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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 January 2025
Agnus Dei
In each of her adaptations of Agatha Christie's work, Sarah Phelps has hidden an Easter egg for eagle-eyed viewers. Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) by Spanish Baroque artist Francisco de Zurbaran appears in each series in the houses of each of her victims. The oil painting is an allusion to John the Baptist's description of Jesus as “The Lamb of God.” It's a simple image, that of a lamb with its feet trussed and ready for slaughter on a sacrificial block. The painting hangs in the lounge in And Then There Were None, the room where the ten guests gather to hear the accusations played over the speakers. In The Witness for the Prosecution, the painting is propped up on an aisle in Ms French's drawing room, appearing in a scene as she dances right before she is found murdered. The painting appears again in the dining room in Ordeal by Innocence, where the unhappy family members gather to hurl accusations at one another. In The ABC Murders, the painting appears in a shot on the stairwell of the Clarke household as Capstick, the maid, looks up at her dying employer, Hermione. Finally, the painting is seen once again in The Pale Horse, adorning the wall to the left of Mark Easterbrook in his office. For Sarah Phelps, the lamb represents the guilty party awaiting to be judged:
It hasn't got a choice. It's not making a sacrifice; it is being sacrificed.… You don't know whether it's alive or dead. It's impossible to tell and I just kept thinking that it kind of crystallised, for me, something to do with Christie, which is about you’ve done something and that something has trussed you and so now you are headed in a direction where you don't actually have any free will. You could have done it a long time ago but now you’re in this story, you’re trussed, you’re basically on the path to perdition and you’ve put yourself there. (Phelps, qtd in Robinson 2020)
Beyond being an intertextual clue for audiences to spot, the painting speaks to an internal logic of the quintet. The painting's repeated appearance speaks to the inevitable nature of death in Christie's writing.
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