(Contains no spoilers)
Imagine an elitist girl boarding school in the English country side led with an iron hand by the founding head-mistress, an elegant, ambitious woman with innovative ideas. Imagine school start at the end of the summer, rich English pupils and foreign royalty, green grass, gardens, tennis lessons, and teachers roaming around.
If A Cat Among the Pigeons would not be my pick for suspense and mystery, the boarding school aesthetic and the strong lead female characters do the trick, to the point where Poirot was hardly needed and come in the plot as a guest-star merely to tie some lose-ends.
Just like for A Murder is Announced, I recommend this book for its characters. Probably because Miss Bullstrode reminds of Miss Blacklock, whom I adored.
Miss Bullstrode is the founder and headmistress of Meadowbank School for Girls. She’s a fascinating character for her ambition and modernity as she founded the school to give girls the best of past traditions along innovative education to prepare them for the future. On the contrary to the stereotypical headmistress image, she’s against too much tradition and love to embrace change or experiment with new ideas. She wants to retire to bring a new wind to the school and is not afraid to take risks. She’s very strong, unbothered and hard to scare. She hardly flinches as her school’s reputation is stained by murders, and accept her fate with grace when she might lose it all and have to start all over again, for, you see, Miss Bullstrode hates anything dull.
The cast is so full of strong women they almost solve the murders without Poirot.
One of them is Jennifer Sutcliffe, a student and extremely talented tennis player who only care about improving her skills and competing, and is quite oblivious to anything else, or like her mother said: “a complete lack of imagination”. At the start of the novel, Jennifer and her eccentric mom, Joan, find themselves fleeing a Persian revolution in which Jennifer’s uncle was involved as a friend of Prince Ali Yusuf of Ramat. Among other things, some diamonds where lost in the mayhem.
Jennifer befriends Julia Upjohn, a bright young girl who’s quite close to solving the murders and go fetch Poirot herself for backup. Her mom used to be a spy and spends her leisure time travelling the world by herself.
‘… The mess in my bedroom – things thrown about everywhere, drawers pulled out and overturned. I had to look through everything before I could be sure – though now I come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing my best Jacqmar scarf.’
‘I’m sorry, Mummy. That was me. It blew overboard in the Mediterranean.’
Interestingly, Princess Shaista who happens to be the cousin of Prince Ali Yusuf, join the school and claims she’s about to be kidnapped for the lost diamonds mentioned earlier.
The murder(s) cause mayhem across the staff: the loyal Miss Chadwick, the efficient Miss Vansittart, French mistresss Miss Blanche, the passionate Eileen Rich, the disliked grumpy Sport teacher, and the newly recruited secretary Ann Shapland.
The plot have a hint of humour as the presence of a new, young and handsome undercover gardener, Adam, distract both pupils and staff.
He drew a sheet of paper towards him. ‘What do you fancy as a name?’
‘Adam would seem appropriate.’
‘Last name?’
‘How about Eden?’
‘I’m not sure I like the way your mind is running. Adam Goodman will do very nicely.’
If not a great suspenseful mystery, a tasteful cast and context in my opinion.
Chapter 26.
Chapter 26 
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