Taken at the Flood
| Author | Agatha Christie |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Dodd, Mead and Company |
Publication date | 1948 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 242 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | NA Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
| Preceded by | The Labours of Hercules |
| Followed by | The Rose and the Yew Tree |
Taken at the Flood is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1948 under the title of There is a Tide... and in UK by the Collins Crime Club in the November of the same year under Christie's original title. The UK edition retailed at eight shillings and sixpence. It features her famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot and is set in 1946.
Plot introduction
While visiting the Coronation Club, Hercule Poirot hears Major Porter talking about Gordon Cloade, who has been killed along with almost his entire household during the Blitz. He has been survived only by his young widow and her brother, but there is a complication. Apparently, Porter knew Robert Underhay, the widow’s first husband, in Africa, and remembers his suggesting that he would deliberately disappear in order to set her free from the marriage without the shame of a divorce. Before his disappearance, Underhay joked that he will subsequently adopt the name “Enoch Arden” in homage to the poem by Tennyson with a similar theme. Overhearing the same anecdote, Jeremy Cloade storms out angrily.
Two years later, in 1946, Poirot is visited by Katherine Cloade, who wishes him to investigate the whereabouts of Robert Underhay, evidently with a view to breaking the will. He refuses, but later notices the death notice of someone called Enoch Arden who was living in the same village as the Cloade family. He sets out to investigate.
Plot summary
After the Prelude, the novel flashes back from late Spring to early Spring, when Lynn Marchant, newly demobilised from the Women's Royal Naval Service, has found difficulty settling back into the village life of Warmsley Vale. She is engaged to Rowley, one of several member of the Cloade family living in the area. Each of them had grown dependent on regular gifts of money from Gordon Cloade, an old bachelor who had been expected to die and leave his fortune to them. Shortly before his death, however, he had married Rosaleen, and the fact that she inherited his fortune means that they are all facing financial crises. Rosaleen’s fortune is jealously guarded by her brother, David, and although various members (including Lynn’s mother, Adela) manage to wheedle small sums out of Rosaleen, David refuses outright to help Frances Cloade, whose husband Jeremy is on the brink of complete ruin.
The arrival in the village of a man calling himself Enoch Arden changes things significantly. Arden attempts to blackmail David Hunter by saying that he knows how to find Rosaleen’s first husband, Robert. Their conversation at the Stag pub is overheard, however, by Beatrice Lippincott, who immediately tells Rowley Cloade. Later, the body of Arden is discovered in his room with his head smashed in.
Rowley Cloade appeals to Poirot to prove that the dead man was Robert Underhay and, remembering Major Porter, the detective is delighted to produce the witness. At the inquest, and despite Rosaleen’s protests that the dead man was not Robert, Porter confirms that the dead Enoch Arden was indeed her first husband. The estate will now revert to the Cloades.
Rosaleen has an apparently strong alibi for the time of the murder since she was in the London flat that evening. David, however, has only a weak alibi: down from London for the day, he has met Lynn on his dash to catch the last train to London leaving at 9.20 pm, and has subsequently evidently telephoned her from the London flat shortly after 11 pm. Since the murder is believed to have taken place shortly before 9 pm, he has enough opportunity and motive to be arrested for the murder.
David’s alibi improves, however, when it is discovered that a heavily made-up woman in an orange headscarf was seen leaving Arden’s room at past 10 pm. The attention of the investigation shifts back to the female Cloades, but Poirot quietly discovers that the immediate cause of Arden’s death may have been smashing his head against a heavy marble mantelpiece. The appearance of a murder may have been created after some form of accidental death.
The behaviour of the suspects becomes erratic. Lynn, though engaged to Rowley, seems to be in love with David. There is a suggestion that Rowley is attracted to Rosaleen, who herself for some reason seems to be eaten up with guilt and fear. Major Porter apparently commits suicide but leaves no note. Subsequent to Porter’s death, it comes to light that Arden was in fact Charles Trenton, second cousin to Frances Cloade. She had come up with the plan to blackmail Rosaleen having heard the story of Major Porter’s anecdote from Jeremy. Although this explains the identity of Enoch Arden, it does little to clarify who killed Arden or who bribed Major Porter to give a false identification of the corpse.
Rosaleen herself is discovered to have died in her sleep from an overdose. Spence suggests that perhaps she has been the murderer all along; the police have been so focused on David’s alibi that they subjected hers almost to no scrutiny.
