Taken at the Flood

Taken at the Flood is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in March 1948 under the title of There is a Tide . . . and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in the November of the same year under Christie's original title. The US edition retailed at $2.50 and the UK edition at eight shillings and sixpence (8/6). It features her famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, and is set in 1946.
The novel tells a story of post-World War II England, when life seems turned upside down, with the relief of the end of the war, the changes from who lived and who died, and the economic challenge of post-war life, playing out for one family in a village not far from London. The detective Superintendent Spence is introduced in this novel, with whom Poirot works again in a few more stories. The Cloade family, brothers and one sister, have had many abrupt changes from the war, losing their brother Gordon in a London bombing raid shortly after his unexpected marriage to a young widow. One son is lost to fighting, a daughter returns from serving as a Wren, and another son seems to be making a successful venture at farming, despite losing his partner in the venture to the war. When the Wren Lynn returns, her interrupted engagement to her cousin resumes, with troublesome interruption from the brother of Uncle Gordon's widow Rosaleen. A stranger in the village, using the literary name Enoch Arden, blackmails David Hunter and is soon found murdered. Hercule Poirot is called in.
Richardson found the "doubly twisted" plot, to be "ingenious enough", but for him, "the quintessential zest, the sense of well-being which goes to make up that Christie feeling, is missing." Another reviewer was more pleased with the novel, saying that Poirot solves the mysteries "with all the acumen that has endeared him to Agatha Christie fans. Fantastic and topping." A review in 1990 was pleased to find a Christie novel tied distinctly to a specific year and world event, but had a more complex commentary on the novel as a whole, calling it a "Compulsive reworking of Tennysonian and Christiean themes, and pretty high up in the range of classic titles."
Plot introduction.
In spring 1944 during World War II, Gordon Cloade marries a widow he meets on board ship to New York, Rosaleen Underhay. A few days after arriving in London with his new wife, his London home is bombed, killing all but two people. One survivor is Gordon's brother-in-law, David Hunter, and the other is his new wife, Rosaleen Cloade. Gordon did not write a new will upon arrival, and his existing will is invalidated by the marriage. Rosaleen inherits Gordon's fortune. A day or so later, during another raid, Poirot sits in a shelter with people from the Concordia club in London and listens to a story about Major Porter's friend Robert Underhay in Africa, about his unhappy marriage and that Underhay may not be dead, told after reading out the news that Gordon Cloade, the second husband of Underhay's widow, was killed by enemy action.
The death of Gordon Cloade brings unexpected change to his siblings and their families. Gordon gave them capital to start a venture, to handle unexpected expenses, encouraged them not to save, and promised his fortune would be split among them when he died.
Plot summary.
In spring 1946, Lynn Marchmont, a Wren during the war, settles again in her mother's home in the village of Warmsley Vale in peacetime, at first happy to be home, then finding life dull. She has been engaged to farmer Rowley Cloade since before the war.
David guards his sister and her fortune. Mrs Marchmont gets up the courage to ask Rosaleen for five hundred pounds when David is away, and Rosaleen writes a check. David angrily turns down a request from Frances Cloade, whose family is in desperate need of money.
A man calling himself Enoch Arden arrives at the village inn The Stag, and attempts to blackmail David by saying he knows how to find Rosaleen's first husband, Robert Underhay. Their conversation is overheard by the landlady, who tells Rowley Cloade. A few days later, a maid finds Arden's body in his room with his head smashed in. That same day, David was down from London. He met Lynn on his dash to catch the last train to London, and evidently telephoned her from the London flat shortly after 11 pm, arguing first that he loves her and then that he cannot be good for her. As the murder is believed to have happened before 9 pm, he had enough opportunity and motive and he is arrested.
Rowley Cloade appeals to the detective Hercule Poirot to find the true identity of the dead man. Poirot asks Major Porter. Rosaleen sees the body and says she does not know the man at all. At the inquest, Porter says that Arden was indeed Robert Underhay, and the coroner's jury votes against advice to believe him, voting willful murder by David. The estate will revert to the Cloades, if the jury's decision holds, as it means Rosaleen's second marriage was not valid.
Poirot talks to people in the village, including Mrs Leadbetter, a guest at the inn who saw a 'hussy', a heavily made up woman wearing slacks and an orange scarf, enter the room assigned to the dead man after 10 pm on the fateful evening. As the police believe that David was on the train to London at that time, they let him go, and look more seriously at women. Poirot learns how the death occurred, with a fall on the marble fender of the fireplace. He proposes it was accidental death, not intentional murder.
Lynn is falling in love with David. Major Porter commits suicide in London but leaves no note. Poirot realises from a photo at the home of Frances Cloade that Arden was related to her; she admits Arden was Charles Trenton, her second cousin. She came up with the plan to blackmail Rosaleen after hearing Major Porter's story about Underhay. This explains Arden's true identity, but nothing else. Frances denies bribing Major Porter.
When Poirot and Lynn visit Rosaleen at home, the maid realizes she does not respond. Poirot sees that Rosaleen has died in her sleep. The doctor identifies the harmless sleeping powder she took, at her bedside table. Superintendent Spence, the investigating officer, suggests that she was the murderer. Rosaleen died from too much morphine; where did she get it?
