‘She could have gotten away with’ murder: The dangerous science behind the Queen of Crime

Before Agatha Christie became one of the best-selling authors of all time, she worked in a chemist’s shop in her hometown of Torquay, England, in service of someone she referred to in her memoir only as Mr. P.

Mr. P carried a dark lump of curare in his pocket — a poison that can quickly paralyze and kill. He walked around with it because it made him “feel powerful,” she wrote in “Agatha Christie: An Autobiography.” Christie couldn’t help but note that despite Mr. P’s “cherubic appearance,” such behaviors might make him a “dangerous man.”

In another instance, Christie’s sharp mind caught a mistake Mr. P made while he showed her how to infuse drugs into suppositories and inadvertently added 10 times the needed dosage.

Realizing Mr. P wouldn’t listen to a “little girl” who flagged his error, Christie had the clever idea to spill the medicine on the floor and “trod on them firmly” to prevent the dangerous drug from being stocked on the store’s shelves, she recalled in her memoir.

The spark for Christie’s gripping detective novels began in this unexpectedly sinister environment, as World War I raged in the background. Throughout her life, she would build a deep knowledge of the science of poisons that helped her leave a lasting legacy on the literary world and beyond.

Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

English island that inspired Agatha Christie is up for sale, along with its luxury Art Deco hotel

After Christie left Mr. P’s shop, she started to train as a pharmacist in Torquay’s hospital in 1916. That’s when the seed of a story began to percolate in her mind. A textbook called “The Pharmaceutical Pocket Book — for Practitioners & Students” that she read in preparation for her exams inspired the murder weapon in her 1920 debut novel “The Mysterious Affair at Styles”: strychnine, a neurotoxin once used in tiny doses as a stimulant, combined with other drugs to kill the victim.

Now, visitors can view her personal copy of the pocket tome — bearing mysterious stains and “A. Christie” scrawled at the top right — in a new exhibit, “ Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery .”

The Christie Archive Trust

Opening October 30 at the British Library in London, the exhibit marks the first time that the little book, and many of the more than 200 items shared by her family and trust, will be on display for the public, said the exhibit’s lead curator Lucy Rowland.

The textbook was one of many artifacts that revealed just how much research went into Christie’s work — and tangible proof that the author had a deep understanding of medications and deadly chemical concoctions, Rowland said.

Photo Illustration by Alberto Mier/CNN/Universal History Archive/Getty Images; Gillian Pullinger/Alamy Stock Photo; Will Dax/Solent News/Shutterstock

Jane Austen’s cause of death has remained a mystery. But her letters and books offer clues

Christie’s accurate descriptions of poisons, which serve as the murder weapon in 41 of her 66 detective novels, still hold up today.

“It was very easy to read Christie as a teenager and not notice that I was being taught science,” said Dr. Kathryn Harkup, former chemist and author of “A Is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie.” “It is stealth science communication at its peak. The plotting, the technical ability you need to be able to put across complex scientific ideas in a way that you don’t notice — my God, that’s a talent.”

And her scientifically driven tales of mystery and murder may have even helped solve real-world crimes: Her early days working with Mr. P, in particular, directly inspired later works that might have prevented poisoning cases.

Christie remains the undisputed queen of crime 50 years after her death — and something of an enigma.

Publicly, Christie remained humble, famously referring to herself as a “sausage machine,” expected to churn out hit after hit for her publishers.

“All of that is part of building this persona that doesn’t threaten or scare the public,” said Dr. Jamie Bernthal-Hooker, a Christie scholar and visiting fellow in English and creative writing at the University of Suffolk in the UK. “Even today, people are afraid of clever and powerful women. I like to say that her greatest fictional creation was Agatha Christie.”

New explorations such as the British Library’s exhibit are providing fresh insights about the adventure-seeking woman who kept pace with the radical change in her lifetime, from 1890 to 1976.

