Okay, now it´s official. I hate Catchpool, Poirot´s sidekick (or as I call him, poor man Hastings), Scotland Yard inspector and our POV character. Yes, that´s right, I´m stuck in his head.
Because this is Catchpool, being whiny and negative as all get out:
Well, I admit it: I don´t like villages. I didn´t say so to Poirot before I left, but I said to myself many times during the train journey, and then again when I got off at the pretty little station. I didn´t like this charming narrow street in which I stood, that curved in the exact shape of a letter S and had a tiny cottages on both sides that looked more suitable for whiskery woodland creatures than for human beings.
I didn´t like being asked presumptuous questions, questions by complete strangers on the street, though I was fully of my own hypocrisy, since I was here in Great Holling to interrogate strangers myself
Seriously, that guy is not right in the head. And it doesn´t stop there:
Here, thankfully, no hot-water bottle with a knitted cover had been laid out for my use. I can´t bear the things; even the sight of them irks me. The warmest thing in any bed should always be a person, in my opinion.
Yeah right, because the Devil has sent hot-water bottles straight up from hell to torment humanity. Honestly, he is such an idiot.
Alone in the parlour, I ruminated over whether I had left it too late to ask her to call me Edward, and, if not, whether I ought to do so. I pondered this while knowing that I would say nothing, and would allow her to continue with "Mr. Catchpool". It is among the more pointless of my habits: wondering what I ought to do when there is no doubt about what I am going to do.
Seriously, does the author think that Catchpool is a compelling character? What is going on here?
As for this being a Poirot pastiche:
After dictating a list of everything we knew, Poirot followed the same procedure for everything we didn´t know but were hoping to find out. (I considered reproducing these two lists here, but do not wish to bore or infuriate others as I was bored and infuriated).
Oh, Christie would have included this list. And this feels like such a cheap cop-out.
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