History Literature / LordEdgwareDies

* DivorceRequiresDeath: Why Jane kills her husband even though he had agreed to the divorce. It turns out her new lover, the Duke of Merton, is Catholic and wouldn't marry a divorcee.

* EarlyBirdCameo: Hastings and Poirot attended a dinner which they met a drunkard. The drunkard turns out to be Ronald Marsh, Lord Edgware's nephew and his heir.

** Poirot stumbles onto the truth as a result of an irrelevant remark made by a stranger who passed him in the street: "If they had just had the sense to ask Ellis right away..."

* FramingTheGuiltyParty: [[spoiler:Lady Edgware hires an actress to impersonate her at a dinner party while she kills her husband, then kills the actress later. During the murder she takes great care to be seen by those in the household, though she purposely acts strangely. At first it seems apparent she's the killer, till all the party guests give her an alibi. When the actress's dead body is found, it appears that the killer hired the actress to commit the murder and frame Lady Edgware.]]

* HisNameIs: Donald Ross is halfway through telling Poirot the important realization he had at a party, when he's interrupted by a caller at the door. The caller murders him.
* IdenticalStranger: Lord Edgware's butler, Alton, is said to bear a striking resemblance to Bryan Martin, but there is no mention of familial ties between the two characters.

* ItsAllAboutMe: Jane is pretty open about this being her philosophy in life; she believes that everyone, everywhere ought to be working to make her happy. She really doesn't care about the damage she might do to other people. She is so self-obsessed to the point that after her husband dies, she shows absolutely no concern or worry for her own well-being, despite the fact that it was obviously murder. [[spoiler: Given that she killed him, she had nothing to worry about, but she didn't even try to look worried about her potentially being a target. In the EpilogueLetter, she says she thinks it was mean of Poirot to have her arrested for doing what she needed to do to be happy merely because that resulted in the murders of three people, and that Carlotta Adams betrayed her trust by mentioning the impersonation in a letter to her sister. The last words in her letter are her speculating that Madame Tussaud's might have a figure of her]].

** Ronald says that after he asked his uncle for money and was turned down, he walked away, "and that very same night...Lord Edgeware dies." Then he says that would be a good title for a book.
* LingerieScene: Jane greets Poirot and Hastings in "a gossamer negligee that revealed more than it hid." It comes off as more of her ItsAllAboutMe egoism than an attempt to be sexy.

* NarrativeProfanityFilter: Inspector Japp is admitting that Lord Edgeware's butler has disappeared.

* NoodleIncident: Poirot speculates that Lord Edgeware agreed to the divorce because Jane discovered something ugly in his past to blackmail him about. What it is is never explained.

* OhCrap: A double whammy, both centered on the same gaffe. While attending a dinner party, someone makes reference to [[spoiler: "the judgment of Paris," a term from Greek mythology, but Jane thinks the speaker is referring to the city. Everyone is embarrassed, but Donald Ross falls into this trope and seems more troubled -- because he realizes that the "Jane" who he spoke to at the dinner party on the night of Lord Edgware's murder was a cultured, intelligent lady who spoke freely and articulately about myths and legends. He immediately deduces that ''this isn't the same woman,'' and rushes off to make a phone call... triggering the trope in Jane, who follows and promptly murders him.]]

* PhoneyCall: How Jane arranges her alibi. She has Carlotta pretend to be her, then calls "herself" at the time of the murder, so everyone thinks that she was at the party when it was actually Carlotta.

* RevengeByProxy: Ms. Carroll says that Lord Edgware treated Geraldine cruelly as a form of revenge against her mother for leaving him.
* ReverseRelationshipReveal: Jane Wilkinson is apparently the victim of a frame-up, in which the murderer hired a mimic named Carlotta Adams to make it appear that Jane had kill Lord Edgware. In fact, Jane was the real murderer and had hired Carlotta to establish her alibi.
** Jane also feels victimized by her terrible husband who refuses to grant her a divorce. He is in fact her victim. He granted her a divorce by letter, but she pretended never to receive it, as part of her alibi for his murder.

* StickyFingers: Alton the butler discovered the victim's body and did not report it immediately. Instead, he saw it as an opportunity to steal cash that was lying about nearby.
* SummationGathering: Played with. Poirot gives his typical summation, but he only gathers two of the suspects, Bryan and Jenny, instead of the whole group. And it turns out that neither of them is the killer, but he summoned them in order to 1) match them up and 2) scare the wits out of Bryan, who pissed Poirot off.

* TilMurderDoUsPart: Jane killed her husband because she knows that the Duke of Merton won't marry a divorcee, but he would marry a widow.

* WhoMurderedTheAsshole: A murder mystery in which the victim, Lord Edgeware, is a complete asshole, emotionally abusive to his daughter, a sadist, and just generally a dick.
* WidowsWeeds: The supremely self-obsessed Jane complains about having to wear black mourning dress.

* ChekhovsGun: The offhand comment that the Duke of Merton is "a violent Anglo-Catholic" turns out to be the motive behind the murder. Jane killed her husband because she knew that the Duke would never marry a divorcee.

* TheNondescript: Carlotta Adams in has an indistinct appearance that "could take on an alien character easily, but had recognisable character of its own".
* NoodleIncident: Poirot speculates that Lord Edgeware agreed to the divorce because Jane discovered something ugly in his ast to blackmail him about. What it is is never explained.

** "Poirot look at her, his head a little on one side," when he's boggling at Jane's unfeigned happiness at her husband being murdered.

* RealLifeWritesThePlot: Agatha Christie first got the idea for this novel after seeing a highly talented vaudeville artiste, who in her show portrayed a range of characters ranging from five to fifty, of both genders and over a dozen varied walks of life. Christie basically started wondering 'if this woman can do all that, what else could she do -- could she impersonate someone specific?'. Plot Ensued.

* TillMurderDoUsPart: Jane killed her husband because she knows that the Duke of Merton won't marry a divorcee, but he would marry a widow.

* QuizzicalHeadTilt:

* SizeableSemiticNose: There's a lot of anti-Semitism in early Christie novels, like in this one when Ronald is talking about going to the opera with a Jewish family hoping to match him up with their daughter Rachel. Ronald says "Her long Jewish nose is quivering with emotion."

* QuizzicalHeadTilt: "Poirot look at her, his head a little on one side," when he's boggling at Jane's unfeigned happiness at her husband being murdered.

* MathematiciansAnswer: Poirot seems to take pleasure in keeping Hastings in the dark. When Hastings asks why the two of them are going off to meet the Duke of Merton, Poirot answers "Because I wish to see him."

* AbusiveParents: Mostly implied. Lord Edgware is a ruthless man who enjoys having people fear him, and his daughter has an unpleasant childhood as a result. However, his treatment of Geraldine is never described in detail; all that's said is he ignores her most of the time, and when he doesn't its nasty enough that she hates him and is glad he's dead.

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: Inspector Japp jokes that "The police are always made out to be blind as bats in detective stories." This is, of course, precisely his role in the Christie universe, to be the dumb cop that Poirot runs rings around.

* AssholeVictim: The murder victim, Lord Edgware, was an unpleasant man with sadistic tendencies.

* CallBack:

* ChekhovsParty: Two. The first is obvious, as Jane is at a party when her husband is murdered. Then, Donald Ross is killed... and that happens at ''another'' party. [[spoiler: Donald overheard Jane mistake the "judgment of Paris" as referring to the city of Paris. This appears to be a simple social embarrassment, but it's much more significant to Donald because he was talking about culture with "Jane" at the dinner party. He puts these two parties together to figure out Jane had an impersonator -- and so she killed him.]]