AOW #27: IRB 2

In this section, pages 98-195, Monsieur Poirot attempts to find out more about Norma Restarick by contacting her family, friends, and connections they might have that would influence Norma. Poirot is frustrated by all of the information he has gathered: he sees “the links”, that connect people surrounding Norma to her and to each other, but he cannot find “the pattern”. He can not make sense of the information that would explain what Norma had first referred to when she told him she “thought” that she had committed a murder. This frustration he feels is reflected in the writing; the omniscient narrator takes the reader through Poirot’s thoughts as he summarizes and mulls over all the information he has gathered. This provides the reader with an overview of what has been uncovered, and what may be important in solving the mystery. In his summary he stresses some aspects that the reader knows to be important, such as the significance of Norma’s position as “The third girl”. Not only does the reader note this fact as important because of it’s repeated mention, but also because it is the title of the book. The individual parts of the mystery are presented through different characters, not only Poirot; using third person omniscient allows Christie to reveal tiny pieces of information that may be useful to Poirot through other characters in different chapters, different parts of the story. When Christie then describes their interpretation of their experiences to Poirot, the reader is able to compare what actually happened to what Poirot thinks happened. This is important because there are some discrepancies which affect Poirot’s ability to solve the mystery. For example, Mrs. Oliver, an old woman who is trying to help Poirot, finds out that one of the tenants of the apartment building Norma lives in died shortly before Poirot’s first encounter with Norma. Mrs. Oliver did not note this as important, so she mentions it briefly a while after finding out. Poirot is very upset by this, because he does think this is important. This example of the effective use of breaking the information into parts also shows one of the many intricate interrelationships surrounding the mystery that Poirot finds very frustrating. After Poirot investigates this “suicide”, he finds that the name of the woman who died is Louise Charpentier. Poirot does not realize this, but Louise was also the name of the woman who could be blamed for Norma’s destroyed childhood: her father had left her mother for another woman – a woman named Louise. The reader realizes this connection because it was discussed by other characters in an earlier chapter. But Poirot does not. At first, I did not make the connection between the two “Louise”s mentioned; however, the suspenseful conclusion, like many of the other cliff-hangers she ends her chapters with, stresses the importance of the name. Christie writes (from Poirot’s point of view), “Why had the name Louise some haunting memory about it?” (Christie 188). This is one example of the effectiveness  of Christie’s style in pulling the reader into the story and encouraging them to solve the mystery with Monsieur Poirot.