The Curious Case of Mr Smith

(in reply to Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Nile)

Agatha Christie cherished the Tories,
Kept the masses out of her stories –
Servants were faceless, background filler –
Never the victim, never the killer.
Whodunnits by nature are class-based, though,
With chaos disrupting the status quo,
That must be traced and rooted out
Before it spreads its dangerous doubt.
Now true, she distrusted businessmen,
And makes them villains agen and agen,
Not like a blue-blooded, honourable gent –
But was this an anti-Semitic bent ?
Of course, she hated the socialist –
But wait, with her there’s always a twist !
Just witness her Nile when splashed on the stage,
With Poirot banished back to the page –
Instead, a Canon is quizzing them,
While building his new Jerusalem –
One wonders what he might behold ?
A commune or sorts ?  We’re not quite told.
And then, at last, there’s Mr Smith –
The snidy lefty they’re travelling with.
Part hypocrite, but only a part,
When a short-hand typist catches his heart.
He makes some good points along the way,
That it’s hard to imagine our Agatha say –
Perhaps once the cuts had been applied,
It left no room for a seedier side.
All-in-all, a little less sour,
Just as Attlee was coming to power.
For this one trip, it must be said,
It wasn’t only her herrings were red.