Whatdunit? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mrs. Boyle (Three Blind Mice)

All four were strangled, but it was the highly unpleasant Mrs. Boyle who got it with the raincoat belt. (Betty Barnard of "The ABC Murders" was strangled with her own belt, however, making her a sort of runner up?)

Answer: Joyce Reynolds (Hallowe'en Party)

This is an easy one, the only trick is to remember if it was Joyce or her brother who was drowned in the bobbing-for-apples tub. Ipy, in "Death Comes as the End" was drowned in an irrigation ditch, Lucky Dyson was drowned in a creek and Leopold Reynolds (Joyce's brother) was drowned in a stream.

Answer: Madame Giselle (Death in the Air/Death in the Clouds)

All four died from a lethal injection (Digitoxin for Mrs. Boynton, cyanide for Emily Brent and Evipan for Mrs. Lorrimer) and a bee did, in fact, buzz around Emily Brent before she was "stung" with the syringe. But it was Mme. Giselle who succumbed to the snake-envenomed dart inserted into her neck on board an airplane in front of the other passengers.

The extremely daring killer used Boomslang venom, which kills almost instantaneously.

Answer: Mrs. Mc Ginty (Mrs. Mc Ginty's Dead)

Cora and Rodgers "got the axe", so to speak; Mrs. Argyle was struck down with a fireplace poker; however Mrs. Mc Ginty's killer borrowed an extremely ornamental red sugar hammer to do the job.

Answer: Mabelle Annesly (The Mysterious Mr. Quin)

In "The Bird With the Broken Wing" from "The Mysterious Mister Quin", beautiful, vulnerable Mabelle had been singing a song about a swan (her swan song!). Not long afterward, someone used a string from the same ukelele to end her life in this truly chilling story.

Henet is strangled with some burial clothes while prowling around the family tomb. Marlene Tucker is garroted and Edna Brent is strangled with a scarf inside a phone booth.

Answer: Lady Camilla Tressilian (Towards Zero)

"Towards Zero" is one of Christie's best- a Gothic mystery complete with a gloomy coastal setting and a stupendous double-bluff solution, revealing a frighteningly unhinged culprit. Superintendent Battle stumbles upon the weapon when he has a "Poirot moment" and notices that one of a fender's two knobs is cleaner than the other. All three of the other victim's are "coshed", using more mundane weapons.

Answer: Ella Zelinsky (The Mirror Crack'd)

The other three succumb to cyanide laced drinks, but poor Ella, who has an allergy and has, unwisely been playing amateur detective, gets it in her nasal spray (ouch!)

Answer: Asa (Death comes as the End)

In "Death Comes as the End", the wise old Asa has, unwisely, tipped her hand to the prolific murderer who slips poison into her unguents. Mr. and Mrs. Craddock, who do not appear but are prominently mentioned as patients of Dr. Roberts in "Cards on the Table" both die suspiciously, he of anthrax poisoning, she of a "tropical infection". Molly Kendal of "A Caribbean Mystery is being administered mind-altering drugs via her cosmetics; fortunately Miss Marple discovers the truth in time to save her, making her our only candidate in this quiz to have survived.

Answer: Amy Gibb (Easy to Kill)

Amy, so the official story went, had a cold and reached for what she thought was cough syrup, but was actually one of her old bottles of hat paint (it contained oxalic acid-the stuff that makes rhubarb leaves poisonous). But there were suspicions; hat-painting had long been out of fashion.

Besides, Amy was a redhead; why would she be using red hat paint? At any rate, she fared better than poor Anne Johnson, who had her nightstand water glass filled with hydrochloric acid! The other two succumbed to poisoned pills.

Answer: Lord Edgeware (Lord Edgeware Dies)

Just thinking about this makes me cringe, though supposedly death is almost instantaneous. Tom Adams, the artist who designed a number of Christie book covers, did a memorably gruesome painting of this for the cover of "Lord Edgeware Dies", a.k.a. "Thirteen at Dinner". Phillip Durrant was dispatched the same way but with a stiletto. The other two were throat-slashings.