LEVEL 5 Teacher’s notes Teacher Support Programme A Murder is Announced Agatha Christie Paddocks are also surprised as they read the newspaper EASYSTARTS over breakfast. These include Miss Letitia Blacklock, the owner, her young cousins, Julia and Patrick Simmons and her old school friend, Dora Bunner. Miss Blacklock thinks it’s a joke but Dora is afraid. So is Mitzi, the foreign LEVEL 2 cook who believes that the Nazis are coming to murder her. Miss Blacklock, knowing that her neighbours will attend the ‘function’, prepares refreshments and heats LEVEL 3 the house in expectation. One by one they arrive and gather in the sitting-room. At precisely 6.30 the lights go out and a man enters the room shining at torch. He fires LEVEL 4 a gun twice and somebody screams. He then turns to leave, hesitates and a third shot is heard before he falls About the author to the ground. Everybody is shocked and Miss Blacklock’s LEVEL 5 blouse is covered in blood. She has been shot in the ear Agatha Christie was born in 1890 in Devon, England. but is not badly hurt. The intruder, however, is dead. She was the youngest child of an American father and an Colonel Easterbrook pulls off his mask and Dora Bunner English mother. Her father died when she was eleven and recognises him as the young Swiss man who worked at LEVEL 6 the young Agatha became very attached to her mother. the Spa Hotel in Medenham Wells. He had asked Miss As a young woman, Agatha was described as tall with Blacklock for money to get back to Switzerland but she reddish-gold hair, fun and bright company, although shy had refused. Detective-Inspector Craddock is put in at times. She married Lieutenant Archibald Christie in charge of the case and he goes to the hotel to ask about 1914 and in 1919, gave birth to her only child, Rosalind. the Swiss employee, Rudi Scherz. He interviews the They divorced in 1928. Two years earlier, following the manager and then Rudi’s girlfriend, Myrna Harris, but death of her mother, Agatha had completely disappeared they can tell him very little. Then Craddock goes to Little for ten days, adding real-life mystery to fact. She married Paddocks and interviews Miss Blacklock, who tells him again in 1930. She had a phenomenal literary career as what she believed happened on the night of the crime. a writer of crime stories and her book sales are only surpassed by the Bible and the works of Shakespeare. Chapters 4–6: Craddock continues to interview those In 1971, she was awarded England’s highest honour, the present at the scene of the crime. He talks to Julia, who Order of the British Empire. She died in January 1976, and doesn’t think the man was trying to shoot Miss Blacklock is buried in the churchyard in Cholsey, Oxfordshire, and then he talks to Mitzi, who rather hysterically thinks near where she lived. For more information see the the police have come to torture her. As Craddock is Introduction to the book or the official website about to leave, Patrick arrives and he interviews him. www.agathachristie.com. Then he goes to Dayas Hall to talk to Phillipa Haymes, a widow who works there but lives at Little Paddocks too. Summary She explains how she arrived home just before the crime Chapters 1–3: On Friday morning, October 29th, the local took place and entered through the unlocked side door. newspaper, the Gazette, is delivered to the neighbours Craddock then visits all the neighbours who had been of Chipping Cleghorn. Among those neighbours are Mrs present on the night but none of them seem to have any Swettenham and her son Edmund, Mrs Easterbrook idea about why the crime was committed. Some time and her husband Colonel Easterbrook, Miss Hinchcliffe later, the police go to see an old lady called Miss Marple, and her friend Miss Murgatroyd and the Reverend who is staying at the Royal Spa Hotel. She tells them that Julian Harmon and his wife Bunch. All of them are Rudi Scherz had altered one of her cheques in order very surprised to read an advertisement announcing a to steal money. On her advice, Craddock talks again to murder at 6.30 p.m. that very evening at a house in the Myrna Harris and finds out that Rudi had told her that village known as Little Paddocks. The residents of Little somebody had paid him to act out a hold-up for a party. pearsonenglishreaders.com © Pearson Education Limited 2015 A Murder is Announced - Teacher’s notes 1 of 5 