“For the first 11 years of her life, Queen Victoria’s on the throne,” said Dr. Mark Aldridge, a Christie historian and associate professor of screen histories at Southampton Solent University in the UK. “By the time she’s writing her books in the late ’60s, she sees the moon landing. I’ve always argued that if she had lived a few more years and seen ‘Star Wars’ in 1977, she would have written ‘Murder in Space’ because she loved new things.”

While Christie lacked a formal education, her curiosity and observant nature guided how she saw the world. She also had a vivid imagination, likely because she came from a family of storytellers who loved to travel, said her great grandson James Prichard, chairman and CEO of Agatha Christie Limited, which manages the rights to her works. Literature, theater and operas furthered her interest in spinning tales of her own.

Before becoming a published author and working in pharmacy, Christie initially volunteered as a nurse at age 24 and treated wounded soldiers at Torquay’s Red Cross Hospital in 1914 during World War I. With her husband off fighting in the war, Christie felt motivated to help however she could.

She had to train on the job, quickly shifting from rolling bandages to tending wounded soldiers. Christie admits in her memoir she felt “disgraced” that she became faint at the sight of blood and wounds the first time she witnessed a surgical operation, but that wouldn’t happen again. Christie learned to steel herself and would avert her eyes during knife incisions.

She enjoyed nursing so much that Christie mused had she not married, she likely would have “trained as a real hospital nurse” after the war. In 1916, she pivoted to learn how to mix medications to assist the pharmacy, which was understaffed.

Christie’s insights from her rich life experiences are subtly but expertly woven into her novels and have helped cement the author as a genius beyond her time.

Specifically, Christie sharpened her attention to detail during her extensive pharmacy training for the Society of Apothecaries’ Assistant Examination in 1917. One night after awakening in a panic, she rushed back to the Torquay Hospital pharmacy, worried she had accidentally cross-contaminated an ointment during her afternoon preparations. She checked every single pot of ointment just to be sure, according to her memoir.

This firsthand experience manifests in her debut novel “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” when the character Cynthia Murdoch, a pharmacy volunteer, says, “If you people only knew how fatally easy it is to poison someone by mistake, you wouldn’t joke about it.”

There was a fine line, Christie realized, between the helpful and harmful nature of medication. Improperly measuring or mixing a medication could turn a lifesaving cure into a lethal substance, as exhibit visitors see as they walk through a mock dispensary.

On display, a 1925 poem penned in blue ink titled “In the Dispensary,” also reflects her thoughts on this dangerous balance: “Here is menace, and murder and sudden death — in these phials of green and blue.”

Science Museum Group

As a fiction writer, Christie wasn’t obliged to be accurate, but she took great pains to prevent any errors in her works — and that expertise came through in her writing without additional flourish. Other contemporary crime authors such as Dorothy L. Sayers often included extraneous details to show that they had done their homework, but Christie didn’t, Harkup said.

The review for Christie’s first novel that pleased her most was printed in “The Pharmaceutical Journal,” which celebrated her knowledge and use of strychnine, rather than fictional untraceable substances that were so often to blame for crimes in other stories. “Miss Agatha Christie knows her job,” the reviewer wrote.

During World War II, Christie — by then a well-known author — studied again to work in the pharmacy at the University College London, where chief pharmacist Harold Davis suggested using thallium as a poison in one of her novels.

Christie paired the recommendation with her previous observations of Mr. P, who served as the inspiration for the nefarious pharmacist in her 1961 novel, “The Pale Horse.”

The plot is all about science versus superstition, said Southampton Solent University’s Aldridge, who analyzed the book with fellow writer and podcaster Gray Robert Brown in a podcast and upcoming book “ The Swinging Christies .” The victim in “The Pale Horse” appears to have been cursed by witches, but spoiler alert, is actually slowly killed with an unusual poison — thallium.

Nicknamed the “poisoner’s poison,” the tasteless, odorless toxic substance acts slowly and mimics potassium in the body, making it difficult to detect — until it’s too late.