Lynn tells Rowley that she wishes to marry David Hunter and he explodes in anger. Rowley is strangling Lynn when Poirot enters the house, and Rowley stops. David arrives shortly, and Poirot explains everything. Rowley visited Arden, and seeing the resemblance to Frances, reacted angrily to the deception. Punched by Rowley, Arden fell against the marble fireplace fender and died. Rowley saw the opportunity to incriminate David. He smashed in Arden's head with fire tongs and left David's lighter at the scene. Rowley persuaded Porter to give the false identification by offering him money. Then Rowley employed Poirot, who would be sure to go to Porter. Porter's guilt led him to commit suicide, leaving a note that Rowley destroyed. David was about to pay the blackmail to Arden; upon discovering Arden's body, David ran for the late train but missed it. David then backtracked to The Stag, disguised himself as a woman, and played out the scene, heard by Mrs Leadbetter, which established the later time of death. Then he called Rosaleen, who placed a call to Lynn that was delivered by the operator but then cut off. A minute later, David called Lynn from the local train station, giving her the impression that he was calling from London. He returned to London on the early morning milk train the next day.
Of the three deaths, Poirot says one is accidental, one is a suicide, and one is murder. The true murder victim was Rosaleen. The woman known as Rosaleen was not David Hunter's sister; his sister was killed and the housemaid Eileen Corrigan had survived the bombing. Poirot sent to Ireland for a photo of Eileen, which explained the truth of what happened during the war. David persuaded her to be Rosaleen. Now he could kill this accomplice with a morphine pill and marry Lynn, whom he loved. Poirot knows all these details but only some of them are known to the police. Rowley feels guilty about the deaths of Trenton and Porter. The police focus on David killing Rosaleen/Eileen, and proving all of that case. After a while, Lynn returns to Rowley, realizing she does love him, especially after his show of force. Life will not be dull with him.
Explanation of the novel's title.
The title of the book in both the UK and US markets is a line from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" in a speech by Brutus in Act IV: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune . . .". The quotation is given in full as the epigraph to the novel.
Literary significance and reception.
No review of this book appeared in the "Times Literary Supplement".
For once, Maurice Richardson, in his review of the 21 November 1948 issue of "The Observer" was slightly unimpressed: "Agatha Christie has, if not a whole day off, at least part of the afternoon. The killing of the blackmailing Enoch Arden, who puts up at the local to harry the already embarrassed Cloade family, the murder that follows, and Poirot's doubly twisted solution are ingenious enough, but the characterisation is a little below par. The quintessential zest, the sense of well-being which goes to make up that Christie feeling, is missing."
An unnamed reviewer in the "Toronto Daily Star" of 10 April 1948 said, "Hercule Poirot, whose eggshaped cranium is crammed with lively gray cells, proves himself a bit of a mug before he sorts out all the details of [Enoch Arden's] death and other even more baffling mysteries. But he does it with all the acumen that has endeared him to Agatha Christie fans. Fantastic and topping."
Robert Barnard summarised the plot of the novel as an "Elderly man married to a glamorous nitwit of dubious social background [which] is a common plot-element in Christie. Here she is widowed (in an air-raid – this is one of the few Christies anchored to an actual time), and burdened by financially insatiable relatives, both of blood and in-law. But who exactly is dead, and who isn't? And who is what they seem, and who isn't?" His commentary is favourable on the title, more cryptic on the novel itself, as he said it was a "Compulsive reworking of Tennysonian and Christiean themes, and pretty high up in the range of classic titles."
References to other works.
The false alibi used by the murderer of a witness sighting the missed train smoke was a partial re-use of a plot device used by Christie in the 1925 short story "The Sign in the Sky", later published in the 1930 collection "The Mysterious Mr. Quin".
Adaptations.
Television.
A television film was produced in 2006 with David Suchet as Poirot in the ITV series "Agatha Christie's Poirot". The cast included Elliot Cowan as David Hunter, Eva Birthistle as Rosaleen, Celia Imrie as Kathy Cloade, Jenny Agutter as Adela Marchmont and Tim Pigott-Smith as Dr. Lionel Woodward. The film made several significant changes to the plot:
This story was adapted for television in the episode "Le flux et le reflux" [The Ebb and the Flow] in the French series "Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie", the eighth episode in the first series, first airing 15 April 2011. Antoine Duléry was Superintendent Larosière, and Marius Colucci was his assistant, Lampion. The adaptation was written by Anne Giafferi and Murielle Magellan, and directed by Sylvie Simon. The plot is essentially the same, but set in a chateau in France, where the extended family of Capitaine Delarive lives. He marries late in life to a younger woman, and brings her and her brother back to France. There is a fire, he is killed. He has not revised his will after his marriage, so his widow inherits his wealth. The denouement is announced by Larosière, who gets back on the case once he overcomes his grief for his good friend Delarive. The woman put forth as his wife surviving the fire was a maid, and the man who claimed to be her brother, was not her brother, and he killed the maid. There is a suicide and an accidental death, as well.
Radio.
John Moffatt played Poirot in the 2004 BBC Radio 4 adaptation of the novel.