MowXml

Agatha Christie

Endless Night - Agatha Christie

Michael Rogers, a footloose, seemingly nonchalant, working-class dabbler, narrates the story. He has a close relationship with his friend, Rudolf Santonix, a famous but ailing architect with an interest in one day building a house for Michael. While walking along a village road, Michael meets Fenella "Ellie" Guteman, a wealthy heiress, who yearns for a life outside of her judgmental and pompous inner circle of relatives and advisers. Ellie and Michael form a romantic relationship and decide to marry.

Excited by the prospect of their new life, Ellie is able to fund the building of Gipsy's Acre, their new modern home near the place where they met. Michael requests Santonix to build the house, to which he readily agrees. The couple come across locals, such as Major Phillpot, the village "God"; Claudia Hardcastle, a woman who shares Ellie's love of horse riding; and Miss Esther Lee, an elderly gypsy who tells Ellie to leave the village or fate will curse her. Matters are made worse when Ellie invites her attractive secretary/companion Greta Anderson to stay at the house, to the annoyance of Michael who eventually gets into a heated argument with her.

Ellie begins to become more worried about the dangers of Gipsy's Acre and more frightened of Miss Lee's increasing hostility towards her. Then, having been missed for several hours after embarking on a routine morning horse ride, Ellie's dead body is found in the woods. An inquest finds that a combination of a heart condition and being thrown from her horse was to blame. Michael visits Rudolf Santonix in hospital as he is close to death. Santonix, with his dying breath, screams "Why didn't you go the other way?" before dying in front of Michael. A now melancholy Michael has to travel to America to attend Ellie's funeral and to receive the inheritance bequeathed to him in Ellie's will. While in America, Michael receives a letter from the village telling him that the bodies of Miss Lee and Claudia Hardcastle had been discovered, suggesting that Ellie's death was not an accident.

Upon returning to the village, the true nature of Michael's intent is revealed: he had met Greta Anderson in Germany before meeting Ellie, and they had instantly fallen in love. Greedy for the good life, they had devised a plan in which Michael would marry Ellie to gain her inheritance, then murder her and marry Greta. Michael then murdered Ellie by poisoning the allergy capsule she took before riding her horse. The slow-acting cyanide killed her during the ride. Having paid Miss Lee to frighten Ellie to throw suspicion on the old gypsy, Michael eliminated her as a witness by pushing her into a quarry. The death of Claudia was an accident in that she had borrowed Ellie's allergy medicine to be able to ride her horse and so had died in the same way. Santonix had guessed Michael's intents previously, and his seemingly random outburst was in anger that Michael killed Ellie rather than living happily with her.

Even as Michael and Greta celebrate their triumph, Michael begins to break down in remorse and revulsion. He tells Greta of his vision of Ellie while on the road to Gipsy's Acre. Infuriated when Greta scolds him for his sudden weakness, he is further enraged by Greta's disdain for Gipsy's Acre and his regret at the murder of Ellie. He viciously strangles Greta. At the end of the novel, Michael meekly awaits his fate as villagers discover Greta's murder and local officials interview him in his home.

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Endless Night - Agatha Christie