Taken at the Flood

Did You Know?

• The novel's title is a line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, spoken by Brutus in Act IV: 'There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune...'
• The false alibi used by the murderer, involving a witness sighting missed train smoke, was a partial re-use of a plot device from Christie's 1925 short story 'The Sign in the Sky'.
• The US edition retailed at $2.50, while the UK edition cost eight shillings and sixpence.

Plot summary

After the war ended in spring 1946, Lynn Marchmont, who had served as a Wren, moved back into her mother's house in Warmsley Vale. At first she enjoyed being home, but soon found the village tedious. She had been engaged to Rowley Cloade, a farmer, since before the war. David Hunter kept a close watch over his sister Rosaleen and her money.

When David was away, Mrs Marchmont gathered the courage to ask Rosaleen for five hundred pounds, and Rosaleen gave her a cheque. David later refused a desperate request for funds from Frances Cloade. A stranger calling himself Enoch Arden showed up at The Stag inn and tried to blackmail David, saying he knew how to locate Rosaleen's first husband, Robert Underhay. The landlady overheard this and told Rowley.

A few days afterward, a maid discovered Arden dead in his room, his head crushed. David had been in London that day; he ran into Lynn while rushing for the last train and phoned her from his London flat after 11 pm, insisting he loved her but was no good for her. Since the murder was thought to have happened before 9 pm, David had both motive and opportunity, so he was arrested. Rowley asked Hercule Poirot to identify the corpse.

Poirot consulted Major Porter. Rosaleen viewed the body and claimed not to know him. At the inquest, Porter testified the dead man was indeed Robert Underhay, and the jury ruled David guilty of wilful murder. This meant Rosaleen's second marriage was invalid, and the Cloade family would inherit the estate.

Poirot interviewed villagers, including Mrs Leadbetter, who had seen a heavily made-up woman in slacks and an orange scarf enter the dead man's room after 10 pm. Since David was on the train then, the police released him and focused on women. Poirot concluded the death was accidental, caused by a fall onto a marble fender.

Characters

Hercule Poirot is a Belgian detective living in London. Superintendent Spence is the investigating officer, assisted by Sergeant Graves. Rosaleen Cloade, twice widowed in her early 20s, was formerly Mrs Robert Underhay and most recently married to Gordon Cloade. David Hunter, her brother, is a former commando and gambler who gained luxury through his sister's marriage.

Gordon Cloade, the wealthy patriarch, remarried in 1944 and died soon after in a bombing raid. Jeremy Cloade, Gordon's older brother, is a senior partner in a firm of solicitors. Frances Cloade, Jeremy's wife, is shrewd and level-headed. Their son Anthony died in the war.

Lionel Cloade, a doctor and medical researcher, has become a morphine addict. Katherine Cloade, his wife, believes in the spirit world. Rowley Cloade, a farmer and Gordon's nephew, is engaged to Lynn Marchmont. Lynn, a demobbed Wren in her early 20s, is restless.

Adela Marchmont, Lynn's elderly widowed mother, is inclined to procrastination. Beatrice Lippincott is landlady of The Stag pub. Gladys is a maid there. Major Porter, a retired soldier, is a club bore.

Enoch Arden is the alias of the blackmailer Charles Trenton. Mrs Leadbetter is a guest at The Stag. Robert Underhay is Rosaleen's previous husband, said to have died in Africa. Eileen Corrigan is a former housemaid who once shared a relationship with David.

Literary significance and reception

Maurice Richardson, reviewing the novel in The Observer of 21 November 1948, found the killing and Poirot's solution ingenious but thought the characterisation below par and the usual Christie feeling missing. An unnamed reviewer in the Toronto Daily Star of 10 April 1948 described Poirot as proving himself a bit of a mug before sorting out the details, but doing so with acumen, calling the work fantastic and topping. Robert Barnard summarised the plot as involving an elderly man married to a glamorous nitwit of dubious background, a common Christie element, and noted the novel is one of the few anchored to an actual time. He called it a compulsive reworking of Tennysonian and Christiean themes, ranking high among classic titles.

Adaptations

A television film adaptation was produced in 2006 for the ITV series Agatha Christie's Poirot, starring David Suchet as Poirot. The cast included Elliot Cowan as David Hunter, Eva Birthistle as Rosaleen, Celia Imrie as Kathy Cloade, Jenny Agutter as Adela Marchmont, and Tim Pigott-Smith as Dr Lionel Woodward. The adaptation made several significant changes. It shifted the setting to the late 1930s.

David's motive was upgraded to that of a mass murderer: the deaths of Gordon Cloade, Rosaleen Turner, and the entire Cloade household were assumed to be from a gas explosion, but Poirot reveals David planted dynamite, seeking revenge against his sister. David and his accomplice Eileen Corrigan took shelter in the basement and emerged from the ruins. Eileen's role was changed: she is an Irish Catholic whom David seduced, made pregnant, and forced into an induced abortion, then manipulated through guilt and morphine addiction.

She is saved from a morphine overdose by Dr Woodward, who steals some of her supply. Kathy harasses Eileen with anonymous phone calls, calling her names. Kathy becomes Adela's sister, and Lionel is renamed Lionel Woodward, no longer a Cloade family member.