LEVEL 5 Teacher’s notes Teacher Support Programme A Murder is Announced Craddock then goes to Little Paddocks again and talks to Blacklock tells Phillipa that she has left her a lot of money EASYSTARTS Mitzi, who this time says that she heard Rudi talking to in her will. Julia, hearing this, is not very happy. Later on, Mrs Haymes in the garden about where to hide in the Dora is found dead. The aspirin was in fact poisonous. house. Craddock then tries to open one of the doors to Craddock visits Miss Blacklock and asks to see a photo of the sitting-room but finds it locked. Miss Bunner explains Sonia Goedler. There are some photo albums that she LEVEL 2 that it usually is as they no longer use it. Craddock finds had been looking at with Julia a few days earlier, but when the key and opens it to discover that it has recently been they find them, the pictures of Sonia have been removed. oiled and used. He explains to Miss Blacklock his idea that Craddock discovers that Phillipa’s husband hadn’t died LEVEL 3 somebody in the room that night had left by that door but had deserted from the army. He accuses her of when the lights were out and had gone behind Rudi and seeing him recently but she denies it. He then finds some fired the shots in order to kill Miss Blacklock. She explains letters from Letitia Blacklock to her sister, Charlotte and LEVEL 4 that she can see no reason for this, not even for money on reading one of them discovers a description of Sonia, as at the moment, she is not rich. Within a few weeks, which reminds him of somebody he knows. He then finds however, she is due to inherit a lot of money from Belle out that Phillipa’s husband has been killed in an accident. LEVEL 5 Goedler, the wife of her old boss. On further questioning, Meanwhile Miss Murgatroyd remembers that a certain Miss Blacklock explains that if she were dead, her boss’s woman wasn’t in the room on the night of the hold-up. nephew and niece, Pip and Emma, would inherit the Chapters 10–12: Miss Hinchcliffe arrives home to find LEVEL 6 money. Craddock then tells Phillipa Haymes what Mitzi that Miss Murgatroyd has been murdered and a letter has told him but she denies everything. Miss Marple arrives at Little Paddocks from Julia Simmons, saying she’s goes to have tea at Miss Blacklock’s house and brings the coming to visit. Miss Blacklock discovers that the girl who conversation around to old photographs. She discovers is staying in her house is not really Julia but Emma. Emma that Miss Blacklock doesn’t have any of her cousins, who says that she has not seen her brother Pip since she was she had never seen until they came to stay with her. three and that when she had found out that her uncle’s Could they be Pip and Emma in disguise? money was to go to Miss Blacklock, she had decided to Chapters 7–9: Edmund Swettenham asks Phillipa Haymes befriend her in the hope of getting some of that money. to marry him. She refuses saying that he doesn’t know She denies shooting at her, however. Miss Blacklock anything about her. Meanwhile, Colonel Easterbrook breaks her pearl necklace and is unusually upset by it. discovers that his gun is missing. He is concerned that it Meanwhile Bunch informs Craddock that Miss Marple could have been used in the shooting, but his wife tells is missing. After dinner that night, Craddock questions him that the last time she saw it was the day after the various suspects at Little Paddocks. Laura Easterbrook hold-up. Miss Marple has coffee with Dora Bunner and originally says she was with her husband but he denies Dora tells her about how kind Miss Blacklock has been it. Then Mitzi runs into the room saying that she saw to her. She also says that she suspects Patrick of being Miss Blacklock with the gun in her hand on the night of involved in the shooting and the oiling of the sitting-room the hold-up. Phillipa then admits that she is actually Pip, door as she had found him in the garden with an oily who isn’t a boy but a girl, and that she had also tried cup and a feather some days earlier. Inspector Craddock to befriend Miss Blacklock in the hope that she would travels to Scotland to meet Belle Goedler, who is weeks get some money. Mitzi goes back into the kitchen and away from dying. She tells him that her dead husband had Miss Blacklock follows her and tries to drown her in the argued with his sister Sonia over the man she married.