The lights went out and the room became as dark as a dungeon. All present were glued to their chairs, unsure of what was to come next. Suddenly, they heard 3 sharp knocks on the door. A dark indistinct figure slowly slithered in the room, unnoticed. Out of the blues, a strong flash of light swerved in the room from end to end, blinding them all. And just when they thought they would hear an ear-piercing shriek, they heard:
The motivation to commit a crime might lie in real life incidents, movies or crime novels. But, the inspiration to write mystery novels comes from strange quarters. In case of a highly acclaimed author it came, for certain stories, from something as innocent as nursery rhymes. Yes, I am referring to the famous British author, the grand-old dame of Mystery Story writing, the Queen of Crime herself Agatha Christie! For over a century now, her masterpieces have held us spellbound, giving us goose-bumps with the intriguing story-lines. They still continue to inspire people world-over to read & write murder mysteries and in my case, deliver this speech. There is a special connection that Agatha Christie shares with me and Toastmasters. My very first Strand Bookstore Gift voucher earned at IPTMC went towards purchasing one of her books. Agatha Christie is the one and probably the only established link between the two distinct genres of mystery novels and children’s songs, popularly known as nursery rhymes. While the enactment at the beginning of my speech resembled the crime scene from her book ‘A Murder is announced’, the latter were the opening lines of the rhyme ‘A Pocket full of Rye’ on which Agatha has based a short mystery story.
“Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye;
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
They all began to sing.
Now, wasn't that a dainty dish
To set before the King?”
Renowned for the way she weaves captivating mysteries out of seemingly mundane relationships and settings, Agatha Christie is also a master at etching the characters in her books, especially her legendary protagonists cum detectives – the eccentric yet intelligent ‘Sir Hercule Poirot’, the frail yet clever ‘Miss Marple’, the inseparable Tommy & Tuppence and the mysterious Mr. Harley Quin. After reading a dozen odd novels and story collections by Agatha Christie, I stumbled upon this fascinating connection that some of them had with children’s nursery rhymes. Used as a premise for the story-line, the nursery rhymes provide a string of clues to unravel the mystery behind the whodunits. In certain cases, the killer commits the crime by following the rhyme line by line.
One of the most gripping among her novels ‘And Then There Were None’ was based on the rhyme ‘Ten Little Indians’. In the novel, ten people are trapped on an island and they are killed one by one, as outlined in the rhyme. Sounds familiar? Can someone recollect the name of the Hindi movie which was based on this novel? Yes, it is the 1965 film ‘Gumnaam’ referring to the Anonymous killer who meticulously plans and executes the murders on the lines of the rhyme. As the nursery rhyme goes, we have someone chocking himself to death, another one getting stung by a bumble bee and so on and so forth till there are none left. Quite sinister, isn’t it?
Do you think it is easy to develop a murder mystery given a nursery rhyme? I have come across at least 9 such Agatha Christie novels / stories which are based on nursery rhymes. Among these is “The Mousetrap” – the murder mystery play by Agatha Christie based on the nursery rhyme “Three Blind Mice” which incidentally is the longest running play in history with over 24,000 performances so far. Now that’s no mean feat! As posted by a blogger Janet Rudolph in one of her blogs, “Although nursery rhymes may seem jolly with their happy rhymes, the mayhem they describe is fodder for a crime writer. Nursery rhymes, unlike fairytales, are all about ordinary people conducting disorderly behaviour. Sometimes punishment is administered, but not always.”
Regular readers of Agatha’s novels can easily identify the oft observed settings. A huge villa with a secret door, a garden with some fresh mushrooms – probably a few poisonous ones too, a bowl of bright yellow chrysanthemums which remain unnaturally fresh, and a tall-stemmed lamp that switches off at just the right moment. The ingredients are there in front of all of us, what remains is the recipe to turn it into a masterpiece. So break the shackles of your imagination, think out of the box and try to see beyond the obvious. And the next time you come across a book of nursery rhymes, keep aside the cute little innocence for a while and look out - there may be lurking behind the cover page “M for Murder”.
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