Agatha christie, p.75
Agatha Christie, page 75
See also: The Man in the Brown Suit (novel); “The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge”; Poirot, Hercule; “The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael”
“Publicity.” See “A Fairy in the Flat” and “A Pot of Tea”
“Pulcinella.” See A Masque from Italy
Puriyaadha Pudhir. See Indian-Language Adaptations
Pye, Mr.
In LGBTQ+ scholarship, Mr. Pye is one of the most widely cited examples of a gay man in Christie. A small, effeminate man with an interest in antiques in The Moving Finger, he ticks many of the boxes for homosexual (or gender inversion) coding in popular culture of the 1930s and 1940s. As Anthony Slide writes, Pye “is what used to be termed euphemistically a confirmed bachelor and there seems to be little reason to doubt that Agatha Christie intended he should be regarded as a harmless gay character” (41). He is referred to by one of the investigators as a “spinster” (TMF 195).
The Pyramids of Giza. See Games
Quain, Cyril
Cyril Quain is a popular, but tedious, novelist who uses the Cavendish Secretarial Bureau in The Clocks. Detection Club authority Martin Edwards (“The Clocks” n.p.) has suggested that he may be based on Freeman Wills Crofts.
Queen of Crime
The title “Queen of Crime” has become, in some contexts, shorthand for Christie but surprisingly little research has been done into its origin beyond a widespread and generalized attribution to reviewer Maurice Richardson at the Observer. Richardson seems to have first used the term referring to “Agatha [Christie], Dorothy [L. Sayers] and Ellery [Queen]” as the “three queens of crime,” with Josephine Bell a potential successor, in 1937 (Dobkins). Ellery Queen, of course, was a pseudonym for the male cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, and Richardson was joking, to an extent. In a 1956 interview (“Genteel Queen of Crime”), Nigel Dennis noted that it was already an established moniker for Christie by 1926, when The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published (Dennis 92).
Although Christie is generally considered the supreme writer of detective fiction, there are widespread references to “Queens of Crime.” The term tends to include Christie and contemporaries such as Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh, but increasingly Gladys Mitchell and/or Josephine Tey (the latter not strictly Golden Age) are added to the set.
The idea of “Queens of Crime” reflects a common critical presumption that Golden Age crime fiction is inherently feminine. It is a traditional distinction in scholarship, “between an effete and feminized English tradition of classic crime fiction and a masculine and muscular American [hardboiled] tradition” (Gulddal, King, and Rolls, Introduction 3). Contemporary scholarship is doing much to undermine this distinction.
See also: Golden Age Crime Fiction
“‘Queen of Crime’ Is a Gentlewoman” (interview)
An interview with Marcelle Bernstein was published in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, 8 March 1970, to mark the U.S. paperback publication of Hallowe’en Party. The two-page spread is mostly Christie in her own words, set-up with remarks from her agent, that she is “an old-fashioned gentlewoman” (Bernstein 60) and peppered with Bernstein’s observations, normally to provide structure and context. Christie begins by stating that it is “embarrassing” to be famous, and for readers to feel that they know her (60). She goes on to discuss her “vitality” in old age, attributing it to a leisurely youth without formal education, and takes care to present herself as an old-fashioned Edwardian gentleman who has stumbled into success by “pure luck” (60).
Christie states that times have changed and become more violent, especially for young people. Although there is an element of noting that boys have become more violent, the remarks are generally about how unsafe boys and girls are in the modern world—something reflected in the increased number of child deaths and child criminals in her latter works. Christie suggests that “[m]urder stories are mainly done for entertainment with a dash of the old morality play behind them; you defend the innocent and pin down the guilty,” thus affirming as she often would that hers was not the world of hardboiled socially relevant crime; indeed, she claims to dislike “violence” and “messy deaths” (60).
