The Moving Finger

Jerry is injured in a plane crash after which he and his sister, Joanna, take up residence in Mrs. Burton's country house in Lymstock.  They receive an anonymous letter accusing them of being lovers while they are simply siblings.  It turns out many people in town are receiving poison letters.  Mrs. Symmington receives a poison letter claiming that her husband is not the father of her second son; later she is found dead.  Beside her body is a glass containing potassium cyanide and a note stating:  "I can't go on."

Her 20 year old daughter, Megan, stays with the Burton's for awhile.  The Burton's maid receives a call from the distraught maid of the Symmington's.  They plan to meet, but the former never shows up.  The next day her body is found in the cupboard under the stairs by Megan.

An investigator from Scotland Yard concludes that the poison letter writer/murderer is a middle aged, prominent Lymstock resident.  The vicar's wife calls her own expert, Miss Marple.  Elsie Holland, governess to the Symmington boys, receives a poison letter. The police catch Aimee Griffith typing on the same typewriter used by the murderer and arrest her.

Jerry heads to London to see the doctor and takes Megan along.  They stop at the dressmaker to get Megan some clothes.  Jerry realizes he has fallen in love with her and proposes, but she turns him down.  Jerry then asks Mr. Symmington if he can woo Megan.  Megan blackmails her stepfather by saying she has proof that he murdered her mother.  Mr. Symmington pays her off, but does not admit his guilt.  After giving Megan a sleeping drug, he tries to murder her, but Jerry and the police are waiting for him.  Jerry rescues Megan and Mr. Symmington is arrested.

Miss Marple explains that the letters served as a diversion.  Mr. Symmington, in love with Elsie Holland, wanted to get rid of his wife.  He modelled the letters on a case that he worked on as a solicitor.  Miss Marple, knowing that it would be hard to prove his guilt, had Megan lure him into a trap.

Megan realizes she is in love with Jerry who buys Miss Barton's house for them.  His sister Joanna marries a doctor from Lymstock.  Emily and Aimee go on a cruise together.

The Moving Finger, published in 1942, courtesy 

http://www.agathachristie.com/stories/the-moving-finger.

The Body in the Library

There's a dead body in the library at Gussington Hall.  The woman is flashily dressed and heavily made up.  The owners, Colonel Arthur Bantry and his wife, Dolly, do not recognize the woman.  Colonel Bantry phones the police while his wife calls Miss Marple.

Suspicion is cast on the neighbour who makes movie props and whom the Colonel dislikes.  Blake has been dating another platinum blonde, but his girlfriend is still alive.  The autopsy reveals the woman was drugged, died between 10 pm and 12 midnight.  Despite her appearance, she was still a virgin.  She is identified as Ruby Keene, a dancer at the Majestic Hotel.  A fellow dancer, Josie, and had had Ruby fill in for her as an exhibition dancer with Raymond Starr, the hotel's tennis star and dance instructor.  However, when Ruby went missing Josie still had to perform, despite her ankle.

Conway Jefferson, a hotel guest who had become fond of Ruby, phoned the police when she went missing.  Several years before, Conway had lost his wife, son and daughter in an airplane crash in which he had also lost his legs.  He is now accompanied by his daughter's widower, Mark, and his son's widow, Adelaide, who are now his heirs.  Conway planned to adopt Ruby and leave her as sole heir to his fortune, which would leave Mark and Adelaide with nothing.  However, they were accounted for, playing bridge in the hotel ballroom with Conway and Josie.  George Bartlett was Ruby's last dance partner that night.

The police suspect that Ruby sneaked off to meet someone who strangled her.  Bartlett's car is found with the corpse of another girl, Pamela.  She had been approached by a director offering her a screen test when she disappeared.  Basil confesses that after quarreling with Dinah, he went home and found the body and dumped it in the Bantry's library.  Conway plans to change his will and leave his money to a dance hostel.  At 3 am an intruder tries to murder Conway in his bedroom.

