The Agatha Christie Spoiler Quiz

Answer: Dr James Sheppard

***SPOILER ALERT***

In this novel, Hastings has moved to Argentina and Hercule Poirot has retired to the village of King's Abbot to grow vegetable marrows. However, his retirement is short-lived when Roger Ackroyd is murdered and Ackroyd's niece, Flora, begs Poirot to find the truth. Dr Sheppard assists Poirot in his investigation and narrates the story. It transpires that he is the murderer.

In her autobiography, Agatha Christie credits her brother-in-law, James Watts and also Lord Louis Mountbatten for the idea of making Dr Sheppard, who performs a Watson-like role as Poirot's assistant, turn out to be the murderer.

"I owe it in part to my brother-in-law, James, who some years previously had said..."What I would like to see is a Watson who turned out to be the criminal". It was a remarkably original thought and I mulled over it lengthily. Then, as it happened, very much the same idea was also suggested to me by Lord Louis Mountbatten, as he then was, who wrote to suggest that a story should be narrated in the first person by someone who later turned out to be the murderer...My mind boggled at the thought of Hastings murdering anybody, and it was anyway going to be difficult to do it in such a way that it would not be cheating".

She went on to say that a lot of people thought it *was* cheating but she insisted that the clues were all there if they read it carefully.

Answer: Michael Rogers

***SPOILER ALERT***

Like "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", this story is also narrated by the murderer. In "Endless Night" (1968), working-class Michael Rogers meets and marries rich heiress Fenella (Ellie) Guteman after a whirlwind romance. Shortly thereafter, Ellie is murdered as a result of a scheme hatched by Michael and Greta, Ellie's friend and companion. They have set their sights on Ellie's fortune which Michael will inherit as her husband. Michael realises too late that, despite his attraction to the sexy Greta, he would have been happier with sweet-natured Ellie.

At the conclusion of the novel, Michael admits to his involvement in the deaths of six people - Ellie, Claudia Hardcastle, Esther Lee, and Greta Andersen, as well as Pete, a childhood friend, and Ed, a companion from his military training camp.

Answer: Justice Lawrence John Wargrave

***SPOILER ALERT***.

The original title of Agatha Christie's book was "Ten Little Niggers", based on an old English rhyme. It was published as "And Then There Were None", as well as "Ten Little Indians", in America because the original British title was considered offensive, even in 1939. It is now known only as "And Then There None", which is the last line of the rhyme.

In this novel, ten people are lured to an island (originally called Nigger Island, then Indian Island, and now Soldier Island), left stranded and then murdered one by one. After the bodies were discovered, Scotland Yard detectives were unable to ascertain the identity of the murderer as they were unable to determine who was the last to die.

In the "Epilogue", the murderer's confession was found by a fishing trawler in a sealed bottle thrown into the sea. Justice Wargrave wrote that he had always been conflicted between his strong sense of justice and the simultaneous desire to kill. When his doctor advised him that his illness was terminal, Justice Wargrave decided that, before he died, he would "invent a murder mystery that no one could solve" and simultaneously punish ten people that he deemed had escaped justice for their crime of murder. He then had a change of heart regarding keeping the mystery and decided to leave a written solution/confession: "It was my ambition to invent a murder mystery that no one could solve. But no artist, I now realize, can be satisfied with art alone. There is a natural craving for recognition which cannot be gain-said. I have, let me confess it in all humility, a pitiful human wish that some one should know just how clever I have been..."

Answer: Simon Doyle and Jacqueline de Bellefort

***SPOILER ALERT***.

Like "Endless Night", the novel "Death on the Nile" (1937) involves the murder of a wealthy heiress as a result of a scheme hatched by the husband and the "other woman". Linnet Ridgeway marries Simon Doyle, the fiance of her impoverished best friend, Jacqueline. When Linnet is found murdered in her bed, the obvious suspects, Simon and Jacqueline, have alibis. Poirot manages to break those alibis and prove that Simon killed his wife with the assistance of Jackie, but not before the additional deaths of Louise Bourget and Salome Otterbourne (both killed by Jackie). As the novel concludes, Jackie tells Simon that it was "A fool's game and we've lost", then kills Simon and turns the gun on herself to avoid the consequences of their crimes.

Answer: Franklin Clarke

***SPOILER ALERT***.

In "The ABC Murders" (1936), a series of "alliterative" murders occurs, based on the alphabet. The first victim is Alice Ascher from Andover, the second Betty Barnard from Bexhill, and the third Sir Carmichael Clarke from Churston. A fourth murder, George Earlsfield from Doncaster, deviated from the pattern. In reality, one murder was conducted for greed and profit, and the other murders were merely "camouflage".

