Dead Man’s Folly

Title: Dead Man’s Folly
Author(s): Agatha Christie
Release year: 1956
Publisher: Dodd, Mead and Company

Why in Database: Turtles play a symbolic role in this detective story. One of the characters is wearing a shirt with printed turtles, so he is “defined” in the novel as a man wearing a turtle shirt. He is mentioned in seven fragments.

The first mention about this person is when another protagonist whining about how young people dress “today”:

They come out at you from everywhere wearing the most incredible shirts–boy this morning had one all covered with crawling turtles and things.

All others fragments are similar, the character either shows up in person or is mentioned, always described through the perspective of his T-shirt:

Poirot moved towards the house and was cai-nnoned into by a young man who was stepping backwards to take a better aim at a coconut. The young man scowled and Poirot apologised, mechanically, his ewe held fascinated by the varied pattern c,f the young man’s shirt. He recognised it as the „turtle„ shirt: of Sir George’s description. Every kind of turtle, tortcoise and sea monster appeared to be writhing and cirawling over it.

Poirot considered (hat latter point. Then he heard footsteps outside and looked up sharply. A figure came round to the front of the Folly and stopped, startled, at the sight of Poirot. Poirot looked with a considering eye on the slim, fair young man wearing a shirt on which a variety of tortoise and turtle was depicted. The shirt was unmistakable.

He strolled down to the bend of the path and looked at it where it wound away into the trees. There was no sign of the young man in the turtle shirt now.

I am not often wrong,„ he explained, „and it exasperates me. It was not you I expected to see.„
„Whom did you expect to see? „ asked Alee Legge.
Poirot replied promptly.
„A young man–a boy almost–in one of these gailypatterned shirts with turtles on it.„
He was pleased at the effect of his words. Alee Legge took a step forward.

He also put down „Boy in turtle shirt„ with a query mark after it. Then he smiled, shook his head, took a pin from the lapel of his jacket, shut his eyes and stabbed with it. It was as good a way as any other, he thought.
He was justifiably annoyed when the pin proved to have transfixed the last entry.
„I am an imbecile,„ said Hercule Poirot. What has a boy in a turtle shirt to do with this?

You tried to withdraw and you were faced with a threat. You were given a rendezvous with someone.
I doubt if I shall ever know that young man’s name. He will be for me always the young man in the turtle shirt„

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