Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. There was one very important person (in his own estimation at least) staying at the Jolly Roger. Hercule Poirot, resplendent in a white duck suit, with a Panama hat tilted over his eyes, his moustaches magnificently furled, lay back in a deck chair and surveyed the bathing beach. A series of terraces led down to it from the hotel....Of the bathers, some were in the sea, some were lying stretched out in the sun.....On the terrace above, the non-bathers sat and commented on the weather, on the scene in front of them.....On Poirot's left a ceaseless flow of conversation poured in a gentle monotone from the lips of Mrs Gardner while at the same time her needles clacked as she knitted vigorously.
(The beautiful Arlena Marshall is the centre of attention, and not always in the best way. So when she ends up dead,strangled in a lonely cove by the beach, Poirot must sift through numerous alibis and motives to reach the truth)
2. Marina's response was this time not so automatic. Her eyes, which had wavered over Heather Badcock's shoulder, now seemed to be fixed on the wall midway up the stairs. She was staring and there was something so ghastly in her expression that Mrs. Bantry took a step forward. Was the woman going to faint? But before she could reach Marina's side, the latter had recovered herself. Her eyes, vague and unfocussed, returned to Heather and the charm of manner was turned on once more, albeit a shade mechanically. "What a nice story. Now, what will you have to drink? Jason! A cocktail?"
(Soon after, Heather is handed a cocktail meant for Marina, and within minutes, is dead...)
3. Poirot took the cocktail from her hand."To your good health, Mademoiselle...to your continued good health."
The girl was no fool. The significance of his tone was not lost on her.
"Is anything the matter?"....He held out his hand with the bullet on the palm of it. She picked it up with a puzzled frown..."Do you mean some criminal idiot was shooting bullets in a hotel garden?...Well, I'm damned, I do seem to lead a charmed life. That's number four....I'm not a beautiful young heiress whose death releases millions. I wish somebody was trying to kill me.....that would be a thrill..."
(If the lovely Nick was not being targeted for her riches, then why the numerous attempts on her life?)
4. "But you are very good at murders," said Mrs Bantry "She has been strangled, you see. What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one's house, one might as well enjoy it...That's why I want you to come and help me find out who did it...Arthur's being rather difficult. He seems to think I shouldn't enjoy myself about it at all. Of course I do know it's very sad, but then I don't know the girl... and when you've seen her you'll understand what I mean when I say she doesn't look real at all."
(An unknown girl, flashily dressed, found dead in the very respectable Colonel Bantry's house? Impossible! Miss Marple soon gets to the bottom of this one.)
5. "Just now we had a somewhat disturbing experience. An apparantly disembodied voice spoke to us all by name, uttering certain precise accusations against us......Ulick Norman Owen! In Miss Brent's letter- Una Nancy Owen- each time, that is to say, U.N Owen. Or by a slight stretch of fancy UNKNOWN!"
(One of Christie's most famous books)
6. "She's written her note to her husband - but at that moment he comes in, reads it and goes haywire. He crumples up the note, slings it into the waste-basket and goes for her. She's terrified, rushes into the hall...he catches up with her, throttles her...she goes limp and he drops her. And then....quotes those words from The Duchess of Malfi just as the child upstairs has reached the bannisters and is peering down."
(But is it as simple as all that? Miss Marple solves an 18-year old riddle)
7. "For a moment I could hardly take in the meaning of the scene before me.
Colonel Protheroe was lying sprawled across my writing table in a horrible unnatural position. There was a pool of some dark fluid on the desk by his head, and it was slowly dripping onto the floor with a horrible drip,drip,drip.
I pulled myself together and went across to him. His skin was cold to the touch. The hand that I raised fell back lifeless. The man was dead- shot through the head."
8. Hercule Poirot did not sleep well. He awoke with a start in the small hours, roused by a loud groan from nearby. At the same moment the ping of a bell sounded sharply.
Someone said,"It was nothing, a mistake..." Then Hercule Poirot heard no more and after a while dozed off uneasily....
(This murder is unsolveable,...except by the great Poirot.So many varied characters, so many motives, so many alibis....and a man who deserved to die...)
9. "I tell you I don't know what I'm afraid of! And that's what worries me. I felt all along that there was something wrong. In the atmosphere- in the house. I'm sensitive to atmosphere...but I don't know if it's these dreadful young jailbirds-or if it's nearer home. There's Lewis just living for his ideas and not noticing anything else, and Carrie Louise, bless her, never seeing or hearing or thinking anything else except what's a lovely thought....There is such a thing as evil... and I want you, Jane, to go down there right away and find out exactly what's the matter."
So that's how Jane Marple came to visit Carrie Louise and Stonygates, residence to two hundred juvenile delinquents...
10. Dear Aunt Jane,I've got the information you wanted. There are only two trains that can possibly apply- the 4.33 and the 5 o'clock...In all this do I smell some village scandal of a fruity character? Did you, returning from a shopping spree in town observe in a passing train the Mayor's wife being embraced by the Sanitary Inspector...?"
(Not the Mayor's wife and the Sanitary Inspector, but a cold-blooded murder in a passing train is what is seen by Miss Marple's friend, Mrs McGillicuddy.)
Source: Author
Ruma
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Bruyere before going online.
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