The title comes from William Blake's Auguries of Innocence: The story begins with Michael Rogers, a twenty-two year old, telling the reader about his time as a chauffeur and how he met the architect Rudolf Santonix.
Mike is poor though, and so can't afford to hire Santonix to build the house he wants.
Michael explains that he’s a “rolling stone”; he isn't content doing just one thing and so has held down many different jobs over the years.
Mike is walking along a village road near the Gipsy's Acre property one day when he falls in love with the grounds.
While walking through the grounds, he meets Fenella (Ellie) Guteman by chance, a wealthy heiress who wants to escape from her world of snobby friends, begging relatives, and restrictive financial advisors.
The situation reads as though she simply disapproves of his spontaneous lifestyle, but Michael claims that his mother knows him all too well.
When Ellie returns, she reveals to Mike that she is in fact, one of the wealthiest women in America and that she was the person who bought Gipsy's Acre.
Major Phillpot, the local landowner, although not a wealthy man, is seen as the "God" of the village; he becomes close with Michael.
Meanwhile, an old gipsy woman, Mrs. Lee, continues to warn Mike and Ellie of a curse and instructs them to leave the house they built.
The police believe it was Mrs. Lee who scared the horse on purpose and murdered Ellie by accident, not knowing she had a heart condition.
While there, he hears that Mrs. Lee has been found dead in a quarry, and Claudia Hardcastle has also died while out riding her horse.
From Mr. Lippincott, he also officially learns that Claudia used to be married to Stanford Lloyd, another one of Ellie's lawyers (the one he thought he saw her with that day).
Before returning to England, Mike goes to visit Santonix on his deathbed in California, his failing health having worsened over the course of the novel.
Before Santonix dies, he screams, “You should have gone the other way!” Feeling disturbed by this, Mike returns to the UK on a sea voyage, giving him time to reflect.
They had fallen in love and later, after Mike had heard that Gipsy's Acre was for sale, they devised a plan to get Ellie’s money.
Shortly afterwards, the police and the local doctor arrive, their suspicions aroused by Claudia Hardcastle's death.
As a young adult, he let another friend bleed to death after he was stabbed during a mugging, just so Mike could steal the money on his person.
The Times Literary Supplement of 16 November 1967 said, "It really is bold of Agatha Christie to write in the persona of a working-class boy who marries a poor little rich girl, but in a pleasantly gothic story of gypsy warnings she brings it all off, together with a nicely melodramatic final twist.
"[6] The Guardian carried a laudatory review in its issue of 10 November 1967 by Francis Iles (Anthony Berkeley Cox) who said, "The old maestrina of the crime-novel (or whatever is the female of 'maestro') pulls yet another out of her inexhaustible bag with Endless Night, quite different in tone from her usual work.
It is impossible to say much about the story without giving away vital secrets: sufficient to warn the reader that if he should think this is a romance he couldn't be more mistaken, and the crashing, not to say horrific suspense at the end is perhaps the most devastating that this surpriseful author has ever brought off.
"[7] Maurice Richardson in The Observer of 5 November 1967 began, "She changes her style again and makes a determined and quite suspenseful attempt to be with it."
He finished, "I shan't give away who murders whom, but the suspense is kept up all the way and Miss Christie's new demi-tough, streamlined style really does come off.
The murder occurs very late, and thus the central section seems desultory, even novelettish (poor little rich girl, gypsy's curse, etc.).
"‘The Case of the Caretaker’ was first published in Strand Magazine, January 1942, and then in the USA in Chicago Sunday Tribune, 5 July 1942."
The play's recording took place at Broadcasting House and had an original score composed by Nicolai Abrahamsen.
Adaptor: Joy Wilkinson Producer/Director: Sam Hoyle Cast: Jonathan Forbes as Mike Lizzy Watts as Ellie Sara Stewart as Greta Joan Walker as Cora/Mike's Mother Victoria Lennox as Mrs. Lee Chris Pavlo as Mr. Constantine/Auctioneer/Policeman/Assistant John Rowe as Philpott/Lippincott Joseph Tremain as Young Mike/Army Boy Dan Starkey as Santonix/Frank Thomas Brown-Lowe as Oscar Endless Night was released by HarperCollins as a graphic novel adaptation on 3 November 2008, adapted by François Rivière and illustrated by Frank Leclercq (ISBN 0-00-727533-1).
It was filmed as part of the sixth series of Agatha Christie's Marple, starring Julia McKenzie.
This adaptation by Kevin Elyot remains fairly faithful to the book, although with the exception of adding Miss Marple.
A French adaptation as part of the television series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie was planned for 2021.