The Mystery of Three Quarters Trivia Quiz

Answer: Annabel Treadway

Annabel Treadway was Barnabas Pandy's granddaughter who lived with him along with her sister Lenore Lavington and niece Ivy.

Of the four letter recipients, Sylvia Rule and John McCrodden are visibly angry when they confront Poirot. Neither of them will listen to Poirot when he tries to explain to them he did not send those letters. On the other hand, Annabel and Hugo Dockerill are both calm and collected and listened to reason. In addition, Hugo Dockerill tells Poirot he does know who Barnabas Pandy is but has never met him personally. Sylvia Rule and John McCrodden say they never heard of Pandy.

Answer: Drowned in his bathtub

Pandy drowned while taking a bath in his home. His granddaughters Annabel and Lenore and great-granddaughter Ivy were in Ivy's room at the time of his death.

When Barnabas Pandy died, everyone believed it to be an accident of some sort and not murder. Pandy was over ninety and, although he was in good health, there was no reason to believe his death was anything other than natural.

Answer: e

The lowercase "e" in Hugo Dockerill's letter is missing the horizontal line in the center. This is also the case with John McCrodden's letter, which his father Rowland was able to reproduce. Timothy Lavington, Annabel's young nephew who attends Hugo's boarding school, also received a letter claiming to be from his deceased father and this letter also has a malformed "e". Poirot is able to examine everyone's typewriters to discover which one has the "e" key that could produce the malformed letter.

Answer: Her niece Ivy and her dog Skittle

When Annabel first visits Poirot, she tells him she could never take a life (that of her grandfather's) and, in fact, had saved lives before. When questioned, she explains how she saved her niece's life from drowning in the rapids at the beach. Poirot then tells her that is only one life saved when Annabel had said "lives". Annabel tells Poirot she was just using the word "lives" in general. It then comes to light that Annabel also saved her now deceased dog Skittle's life in the same incident but was embarrassed to consider a dog's life equal to that of a human's. Skittle is now deceased as this incident happened many years before. Hopscotch is Annabel's current dog.

Despite saving Ivy's life, Annabel seems to feel guilty over the incident in Poirot's mind. Ivy's face was disfigured during the incident from being hit with branches and rocks.

Answer: Rowland McCrodden

Rowland "Rope" McCrodden asks (really demands) that Poirot investigate because his son John received a letter, and thinks his father is playing a cruel trick on him. Rowland, who says he did not send the letters, also doesn't appreciate someone smearing his son's name with a baseless accusation. Rowland is a strong proponent of the death penalty, which is how he earned the nickname Rope.

Answer: Under Timothy's bed

Annabel's dress was found taped under Timothy's bed at his boarding school by Jane Dockerill. The dress was still slightly damp, despite the fact that Lenore and Ivy both said the dress was dry when Annabel was still wearing it after Pandy's body was discovered. To Poirot, this is a clear indication that someone is framing Annabel for Pandy's death, despite the fact that it is not clear if he was murdered or not.

Despite the fact that the boarding school is well guarded, the Dockerills cannot guarantee no one could have sneaked in and hid the dress there.

This means anyone could have done it. However, as everyone except Poirot fails to realize, while anyone could have hid the dress under the bed not everyone had access to the dress in the first place.

Answer: Fire his manservant and friend Kingsbury

Kingsbury was an old friend and manservant to Barnabas Pandy. Kingsbury lived in a cottage on the estate and was the person who found Pandy's body. Kingsbury denies killing his friend and is giving the money he inherited from him to charity.

Kingsbury interrupted a dinner a few days before Pandy died, when Lenore was arguing with her daughter Ivy and sister Annabel. Kingsbury refused to tell Poirot or Catchpool what the argument was about, but he did mention that Pandy shed one tear, something he had never seen Pandy do before in his life.

Pandy also sought to reconcile with an old business partner turned enemy named Vincent Lobb. When the two were partners in a mine, some materials had been stolen and a worker was imprisoned for the theft. That worker committed suicide in prison. Lobb later revealed he knew that man was actually innocent but said nothing. This caused Pandy to be furious with Lobb and he never spoke to him again. However, shortly before he died Pandy wished to be reconciled with Lobb, who had died over a decade earlier.

The last unusual thing Pandy did was to call his lawyer and tell him he wished to disinherit his granddaughter in a new will. Everyone assumed this meant he wanted to disinherit Annabel, who was his least favorite granddaughter. However, the new will was never made before Pandy died.

Answer: A bloody towel

Kingsbury was found dead in the same bathroom where Barnabas Pandy died. It appears Kingsbury fell and hit his head on the bathtub. Poirot then speculates that Kingsbury grabbed a towel to cover his bleeding wound, but this towel was found thrown across the room. From the bloody fingerprints, Poirot says someone came across the injured Kingsbury and pulled the towel away from him so he would bleed to death. Poirot considers his death to be a murder because this person let Kingsbury die instead of trying to save him.

Answer: No

Barnabas Pandy died either a natural death or of some kind of accident while bathing. As Poirot explains, Ivy, Lenore and Annabel all can provide an alibi for each other. Kingsbury did not have enough time to kill Pandy and change out of his wet clothes before the women arrived (and the women all say Kingsbury was dry at the time).

While it is possible an outsider could have sneaked into the house and drowned Pandy, the dog Hopscotch did not bark like he always does when a stranger arrives. This proves to Poirot that Pandy's death was not a murder.

Answer: Lenore Lavington

Poirot thought the best way to identify the letter writer was to discover the common connection between all three recipients. Early on he discovered the connection between three of the four people (hence the three quarters of the title). Annabel Treadway was Barnabas Pandy's granddaughter. Hugo Dockerill was the headmaster of the school attended by Timothy, Pandy's great grandson. Sylvia Rule's son Freddie also attended Dockerill's school. That linked three people together but not John McCrodden. It turns out John McCrodden had an affair with Lenore Lavington. John did not recognize the name because Lenore used a false name at the time. That connects all four letter recipients to Lenore, who must be the writer. Her goal was to get her sister Annabel hanged for the murder of Barnabas Pandy.

Lenore hated her sister ever since Annabel saved Ivy's life. Lenore blamed Annabel for Ivy's disfigurement. What Lenore only learned recently (at the dinner where Pandy cried) was that Annabel had saved the dog Skittle before she saved Ivy. Pandy had also disliked Annabel for a variety of reasons, but his attitude toward her changed at that dinner. He realized that Annabel was burdened with her guilt at saving the dog first for years, and that he had treated her terribly. This is why he shed that tear.

When Pandy called for his lawyer to change his will, he let Lenore believe he was disinheriting Annabel. Lenore agreed with this. However, this was a test of Lenore and showed Pandy that Lenore had no sympathy for her sister and possibly enjoyed Annabel's suffering. When Pandy died without changing his will, Lenore was disappointed that Annabel received half the estate. In revenge, Lenore sent the four mysterious letters in the hopes that Poirot would investigate. Lenore set up false clues to lead Poirot and Catchpool toward Annabel, hoping she would be hanged for a murder she didn't commit.