Characters of 'Seven Dials' Trivia Quiz

Answer:

The incorrect options for this collection quiz were inspired by the similarity of the tone in which the first few chapters of 'The Seven Dials Mystery' were written to that of the short stories by PG Wodehouse, particularly the stories about the inmates of Blandings Castle, published between 1915 and 1975. Agatha Christie and PG Wodehouse were fans of each other's work, and corresponded for many years. In 1969 Christie dedicated 'Hallowe'en Party' to Wodehouse, but this 1929 novel predates the friendship. Despite the similarities apparent in the opening chapters, Christie's characters turn out to have more substance than is generally the case for Wodehouse.

The story opens at the stately home of Chimneys (familiar from 'The Secret of Chimneys', published four years earlier), and 'The Seven Dials Mystery' brings back some characters from that novel, including Superintendent Battle, who doesn't appear until Chapter 10; Lady Eileen 'Bundle' Brent and her father Lord Caterham, owner of Chimneys; their butler Tredwell; George Lomax (at whose home the attempted theft of top-secret documents occurs) and Bill Eversleigh.

Chimneys has been rented out to Sir Oswald Coote, a self-important self-made millionaire, and his wife, who is completely cowed by the task of managing servants, and wishes she could go back to the snug little cottage they inhabited in the early years of their marriage. She is particularly unable to manage Macdonald, a gardener reminiscent of the redoubtable Angus McAllister with whom Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth tangles on a regular basis. Their guests include Bill Eversleigh, Jimmy Thesiger, Ronny Devereux, three girls whose only role is to be giggling girls, and Gerald Wade, a notorious oversleeper who can't understand why everyone always seems to have finished breakfast before he arrives in the dining room around noon. The other young visitors, feeling he is inconsiderate of their hostess's stress at his lateness, consult Rupert 'Pongo' Bateman (Sir Oswald's incredibly efficient private secretary) for an idea as to how they might alter his behaviour. It is Pongo's idea to buy an alarm clock. The others run with this idea, but decide one alarm would be inadequate for such a heavy sleeper; they purchase eight alarm clocks, and set them to go off at intervals starting at 6:30am the next morning.

When the stunt appears to have failed, Gerry Wade is discovered to have been killed, and the novel starts to take on a more serious tone, especially when Ronny Devereux stumbles into the road in front of Bundle's roadster a few days later, dying of a gunshot while uttering the phrase 'Seven Dials'. Bundle seeks the help of Superintendent Battle, then determines that she and her friends need to pursue the lead that the superintendent seems unwilling to chase. Not only do they get to the heart of the mystery of Seven Dials (which refers to both a disreputable club and a mysterious group that meets there), they manage to prevent the theft of important secret papers (even though one of them turns out to be the super-thief, not the cherubic and gormless character with whom we had been made familiar).

If, like me, you were intrigued by the nickname Pongo, used by both Wodehouse and Christie, and also the name of the father dog in Dodie Smith's 1956 book 'The One hundred and One Dalmatians', you might like to consider that it is also the name for the genus of the orangutan, and was popularly used in the late 19th century to refer to any large ape-like creature. So not very complimentary as a nickname!