Miss Marple discovers that Mark was married to Josie.  They murdered Ruby so that she would not inherit Conway's money.  The two were also responsible for Pamela's murder.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51THBfc9n3L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Murder at the Vicarage

When Colonel Lucius Protheroe turns up dead at the vicarage, no one is surprised.  Even the local vicar says "killing him would be doing a service to the townsfolk".  While the vicar looks suspicious, two other people confess to the crime and Miss Marple is called in to solve the murder.  Miss Marple determines that the two people who confessed, Mrs. Protheroe and her lover Lawrence Redding, were indeed the murderers, and simply wanted to deflect guilt by admitting to the crime.  Miss Marple appears in later novels, The Body in the Library (1942) and 4:50 from Paddington (1957).

Murder at the Vicarage, published in 1930, courtesy 

http://www.agathachristie.com/stories/the-murder-at-the-vicarage.

The Best Selling Novelist of All Time

Agatha Christie courtesy http://www.twincities.com/2016/11/16/minneapolis-theater-round-agatha-christie-murder-on-the-nile.

My husband Rob and daughter Jacqueline used to play a video mystery game called Murder on the Orient Express based on the famous novel written by Agatha Christie.  More recently, they played Death on the Nile.  Currently they are playing Evil Under the Sun.  These games peaked Jacqueline's interest and she started searching our bookshelves for Rob's old Agatha Christie Novels.  Last night she begged to stay up later so she could read Murder on the Orient Express.  How could I say no?  I mentioned to her that Daddy and I watched the movie of the same name, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, a few years ago.  The movie was filmed in 1972 but I didn't realize that the book was first published in 1934.  "It's almost as old as Grandpa!" I said to Jacqueline.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Murder_on_the_Orient_Express_First_Edition_Cover_1934.jpg

It turns out that Rob has ten of the Agatha Christie mysteries, but the famous author wrote at least 66 detective novels.  In fact, she is the most widely published novelist in history, only outsold by the Bible and Shakespeare.  For a complete list of Christie's novels, visit http://www.agathachristie.com/stories.

https://books.google.ca/books/about/The_Body_in_the_Library_Miss_Marple.html?id=Xr0XqQoyc0AC&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y

Agatha Christie's main character Hercule Poirot could have been inspired by someone she met while attending school in France where she learned how to speak fluent French.  One source, however, says that Christie's character was inspired by a Belgian gendarme she met in Britain after he fled the Germans during the First World War.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10825492/Poirot-unmasked-the-Belgian-refugee-who-inspired-Agatha-Christie-character.html

https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Crackd-Side-Mystery-Mysteries/dp/0062073672

Agatha Christie served as a nurse during the First World War.  Her knowledge of poisons, which she learned at the time, could have been used in any one of the 83 poisonings in her books.  For instance, cyanide features in The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side, And Then There Were None, A Pocket Full of Rye and Sparkling Cyanide.  Kathryn Harkup writes about this in her book A is for Arsenic:  The Poisons of Agatha Christie https://bookshop.theguardian.com/catalog/product/view/id/323440/. 

 

https://covers.openlibrary.org/w/id/3451-M.jpg

 

Agatha Christie travelled widely through Europe and Africa.  She participated in archeological digs in the Middle East with her second husband Max Mallowan which inspired many book titles.  While on digs, Mallowan discovered artifacts as old as 3000 years.  Christie, always conscious of the fact that she was 15 years older than her husband, used her face cream to clean the artifacts.  As archeologist Charlotte Trumpler explained:  "Christie was of course fascinated by puzzles, by the little archeological fragments, and she had a gift for piecing them together patiently." http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/03/12/uk.christie.writer.archaeology/ Her novel, Murder in Mesopotamia, with an archeologist as the culprit, was the result of these digs.  

Christie helped husband Mallowan uncover the lost city of Nimrud in the late 1940's and early 1950's courtesy http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4095210/Photographer-Mesopotamia-Incredible-pictures-taken-Agatha-Christie-reveal-helped-uncover-Iraq-s-lost-city-Nimrud-archaeologist-husband-writing-detective-novels.html.