After the Funeral

After the Funeral is a mystery novel by the English writer Agatha Christie, first published in 1953 and published in the United States under the title Funerals Are Fatal. It features her Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.

Richard Abernethie dies at home, and his relatives come together at Enderby Hall for the reading of his will by his lawyer, Mr Entwhistle. The estate is to be divided between his brother Timothy and Timothy's wife Maud; his sister Cora Lansquenet; his nephew George Crossfield; his nieces Rosamund Shane and Susan Banks and their husbands; and Helen Abernethie, the widow of his late brother Leo.

Richard's death has been accepted as natural until his sister Cora says, at the gathering after the funeral, that he was murdered. Nobody takes the remark seriously at the time. The following day Cora is herself found murdered, which changes how the whole family regards the first death, and Poirot is brought in to establish what she had seen, and which of them she had seen it in. A later British paperback changed the title to Murder at the Gallop, and the film of that name replaced Poirot with Miss Marple.