You don’t have to be a detective to know about Agatha Christie. Even if you haven’t read one of the British writer’s thrillers, chances are you’ve seen one of her plays or watched one of the many movies based on her novels.
For one of her fans, her works are more about the history than the mystery.
Digital marketing writer Kate Gingold loves Christie, but not as much as she loves to research. Much like an enthusiastic language arts student, she enjoys looking into the meaning or history of what she reads to help her understanding of a work.
Gingold, now an Elgin resident after living in Naperville for 34 years, has just published a reference book, “Agatha Annotated: Investigating the Books of the 1920s,” for those who are like her.
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“I love research, I love local history,” said Gingold, who wrote a children’s book about Naperville’s sesquicentennial in 1981. “I have always been a fan of Agatha Christie.”
As if following a twisty Christie plot weren’t hard enough, her books are full of references from times gone by.
“Over the years, I would look things up,” Gingold said. “During COVID, I was home not doing anything. I couldn’t go to the library.”
But she was able to download books, and then ended up reaching out all over the world to find the answers she needed.
Gingold began to jot down what she found in a notebook as she read. Since Christie began writing in the 1920s, many of the references she makes are now more than a hundred years old.
“Kids today wouldn’t know how to dial an operator,” she said. “For years I skimmed over parts I didn’t understand, like the French Inspector Poirot spoke.”
Here’s an example from Gingold’s highly detailed reference book. In 1927, Christie wrote a book called “The Big Four.” In chapter 11, Poirot is reading the notation of a chess game: P-K4, P-K4; 2 Kt-KB3, Kt-QB3; 3 B-Kt5;?
Not only does Gingold explain what the code means but adds that this particular version of descriptive notation has not been used since the 1980s.
If you’ve ever been confused by Poirot’s French, you’ll appreciate the many phrases Gingold translates. There’s everything from ” bas the Big Four,” meaning “Down with the Big Four,” from chapter 16 in “The Big Four,” to “Voyons,” a French expression meaning “let’s see” that he uses in the “Mysterious Affair at Styles,” “Poirot Investigates” and “The Adventures of the Western Star.”
But the book is far more than a French to English dictionary. It’s full of trivia about the 1920s, from history to geography and much in between.
For example, did you know that Victorians used a number of different doorbells, from a simple knocker rapped on a metal plate to a lever that could be flipped down to ring a bell suspended inside?
It’s these kinds of small details that Gingold believes bridges generations.
“I think it makes you feel more connected to the period,” she said. “Even if Poirot is on TV, there are little details I never noticed before, like the doorbells. There were so many different kinds then. I like to see how people really lived. I find it just as fascinating as seeing how the ‘Real Housewives’ live now.”
You never know what you’re going to stumble across in Gingold’s book. I was amazed to see a reference to my hometown, Wembley in north London. I didn’t know Christie had ever mentioned it, but apparently it is referenced in chapter seven of her 1929 novel, “Partners in Crime.”
Gingold explains that the town dates from before 800 A.D., when it was known as Wemba’s Meadow. It remained a small village until the 1800s, when a boom in manufacturing sparked a huge growth in population and home building.
So, now you know.
Since Christie’s books always feature at least one murder, there’s some information on the methods used. For example, prussic acid is another name for hydrogen cyanide, as mentioned in two of her novels. In case you are wondering, when not being used to kill people it’s also pretty effective against vermin and electroplating precious metals.
Chloral was used to treat insomnia and anxiety in the late 1800s, but an overdose will lower body temperature, blood pressure and respiration until death occurs.
The .455 in “The Seven Dials Mystery” refers to the diameter of the gun barrel and the pure milk mentioned in the book can harbor microorganisms, including tuberculosis.
Some of the terminology Christie used is not deemed politically correct today, but Gingold still explains it in the context of the time.
“This term (Chinaman) for a man or person who is of Chinese descent is considered derogatory today and may have been in the 1920s as well,” she writes. “While Englishman and Frenchman were also commonly used, Chinaman was often applied to people of any Asian ancestry and is thought to suggest the stereotype of speaking broken English.”
Christie wrote 66 mysteries and Gingold confesses it’s a little daunting to annotate them all. But now that she’s started, she plans to move on to the books from the 1930s.
“I like the history more than the mystery,” Gingold said. “I don’t like hard-boiled mysteries. They’re like going to a Renaissance fair. You dress up and pretend to live in the fantasy, but you don’t talk about the bubonic plague. It’s fun.”
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Hilary Decent is a freelance journalist who moved to Naperville from England in 2007.