Grave Mistake Trivia Quiz

Answer: The gardener dies

Sybil Foster is a middle-aged woman who is slightly scatterbrained and overly dramatic. She has employed her gardener for many, many years, but they have recently been having disputes over various plans for Sybil's elaborate gardens and the gardener walked away from Sybil after their most recent argument. Sybil wants to fire him but feels like she cannot because domestic help is extremely difficult to find and because the gardener had been with her for decades. Verity tells her all will be fine in a few days. However as soon as she says this, the elderly gardener dies and Sybil is forced to find a new one. As luck would have it, the widowed Mrs. Black's brother, who just moved to the town of Upper Quintern, is a gardener ironically named Bruce Gardener.

Bruce's ideas are much more in line with Sybil's and Sybil soon dotes over him and recommends Bruce to her friends, including Verity.

Answer: Dr. Basil Schramm

Nikolas Markos is a man of Greek origin who has recently purchased an old house in Upper Quintern after failing to convince Sybil to sell him her home. He lives with his son Gideon, who is immediately smitten with Prunella, Sybil's daughter and Verity's goddaughter. Verity is shocked to discover that a late-arriving guest named Dr. Basil Schramm is actually one Basil Smythe whom Verity has a past connection with.

The reader is not immediately told what this connection is, but is left with the impression that something is suspicious about Dr. Schramm.

Answer: Prunella gets engaged to Gideon

Sybil disapproves of Prunella's engagement because Gideon is of Greek origin, despite the fact that she thinks he is a decent man otherwise. Sybil wants Prunella to marry John Swingletree, a man Prunella hates with a passion. It initially appears that Sybil accepts the engagement, however, and is calm when Verity informs her of it.

Claude Carter is Sybil's stepson from her first marriage to a Maurice Carter. Maurice died in World War II when his train was bombed, leaving behind Claude who was still a very small child. Since then, Claude has grown into a disreputable man who finds himself in and out of prison and in constant need of money. Sybil and Prunella (who is from Sybil's second marriage) hate Claude, but Sybil still lets him stay in her home because she loved Maurice. Claude announced he was going to visit Upper Quintern and Sybil checked herself into Greengages partially to avoid him. He is not supposed to know her location, but Bruce lets it slip. Claude attempts to visit Sybil at Greengages but is denied entry.

Answer: The pills in her mouth are soluble in alcohol

Sybil supposedly committed suicide by dissolving a bunch of pills in whiskey and drinking it. When that didn't work, she allegedly took more pills straight from the bottle and these were found in the back of her mouth, unswallowed. This doesn't make sense to Alleyn because there was still whiskey nearby she could have used and he thought she would try another method if the pills didn't work. Alleyn's suspicions are confirmed when he and Fox investigate Sybil's room at Greengages and finds bite marks in her pillowcase, indicating she was smothered.

Answer: Claude Carter

Sybil's will left her house, called Quintern Place, to Prunella. In addition, Prunella will receive half of Sybil's estate on the condition she marries Mr. Swingletree, which Prunella refuses to do. The other half of Sybil's estate is left to Dr. Schramm. Dr. Schramm will also get Prunella's half should she refuse it. Bruce is left 25,000 pounds. Claude is not mentioned in Sybil's will. However, Claude will receive a trust left to him by his father upon Sybil's death.

This will was written by Sybil just a few days before her death. Alleyn looks into whether this will might have been forged or made under duress. However, it turns out Sybil did write this will while of sound mind. Two workers at Greengages witnessed it and Sybil sealed it in an envelope. She gave the envelope to Bruce, who handed it over to Mrs. Jim, the day helper at Quintern Place.

Answer: A rare stamp

Claude's father left him his rare stamp collection when he died. Claude had sold the entire stamp collection years prior for the money. However, he was missing a rare stamp called the Black Alexander. This stamp was of particularly great value, but wasn't with the rest of Maurice's stamp collection. On the day he died, Maurice took the Black Alexander out of the bank because he wanted to store it safely during the war. He went to Quintern Place and left a note for Sybil explaining that he took Black Alexander out of storage but never explained what he did with it because he was called away suddenly and the train he was riding on was bombed and he died. Everyone just assumed the Black Alexander was lost in the bombing.