In the book, two women have a fight that involves them pulling at each other’s hair. One of them loses a large amount of her hair at the root — and dies shortly after. It’s a clue about the sinister goings-on in the novel and the culprit: Thallium poisoning causes hair loss.

Christie’s use of thallium in the novel is so accurate that it’s been credited with saving the lives of two people.

She received a letter in 1975 from a young woman in South America, for instance, who said reading “The Pale Horse” led her to realize that an acquaintance was being slowly poisoned by his wife, Harkup said.

“But of this I am quite, quite certain — had I not read The Pale Horse and thus learned of the effects of thallium poisoning, X would not have survived,” the letter reads, as quoted in Harkup’s book “A Is for Arsenic.” “It was only the prompt medication which saved him; and the doctors, even if he had gone to hospital, would not have known in time what the trouble was.”

After Christie’s death, a London nurse named Marsha Maitland who also read the novel, was able to identify the symptoms of thallium poisoning in a sick 19-month-old child in 1977.

The young girl who mysteriously fell ill was brought to London, where Maitland suggested that the strange symptoms aligned with those described in “The Pale Horse.” Thallium, an ingredient in an insecticide used to kill pests in the child’s home, was confirmed via urine testing — the baby had accidentally ingested it. With treatment, the child fully recovered in four months.

The baby’s attending physicians published a paper about the case later that year, which included an acknowledgement that read, “We are indebted to the late Agatha Christie for her excellent and perceptive descriptions and to Nurse Maitland for keeping us up to date on the literature.”

After World War II, Christie never worked in a pharmacy again, but she kept pace with the rapidly changing world of medicine through reading and communicating with an impressive cadre of experts. Her stories in the 1960s even peppered mentions of increasingly popular recreational drugs.

“She knows what she’s doing. She could have gotten away with” murder if she wanted to, Aldridge said.

Rather than rely on clues that are quietly assembled off the page or inside the mind of a detective like Sherlock Holmes, Christie’s readers are always presented with all the facts needed to solve the case.

“She always plays fair with her readers, she’s just playing it on a different level to the rest of us mortals,” Harkup said. “You should be able to figure it out. But you probably won’t.”

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Agatha Christie’s classic detective novels edited to remove potentially offensive language

Her crimes are sanitized — rarely any bodily fluids are mentioned on the page. But poison, which so often served as the deadly weapon in her books, provided Christie with an intriguing literary arsenal for murderers.

“To sit back, think, plan, acquire and administer a poison, and then wait for it to take effect is an extra level of nasty that I think we are fascinated by,” Harkup said.

Lurking within Christie’s deceptively simple prose are hints about how deeply she understood the best and worst nuances of human nature, explained Dr. Michelle Kazmer, dean of the College of Communication and Information and professor in the School of Information at Florida State University.

“Agatha Christie had more to say about the giant concepts of what it means to be human, and in a very multifaceted way, looked at issues of love, justice, good, evil,” said Kazmer, who has also studied Christie’s work.

Alongside her scientifically credible poisoning scenarios, numerous doctors and pharmacists appear in Christie’s novels — sometimes as victims, other times as murderers — showing how her early brushes with the world of medicine never left her mind.

“You aren’t good at these things unless you have some kind of interest,” said Prichard, Christie’s great grandson. “I don’t think she went into the hospital at the beginning of World War I knowing she would be interested, but I think that interest grew. And it stayed with her for life.”

