Peril at End House

Peril at End House
Agatha Christie

Summary (with spoilers):
Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings are on vacation. Poirot is retired, but wait, is that a bullet zooming past!? Yes, the beautiful Magdala Buckley, known to everyone as  "Nick," is in peril. She's narrowly escaped harm in a string of accidents, and Poirot believes that her life is in danger.


So who is the would-be murderer? The suspects are:
Charles Vyse: Cousin and lawyer
George Challenger: In love with Nick
Ellen + family: Servants
Frederica Rice: Best friend
Jim Lazarus: An art dealer and boyfriend of Rice
Mr. and Mrs. Croft: Couple from Australia living on the estate of End House. Mrs. Croft is paralyzed

Poirot suggests that Nick have a friend (other than Ms. Rice) stay with her. Nick telegraphs her cousin Maggie. During a dinner and fireworks party, Nick (who is wearing black, a color she never usually wears), goes inside to replace her shawl with something warmer. Her cousin follows to get a coat. Poirot, whose feet are getting wet, goes into the house and discovers that someone has been shot. At first, he believes it to be Nick, because the victim is wearing Nick's shawl, but in fact it is the cousin, Maggie.
After the shock, Nick is persuaded to stay at a hospital (which is really just for her protection.) No one is allowed to see her. Poirot does some snooping about. He finds that Nick was secretly engaged to the airman Michael Seton, who is probably dead. Seton, conveniently, has just inherited a large fortune. While in the hospital, Nick eats some chocolates which she thinks were sent by Poirot, but which were laced with cocaine. 

There are lots of clues, but I'll just talk about the giveaway clue. While looking for a will that Nick drew up, Poirot finds some love letters from Seton that are fishy. There aren't a lot of them, and it's clear that more were written than the bundle that Nick kept.
Poirot finally figures things out. He decides to  tell everyone that Nick is dead, and stages a dinner party at End House with all of the suspects. Nick's will, which has been missing for the entire book, mysteriously shows up. Charles Vyse reads the will, which says that all of Nick's assets are to be left to Mrs. Croft. Nick shows up, pretending to be a ghost, and Chief Inspector Japp also makes an appearance, revealing that Mrs. Croft is actually a scammer who forged the will.

Spoiler alert: I'M GOING TO REVEAL THE MURDERER NOW!

Twist! The murderer is actually Nick. It was her cousin, whose full name is the same as Nick's, who was engaged to Seton. Nick killed her cousin so that she could pretend to be Seton's fiance and inherit all of his money. Tricky.

My Thoughts:
I haven't read much Christie (or many mysteries, for that matter), but I preferred And Then There Were None. I didn't see the ending of The Peril at End House coming, although I thought the letters were a bit weird. It crossed my mind that Nick might not actually have been engaged to Seton, but then when he uses her name in a letter, I thought that he must have been. (Totally didn't think about how her cousin could have the same name).

It was easy to read, but the mystery didn't grab me that much. There were all of those clues, but I wanted to breeze through to see what happened. Enjoyable, but forgettable.