69 pages • 2 hours read
The Mousetrap
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Act I, Scene 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Act I, Scene 1, Pages 1-4 Summary
Christie’s script begins with a description of the setting: The Great Hall of Monkswell Manor. The Hall is the lounge of Mr. and Mrs. Ralston’s newly opened guest house and contains several tables and chairs, as well as doors that lead to offstage sections of the Manor.
The play begins with all the lights off and the song “Three Blind Mice” playing. As the curtain rises, the lights are still off, but the music fades. The audience hears a woman’s scream, some concerned voices, and police whistles. These sounds fade, and the audience hears a voice on the radio reporting a murder being investigated by Scotland Yard.
The lights come up, revealing Monkswell Manor as the radio continues to report on the murder of Mrs. Maureen Lyon, and then turns to the snowstorm along the Scotland coast. Mollie Ralston comes in, turns off the radio, and takes off her gloves and coat. She calls for Mrs. Barlow, but gets no reply, and heads offstage.
Giles Ralston, Mollie’s husband, enters, calling for her while taking off his coat. She reenters the stage, and they talk about their supposed errands—her to the village and him to find chicken netting (however, it is revealed at the end of the play that they were off buying each other anniversary presents). Their conversation turns to the weather and the sign for the guest house that Giles has incorrectly lettered.
Giles asks Mollie about the guest arrangements—four guests in four rooms—and they discuss their inexperience in the hospitality industry. When Giles leaves the room, Mollie turns the radio back on, and it repeats the information about the murder suspect’s clothes, which match the pieces that Giles left behind and Mollie now picks up while heading offstage herself.
Act I, Scene 1, Pages 5-15 Summary
Mollie switches off the radio as she lets in the first guest, Christopher Wren (this turns out to be an alias; the audience never learns his real name). He compliments the lounge, and Mollie gives him a tour of the offstage dining room. When they return to the lounge, they meet up with Giles.
Giles dislikes Christopher’s rambling and takes his suitcase offstage. Christopher, sensing Giles’s distaste, chats with Mollie about how interesting he thinks people are. Mollie smokes a cigarette. Christopher claims to be an architect (he is hiding his identity as a gay army deserter). Giles returns, Christopher compliments Mollie, she responds coldly and shows Christopher up to his room offstage.
Giles answers the doorbell offstage and returns to stage with Mrs. Boyle. She complains, and Giles goes offstage to assist Major Metcalf with bringing in Mrs. Boyles’ luggage from their shared taxi. Mollie comes back, and Mrs. Boyle complains about her inexperience. Major Metcalf (who is a detective in disguise) and Giles return. Mollie tells Giles she shifted the rooms to accommodate Christopher’s preferences; Giles leads Metcalf offstage to his room, carrying Mrs. Boyle’s luggage.
Mrs. Boyle complains about the lack of staff. Christopher sneaks in, singing a nursery rhyme about the snow. Mollie introduces the guests to each other. Giles returns and tells Mrs. Boyle that they can find a replacement for her if she wants to leave due to her complaints. Mrs. Boyle refuses to leave and asks Mollie to take her to her room.
Christopher expresses his distaste for Mrs. Boyle, and another guest—Miss Casewell (another alias; her real name is Katherine Corrigan)—arrives. She warms herself in front of the fire and tosses her overcoat to Giles. When she looks over a newspaper, Christopher asks about the news. Miss Casewell, Christopher, and Giles discuss the murder coverage. Mollie returns to the hall, and she takes Miss Casewell to her room with Giles carrying luggage behind them.
Once alone, Christopher sings “Little Jack Horner” and hides behind a curtain. When Mollie and Giles come back and discuss dinner, Christopher emerges from the curtain and offers to help cook. Mollie takes Christopher to the kitchen offstage and returns without him. Giles and Mollie talk about Christopher and the other guests.
The doorbell rings unexpectedly, and Giles leads a foreign man named Mr. Paravicini into the lounge. He claims he had trouble with his car in the snow and asks for a room. Mollie offers him the empty one. Paravicini jokes about being mysterious (he turns out to be a watch thief) and the weather isolating the guest house. This causes the Ralstons to feel uneasy as the scene ends and the curtain falls.
Act I, Scene 1 Analysis
The first scene of The Mousetrap introduces most of the characters. Giles, as a new co-owner of a guest house, wonders “what all of these people will be like” (4), which sets up Christie’s thematic look into the nature of identity and how it is constructed. The location of Monkswell Manor allows for the paths of many different people to intersect. Christie’s guest house also categorizes the play with other stories about inns, such as Daphne du Maurier’s 1936 murder mystery Jamaica Inn.
The Monkswell Manor location gains importance as a place that the characters are unable to leave. They conflict with nature by being “snowed up” (3) with their cars “bogged” in drifts (11). Christie’s entire onstage plot takes place in a single room. Trapping characters is a way to raise the stakes of interpersonal interaction.
The stakes of The Mousetrap are also established by the descriptions of a murder in Paddington on the radio and in the newspaper. Before any characters enter the stage, the audience is informed of the murder, setting up the expectation that identifying the murderer will be the focus of the play. However, the play later subverts the expectations of how detective fiction stories unfold by making the primary investigator (who has not entered the play by the end of the first scene) the murderer.
Christie’s original title for The Mousetrap was Three Blind Mice, like the nursery rhyme that is repeated throughout the play. Throughout the first scene, Christopher’s singing of nursery rhymes makes him seem suspicious. He says he “adore[s]” these rhymes because they are “so tragic and macabre” (9). Christopher is not the murderer, however; the nursery rhymes are false clues, also called red herrings, which throw the audience off track.
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By Agatha Christie