在阿加莎​​·克里斯蒂成为有史以来最畅销的作家之一之前，她曾在家乡英国托基的一家药店工作，为一位她在回忆录中只称之为 P 先生的人服务。

P先生口袋里装着一块深色的箭毒——一种能迅速麻痹并致人死亡的毒药。他随身携带箭毒是因为它让他“感觉自己很强大”，克里斯蒂在《阿加莎·克里斯蒂自传》中写道。克里斯蒂不禁注意到，尽管P先生“外表俊美”，但这种行为可能使他成为一个“危险人物”。

另一次，克里斯蒂敏锐的头脑发现 P 先生在向她演示如何将药物注入栓剂时犯了一个错误，他无意中添加了所需剂量的 10 倍。

克里斯蒂在回忆录中写道，她意识到 P 先生不会听一个“小女孩”指出他的错误，于是想出了一个巧妙的办法，把药洒在地板上，“用力踩踏”，以防止这种危险的药物被摆上商店的货架。

克里斯蒂引人入胜的侦探小说灵感，正是在第一次世界大战肆虐的背景下，于这出乎意料的险恶环境中萌芽的。她一生致力于研究毒物科学，积累了深厚的知识，这为她在文学界乃至更广泛的领域留下了不朽的遗产。

Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

曾激发阿加莎·克里斯蒂创作灵感的英国岛屿及其豪华装饰艺术风格酒店正在出售。

克里斯蒂离开P先生的药店后，于1916年在托基医院开始接受药剂师培训。正是在那时，一个故事的种子开始在她脑海中酝酿。她为备考而阅读的一本名为《药学袖珍手册——从业人员与学生用书》的教科书，启发了她1920年处女作小说《斯泰尔斯庄园奇案》中的凶器：士的宁，一种神经毒素，曾被用作兴奋剂，剂量极小，如今却与其他药物混合使用以致人死亡。

现在，参观者可以在名为“阿加莎·克里斯蒂：神秘世界”的新展览中看到她个人收藏的袖珍书——书上有神秘的污渍，右上角潦草地写着“A. Christie”。

克里斯蒂档案馆信托

展览将于 10 月 30 日在伦敦的大英图书馆开幕，展览首席策展人露西·罗兰表示，这将是这本小册子以及她的家人和信托基金分享的 200 多件物品首次向公众展出。

罗兰说，这本教科书是众多文物之一，它揭示了克里斯蒂的作品投入了多少研究——也是作者对药物和致命化学混合物有着深刻理解的切实证据。

图片插图：Alberto Mier/CNN/Universal History Archive/Getty Images；Gillian Pullinger/Alamy Stock Photo；Will Dax/Solent News/Shutterstock

简·奥斯汀的死因一直是个谜。但她的信件和书籍提供了一些线索。

克里斯蒂对毒药的准确描述，在她 66 部侦探小说中的 41 部中，毒药都是凶器，即使在今天看来仍然适用。

“我十几岁的时候读克里斯蒂的小说，很容易就能学到科学知识，”前化学家、著有《A Is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie》一书的凯瑟琳·哈库普博士说。“这是最巧妙的科学传播方式。情节安排得非常精妙，作者需要高超的技巧才能将复杂的科学概念以一种让人察觉不到的方式呈现出来——我的天，这真是一种天赋。”

她以科学为依据的神秘谋杀故事甚至可能帮助侦破了现实世界的犯罪案件：特别是她早期与 P 先生的合作，直接启发了后来的作品，这些作品可能预防了投毒案件的发生。

克里斯蒂去世 50 年后，她仍然是无可争议的犯罪小说女王——而且在某种程度上也是一个谜。

在公众面前，克里斯蒂一直保持谦逊，她曾自嘲为“香肠制造机”，期望能为出版商源源不断地创作出畅销作品。

“这一切都是为了塑造一个不会对公众构成威胁或恐吓的形象，”克里斯蒂研究专家、英国萨福克大学英语与创意写作访问学者杰米·伯恩塔尔-胡克博士说道。“即使在今天，人们仍然会害怕聪明而强大的女性。我常说，她最伟大的虚构作品就是阿加莎·克里斯蒂本人。”

