“The Hollow” is a novel by Agatha Christie from 1946. Its title is a name of an English country house. The hollow may mean many other things at the same time. Its an allusion to the poem of Tennyson (“I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood...”), but, in my opinion, the most important meaning of it is an allusion to the hollow of the idolatry.
Central figures of “The Hollow” are two women who “love” a selfish and superficial doctor John Christow: his devoted wife Gerda Christow, a stupid woman, and his devoted mistress Henrietta Savernake, a clever sculptress. In the beginning of the book, there is a strange (and for its story very important) mention about miss Savernake's work “The Worshipper”.
The Worshipper made by a religious artist could be a wonderful monument of the faith. “The Worshipper” by Henrietta Savernake, has, however, nothing to do with the faith – at least not with the faith in God. This sculpture features Gerda Christow as a “strange submissive figure, a figure offering up worship to an unseen deity – the face raised – blind, dumb, devoted – terribly strong, terribly fanatical...” The poor woman is offering up worship to her poor husband Dr Christow, who is her idol...
Gerda is a vulnerable person. She is often insulted as “terribly slow” or “stupid” and the world seems to be a dangerous place for her. Her whole happiness is the man who promised “to take care of her”. John is in her eyes an idealistic doctor, a perfect husband and a truly noble person. She makes every sacrifice for him. One of these sacrifices is a visit to his horrible relatives, Sir Henry an Lucy Angkatell. John looks forward to this visit, but his wife is afraid of it.
The Angkatells organise a weekend's entertainment at their country house, The Hollow, having overlooked the fact that the invited guests loathe each other. They invite at the same time John, Gerda, Henrietta and also Edward and Midge. Edward loves Henrietta, but Henrietta is in love with John. Edward, of course, hates him. Midge loves Edward and is unhappy both because of him and because of herself.
All the guests come to The Hollow and the atmosphere is very stifling. To crown it all, a neighbour suddenly appears on Saturday evening “to borrow a box of matches”. This neighbour is the beautiful Veronica Cray, an old flame of John Christow, who in fact wants to seduce him again. She takes him away from The Hollow to her own cottage and spends a night with him. John returns home at 3 a.m.
Another cottage in the neighbourhood is occupied by Hercule Poirot, who has been invited for Sunday lunch by the Angkatells. When Poirot arrives, he is a witness to a scene that seems strangely staged. Gerda Christow stands with a gun in her hand next to John's body, bleeding into the swimming pool. Lucy, Henrietta and Midge are also present at the scene. John utters a final urgent appeal, “Henrietta”, and dies.
It is obvious that Gerda is the murderess. Henrietta steps forward to take the revolver from her hand, but apparently fumbles and drops it into the swimming pool, destroying the evidence. However, the pistol that Gerda was holding was not the gun used to kill John. The detective plot is very simple: Gerda had taken from Henry's collection of firearms two pistols - shooting John with one, and then planning to be discovered with the other pistol in her hand, later proven not to be the murder weapon. The Angkatells know that Gerda is the murderess, and attempt to save her from imprisonment.
At the same time, Agatha Christie develops another simple plot - a love one this time. Edward comes to the realization that Henrietta is no longer the girl he once loved. He looks at his relative Midge and realises that she is no longer “little Midge” of their childhood. Edward asks her to marry him. Midge is happy for a while, but then she realises that to live with Edward would mean to live with the ghost of Henrietta, too. She decides to call off the wedding. Edward puts his head in a gas oven but he is saved by Midge. She relents and the wedding is on again...
Henrietta understood that John's final appeal had been for her to help Gerda and assumed the responsibility by dropping the gun. Later she finds Gerda's second gun and hides it in a clay sculpture of a horse in her workshop to avoid the police searches. There is, however, the final clue: the holster in which the murder weapon was kept. Gerda had cut this up and placed it in her workbag. Henrietta rushes to Gerda in an attempt to retrieve and destroy it.
Gerda has no idea that Henrietta was her husband's mistress. She saw, however, John with Veronica at that night. This was the motive for the murder. Gerda tries to kill even Henrietta as Henrietta knows her secret. She gives a poisoned cup of tea to Henrietta. Hercule Poirot, however, arrives and rearranges the tea cups. Gerda returns from the kitchen, drinks from the cup intended for Henrietta and dies. (This is a questionable end of many Poirot's stories - the detective taking justice into his own hands...)
Before Poirot came, Gerda had been talking to Henrietta about John: “It was all a lie - everything! All the things I thought he was... I'd trusted John. I'd believed in him - as though he were God. I thought he was the noblest man in the world. I thought he was everything that was fine and noble. And it was all a lie! I was left with nothing at all... I couldn't bear it! I had to kill him!”
This is the true message of the novel, the message concerning the hollow of the idolatry. An idolater is always “left with nothing at all” in the end. I like this expression of a biblical message in the language of the modern literature very much. I am, however, sorry to say that Agatha Christie uses the Bible in a specific way. She writes about idols, but seldom aobut God (and hardly at all about Christ). She often paraphrases the Bible, but the meaning of her biblical allusions is not biblical. In “The Hollow”, there is a happy end, where Edward falls in love with Midge and thinks that “Midge is the rock on which I can build my life”. Even Henrietta thinks that “it's people like Midge who are the salt of the earth”. It has nothing to do with Christ's disciples as the salt of the earth according to the New Testament (Midge is “warm”, nothing more than that). It seems that the authoress has no idea that only the Lord is the rock on which a person can build his or her life and that to build one's life on another human being is always the idolatry...
2024 ©