The Mousetrap

Giles is in his twenties, is “arrogant but attractive” (2) and co-runs Monkswell Manor with Mollie. Of all the characters, he has the least to hide. He is initially made to look suspicious early in the play due to having an overcoat that is like the murderer’s. The second red herring that points to Giles being the murderer is the London newspaper in his coat. However, Giles’s only secret is that he went to London to buy a hat for Mollie as an anniversary present.

Giles becomes entangled with other characters through Mollie, his “darling” (63). He is jealous of the male attention she receives from Christopher and Paravicini. Without Mollie, Giles has no connections to the Longridge Farm case; he is never at risk for being murdered. Also, the earliest red herring that pointed to Giles is discredited because several characters arrive with similar overcoats. His omission about going to London for Mollie’s gift is free of the trauma that accompanies the other character’s deceptions.

Like Giles, Christopher has no connection to the Longridge Farm case. However, unlike Giles, Christopher’s secret springs from a traumatic experience; he is an army deserter. His dialogue implies that he is gay; Christopher calls Trotter, and policemen in general, “attractive” (23). Also, Christopher “adore[s] cooking” (35) and says, “Everyone’s always been against me” (38). Christopher’s sexuality is implicit. Like his real name, it is never fully revealed to the audience. The idea that part of his ostracization is due to his sexual orientation, especially as a member of the army, is subtextual.

Several red herrings point to Christopher being the murderer. Both Christopher and Georgie Corrigan (the actual murderer) deserted the army, and both are described, at different points, as “childish” (5). Christopher sings children’s songs and is fascinated with the “macabre” (9). While Christopher’s only crime is desertion, he functions as an effective distraction from the real killer. In England, homosexuality was only legalized in 1967, well after The Mousetrap’s debut. Through Christopher, Christie may have been commenting on the way society pathologized and criminalized gay people at the time of publication. 

The killer, Georgie Corrigan, disguises himself as a policeman, Detective Sergeant Trotter. When he enters Monkswell Manor, other characters remark on how Trotter is attractive and “young” (23). Trotter fabricates his policeman identity, in part, by creating a profile of the murderer—essentially describing himself in a detached manner. For instance, Trotter tells Mollie matter-of-factly that the evidence points to Georgie Corrigan because of his “mental instability, childish mentality” (40). When Trotter drops his policeman act and reveals he is Georgie, he becomes “simple and childlike” (63).

Additionally, Trotter uses the conventions of detective fiction to fabricate his false identity. He puts the other characters through several rounds of questioning, creates suspicions using red herrings, and eventually he asks the characters to reconstruct the actions that were performed during the murder of Mrs. Boyle. These tactics—controlling the flow of dialogue and action—make it harder for the other characters to see his identity. In truth, he seeks revenge for the trauma he and his siblings endured at Longridge Farm.

Katherine (Kathy) Corrigan, the sister of the murderer—Georgie Corrigan—uses the false last name Casewell. Like Christopher, Katherine is coded as queer. She is “a young woman of a manly type” (10) who identifies politically as not quite “Red—just pale pink” (17), meaning she is not on the far left (“Red” being a word for Communist), but left of center. Katherine might also have adopted her masculine persona to protect herself as a woman traveling alone “abroad” in “Majorca—and other places” (55) while trying to find Georgie. Her gender presentation also makes her suspicious to the audience because of Trotter’s insistence that the killer is male.

Because her motivation is to find Georgie, Katherine more easily reveals her real first name than other characters. When questioned by Trotter, Katherine tries to ascertain if he is Georgie in disguise by using the name Katherine and the fact that she used to have a different last name. However, she is cagey with other characters, especially before Trotter’s appearance, indicating that she does not suspect them. 

Metcalf is a middle-aged policeman in disguise. He uses a “military [...] manner” (8) in this disguise and he may have served in the military before becoming a policeman (the audience doesn’t learn if his name is false or much about his real identity beyond his occupation). Being undercover, Metcalf generally keeps a low profile, but he does provide information about Mrs. Boyle’s connection to Longridge Farm. Only Mollie tries to throw suspicion on Metcalf, suggesting to Trotter that it is the Corrigan children’s father who might be the murderer. However, her idea is quickly dismissed, and Trotter reasserts the accurate profile of the murderer being a younger man, specifically Georgie Corrigan himself.

Christie describes Paravicini as “foreign and dark and elderly,” as well as “a slightly taller edition of Hercule Poirot” (13). This makes Paravicini a visual reference to Christie’s other novels and stories involving the detective Poirot. However, in The Mousetrap, Paravicini is a watch-thief and a letch.

While he acts in a suspicious fashion, including playing “Three Blind Mice” on the piano, Paravicini, like Metcalf, is too old to be a serious suspect for the murders. His age could be part of his disguise (like Metcalf, the audience does not learn all the details about Paravicini’s past).