大英图书馆的展览等新探索，为我们提供了关于这位勇于冒险、紧跟时代步伐的女性的全新见解，她的一生从 1890 年持续到 1976 年，经历了翻天覆地的变化。

“维多利亚女王在位的前11年，”克里斯蒂研究专家、英国南安普顿索伦特大学电影史副教授马克·奥尔德里奇博士说，“到了20世纪60年代末她开始写作的时候，她见证了人类登月。我一直认为，如果她能再活几年，在1977年看到《星球大战》，她肯定会写出《太空谋杀案》，因为她热爱新鲜事物。”

尽管克里斯蒂没有接受过正规教育，但她的好奇心和敏锐的观察力引导着她看待世界的方式。她的曾孙詹姆斯·普里查德（James Prichard）是阿加莎·克里斯蒂有限公司（Agatha Christie Limited）的董事长兼首席执行官，该公司负责管理她作品的版权。普里查德表示，克里斯蒂也拥有丰富的想象力，这很可能是因为她出身于一个热爱旅行、喜欢讲故事的家庭。文学、戏剧和歌剧进一步激发了她创作属于自己的故事的兴趣。

在成为一名出版作家和从事药剂师工作之前，克里斯蒂最初在24岁时志愿担任护士，并在第一次世界大战期间的1914年在托基红十字医院治疗受伤的士兵。由于她的丈夫在前线作战，克里斯蒂感到自己有责任尽其所能地提供帮助。

她必须在工作中接受训练，迅速从卷绷带转为照料受伤的士兵。克里斯蒂在回忆录中坦言，第一次目睹手术时，她看到鲜血和伤口就晕倒了，这让她感到“羞愧”，但这种情况不会再发生了。克里斯蒂学会了坚强自己，在刀割伤口时会尽量避开视线。

她非常喜欢护理工作，以至于克里斯蒂曾想，如果她没有结婚，战后她很可能会“接受正规的医院护士培训”。1916年，她转而学习如何配药，以帮助人手不足的药房。

克里斯蒂将她丰富的人生经历中的深刻见解巧妙而精湛地融入到她的小说中，这使她成为一位超越时代的文学天才。

具体来说，克里斯蒂在1917年参加药剂师协会助理考试期间接受了大量的药剂师培训，这极大地提升了她对细节的关注度。一天晚上，她惊醒后惊慌失措，匆匆赶回托基医院药房，担心自己在下午配药时不小心交叉污染了某种药膏。据她的回忆录记载，为了确保万无一失，她检查了每一罐药膏。

这种亲身经历体现在她的处女作小说《斯泰尔斯庄园的神秘事件》中，小说中的药房志愿者辛西娅·默多克说道：“如果你们知道不小心毒死人是多么容易，你们就不会拿这件事开玩笑了。”

克里斯蒂意识到，药物的益处和危害之间只有一线之隔。正如参观者在模拟药房中看到的那样，药物的计量或配制不当，就可能将救命良药变成致命毒药。

展出的一首 1925 年用蓝色墨水写成的诗《在药房里》也反映了她对这种危险平衡的看法：“这里有威胁、谋杀和猝死——就在这些绿色和蓝色的小瓶里。”

科学博物馆集团

作为一名小说家，克里斯蒂没有义务做到完全准确，但她却竭尽全力避免作品中出现任何错误——而这种专业精神自然流露，毫不矫饰。哈库普指出，其他一些同时代的犯罪小说作家，例如多萝西·L·塞耶斯，常常会添加一些无关紧要的细节来表明自己做过功课，但克里斯蒂却不会这样做。

克里斯蒂的第一部小说最令她满意的评论发表在《药学杂志》上，该评论赞扬了她对士的宁的了解和运用，而不是像其他小说中那样，经常使用虚构的、无法追踪的致罪物质。“阿加莎·克里斯蒂小姐很懂行，”评论员写道。

