Why didn’t they ask Evans? By Agatha Christie

Most commonly known are the Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple series from this author but her other murder mysteries are equally fun to read. This happens to be one of the books where 2 bored friends get themselves entangled in a murder mystery. The story starts on a quiet day at a golf course with the vicar’s youngest son and the local doctor. As the sun begins to set, young Bobby Jones hits his ball in the direction of the cliff. When he goes looking for the ball, he calls the doctor over, as there appears to be something at the bottom of the cliff.

Both scramble down and find a nearly dead man. There is nothing that can be done, so the doctor decides to go for help and Bobby stays with the dying man. Suddenly the man opens his eyes and says, ‘Why didn’t they ask Evans?’ and then dies. Bobby felt bad, so he took out a handkerchief form the man’s pocket to cover his face. A photo falls out of the man’s pocket. Bobby sees it is a picture of a beautiful young lady and tucks back into the pocket. He was getting late and wondering how long it would be before help came. Then he heard someone coming and a stranger calls from the top to check if all was ok. He offers to stay with the body instead of Bobby.

Then Bobby goes off for a couple of days and returns to meet up with an old friend Frankie and they get to talk about the accident. The inquest passes the verdict of death by accident. The body had been identified by the sister and brother in law who were traced through the picture found in the dead man’s pocket. Bobby is surprised to see the sister as she does not look anything like the photo he had seen. Now he gets a little interested but feels there is nothing he can do. Then he gets asked by the sister and brother in law of the dead man if there were any last words he may have said. Its only later that Bobby remembers that he had said, ‘Why didn’t they ask Evans?’ 

He informs the sister on the address they had given him apologising for forgetting to mention this. The response he gets was a very terse thank you. In a few days he gets an offer for a job working out in South America which is strange as this is out of the blue. He talks to Frankie about it and they think this is too much of a coincidence and decide to find out more about the dead man and his family. They want to get to the bottom of what the dead man meant by ‘Why didn’t they ask Evans?’ Who the lady in the photo was, as it definitely was not the sister? They start by finding out more about the stranger who had stopped to help out by sitting with the body. 

They feel sure he had something do with it for who else had the opportunity to change the photo? He is the prime suspect but when found he comes across as totally harmless. Will they find the girl in the photo? The plot is well written and has enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing. How the nursing home Grange’s doctor and his wife are involved in this mystery? Bobby has to keep disguising himself to keep near Frankie while they are investigating. They confide in one or two people to get help but are they being naïve trusting anyone in this case?  But still, the answer to the question, ‘why didn’t they ask Evans?’ eludes them. 

The mystery will of course get cleared at the end but the outcome to my mind was less than satisfactory over all, see if you think the same. I like all neat and bad people get punished and all live happily ever after and this ending is not that neat. But I certainly enjoyed reading this Christie book.