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The mistress of crime thrillers
Alasdair Steven investigates the work of Agatha Christie
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From £26,900. n
The Queen of Crime
knew a thing or two about
poison. Agatha Christie
studied pharmacy in her native
Torquay during the First World
War and worked in the local
pharmacy which was close to
Torre Abbey. While there Christie
learnt much that she was later
to use in her novels. Not for
her the butler with the poker –
Christie preferred a sinister and
little known poison in a remote
country house.
She gained her certificate to
practice as a pharmacist in 1917
and worked with the Voluntary
Aid Detachment treating
wounded soldiers who had been
shipped back to Torquay. She
also worked as a ‘ward-maid’ in
Torre hospital and did relief work
in Torquay Town Hall when it
was a Red Cross Centre.
In the Second World War
she worked in the pharmacy
as an assistant and qualified
so she could dispense drugs.
Against each chemical in her
meticulous exercise books there
is a list of its properties and the
recommended dosage.
There is now a museum in the
grounds of Torre Abbey with
a gallery dedicated to Christie
memorabilia: Significantly there
is a special area devoted to
the poisons used in her books.
About 80% of the Christie books
Agatha Christie Queen of Crime
are centred around killings by
poison or some rum mixture
which Christie had learnt about
as a pharmacist.
Mysterious
One of her favourite poisons
was strychnine which had been
in common domestic use for
many centuries as rat poison.
After taking strychnine there
are violent convulsions and
swallowing is impossible. In The
Mysterious Mr Quin many were
murdered by strychnine while
that glorious fictional eccentric
Hercule Poirot has to make his
“little grey cells” work overtime
in another strychnine related
murder in Death is Three Acts.
One of Christie’s most
ingenious poison killings was
Death in the Air where there
is a death on an aeroplane. A
tell-tale red mark is spotted on
the lady’s neck and a dart at
her feet. The dart was a jungle
blowpipe and had been dipped in
tree-snake venom: That causes
“acute haemorrhaging under the
skin and also acts on the heart,
paralysing it immediately.”
But one of Christie’s most
thrilling books was Witness
For The Prosecution which was
made into a famous film with
Charles Laughton, Marlene
Dietrich and Tyrone Power.
In a plot that twists and turns,
Laughton accepts Dietrich’s case
strongly against medical advice.
His heart condition necessitates
him having a constant nurse on
hand (played by Elsa Lancaster,
Laughton’s real life wife) who
sternly reminds him when to
take his pills.
Jean Reid, a Christie expert
at the Torquay museum,
confirms that “much of Dame
Agatha’s plots develop from
her pharmacy training. But it
is the jigsaw-like plots that
grip the reader. We have some
fascinating Christie material
at the museum and at nearby
Greenways, her home and now a
National Trust property. My own
favourites are Nemesis and the
Murder of Roger Ackroyd.”
The cunning twist in the last
named book shows Christie at
her most chemically inventive. It
is another strychnine poisoning
and Hercule Poirot has the
coffee cup reanalysed and tested
for narcotics. “A narcotic taken
with the strychnine,” Hercule
announces with his accustomed
insouciant urbanity, “will delay
the action of the poison for some
hours.”
From the week beginning
September 15 Torquay is to
celebrate the 110th anniversary
of Christie’s birth. The museum
and Greenways will hold
special events along with a
‘potent garden’ which will
highlight the author’s interest in
poisonous plants.
So the creator of such wonderful
characters as Hercule Poirot and
Miss Marple will be celebrated
in the town where she studied
pharmacy and dreamt up all those
dastardly and poisonous plots.
The books have given
generations of readers, filmgoers
and TV viewers hours of
entertainment and they all came
from a young girl studying in her
local pharmacy. n
l Alasdair Steven is a freelance
writer on the arts. He has covered
opera and ballet in the UK as well
as writing television scripts.
54 Pharmacy Professional | July/August 2010
July/August 2010 | Pharmacy Professional
55