Twenty-five years later, Claude is back at Quintern Place and is obsessed with finding the house plans. In the garden section, there is a place marked with an X. The X is located in the stable area which Sybil had converted into a living quarters for Bruce. Alleyn found Claude prying in a collapsed fireplace and, later in the novel, Claude finds the Black Alexander buried underneath it.

Answer: Dr. Schramm

Everyone thought it odd that Sybil would leave her entire fortune to Dr. Schramm, a suspicious man she had only known a short time. During an interview with Alleyn, Schramm admits he was actually engaged to Sybil. This makes him even more of a suspect in Alleyn's eyes. Verity later tells Alleyn she can believe Sybil was engaged to Schramm because she had fallen for him years before. Schramm, then called Basil Smythe, was a student in Verity's father's medical school. Verity and Basil had an affair and later became engaged.

However, Basil left Verity at the altar and forged a check with her father's signature on it.

Answer: False

Alleyn saw an old picture Sybil had of her first husband Captain Maurice Carter with his regiment during World War II. He recognized Bruce Gardener as Carter's valet. When he asked Bruce about this, Bruce denied knowing Sybil was his captain's wife. Bruce explained he had never met Sybil in those days and while he had seen photos, many years had passed. Sybil also had a new last name because she remarried.

Alleyn believed Bruce's denials initially, but soon came to realize Bruce was lying. As Captain Carter's valet, Bruce would have known everything about Maurice, including his home life and the name of his son and home. Alleyn speculates that Maurice confided in Bruce about the Black Alexander and Bruce went to retrieve it twenty-five years later.

Answer: Sister Jackson described a man who looked like Bruce sneaking into Sybil's room

Bruce was after the Black Alexander stamp that Captain Carter had hidden twenty-five years prior. However, when Sybil made a new will leaving him 25,000 pounds, Bruce decided to kill her instead. Bruce had opened the envelope containing the will and read it. He denied this, but Mrs. Jim noticed the seal on the envelope had been resealed. In addition, Bruce had wiped the will of his fingerprints and in doing so also wiped off those of Sybil and the two witnesses. The only fingerprints on the will all belonged to people who handled the will after Prunella found it. This meant that at some point, the will had been read and cleaned by someone who denied knowing about it.

Bruce killed Sybil by sneaking up to her room at Greengages and smothering her with the pillow. Claude witnessed Bruce enter Sybil's room. Claude had also sneaked up to see Sybil, but hid in the closet when he saw Bruce. Claude wanted to ask Sybil for money but found her dead and knew Bruce had killed her. He took to blackmailing Bruce. Bruce killed Claude as a result. Bruce was tasked with digging Sybil's grave and took all day doing so. He said that a vein of clay made digging difficult and that is why it took so long to dig. In reality that was just an excuse to cover for the fact that he dug the grave very deep to hid Claude's body after he killed him.

Claude had also been blackmailing Sister Jackson, a nurse at Greengages. She entered Sybil's room after Bruce killed her and Claude was hiding in the bathroom. Sister Jackson claimed Sybil had been asleep at the time in order to cover for Dr. Schramm, whom she believed killed Sybil. But Sister Jackson did not see Bruce enter Sybil's room.

Answer: False

Bruce was only tried for the murder of Claude, as Alleyn did not believe there was enough evidence to try him for Sybil's death. Alleyn also says that it does not really matter anyway, because the circumstances of Claude's murder stem from that of Sybil's and the truth will come out anyway.

At the end of the novel, Verity laments losing such a good gardener as Bruce. This is a flashback to the beginning of the novel where Sybil lamented losing such a good gardener when her original one died even though they argued a lot.