Turning to her own life, Christie talks about the influence of her grandmother and great-aunt on the development of Miss Marple and discusses her first marriage with remarkable candor: “I married at 24. We were very happy for 22 years. Then my mother died a very painful death and my husband found a young woman. Well, you can’t write your fate. Your fate comes to you. But you can do what you like with the characters you create” (61). Writing crime fiction, that “old morality tale,” was demonstrably not a release for Christie in the aftermath of her mother’s death and her husband’s infidelity; she went on to fictionalize events pseudonymously in the Mary Westmacott novel Unfinished Portrait, which deals with the complex emotions rather than following a tight plot. Neither Bernstein nor Christie mentions this or expands on the above confession, but Bernstein describes Christie’s 1926 disappearance. Presumably, this will have caused concern among the Christie camp as she, her daughter, and her agents tended to take swift action if anyone tried to raise the event publicly.
The conversation becomes jaunty once more, as Christie describes irritating Stephen Glanville with research questions for Death Comes as the End and checking the positions of light switches on the Orient Express for Murder on the Orient Express. She compares the process of creating a character for a book to that of “auditioning an actor” (Bernstein 61). She opines that writing can be “boring”; that she is more interested in writing dialogue than “describing people or places,” and that detective novels do not need to be more than 45,000 words long, despite pressure on her to produce 60,000–70,000 words (61). Nowadays, this would likely be doubled.
See also: “Genteel Queen of Crime”; “An Interview with Agatha Christie” (1970)
“The Quickness of the Hand.” See “Poirot and the Crime in Cabin 66”
Quimper, Dr.
Physician to elderly hypochondriac Luther Crackenthorpe in 4.50 from Paddington, Dr. Quimper proves to have murdered his wife in the heat of a midlife crisis, wanting to marry another woman. He is dismissed as a suspect early on, partly due to his social position and partly because he is a “regular old woman,” incapable of violence (99). This is the inverse of the trick played by Christie in her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (see Howard, Evelyn).
Quin, Harley
This character’s name alone gives a clue to his character: he is “Harlequin the Invisible,” the figure from the Harlequinade. Earl F. Bargainnier describes him as “Christie’s only completely omniscient detective” (92). In the 14 short stories in which he appears, he works with Mr. Satterthwaite, a shy looker-on at life. Quin, who normally appears in circumstances where some trick of the light gives the impression that he is dressed in Harlequin’s motley, acts as a catalyst for Satterthwaite to realize that he sees and understands more than he knew.
“You make me see things,” says Satterthwaite in “The Dead Harlequin,” “things I ought to have seen all along—that I actually have seen—but without knowing I saw them” (MMQ 227). Quin replies that human beings tend to be “not content to just see things” but inevitably “tack the wrong interpretation on” (227). Quin is a semi-supernatural figure: his exits are more often than not into the sea or into space at the end of the story. He simply comes in at key moments and helps Satterthwaite realize his own useful role in things. Quin was one of Christie’s favorite of her own creations and, after the first film in 1928, refused further permission to dramatize these stories.
Quin appears in the 12 stories collected in The Mysterious Mr. Quin as well as in “The Love Detectives” and “The Harlequin Tea Set.”
Race, Colonel Johnny
Colonel Race is a central character in two standalone novels (The Man in the Brown Suit and Sparkling Cyanide) and two Hercule Poirot cases (Cards on the Table and Death on the Nile), and authors a letter of introduction for Poirot in Appointment with Death. A member of the British Secret Service, he is first introduced as a dashing potential love interest for the narrator Anne Beddingfeld in The Man in the Brown Suit but later becomes a more conventional part of Poirot’s professional network. More down to earth and conversational than most of Christie’s spies, he is a suave ex-military gentleman of independent means. Several actors have played him on screen, most notably David Niven in Death on the Nile (1978), but the character is often changed in or omitted from adaptations.
“Racial Musings.” See Poems
“The Radium Thieves.” See The Big Four (novel)
Radnor, Jacob
Jacob Radnor is a weak but charming young man who woos both the young Freda Stanton and her older aunt, Mrs. Pengelly, in “The Cornish Mystery.” This is a typical ne’er-do-well, albeit one whose true nature, including his weaknesses, is hidden until the end of the story.