Poirot explained it thus: "What would be the object of writing such letters? To focus attention on the writer, to call attention to the murders! En verite, it did not seem to make sense at first sight. And then I saw light. It was to focus attention on several murders - on a group of murders. Is it not your great Shakespeare who has said, 'You cannot see the trees for the wood'?..."When do you notice a pin least? When it is in a pincushion! When do you notice an individual murder least? When it is one of a series of related murders".

Poirot realised that, out of all the murders, only one involved a substantial inheritance - that of Sir Carmichael Clarke. Franklin Clarke stood to inherit his brother's estate as Sir Carmichael had no children and Lady Charlotte was dying of cancer. However, there was the danger that Sir Carmichael might marry again and perhaps have children, in which case Franklin's chance of inheriting his brother's wealth would vanish - hence the motive for the murder.

Answer: Dr James Kennedy

***SPOILER ALERT***.

Dr James Kennedy raised his much younger half-sister, Helen, after her parents died. "He adored his half-sister and that affection became possessive and unwholesome". It led to him murdering Helen (Gwenda's stepmother) and Leonie (Gwenda's nurse/nanny). He was unaware that Gwenda, as a 3-year-old, had witnessed the murder of Helen. The murders of Helen and Leonie went undetected for 18 years until Gwenda and Giles starting digging up the past, triggered by Gwenda's flashback memory of Helen's murder. Dr Kennedy then killed Lily Abbott Kimble, the house-parlourmaid, whose letter to the doctor was erroneously interpreted as an attempt at blackmail. Mrs Cocker, the cook, almost became a victim when she ingested poisoned brandy intended for Gwenda. Dr Kennedy's attempt to strangle Gwenda was thwarted by Miss Marple.

This novel chronicles the last case of Miss Jane Marple. It was written during the Second World War under the original title of "Murder in Retrospect". However, Agatha Christie had to re-name her work when her American publishers used that title for her novel "Five Little Pigs". She changed it to "Cover Her Face" but had to change it again when P.D. James' debut novel was published with that title in 1962. Eventually it was published posthumously as "Sleeping Murder" in 1976. Agatha Christie made a gift of the copyright to her husband, Max Mallowan.

Answer: Patrick and Christine Redfern

***SPOILER ALERT***.

This novel involves the murder of well-known actress Arlena Stuart. She was strangled on an isolated beach on Smuggler's Island. Poirot's impression of the murder was that it was a very "slick" crime and this led him to believe that this was not a first-time offence. Therefore, he requested from the police details of any similar crimes of strangulation within the last three years. When he read the case history of the murder of Alice Corrigan, he recognised similarities between the two cases. He deduced that Patrick Redfern was really Edward Corrigan. With Christine's help, Edward/Patrick murdered his wife Alice and Arlena Stuart for financial gain. Together Christine and Patrick manipulated the times of death to create seemingly cast-iron alibis for themselves.

Answer: Josephine Leonides

Josephine Leonides was only 11 years old but extremely intelligent and precocious. She wrote in her notebook that she killed her grandfather, Aristide, because he would not let her have ballet lessons. She also poisoned Nannie because Nannie was encouraging Josephine's mother, Magda, to send her to boarding school in Switzerland. Although Sir Arthur Hayward had suspected for quite some time that Josephine was the murderer, no-one else seriously considered an 11-year-old child as a killer. When Aunt Edith realised the truth of the murders, she took matters into her own hands.

Agatha Christie was criticised for choosing a child as the murderer, and her publishers wanted her to change the ending, but she stood firm and refused. In her autobiography, she said "Of my detective books, I think the two that satisfy me best are "Crooked House" and "Ordeal by Innocence".

Answer: Clotilde Bradbury-Scott

***SPOILER ALERT***.

The theme of this novel is retribution. In this story, Miss Marple assumes the role of Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution, when Jason Rafiel leaves her a bequest of 20,000 pounds to solve a crime but provides her with absolutely no information regarding this. Miss Marple soon discovers that Jason's son, Michael, is in prison for the murder of his fiancee, Verity Hunt, and correctly assumes that Mr Rafiel wished her to see whether there had been a miscarriage of justice. In her denouement, Miss Marple reveals Verity's murderer to be her guardian, Clotilde Bradbury-Scott, who loved Verity to such an extreme that she murdered her in order to keep her forever, rather than let her go to be with the man she loved.

Answer: Richard Symmington

***SPOILER ALERT***.

This case appeared to focus on the authorship of a series of "poison pen letters" that were sent to many people in the village of Lymstock. But as Miss Marple accurately deduced, the letters were merely a smoke screen: "...putting aside the letters, just one thing happened - Mrs Symmington died". And, as is so often the case, it was the husband "whodunnit". He had fallen in love with his son's governess, Elsie. He did not want to divorce his wife and lose his children, his home and his respectability. The only way he could have everything, including Elsie, was to murder his wife. To cover up his crime, he also murdered his parlour-maid, Agnes.