At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie

JetBlackDragonfly
Oct 2, 2023
3 min read

Updated: Apr 30

I've enjoyed reading all the Marple mysteries back to back, but have to say At Bertram's Hotel was not my favourite.

I felt it was disjointed, and while there was a murder and a mystery, the plot was too scattered to really engage me. Still, it's quirky and original, proving that if you are as good as Christie was, you're allowed to break some rules.

Bertram's Hotel is tucked away in a quiet pocket of London, favoured by American tourists and older English alike for its old fashioned charm. Here, you can have tea in the lobby with real muffins and Ceylon, perhaps running into retired military or aging socialites. Miss Marple has been given a fortnight holiday by her nephew and has chosen Bertram's, where she visited as a girl. Among the guests are Elvira Blake, a young woman about to come into her fortune at 21, who is full of pranks played with her friend Bridget - like pawning shoplifted jewellery to finance excursions when she slips away from her Guardian. There is also the wild adventuress Bess Sedgwick, whose escapades are reported in the papers - a woman too wild to bring up her own child. Elvira and Bess are both lovers of the same French/Polish/Italian race-car driver Ladislaus Malinowski, whose hot sports car attracts a lot of attention at the hotel.

Canon Pennyfather is also spending four days at Bertram's on his way to give a talk in Lucerne - was that today? or was it yesterday? He is never quite sure and quite happy to be found in the right place at the right time.

One evening, Canon Pennyfather leaves the hotel and disappears for three days! A search brings in Police Chief Inspector Davy, nicknamed 'Father', who finds Marple a great source of observations. Then 'Father' learns of other news - the well executed robbery one night of an Irish Mail train. Could any of these guests have been involved in the robbery gang?

Outside in the thick night fog, someone takes a shot at Elvira Blake approaching the hotel. The doorman runs out to help and a second shot is fired, killing him. Who is trying to kill Miss Blake?

The stories of Elvira, Bess, Pennyfather, and the true mystery of Bertram's itself are all interesting, and that's what a hotel offers - different types of people who have their stay in common. That said, I found it disjointed and would have preferred a tighter knit story. The various stories are complete and all the threads come together, although I found some of the coincidences a little farfetched. You learn about the characters in separate vignettes mainly taking place outside the hotel, whereas I was expecting the action to happen under the one roof.

I guess that's what the ITV version tried to do when it was filmed in 2007. They moved all the stories to Bertram's Hotel - with several major changes! In that version, Bertram's was used to transfer Nazis and war criminals to a safe country while robbing them of their art treasures - the race car driver became a Nazi hunter and Bess a French resistance agent! Pennyfather was now a Nazi named Herman Koch, who never disappeared. Elvira has a guilty relationship with her friend Bridget, as she once made Bridget swim in a river where she contracted polio and lost the use of her hand!

Where the novel ends with a dramatic car chase and a fiery crash, the film has a new ending!

Christie apparently based Bertram's on a real hotel she enjoyed going to called Brown's in London. Like all the Christie mysteries I've read, Bertram's was packed with originality, but this one was definitely my least favourite.

1965 / Hardcover / 256 pages