Radzky, Countess
The histrionic Countess Radzky is among the guests at Chimneys in The Seven Dials Mystery and is later revealed to be a benevolent spy for the Seven Dials organization. In reality, she is Babe St. Maur, a talented and aspiring actress from New York. She is spotted because the two women have the same mole on their necks.
Rafiel, Jason
Jason Rafiel is an extremely wealthy and cantankerous man befriended by Miss Marple while she is on vacation in A Caribbean Mystery. He is generally antisocial but always surrounded by attendants, and he respects Miss Marple because she has “got brains” (ACM 162). By the end of the novel, he has revealed, beneath the exterior, unexpected swellings of generosity, taking care of his distraught secretary, Esther Walters, to whom he is generally rude. He likens Miss Marple to Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, when she catches the murderer.
In Nemesis, published seven years later, Rafiel is dead, and his solicitors contact Miss Marple with news of a generous bequest and a mission. Rafiel commissions Miss Marple to clear his son’s name: Michael Rafiel was falsely imprisoned for murdering a girlfriend many years ago. In his letter, Jason Rafiel reminds Miss Marple of the vision of “Nemesis,” surrounded by pink knitting.
Rafiel, Michael
The late Jason Rafiel’s son in Nemesis, Michael Rafiel is considered a black sheep and a bad lot, because of his flippant way with women, but his father is convinced that he was wrongly convicted for murder. Investigating to clear his name, Miss Marple determines that Michael’s chief qualities are loyalty and kindness, things obscured by his bad-boy history, and his freedom from prison represents a second chance.
Ragg, Gordon. See Whitfield, Lord
“The Rajah’s Emerald” (story)
This 1926 short story is now best-known for introducing a character named James Bond (not the spy). Bond, a holidaymaker, accidentally puts on the wrong trousers in a holiday villa, and discovers in their pocket a gigantic emerald. This proves to be a priceless jewel belonging to the Rajah of Maraputna, and its theft is in all the newspapers. When he returns to the scene, he is stopped by a policeman, Inspector Merrilees, who accuses him of stealing the emerald, and arrests him. As the two men head toward Bond’s lodgings to recover the stone, they pass a police station, where Bond cries out that Inspector Merrilees has picked his pocket. Other policemen arrive, search the inspector, and discover the stone that Bond has hidden in the other man’s pocket. Wealthy landowner Lord Edward Campion arrives and identifies the inspector as an imposter—his dishonest valet in disguise. Bond is commended for his quick thinking and enjoys a rise in social standing.
Besides its plot, “The Rajah’s Emerald” is interesting for its discussion of socialism. Bond becomes an angry socialist due to disgruntlement at rude treatment by wealthy women and a “little yellow book” of political maxims. However, once he has won the favor of a kindly Lord, he decides that capitalism is the finest course.
The story was first published in Red Magazine on 30 July 1926 and appeared in the U.K. collection The Listerdale Mystery (1934) and in the U.S. anthology The Golden Ball (1971). It has never been dramatized, but some elements of the plot and setting were recycled for Christie’s 1962 one-act play, Afternoon at the Seaside.
Characters: Bond, James; Campion, Lord Edward; Grace; Jones; Maraputna, Rajah of; Merrilees, Detective Inspector; Sopworth, Claud and sisters
See also: Afternoon at the Seaside; The Golden Ball (story collection); The Listerdale Mystery (story collection)
Ralston, Giles, and Mollie
Called Giles and Molly Davis in both versions of “Three Blind Mice,” the Ralstons run Monkswell Manor as a guesthouse in The Mousetrap. They are a young, energetic couple struggling to make a life for themselves in the aftermath of World War II. Over the course of the play, it becomes clear that they do not really know each other at all: they married shortly after meeting and, although everything winds up happily for them, they realize that they are unaware of one another’s backgrounds or even their movements on a given day.
Ramona, Dolores. See de Sara, Madeleine
Randolph, Myrna
Myrna Randolph is the woman with whom Rodney Scudamore is rumored to be having or to want an affair in the Mary Westmacott novel Absent in the Spring.
Raphion
Raphion is the name given by Alan Grierson to a malformed creature he befriends, which turns out to be God, in “In the Cool of the Evening.”
