'Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie Essay\r'

'hickory tree Dickory docking is a work of research worker fictionalisation by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime companionship on October 31, 1955[1] and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in November of the same yr under the piddle of hickory Dickory Death[2][3]. The UK rende anchor ring retailed at ten shillings and sixpence (10/6)[1] and the US edition at $3.00[3]. It features her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The novel is notable for featuring Poirot’s cost-effective secretary, deteriorate Felicity Lemon, who had previously merely appe atomic number 18d in the Poirot short stories.\r\n game innovation\r\nAn outbreak of apparent kleptomania at a student society is not unremarkably the sort of shame that arouses Hercule Poirot’s interest. scarcely when he fronts the bizarre list of stolen and vandalized items †including a stethoscope, some lightbulbs, some old gabardine trousers, a box of chocolates, a gel ded rucksack, some boric powder and a diamond ring later install in a bowl of a soup †he congratulates the warden, Mrs Hubbard, on a ‘unique and beautiful problem’. It is scarce not long before the crime of theft is the least of Poirot’s c at a timerns.\r\n story of the novel’s title\r\nThe title is interpreted, as are other of Christie’s titles, from a nursery rhyme: hickory tree Dickory docking fee. This is nevertheless one of her most(prenominal) comminuted l signs to the original nursery rhyme, consisting of subaltern more than the name of a road.\r\nPlot summary\r\nPoirot’s closure of the piddling thefts is unsubtle but effective: once he has threatened to call in the police, Celia Austin quickly confesses to the pettier amongst the incidents. She denies specifically: take Nigel Chapman’s green ink and apply it to deface Eliza representh Johnston’s work; pickings the stethoscope, the light bulbs and boracic powder; and penetrative up and concealing a rucksack. Celia appears to put up committed the lesser thefts in dictate to attract the attention of Colin McNabb, a psychology student who at first regards her as an interesting case study, and wherefore †around immediately †becomes engaged to her. Celia makes restitution for the crimes and is evidently reconciled with her victims, but when she is detect the undermentioned morning dead from an overdose of morphia it does not take the investigators long to see through attempts to make her death appear like suicide. Several of the original incidents acquire not been solved by Celia’s confession.\r\nInspector Sharpe quickly solves the mystery of the stolen stethoscope during his interviews with the inhabitants of the hostel. Nigel Chapman admits to having stolen the stethoscope in order to pose as a doctor and steal the morphine tartrate from the hospital dispensary as part of a bet to acquire three deadly pois ons. He claims that these poisons were then care richly disposed of, but cannot be sure that the morphine was not stolen from him while it was in his possession. Poirot turns his attention to the take of the diamond ring, and confronts Valerie Hobhouse, in whose soup the ring was prove. It seems that the diamond had been replaced with a zircon and, devoted the fact that it was difficult for anyone but Valerie to befool put the ring into the soup, Poirot accuses her of having stolen the diamond.\r\nShe admits to having done so, formulation that she needed the money to pay slay gambling debts. She also admits to having planted in Celia’s mind the entire motif of the thefts. Mrs. Nicoletis has been behaving very nervously, as if she were losing her nerve. One dark someone add ups her drunk and kills her. Poirot focuses his attention now on the cutting up of the rucksack. By comparing an example of the rucksack event destroyed with others, he identifies an unusual corr ugated base, and suggests to the police that the rucksack may consecrate been part of a clever global smuggling exercise. The rucksacks were sold to innocent students, and then exchanged as a content of transporting drugs and gems. Mrs. Nicoletis had been bankrolling the organisation, but was not the brain substructure it. When the police visited hickory tree Road on an unconnected issue, the murderer had cut up the rucksack to avoid its macrocosm found and removed light bulbs to avoid being recognised. Patricia Lane comes to Nigel and admits that, in an effort to documentation a dangerous poison safe, she has taken the morphine from the bottle in his defecateer and substituted for it bicarbonate of soda water. Now, however, the bottle of bicarbonate of soda has been taken from her own drawer.\r\nWhile they are searching for this bottle Patricia mentions that she is intending to spare to his pay back in order to reconcile the two. Nigel tells her that the campaign for h is estrangement from his pay off is that he discovered that his father had poisoned his mother. This is why he changed his name and carries two passports. Nigel comes to Inspector Sharpe and tells him about the lacking(p) morphine, but while he is there, Patricia telephones to narrate that she has discovered something make headway. By the time that Nigel and Sharpe get to the house, Patricia has been killed by a blow to the head. Mr. Akibombo comes to Sharpe and says that he had taken Patricia’s bicarbonate to hush up a hold out complaint; when he took a teaspoonful of the bicarbonate, however, he had stomach pains and later discovered that the sporty powder was in fact the boracic powder.\r\nBy the time Patricia had substituted the bicarbonate, the morphine had already been substituted by the stolen boracic powder. Poirot, whose skepticisms about Valerie Hobhouse’s role in the smuggling proceeding have been proved correct by a police raid on her beauty cucko ld, now closes the case. The murderer has been the most obvious person, Nigel Chapman, who was known to have the morphine in his possession. He killed Celia because she knew about his treble identity and also knew that Valerie travelled foreign on a false passport. He killed Mrs. Nicoletis because she was sure to give the smuggling operation away under pressure, and killed Patricia because she was likely to draw to his father’s attention the late events.\r\nWhen Poirot outlines to Nigel’s father’s poll taker the case against Nigel, the solicitor is able to fork up final proof. Nigel’s mother had been poisoned, not by his father, but by Nigel himself. When the father discovered this he forced him to write a confession and left it with his solicitor together with a letter explaining that it should be produced were there any evidence of further wrongdoing by his son. Valerie confirms Poirot’s solution further. She has placed the call to the poli ce station, simply from Patricia, after Nigel had already killed her. The green ink was a double-bluff intended to divert suspicion away from him. Valerie is willing to incriminate Nigel fully because Mrs. Nicoletis was actually her mother.\r\nCharacters in â€Å"hickory tree Dickory Dock”\r\n• Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective\r\n• Inspector Sharpe, the investigate officer\r\n• Miss Felicity Lemon, Poirot’s secretary\r\n• Mrs. Christina Nicoletis, the owner of the student hostel at Hickory Road\r\n• Mrs Hubbard, Miss Lemon’s sister and the warden of Hickory Road\r\n• George, Poirot’s valet\r\n• Celia Austin, pill roller in the dispensary at St. Catherine’s infirmary\r\n• Colin McNabb, a psychology student\r\n• Nigel Chapman, a History student, a nonmigratory at Hickory Road\r\n• Valerie Hobhouse, a occupant physician physician at Hickory Road and furnish in a beauty shop\r\nà ¢â‚¬Â¢ Sally Finch, a student resident at Hickory Road\r\n• Elizabeth Johnston, a student resident at Hickory Road\r\n• Patricia Lane, a student resident at Hickory Road\r\n• Genevieve, a student resident at Hickory Road\r\n• Leonard Bateson, a student resident at Hickory Road\r\n• Mr. Chandra Lal, a student resident at Hickory Road\r\n• Mr. Akibombo, a student resident at Hickory Road\r\n• female horse, the take a leak at Hickory Road\r\n• Geronimo, Maria’s husband\r\n'