Mark Aldridge

He's creating a bigger problem.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes.

He'll go for it, but he won't be able to succeed.

I guess that more broadly, to round this section off, we can see it as an allegory for history's contrary positions on Winston Churchill, who obviously is seen very differently by different people.

So we're back from dinner and lovely dinner.

Really nice.

Shall we recommend it?

It's a really good Turkish Greek.

But I think that this is the closest they get to being a romance.

so even then you're going I mean it deals with love as a theme but it's not a like Mills and Boo I don't know the reason why it feels more like a romance is because it has got that central trio the central triangle as we know is so common in Agatha Christie but here Mary Westmacott is presenting it to us

And I think that there is something about the way that Isabella's used as a pawn between the two dominant male characters that is typical of some romances of this era, but also quite atypical of Agatha Christie, I would say.

She's an unusually passive character, but that is sort of the point.

It's not like that she is just because that's what women are like, you know, in quotation marks, but because that's her function is that she's so sort of bewitched by John Gabriel in particular that she can't fight.

Which is so unusual.

I know I'm immediately going to tell myself that there are loads of other examples of this.

But the fact that like the failed part of the triangle, the person who doesn't get to be part of most of the action is the narrator.

feels quite anti-romantic at the same time.

You know, that it's about loss and, yeah, confusion.

This real thing about Hugh just really not understanding John Gabriel.