At Bertram’s Hotel

☆☆☆

Reasons for the Poirot Score

This novel is an enjoyable read with its vivid characters and the Edwardian charm – superbly conveyed –  of its setting, Bertram’s Hotel. Miss Marple is taking a London holiday at the Hotel when, once again, she finds herself amongst criminals. It is not she, however, but Chief-Inspector Davy who does most of the work in solving the series of high-profile robberies that are troubling Scotland Yard. This is not a whodunnit but a sedentary adventure story – hence the lowish score. There is, finally, a murder but that is an element in, if not another story, certainly a secondary plot. 

Click here for full review (spoilers ahead)

Trivia

Bertram’s Hotel

The most significant character in this novel is Bertram’s Hotel itself. Its atmosphere is so strongly drawn that I felt as though I had spent several days at the hotel as a guest. Surely Christie had a specific hotel in mind as its model. Charles Osborne said it was an open secret that Bertram’s was based on Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair. Dorothy Olding suggested it was The Connaught. Biographers of Christie, Janet Morgan and Laura Thompson, both believe that Flemings Hotel was the primary source of inspiration. The Connaught is possible but probably too large. Christie describes what we would now call a ‘boutique hotel’. The contest, I think, is between Brown’s and Flemings, both cosy Mayfair hotels, and both created by merging adjacent Georgian town houses. 

Christie gives two clues to location, though both, no doubt on purpose, somewhat vague. At the beginning of the novel she writes: ‘If you turn off on an unpretentious street from the Park, and turn left and right once or twice, you will find yourself in a quiet street with Bertram’s Hotel on the right hand side.’ Towards the end of the novel (chapter 25) Miss Marple is sitting in an arm-chair in the hotel with Chief-Inspector Davy. The Chief-Inspector says of the street outside the hotel: ‘ … this is a way through to Berkeley Square and Shepherd Market’. 

The ‘Park’ in the first quotation is Hyde Park (not Green Park). Flemings Hotel is in Half Moon Street, five or six blocks along Piccadilly from ‘the Park’. A few left and right turns could indeed take you there. Brown’s in Dover Street (although the modern entrance is in Albemarle Street) is a further five blocks along Piccadilly and would take several more turns, especially as you would need to negotiate Berkeley Square. The Connaught could be reached with just one turn. The Chief-Inspector’s remark is more helpful. Half Moon Street passes close by one edge of Shepherd Market, and on to Curzon Street which leads into Berkeley Square. From Brown’s one might say that the way is through to Berkeley Square, but it would be odd to talk of a ‘way through to .. Shepherd Market’ (and the same is true of the Connaught). My conclusion: Bertram’s Hotel is more closely based on Flemings Hotel, although Christie may well have used several hotels as inspiration.

Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest opens in Algernon Moncrieff’s flat in Half-Moon Street (the hyphen has since been dropped). Bertie Wooster, and his more famous butler, Jeeves, lived in Berkeley Square, and Wooster’s club, The Drones, was located in Dover Street. Christie dedicated Hallowe’en Party (1969) to Jeeves’ creator, P.G. Wodehouse.

Marshall & Snelgrove’s, Army & Navy Stores, Robinson & Cleaver’s

It was time to go out and enjoy the pleasures of London. … She might  walk  … along Bond Street and take a 25 bus to Marshall & Snelgrove’s, or she might take a 25 the other way [to] the Army & Navy Stores. …The commissionaire  .. clicked his thumb and a taxi appeared like magic. Miss Marple .. decided on the spur of the moment to go to Robinson & Cleaver’s. 

Chapter 5

The world of retail has greatly changed in the last fifty years. Many of the big department and clothes stores in cities across Europe were founded in the nineteenth century and were still flourishing, and occupied impressive premises, in the 1960s. Many closed in the 1980s.

For me the names of these shops summon up remembrance of things past, of my childhood in London in the 1950s and 1960s: Marshall & Snelgrove; Swan & Edgar; Debenham & Freebody; Derry & Toms; Arding & Hobbs; Dickins & Jones; Army & Navy Stores. Not all were a conjunction of two names. There was Barkers in Kensington, and Pratts in Streatham. Not all are defunct: there is still Harrods, and Selfridges, and Liberty, and John Lewis. 

Marshall & Snelgrove was founded in 1837. Its flagship store was in Oxford Street in London’s West End. Because of financial problems following the First World War it was effectively bought by Debenham & Freebody in 1919 but continued trading as Marshall & Snelgrove. There is a rather arcane clue in Murder on the Orient Express that plays on the name of Debenham & Freebody. The shop became just Debenhams in the 1970s. The company demolished and rebuilt the Oxford Street store and reopened it as Debenham’s main London shop, which it still is, although the future of the company is uncertain. The Debenham & Freebody main shop had been in Wigmore Street opposite the concert venue, The Wigmore Hall. This fine building was purpose built in 1907 and is faced with Doulton Carrara tiles. The building remains the jewel in the Street.

The Army & Navy Stores was founded in the 1870s, by a group of army and naval officers, as a cooperative to provide goods for its members. It expanded to include many shops mainly in and around London. In 1973 it was acquired by the House of Fraser – a retail group that also, for a time, included Harrods. The flagship shop was in Victoria Street not far from Victoria station.

Robinson & Cleaver was not a department store but a fabrics shop. Its main shop was in Belfast and it focussed on Irish linen. It was founded in 1870. The premises of the London shop, in Regent Street, were built for Robinson & Cleaver between 1904 and 1915. They were designed by G R Crickmay and Co. from Dorset and are notable for the Norwegian red granite (see photo). The building is now called Linen Hall and the initials RC intertwined within a gold wreath are still plain to see. 

Miss Marple had to decide quickly which shop she wanted to visit as she got into the taxi since they were each in different directions from Bertram’s Hotel. The Army & Navy Stores would have required the taxi to drive south to Victoria and Marshall & Snelgrove was north, in Oxford Street, near the top of Bond Street. She decided on Robinson & Cleaver, to the north-east, in Regent Street.