Marple had already visited Blenheim twice before, so she saved her feet by limiting the amount of sight-seeing indoors and coming fairly soon to the enjoyment of the gardens and beautiful view.

Chapter 5

Blenheim refers to Blenheim Palace and Park at Woodstock, a small town a dozen miles north of Oxford. If you walk from the Palace to the far side of the lake you will be amongst trees, or descendents of trees, that once formed a part of the ancient Wychwood Forest. 

Wychwood  is named after the Hwicce, an Anglo-Saxon tribal kingdom. Anglo-Saxon kings  frequently hunted deer and other animals that lived primarily in wooded areas. Ethelred II (‘Ethelred the Unready’) (reigned 978-1016) built a royal hunting lodge at the edge of Wychwood Forest probably within what is now Blenheim Park. The Forest was to the west of the main road through Woodstock (the Oxford-Stratford road). It is believed that Ethelred held a council there. 

William I (‘William the Conqueror’)(reigned 1066-1087) introduced laws, known as ‘forest laws’ essentially to protect some areas (‘forests’) for hunting. The forest laws formed a separate legal system from the common law. It protected certain animals and the vegetation. Although we now think of a forest as referring to a wooded area, the legal meaning referred to an area, whether wooded or not, protected under the forest laws. Wychwood Forest was protected under these laws.

William’s son, Henry I ( reigned 1100-1135) built a residence, Woodstock Manor, perhaps just a wooden structure, in what is now Blenheim Park. He also built the first stone wall around the residence, to form a park (though not as extensive as the present Park) to keep the deer in and the peasants out. It is thought that he kept various exotic animals in the park (though not roaming freely). William of Malmsebury, in his Chronicles of the Kings of England (1110) wrote that Henry ‘was extremely fond of the wonders of distant countries, begging with great delight from foreign kings, lions, leopards, lynxes, or camels ..also a creature called a porcupine, sent to him by William of Montpelier’. 

Henry’s only legitimate son had drowned in 1120. When Henry died, his nephew, Stephen, and his daughter, Matilda, both claimed the throne. The period of anarchy in England that followed will be well-known to those lovers of crime fiction who read Ellis Peters’ Cadfael Chronicles or have enjoyed the TV series starring Derek Jacobi. 

Relative order was restored when Stephen died and Matilda’s son became King as Henry II (reigned 1154-1189). He spent considerable time at Woodstock and probably rebuilt Woodstock Manor, this time using stone. The site of this royal building was across the river Glyme (now the lake) from Blenheim Palace. Around 1165 Henry apparently fell in love with Rosamund Clifford – Rosamund the Fair – and brought her to Woodstock. Henry’s frequent visits to his manor at Woodstock necessitated greatly increased local accommodation. ‘Old Woodstock’ was only a few buildings just north of where the Oxford-Stratford road crosses the river Glyme (around where The Black Prince pub is). To provide the accommodation for the King’s retinue, and the infrastructure for the food needed, the King gave the land for the building of ‘New Woodstock’ – the area that would now be thought of as the central part of the town. Over the following century Woodstock Manor was a popular home for most of the Kings of England. Edward III’s oldest son, Edward of Woodstock, better known as the Black Prince, was born there. Henry VIII stayed in Woodstock many times, and his daughter, the future Elizabeth I, was imprisoned in the gatehouse to the Manor in 1554-5 by Queen Mary. The Civil War, in the mid-seventeenth century, was not kind to Woodstock. Woodstock was a royalist stronghold. After victory by the Parliamentarians some of the town was destroyed. Furthermore, in losing royal patronage its economy suffered, and did not recover after the restoration of the monarchy. 

But all changed in 1705. John Churchill had led the English troops in the victory in 1704, over the French, at Blindheim (Blenheim) in Bavaria in the ‘Wars of the Spanish Succession’. John’s wife, Sarah Churchill, was a close friend of Queen Anne’s. And so Queen Anne gave Woodstock Manor to Churchill, together with the title of Duke of Marlborough. Parliament agreed a gift to enable the estate to be developed. The newly created Duke chose his drinking friend and fellow member of the Kit Cat club, John Vanbrugh as architect for the grand building that he and his wife wanted built. The landscaping that we now see was commissioned, around fifty years later, by the Fourth Duke and designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown who had met the Duke’s sons at Eton. Brown created the lakes, that are now such a prominent feature of the gardens, by damming the River Glyme. He needed to support the lower stonework of Vanbrugh’s bridge and used stones and rubble from what remained of  Henry II’s manor. Ever since Blenheim Palace was built it has been a tourist attraction enabling the small town of Woodstock to thrive. Elizabeth Bennett, in Pride and Prejudice, some 150 years before Miss Marple, visited it during her time with her aunt and uncle, although it was Pemberley in Derbyshire that made more of an impact!  

It is often falsely claimed that Geoffery Chaucer, the great English poet and author of The Canterbury Tales lived in Woodstock. Chaucer’s son, Sir Thomas Chaucer, however, who was chief butler to three kings and Speaker of the House of Commons was granted the use of Woodstock Manor in 1411 by Queen Joan (wife of Henry IV). A poet with closer connections to Woodstock was John Wilmot, Early of Rochester. He was born, in 1647, not far from Woodstock, at Ditchley. In 1674 Charles II appointed him Keeper and Ranger of Woodstock Park and allowed him the use of a residence within the Park, where in fact he died in 1680. He was a brave soldier, a dissolute man, and a fine poet. Here is the opening of his A Young Lady to her Ancient Lover.

Ancient person for whom I

All the flutt’ring youth defy

Long be it ere thou grow old,

Aching, shaking, crazy, cold;

But still continue as thou art,

Ancient person of my heart

John Vanbrugh, the architect of Blenheim Palace, was a playwright of considerable standing. Lord Foppington, in The Relapse, is one of the great characters of Restoration (or post-Restoration) comedy. A man who hides his considerable intelligence under the guise of foppery. I have been fortunate to see, over the years, two great stage actors perform the part: Donald Sinden, and Alex Jennings. Foppington was perhaps an inspiration to Wodehouse. Here he is on books (Act II, scene I)

Lord Foppington: .. I have a private gallery … is furnished with nothing but books and looking glasses. Madam, I have gilded ’em, and ranged ’em so prettily, before Gad, it is the most entertaining thing in the world to walk and look upon ’em.

Amanda: Nay, I love a neat library, too; but ’tis, I think, the inside of the book should recommend it most to us.

Lord Foppington: That, I must confess, I am nat altogether so fand of. Far to mind the inside  of a book, is to entertain one’s self with the forced product of another man’s brain.