Dead Man's Folly Trivia Quiz

Answer: People keep suggesting changes.

Mrs. Oliver cannot quite put her finger on what is wrong, but she finds that people keep wanting to make changes in what is, after all, her murder game. She stubbornly resists the major changes, but finds herself giving in to minor and seemingly inconsequential ones.

Although the suggestions come from different people, she feels that one person is actually behind them. Although she doesn't know who it is, she reasons that "It's somebody very clever and very careful. It might be anybody." She also feels that "... if there was to be a real murder tomorrow instead of a fake one, I shouldn't be surprised." She turns out to be quite awfully right.

Answer: Hattie Stubbs

Although Amy Folliat had led Poirot (and others) to believe that the parents of her charge, Hattie, had lost all of the fortune they had made in their sugar cane plantations, Poirot deduces that Hattie was in fact a rich woman when she married James Folliat/George Stubbs. Docile and easily dominated, she signed whatever documents her new husband asked he to sign, until, as Poirot reminds Mrs. Folliat "...in the end, the desired financial result was reached. Sir George Stubbs, the new personality assumed by your son, became a rich man and his wife became a pauper."

Answer: It would be completely out of character for Lady Stubbs to be so thoughtful.

Michael Weyman comments on the absurdity of the folly being stuck in among so many trees where there is no vista, when it would have been far better situated at the top of the grassy bank by the house. He wrongly attributes this to Sir George's utter lack of taste: "...a big oak tree crashes down in a gale. Leaves a nasty scar. 'Oh, we'll tidy that place up by putting a folly there'...That's all they ever think about, these rich city fellows, tidying up!" Mr. Weyman little suspects that the real Hattie Stubbs lies under the folly, where Sir George cleverly buried her in the freshly disturbed earth left after the oak tree came down. Similarly, he thinks it absurd for the self-absorbed Lady Stubbs to have thoughtfully sent Miss Brewis with refreshments for young Marlene in the boathouse, as she claims. Again, he does not realize that it was not out of thoughtfulness that Miss Brewis was sent on her errand, but because the Stubbs' were afraid that Miss Brewis might have independently thought to take a tray to the boathouse and might have chosen an inopportune time to do so (also, Lady Stubbs probably took a malicious pleasure in sending Miss Brewis, whom she dislikes and who quite hates her, to the scene of the murder at about the time it occured).

Answer: Edmund Spenser

Shortly after quoting these lines (from Spenser's "The Faerie Queene"), Mrs. Folliat tells Poirot "It's a very wicked world, M. Poirot. And there are very wicked people in the world." One of these, sadly, is her own son.

Answer: "He's always hated me."

In fact, Lady Stubbs does not want to meet De Souza because he will realize that she is not the person she claims to be. Hattie Stubbs, De Souza's cousin, has been killed by Sir George Stubbs, and "Lady Stubbs" has been impersonating her since the murder.

The ruse has fooled the servants, who barely got a glimpse of the real Hattie Stubbs, but it will certainly not fool a blood relative like De Souza. Lady Stubb's statements about De Souza, made shortly before her "disappearance", makes him a prime suspect in her supposed murder.

Answer: The Purple Peril

During the "Murder Hunt", Poirot comes upon Mrs. Oliver in the Camellia garden "...dressed in purple splendor, sitting on a garden seat in a brooding attitude, and looking rather like Mrs. Siddons." Michael Weyman, asked by the inspector who he thinks might have been the murderer, replies "Well, I'd say it was our prolific authoress, the Purple Peril. Have you seen her Imperial Purple getup? I suggest that she went a bit off her onion and thought how much better the murder hunt would be if there was a real body. How's that?"

Answer: Peggy Legge

Peggy Legge was originally to have played the victim, the "Yugoslavian first wife of an atom scientist", but eventually Marlene was suggested instead (undoubtedly by one of the Stubbs'; one of the "seemingly trivial" suggestions Mrs. Oliver was so uneasy about).

