Volume 68 in the Agatha Christie Collection (1967) Limited edition of 1000 copies worldwide Gipsy's Acre was a truly beautiful upland site with views out to sea -- and in Michael Rogers it stirred a child-like fantasy. There, among the dark fir trees, he planned to build a house, find a wonderful girl and live happily ever after, Yet, as he left the village, a shadow of menace hung over the land. For this was the place where accidents happened. Perhaps Michael should have heeded the locals' warnings: 'There's no luck for them as meddles with Gipsy's Acre'.
"I’d no real idea that that wasn’t all there was to it. I suppose it happens to everyone sooner or later and it happens suddenly. You don’t think as you imagine you’re going to think: ‘This might be the girl for me… This is the girl who is going to be mine.’ At least, I didn’t feel it that way. I didn’t know that when it happened it would happen quite suddenly. That I would say: ‘That’s the girl I belong to. I’m hers. I belong to her, utterly, for always.’ No. I never dreamed it would be like that. Didn’t one of the old comedians say once– wasn’t it one of his stock jokes? ‘I’ve been in love once and if I felt it coming on again I tell you I’d emigrate.’ It was the same with me. If I had known, if I had only known what it could all come to mean I’d have emigrated too! If I’d been wise, that is."
Endless Night is one of Dame Agatha's lesser known novels. However, it is easily one of her best.
The narrator describes this story as a love story but it is clear from the outset - and obviously knowing that it is an AC story - that not all is well and that there are powers conspiring against the main characters. It is for the reader to follow the narrator into the story of Gipsy's Acre, his story.
I'm not going to give anything away here but just want to say that this book had me hooked and led me down the garden path right until the very end. And for someone who is quick to describe Dame Agatha's mysteries as formulaic, this is not easy to admit. Well, ok, it is. I enjoyed every minute of being mislead by this story.
"In my end is my beginning…That’s a quotation I’ve often heard people say. It sounds all right– but what does it really mean? Is there ever any particular spot where one can put one’s finger and say: ‘It all began that day, at such a time and such a place, with such an incident?’ "
