July 25, 1935

July 25, 1935, is the date that gives the second warning in the A B C murder campaign its immediate force: it identifies Bexhill-on-Sea as the next threatened place, then becomes the morning on which Elizabeth Barnard is found dead there. The interval between prediction and discovery makes the date a hinge between a taunting letter and a confirmed murder.

The Date in the Warning

In a printed letter addressed to Hercule Poirot, the writer boasts that the Andover crime went well and declares that the entertainment is only beginning. The message then directs attention to Bexhill-on-Sea and specifies the 25th as the date. Its jaunty language and sign-off, A B C, contrast with the serious purpose of the notice: to announce another crime while challenging Poirot to anticipate it.

The warning arrives after the Andover murder, which Poirot had already described as the beginning rather than an isolated case. For Arthur Hastings, the letter makes that prediction newly concrete. The place and date turn the prospect of repetition into a timetable, while the sender’s self-congratulatory tone presents the coming violence as a game.

July 25 in the Narrative

On the morning of July 25, Hastings wakes at about half past seven to Poirot gently shaking his shoulder. One look at Poirot’s face brings him fully alert. Poirot tells him that a young woman’s body has been found on the beach at Bexhill-on-Sea and that the death occurred during the night, between 11:30 p.m. and 1 a.m.

The victim is identified as Elizabeth Barnard, a waitress at one of the local cafés who lived with her parents in a recently built bungalow. An A.B.C. railway guide, open to the trains to Bexhill, has been found beneath her body. The guide’s placement makes the earlier date and place-name part of a recognizable pattern, rather than merely the contents of a threat.

Significance

The date’s significance lies in the tight correspondence between the warning and the discovery. July 25 is first presented as a future deadline chosen by the letter-writer; by the time Hastings is awakened, the threatened interval has passed and a body has been found. The shift from anticipation to confirmation gives the date its narrative weight and advances the investigation from the first murder toward a sequence that Poirot and Hastings must now confront.