The Laws of Narrative:
II) Christie’s Law (A) - If you don’t see the body, they aren’t really dead.
Many Agatha Christie characters die “off screen”. There is much dialogue about the death, but we (through the viewpoint character) never actually see the corpse. This is a trick to stop us from suspecting that the dead character is the murderer. Remember, murders are like potato chips, one is never enough. Thus, in the last chapter, we find that the “off screen” victim has been alive all along. They’ve either been hiding in the hidden passages or they’re dressed up as a secondary character that we’ve barely noticed, happily wreaking havoc.
Don’t believe it the next time you read: “he died in the war” or “he was poisoned in Egypt” or even “the police found his body”. He’s either hiding behind a secret door or pretending to be the butler. And we all know what butlers do best.
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