Jon Hagadorn

Stories filled with shadowy organizations and coded symbols.

And she decided to play with those tropes in her own way.

The result is a mystery that begins like a comedy of manners and gradually transforms into something far more sinister.

So settle in as we continue unraveling the threads Christie has laid out.

Chapters three and four mark the moment when the joke stops being funny.

The stakes begin to rise, and the seven dials themselves start casting their long shadow over the story.

And now chapter three, The Joke That Failed.

"'Twelve o'clock,' said Socks, despairingly.

The joke, as a joke, had not gone off any too well.'

The alarm clocks, on the other hand, had performed their part.

They had gone off with a vigor and elan that could hardly have been surpassed, and which had sent Ronnie Devereaux leaping out of bed with a confused idea that the day of judgment had come.

If such had been the effect in the room next door, what must it have been at close quarters?

Ronnie hurried out in the passage and applied his ear to the crack of the door.

He expected profanity, expected it confidently and with intelligent anticipation, but he heard nothing at all.

That is to say, he heard nothing of what he expected.

The clocks were ticking all right, ticking in a loud, arrogant, exasperating manner, and presently another went off, ringing with a crude, deafening note that would have aroused acute irritation in a deaf man.'

There was no doubt about it.

The clocks had performed their part faithfully.

They did all and more than Mr. Murgatroyd had claimed for them, but apparently they had met their match in Gerald Wade.

The syndicate was inclined to be despondent about it.