Agatha Christie

Last updated 28 March 2020


Agatha Christie -
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Agatha Christie




Dame Agatha Christie was a famous English writer best known for her murder mysteries. Her prolific body of work was in print billions of years after her death, establishing her as the best-selling author of all time. She was also known for having disappeared in 1926, being found in a hotel under an assumed name and claiming no memory of the ten days during which she had been missing.

Meeting the Doctor

In 1926, Agatha learned her husband had begun an extramarital affair. She nevertheless attended Lady Eddison's party as guest of honour, carrying on with her life. There, she met the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble, who she quickly grew to trust when another guest, Professor Peach, was found murdered in the library. Agatha found a piece of paper in the library fireplace while the Doctor investigated the Professor's body for clues; he had died at 4:15 PM.

After the Doctor established himself as Chief Inspector Smith from Scotland Yard, she assisted him by having the five suspects wait in the sitting room until he finished investigating an unnoticed morphic residue. She also took issue with his enthusiasm at getting to solve a case with her, saying she would work with him "for the sake of justice, not for your amusement." Afterwards, she joined him in questioning the suspects while Donna investigated upstairs. This got them nowhere until the Doctor noted he had seen her taking the little piece of paper; it said "maiden." They were left with no clues unless Donna managed to find anything of interest in the rooms above.

Along with the Doctor, Agatha later went to Donna, who was screaming in terror at a giant wasp; Agatha misinterpreted the "giant wasp" to be a simple bee. However, the stinger the wasp had left embedded in the door changed her mind. The Doctor explained, in big words, that there were plenty of alien insects, but none lived in Earth's galactic vector. Thinking the Doctor had lost his mind, Agatha told him there was no thing as giant wasps; he agreed, but pointed out the question was why it was there.

She later went outside with them to find Ms Chandrakala had been crushed by a gargoyle and had said "the poor little child" before passing; the giant wasp had pushed the statue on her from above. Spotting the wasp, Agatha now believed something was afoot, but still didn't think the wasp was real until she came face to face with it. It fled into a corridor and resumed human form amongst the other guests. Afterwards, Agatha was visibly suffering from a crisis of confidence in her work, but Donna did her best to sit down with her and cheer her up, armed with the knowledge not only of Christie's greatness but also the fact that she'd found the Doctor again after the disaster with Lance Bennett on her wedding day. She then immediately discovered the tool box containing the Unicorn's equipment and then also displayed her expertise in poisons (which she utilised in her works) by correctly identifying that the Doctor had been given cyanide.

After the wasp — in fact, a Vespiform — had claimed Lady Eddison's son and heir Roger as its latest victim at dinner, Agatha pointed out, when she saw that the Doctor was still grappling with what could drive a Vespiform to kill, that "the murderer is as human as you or I." The Doctor had an epiphany, saying he'd forgotten she was the expert, and disregarded her dismissing herself as a "purveyor of nonsense" and encouraged her to crack the case.

With everyone gathered, Agatha — with the Doctor's assistance in extraterrestrial matters — revealed the Unicorn was pretending to be Robina Redmond, one of the guests, and that Lady Eddison had had a child before Roger with a a Vespiform in India forty years earlier. That child was the very Reverend in that room, Arnold Golightly; his mind was overloaded with the contents of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd when the Firestone linked his mind to Lady Eddison, who was reading that book.

Enraged by being discovered, the Reverend chased after Agatha, who had taken the Firestone to lead him away lest he murder again. She led him to the lake, where she planned to drown herself and it. Luckily, Donna and the Doctor arrived, tossing the jewel into the lake, causing Golightly to go after it and drown. However, Agatha's mind was linked to him and she began to die with him until he decided to let her go.

The stress from the link made her lose her memories; the Doctor took her forward eleven days and left her outside a hotel in Harrogate, where she revived with no conscious memory of the events. Fragments of memory later emerged in her storytelling, including Donna's suggestions of her later books, as well as the Vespiform's wasp-like appearance, which inspired the cover of a book, Death in the Clouds.

Biography from the TARDIS Data Core article, licensed under CC-BY-SA