84 pages • 2 hours read
Agatha ChristieCrooked House
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1949A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
The next morning, Charles reflects on the conversations he’s had with the various inhabitants of Three Gables, noting that Philip still seems reluctant to speak to him. He speculates that Philip’s motive to kill Aristide might have been his favoritism of Roger, which turned Philip into a reserved and unhappy individual. He finds himself wishing that Laurence alone committed the murder before realizing that he’s starting to desire “not the true solution, but the solution that suited me best” (126).
In the schoolroom, Charles finds Laurence with Josephine and Eustace. When he enters Laurence hurries out, spooked, leaving him to speak to Eustace alone. Eustace expresses his frustration at living in such a “queer house” with his dramatic mother, repressive father, and abnormally young step-grandmother. He callously states that it was about time Aristide died, as “you can’t enjoy life at that age” (131).
Laurence returns to the room and Eustace leaves. Laurence is high-strung, lamenting to Charles that he always does everything wrong. He suspects that he is being framed for Aristide’s murder. When asked about Brenda, he vehemently defends her character, calling her an “angel”.
As Charles exits the room, he runs into Josephine, who has been up in the attic “detecting.” She tells Charles it must nearly be time for another murder, as in detective stories there is always an additional victim, killed for knowing too much. Charles descends the stairs, where he is stopped by Brenda, who frantically asks him about the state of the investigation. He again finds himself given over to sympathy for her and tries to reassure her as best he can. By the front door he finds Sophia, who tells him that he’s wanted back at Scotland Yard.
Chapter 17 Summary
At Scotland Yard, Taverner, Gaitskill, and Arthur are assembled. Gaitskill presents a surprising letter from Aristide, handed in by a childhood friend named Mr. Agrodopolous. It is a confession from Aristide that he has changed his will behind his lawyer’s back. Aristide believed that each family has one member who was a stronger individual than the rest, whose duty it is to care for the others. In the Leonides family he identified Sophia as the golden child, and consequently made her his heir, leaving her his entire estate save for a generous allowance to Brenda. At the presentation of his will, he slipped the true will under the fake one and tricked each of his children into signing it. Charles is shocked at this development and insists that Sophia could not have known about the change. The phone rings, and Charles answers to a frantic Sophia announcing that Josephine has been attacked, suffering a serious head injury.
Chapter 18 Summary
At Three Gables, Sophia shows Charles the site of the accident. The door of the old washhouse, where Josephine likes to swing back and forth, has been rigged up as a booby trap. Josephine was hit on the head with a marble lion-shaped doorstop placed in a precarious position by design, and Sophia found her after she didn’t come in for lunch. Taverner notices dents in the floor where the would-be murderer practiced to see how the doorstop would fall. He uses Josephine’s fallen scarf to pick up the doorstop. Charles spots muddy footprints on a nearby chair, which Taverner can’t puzzle out.
Inside the house, Magda is hysterical. Janet comments that there is a “wickedness” in Three Gables and that Josephine was attacked for knowing too much. Charles asks about the whereabouts of Josephine’s notebook, but she doesn’t know where it is. Taverner calls out from Josephine’s room. Charles enters to find it overturned, as if someone had been looking for something in a hurry. Charles has a sudden flash of memory, remembering that when he last saw Josephine she claimed to be “detecting” in the attic. Sprinting up to the attic himself, he finds a packet of love letters to Laurence Brown. The first letter contains an incriminating reference to the Aristide murder plot. Charles brings the letters to Taverner, who exclaims that they “pretty well cook Mrs. Brenda Leonides’ goose” (153).
Chapter 19 Summary
Taverner believes that the odd nature of the trap, like the serine-insulin swap, was due to Laurence Brown’s shying away from overt violence. He doesn’t think Brenda knew about the booby trap, but that she orchestrated the poisoning. He jokingly asks Charles how it feels to be engaged to a wealthy heiress and states that Gaitskill will break the new revelations about the will to the family the following day.
Chapter 20 Summary
Josephine is recovering well, though she is not allowed visitors. Sophia has taken extra care to make sure Magda can’t visit her daughter, fearing that she would cause a scene and excite Josephine.
Back at Three Gables, Gaitskill breaks the news to the Leonides family. An argument breaks out over what Sophia should do with her inheritance—Magda and Edith beseech her to bail out Roger, while Clemency and Roger himself deny any desire for financial help. Sophia struggles to keep her composure as she states that she will not bail out the company. Philip and Eustace are incensed at being cut out of the will, with Philip coldly telling his daughter that she “played her cards very well” (162). One by one the family storms out until only Charles and Sophia remain. Charles compliments her firm decisiveness and tells her he understands why Aristide left the money to her.
Chapters 16-20 Analysis
In this section of the novel, the killers appear to have been found when Brenda and Laurence’s love letters are discovered. Yet as Josephine says, a good detective novel never reveals the killer until the very end. Christie hints that the true murderer has yet to be found, and that both Brenda and Laurence might be red herrings.
Sophia is added to the possible suspect pool due to her sole inheritance of Aristide’s fortune, but Charles again reveals his biases in not truly considering her guilt. Taverner might think of Charles as a neutral party, but Charles knows he isn’t. Like the Leonides family, Charles hopes that the suspect is the person who is least sympathetic to him—in his case, Laurence and not Brenda. Whether he is the only one who can see past the family’s dislike of Brenda or the only one gullible enough to fall for her manipulation is unclear; either way, he continues to be an unreliable narrator. His firsthand account of the investigation allows readers to experience the unfolding events as an everyman would, colored by the unique preconceptions that everyone has to some degree.
Aristide’s letter continues the theme of hereditary. He singles out Sophia as having the strongest personality and suggests that each family has one such golden child. If Sophia represents the very best of the Leonides family coalesced in one person, then it stands to reason that whoever murdered Aristide is the opposite, a bad seed in whom all the family’s worst traits came to fruition. From a genetic standpoint, this exempts from suspicion Edith, Janet, and the non-blood family members. Only one of Aristide’s children or grandchildren could have inherited the required combination of ruthlessness from the de Havilands and unscrupulousness from the Leonideses.
After Aristide’s changed will is presented to the family, the tight-knit bonds between the Leonides family members begin to fray. The knowledge that they will not receive any more money from their late relative spurs anger and hurt in his children and grandchildren. The spell of “idolatry” is broken, bringing familial tensions to the surface. For some of the Leonideses, like Roger and Clemency, the dissolving of these overly tight bonds means that they have the freedom they’ve long been yearning for.
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