Endless Night (novel)
Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
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| Cover artist | Kenneth Farnhill |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
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Publication date
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30 October 1967 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 224 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
| Preceded by | Third Girl |
| Followed by | By the Pricking of My Thumbs |
Endless Night is a crime fiction novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 30 October 1967 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at eighteen shillings (18/-) and the US edition at $4.95. It was one of her favourites of her own works and received some of the warmest critical notices of her career upon publication.
The title comes from William Blake's Auguries of Innocence:
Michael Rogers, a footloose, seemingly nonchalant, working-class dabbler, narrates the story. He has a close relationship with his friend, Rudolf Santonix, a famous but ailing architect with an interest in one day building a house for Michael. While walking along a village road, Michael meets Fenella "Ellie" Guteman, a wealthy heiress, who yearns for a life outside of her judgmental and pompous inner circle of relatives and advisers. Ellie and Michael form a romantic relationship and decide to marry.
Excited by the prospect of their new life, Ellie is able to fund the building of Gipsy's Acre, their new modern home near the place where they met. Michael requests Santonix to build the house, to which he readily agrees. The couple come across locals, such as Major Phillpot, the village "God"; Claudia Hardcastle, a woman who shares Ellie's love of horse riding; and Miss Esther Lee, an elderly gypsy who tells Ellie to leave the village or fate will curse her. Matters are made worse when Ellie invites her attractive secretary/companion Greta Anderson to stay at the house, to the annoyance of Michael who eventually gets into a heated argument with her.
Ellie begins to become more worried about the dangers of Gipsy's Acre and more frightened of Miss Lee's increasing hostility towards her. Then, having been missed for several hours after embarking on a routine morning horse ride, Ellie's dead body is found in the woods. An inquest finds that a combination of a heart condition and being thrown from her horse was to blame. Michael visits Rudolf Santonix in hospital as he is close to death. Santonix, with his dying breath, screams "Why didn't you go the other way?" before dying in front of Michael. A now melancholy Michael has to travel to America to attend Ellie's funeral and to receive the inheritance bequeathed to him in Ellie's will. While in America, Michael receives a letter from the village telling him that the bodies of Miss Lee and Claudia Hardcastle had been discovered, suggesting that Ellie's death was not an accident.
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