In Agatha Christie’s novel "The Hollow," the eccentric Lucy Angkatell holds a dinner party for the Christows (John, a famous doctor, and his wife, Gerda), various members of her extended family and her neighbor, detective Hercule Poirot. The next morning, Poirot witnesses a scene that seems strangely staged: Gerda stands with a gun in her hand next to John’s body as it bleeds into the swimming pool. Lucy, Henrietta (John’s lover) and Edward (a cousin of Lucy’s) are also present. John utters a final urgent appeal, “Henrietta,” and dies.
It seems obvious that Gerda is the murderer. Henrietta steps forward to take the revolver from her hand, but apparently fumbles and drops it into the pool, destroying the evidence of Gerda’s fingerprints on the handle. Poirot realizes that the dying man’s “Henrietta” was a call to his lover to protect his wife from imprisonment for his death.
Without any conscious plan, the entire family joins in the plot and deliberately misdirects Poirot. Each of them knows that Gerda is the murderer, so they stage the crime scene, but in a reflexive way: The deception lies in the very fact that it appears staged. The truth masks itself as artifice, such that the faked elements are, in fact, “clues.” As another of Christie’s famous detectives, Jane Marple, remarks in "They Do It with Mirrors": “Never underestimate the power of the obvious.”
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