Endless Night

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Reasons for the Poirot Score

This is more a Nordic noir thriller than whodunnit. There are no clues or denouement. It is not a book in which the reader tries to guess ‘the solution’. It therefore receives a rather low Poirot score. But it has a good Christie twist near the end, and is an enjoyable read. It is also most impressive that Christie tries what is for her a new genre at this stage in her life, and she carries it off with considerable skill. 

Click here for full review (spoilers ahead)

Trivia

The Queen Mary

‘How are you, Uncle Andrew? How did you come? Did you fly?’ ‘No, I had a very pleasant trip across on the Queen Mary‘

Chapter 10

The RMS (Royal Mail Ship) Queen Mary was a British passenger liner that crossed the Atlantic each week between Southampton and New York, stopping also at Cherbourg. Together with its slightly larger sister ship, the RMS Queen Elizabeth, it dominated the transatlantic passenger trade from the mid-1930s until the late 1960s, when the rise of jet aircraft undermined its profitability. Uncle Andrew must have been one of the ship’s last passengers. In September 1967 the Queen Mary completed its 1000^th, and last, Atlantic crossing having carried in total over two million passengers and sailed almost four million miles. The ship is now a tourist attraction and hotel and is permanently docked at Long Beach, California.

The Queen Mary was built by John Brown and Co. at Clydebank, Scotland, and launched in 1934. It was named after the wife of King George V. Mary was Queen of England from 1910 to 1936 (when her husband died). She was the mother of Edward VIII and also of George VI. In the film The King’s Speech Mary was played by Claire Bloom. Mary died in 1953 aged 85 years, a few weeks before the coronation of her granddaughter as Queen Elizabeth II.

During the Second World War the Queen Mary was used as a troop ship. On several occasions it carried Winston Churchill to the United States to meet with President Roosevelt. After the War it returned to being a passenger liner owned and run by Cunard. Celebrities travelled between North America and Europe in art deco luxury wanting the honour of being at the Captain’s table. The captain was not only the senior navigating officer, and ultimately in charge of the entire ship, he was also host to over 2000 passengers. Harry Grattidge, who was born in the same year as Agatha Christie and became captain of the Queen Mary in 1949, described his role: ‘To play host, day after day, to meet more than two hundred people each week, is like presiding over some gigantic house party that never ends.’ [See his autobiography, Captain of the Queens]

In 1952 Grattidge captained the Queen Elizabeth and became the most senior Cunard seafarer as Commodore of the Fleet. I met him a few times when I was a boy (my father was in shipping). He had immense charm, and an imposing frame: one of the few people I have known whom I would describe as having charisma. Although being captain of the Queen Elizabeth (as the larger ship) had perhaps a little more status than being captain of the Queen Mary, Harry Grattidge preferred the Queen Mary. He said of the Queen Elizabeth that it was ‘a great hotel’, but described the Queen Mary as ‘a great ship’. 

Harry Grattidge retired in 1952. The last captain of the Queen Mary who would have been in charge when Uncle Andrew sailed on her was John Treasure Jones. 

Commodore Harry Grattidge