Ruth Rendell: "The Killing Doll" Quiz

Answer: Three times

At the beginning of the book, he was widowed when Edith died of cancer. He married two more times during the course of the story.

Answer: Peter and Doreen

Peter was known by his nickname, "Pup," and Doreen was called "Dolly". When Myra suggested that Peter and Doreen might like moving up to the top floor of the house, Harold was at first unsure who she was talking about, as he'd heard their proper names so seldom.

Answer: Make him taller

By the end of the book, he was delighted to find he had grown to five foot eight -- the last inch when he was twenty.

Answer: He wanted to leave her and marry another man

He wanted to marry Ashley Clare, in whose apartment he spent most of his nights.

Answer: Conal Moore

Conal was the cousin with whom Diarmit roomed when he came to London. Diarmit was semi-literate and could not read the postcards Conal sent him, so he had no idea when or if Conal would return. He believed that he himself had disappeared and began insisting his name was Conal Moore.

Answer: Yvonne

He fell deeply in love with her.

Answer: Anubis

Pup never really did an invocation, but chanted and stage acted. Dolly was terrified to see Anubis emerge from the incense smoke during the evocation. She saw him everywhere after that, even seeing him turn into a bus driver.

Answer: She had a birthmark on her cheek

Pup, who had quickly lost his interest in magic as he matured, was hoping she wouldn't ask him to remove it. Dolly hated cats and was responsible for the death of Mrs. Brewer's Fluffy. Mrs. Das heard Dolly yell and saw her drive the cat into traffic.

She told Mrs. Brewer what she had seen, not because she liked cats, but because Mrs. Brewer was one of the few persons in the neighborhood who would speak to her since she was Indian.

Answer: All of these

"She was a trumpery, shallow, insincere woman was Myra, but she had her happinesses and her miseries like anyone else ..."

Answer: On the underground platform

She took the little girl doll to Mrs. Leebridge, and coming home on the underground thought she encountered Myra. The crowded platform was the ideal place to push her under the subway. Just as she was ready to push, the bun-faced woman saw what she was doing and reacted with horror. Dolly ran out of the station, running into the real Myra in the crowd.

Answer: A geomancer

It was an obscure term for magician and would impress Dolly. His interest in magic soon faded, but he found it useful as an excuse to give the overprotective Dolly when he wanted be out in the evenings.

Answer: Edith and Myra

She began hearing her mother, Edith, speak after the séance with the Adonai Church of God Spiritists. Myra joined her after Dolly disrupted another séance with hysterical screaming. Mrs. Leebridge was furious that Roberta Fitterer, the medium, had been interrupted in her work "Look what that girl's done. ... the ectoplasm rushing back like that, it's a wonder she's not all burned up." Mrs. Leebridge was a sucker for photographs of ectoplasm and other such fakery.

Answer: He survived George

Oddly, for a man who wanted to marry Ashley, George had not altered his will, thus leaving Yvonne a wealthy woman.

Answer: Her extraordinary beauty

"Dismay was what most women felt in the presence of Yvonne Colefax." But Myra liked her a great deal because she was always friendly and eager to please, and pitied her because her husband ignored her.

Answer: Myra and Ashley Clare

She also made a ballet girl, a little girl with yellow plaits, and an Indian boy, along with a doll that was a nightdress case for Yvonne.

Answer: Andrea

"She was the most domesticated of his girls, the only one who was houseproud, who could cook." She made him delicious dinners (eggs Benedict, chicken pies) in her tiny bedsit.

Answer: None of these

Myra died trying to abort herself with the syringe she had gotten from George's surgery. Dolly was convinced that Pup was responsible for her death since, on the night she died, Pup had been play-acting "We'll clobber the wicked stepmother!"

Answer: True

Edith called him Harold, Myra Brewer called him Hal because she thought it sounded dashing, and Wendy Collins called him Harry.

Answer: Ernest, Duke of Cumberland

Writing it "... had been fun, the best fun he had ever known." The novel was called "Her Highness My Sister", and was about "... the unsavory life of that least exemplary of the sons of George III ... who was said to have committed incest with his sister and murdered his valet."

Answer: Her talisman

She lost it somewhere between the Mistley tunnel and home. Pup had made it for her; a seven-sided pendant painted green with the letters in red. She always wore it and tried to dress to compliment its colors.