Instead, Peggy is pressed into service as a gypsy fortune teller, Madame Zuleika, though she admits she would rather have played the corpse; "much more peaceful". Marlene is unhappy that she is only going to be strangled with a cord; she would rather have been stabbed "...and have lashings of red paint." *NOTE- More than one FT player has insisted that Mrs. Legge's first name is Sally, not Peggy. Both the Bantam edition and the "Bedtime, Bathtub, and Armchair companion to Agatha Christie" give her name as Peggy; it may be Sally in another edition(s).

Answer: Turtles

Poirot encounters this strange fellow during the fete, at the coconut shy, and comes upon him the following day at the folly, where he evidently had intended to meet someone (Alec Legge, as it turns out). Both times, Poirot recognizes him by his garish shirt, adorned with various turtles and tortoises. Apparently, this young man never changes his shirt; either that or he has more than one garish shirt adorned with turtles.

His connection with Alec Legge is never fully elucidated, but apparently the latter had entertained some vague Communist sympathies at one time and had gotten involved with some group or other from which he subsequently tried to extricate himself.

His angst over this wreaked havoc upon his marriage to Peggy who, we discover towards the end of the novel, has cleared out and left him (presumably to take up with Michael Weyman).

Answer: Cyclamen

Christie uses rather more poetic imagery in this novel than usual; the name "Folliat" echoes the "folly" of the title, for example. Cyclamens are mentioned as growing abundantly at the Nasse estate; Lady Stubbs is wearing vivid cyclamen lipstick when Poirot first meets her.

When last seen before her "disappearance", she is wearing a cyclamen-pink georgette dress with a big coolie hat of black straw (later found in the river). When Poirot pays his final visit to Mrs. Folliat, he notes that the cyclamen are finished blooming; so, too, has Lady Stubbs ceased to exist, both the true Hattie Stubbs and the false Hattie, as impersonated by Sir George's Italian first wife.

Answer: "Always be Folliats at Nasse"

Old Merdell represents a double threat to the Stubbs'; he was a witness to Lady Stubbs' burial and he has recognized "Sir George" as James Folliat, who was declared missing and presumed killed in WWII, though he had actually deserted. Though few people take the drunken old man's rambling at all seriously, his granddaughter Marlene was struck by his mention of a dead body in the woods.

She repeated this story to Sir George, who gave her money to keep quiet; eventually, the Stubbs' manage to silence Marlene and her grandfather, who is pushed into the river during a bout of drunkenness and drowns.

Answer: A charm from her bracelet

A charm in the shape of an airplane apparently fell from the bracelet Peggy was wearing in her "Madame Zuleika" getup and lodged in a crack at the base of the folly. Poirot picks it up, and later finds her looking for it. It had come loose during an assignation with Michael Weyman, during the time she had claimed to be in the tea-tent taking her break from fortune-telling.

Answer: Foreign students

Students from the nearby youth hostel, many of them foreign, are forever short-cutting across the Nasse estate to get to the river ferry. They are a source of great consternation to Sir George, who complains that many of them don't speak a word of English and are, he suspects, probably Communists. Peggy Legge compares his fulminations to those of Betsy Trotwood in Dickens' "David Copperfield" about donkeys crossing her lawn. Poirot encounters two of these young women on his way to Nasecombe in the beginning of the story; one of them turns out to be Lady Stubbs!

Answer: Three

Hattie Stubbs has been killed before the novel begins. Marlene is killed by Lady Stubbs because her grandfather, old Merdell, had told her about Hattie's murder and burial and she had been plying the Stubbs for hush money. Merdell is killed because he recognizes Sir George as the "late" James Folliat.

Answer: Bigamy

Though James Folliat (alias Sir George) may have been guilty of any of these things at some point, he definitely committed bigamy when he married Hattie Stubbs, since he had already taken a wife in Trieste. Poirot believes that he resolved from the first to do away with Hattie once he had appropriated her fortune and ensconce his original wife as the lady of Nasse House, a resolution which he carried out.

Answer: The folly being torn down.

In the final chapter, Poirot presents Mrs. Folliat with the solution to the murder, which she already knows, but refuses to acknowledge as she cannot bring herself to betray her son. At the end of their conversation, he calls her attention to the sound of a pickaxe; the folly is being torn down and the body of Hattie Stubbs will soon be found. Mrs. Folliat then asks Poirot to leave her, stating "There are some things that one has to face quite alone..."