“Rare Interview with Agatha Christie.” See “Entrevista a Agatha Christie”
Ratchett, Samuel (“Cassetti”)
Potentially the most evil victim in the Christie canon, “Samuel Ratchett” is an alias for Signor Cassetti, an Italian-American gangster who masterminded the kidnap and murder of the young Daisy Armstrong. He is killed in Murder on the Orient Express by a makeshift international jury of 12 people affected by the previous case. Ratchett assumes that his money means he can buy anything or anyone, and one of the great evils unveiled in the novel is that he is generally right: one of his underlings has taken the fall in the Armstrong case. However, Poirot refuses to act as his bodyguard, stating simply, “I do not like your face” (MOE 36).
Rathbone, Dr.
In They Came to Baghdad, Dr. Rathbone runs the Olive Branch, a front business that claims to be pursuing world peace. It is used by Rathbone for money laundering, but there is another, more sinister purpose applied by Edward Goring.
The Rats. See Rule of Three
Ravenscroft, Celia
Celia Ravenscroft is Ariadne Oliver’s goddaughter, whose prospective marriage to Desmond Burton-Cox prompts a reinvestigation into her parents’ deaths in Elephants Can Remember. She was away at boarding school when the murder-suicide occurred so is unable to provide information. She represents a sane and rational counterpart to her prospective mother-in-law, who is hung up on heredity.
Ravenscroft, General Sir Alistair, and Lady Margaret (“Molly”)
Alistair and Margaret Ravenscroft are the deceased parents of Celia Ravenscroft in Elephants Can Remember. In an echo of a device used in A Murder Is Announced, Molly has died and been replaced by her mentally unstable twin sister, Dolly Jarrow, whose dangerous behavior spurred Sir Alistair to take desperate measures.
Rayburn, Harry
Harry Rayburn is the stern, handsome stranger Anne Beddingfeld longs for, finds, grows to fear, and then falls in love with in The Man in the Brown Suit. With a complicated backstory that amounts to a secret fortune and title, he represents the heroic love interest of mass-produced popular culture to which this novel pays parodic tribute.
“The Red House” (story; alternative title: “The First Wish”). See Partners in Crime (story collection)
“The Red Signal” (story)
Like The Sittaford Mystery, “The Red Signal” involves a warning at a séance followed by a murder. In this earlier story, however, there is a focus on psychology. Sir Alington West, an eminent alienist, attends a séance with an obviously fake medium to discreetly observe a member of the party with suspected psychological issues. After talking about subconscious secrets, Sir Alington is shot to death following the séance. His nephew, Dermot West, is the prime suspect, because Sir Alington knew that Dermot was in love with the married hostess, Claire Trent. However, it turns out that Claire’s husband is insane and trying to frame her. In the end, Jack commits suicide, and Dermot plans to marry Claire.
There is much talk in this story of séances accessing the subconscious. There are also discussions of hereditary traits such as color-blindness, which would later feature in “The Harlequin Tea Set.” “The Red Signal” was first published in June 1924 in the Grand Magazine. In 1933, it appeared in the U.K. collection The Hound of Death. It appeared in the United States in The Witness for the Prosecution in 1948. It has been dramatized for television twice. A live version appeared as part of Suspense on CBS on 22 January 1952. A second adaptation, part of The Agatha Christie Hour, aired on ITV on 2 November 1982.
Characters: Eversleigh, Violet; Johnson; Milson; Thompson, Mrs.; Trent, Claire; Trent, Jack; Verall, Inspector; West, Sir Alington; West, Dermot
See also: The Agatha Christie Hour; CBS Television Adaptation; The Hound of Death (story collection); Psychoanalysis; The Sittaford Mystery
The Red Signal (television adaptation). See CBS Television Adaptations
Redding, Lawrence
Lawrence Redding is an attractive, bohemian artist in The Murder at the Vicarage, who is having an affair with Anne Protheroe and a cover-affair with her stepdaughter, Lettice. Unlike, for example, Basil Blake in The Body in the Library, he is an example of an attractive, dangerous-seeming cad who turns out to be even worse than he seems.