In the denouement of the novel, Lynn goes to tell Rowley that she wishes to break the engagement and marry David Hunter. Rowley reacts violently, and is actually strangling Lynn when Poirot steps in to stop him. David arrives, and Poirot explains all. Rowley has visited Arden and, seeing the physical resemblance to Frances, has reacted angrily to the deception that is being played. Arden, pushed by Rowley, has stumbled and fallen against the mantelpiece, and Rowley has at this point seen the opportunity to incriminate David. He smashed in Arden’s head with the poker and left at the scene David’s lighter. Later, it was Rowley who persuaded Porter to give the false identification, carefully employing Poirot, who would be sure to go to Porter on the basis of that first scene at the club, which Rowley also knows of from Jeremy. Porter’s guilt got the better of him and he committed suicide, leaving a note that Rowley later destroyed.
David, Poirot explains, was very clever on the night of Arden’s murder. Discovering the dead body of Arden, he ran for the 9.20 train but missed it; Lynn actually saw the smoke from the departing train on the evening, but he convinced her that it was earlier than it was and that he still had time to meet her. He then backtracked to The Stag, disguised himself as a woman, and played out the scene there that established the later time of death. Then he returned to the station and made a telephone call to Rosaleen, who placed a call to Lynn that was delivered by the operator but then cut off. Immediately afterwards, David spoke to Lynn from the station telephone box, giving the impression that a single call from London had been interrupted. He went back to London on the milk train the next day.
Rowley is implicated in two deaths: one accidental and one a genuine suicide. The only true murder was Rosaleen’s. David had no apparent motive to kill his own sister, especially when by doing so he would deprive himself of the Cloade fortune. But the woman posing as Rosaleen was not his sister; his sister had been killed during the bombing of Gordon’s household two years before. The woman posing as Rosaleen was actually one of Gordon’s housemaids, who had become David’s lover and, later, his accomplice in obtaining the Cloade fortune. Now, however, he could kill this accomplice and marry Lynn, with whom he was in love and who would naturally gain a portion of the fortune through family connections.
The novel has had no fewer than three criminal conspiracies: David/housemaid, Frances/Charles and Rowley/Porter. At the end, though, no one is tried other than David himself. In one of his occasional finesses of the criminal justice system, Poirot ensures that Rowley is not tried for his own crimes, but instead will marry Lynn, who has loved him all along without realising it.
Characters in "Taken at the Flood"
- Hercule Poirot, the Belgian Detective
- Superintendent Spence, the investigating officer
- Sergeant Graves, Spence’s assistant
- George, Poirot’s valet
- Rosaleen Cloade, formerly Mrs. Robert Underhay, a wealthy young widow
- David Hunter, Rosaleen’s brother
- Jeremy Cloade, a solicitor
- Frances Cloade, Jeremy’s wife
- Lionel Cloade, a doctor
- Katherine Cloade, Lionel’s wife
- Rowley Cloade, a farmer
- Lynn Marchant, a demobbed Wren, fiancée to Rowley
- Adela Marchmant, Lynn’s mother
- Beatrice Lippincott, pub landlady of The Stag
- Major Porter, the club bore
- “Enoch Arden”, a blackmailer
- Mrs. Leadbetter, a resident of The Stag
Major theme
Christie had written very little about the Second World War in her novels: there is only the nazi spy plot in the thriller N or M? and the political anxiety of One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. In Taken at the Flood, however, she addresses the problems of reconstruction. David is a daring former commando: a man for whom there seems little use in peacetime. Lynn is trying to come to terms with the boredom of village life after the excitement of seeing the world. Rowley is a man who feels cheated by having been forced to till the land while his good friend Johnnie Vavasour has gone to war and been killed. Adela’s comfortable living has been destroyed by post-war tax rises.
The conclusion of the novel, in which the dangerous man is destroyed, while the Wren and her farmer are united, exhibits Christie’s social conservatism. The money goes back to the people who have always depended upon it, while the individual who has attempted to exploit the chaos of war for her own social mobility (the housemaid, Eileen Corrigan) is shown to be gauche, uneasy, guilty and ultimately the victim of murder.
Trivia
- The title of the book is a line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune...". The quotation is given in full as the epigraph to the novel.
- When Poirot is reading the newspaper accounts of the disappearance of Robert Underhay, the front pages are identical apart from the main article.
Film, TV, Radio or Theatrical Adaptations
Produced in 2006 with David Suchet as Poirot in the ITV series Agatha Christie's Poirot.
John Moffatt played Poirot in the BBC radio adaption.
Publication history
- 1948, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), 1948, Hardback, 242 pp
- 1948, Collins Crime Club (London), November 1948, Hardback, 192 pp