二战期间，克里斯蒂——当时已是位知名作家——再次学习，在伦敦大学学院的药学院工作。首席药剂师哈罗德·戴维斯建议她在自己的一部小说中使用铊作为毒药。

克里斯蒂将这一建议与她之前对 P 先生的观察联系起来，P 先生是她 1961 年小说《苍白骏马》中邪恶药剂师的灵感来源。

南安普顿索伦特大学的奥尔德里奇说，这部小说的情节完全围绕科学与迷信的对抗展开。他与作家兼播客主持人格雷·罗伯特·布朗在播客节目和即将出版的著作《摇摆的克里斯蒂》中分析了这本书。《苍白骏马》中的受害者看似被女巫诅咒，但剧透一下，他实际上是被一种不寻常的毒药——铊——慢慢毒死的。

这种无色无味的有毒物质被称为“投毒者的毒药”，它作用缓慢，会模仿体内的钾，因此很难被发现——直到为时已晚。

书中，两个女人发生争执，互相揪头发。其中一个女人头发大量脱落，不久后便去世了。这暗示了小说中发生的险恶事件以及罪魁祸首：铊中毒会导致脱发。

克里斯蒂在小说中对铊的运用非常精准，据说它挽救了两个人的生命。

哈库普说，例如，1975年，她收到了一位南美洲年轻女子的来信，信中说，读了《苍白的马》之后，她意识到一位熟人正在被他的妻子慢慢毒害。

“但我对此非常、非常肯定——如果我没有读过《苍白骏马》，没有因此了解铊中毒的后果，X 就不会活下来，”信中写道，这段话引自哈库普的著作《A Is for Arsenic》。“正是及时的治疗才救了他；即使他去了医院，医生们也无法及时发现他到底出了什么问题。”

克里斯蒂去世后，一位名叫玛莎·梅特兰的伦敦护士也读过这部小说，她在 1977 年发现一名 19 个月大的患病儿童出现了铊中毒的症状。

这位神秘患病的小女孩被送往伦敦，梅特兰医生认为她的怪异症状与《苍白骏马》中的描述相符。尿检证实她体内含有铊，这是她家中用于杀虫的杀虫剂成分之一——婴儿误食了这种物质。经过治疗，孩子在四个月后完全康复。

婴儿的主治医生在当年晚些时候发表了一篇关于此病例的论文，其中有一段致谢，写道：“我们感谢已故的阿加莎·克里斯蒂的出色而敏锐的描述，以及梅特兰护士让我们及时了解相关文献。”

二战后，克里斯蒂再也没有在药房工作过，但她通过阅读和与众多杰出专家交流，始终关注着瞬息万变的医学界。她在20世纪60年代的报道中甚至还提及了当时日益流行的娱乐性药物。

“她很清楚自己在做什么。如果她想的话，她完全可以逍遥法外，”奥尔德里奇说。

与依赖像夏洛克·福尔摩斯那样在书页之外或侦探脑海中悄悄收集的线索不同，克里斯蒂的读者总是能直接获得破案所需的所有事实。

“她对读者一向公平，只是她用的技巧和我们这些凡人不一样，”哈库普说。“你应该能猜到，但你可能猜不到。”

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

阿加莎·克里斯蒂的经典侦探小说经过编辑，删除了可能冒犯性的语言。

她的犯罪描写经过粉饰——书中很少提及体液。但毒药，这种在她作品中经常出现的致命武器，为克里斯蒂的杀人犯提供了一套引人入胜的文学武器库。

哈库普说：“坐下来，思考，计划，获取并施用毒药，然后等待它生效，这是一种更恶劣的程度，我认为我们对此很着迷。”

佛罗里达州立大学传播与信息学院院长兼信息学院教授米歇尔·卡兹默博士解释说，克里斯蒂看似简单的散文中隐藏着她对人性善恶细微差别的深刻理解。

“阿加莎·克里斯蒂对人性的意义等宏大概念有着更深刻的见解，她以多面的方式探讨了爱、正义、善、恶等问题，”卡兹默说道，他也研究过克里斯蒂的作品。

除了她那些具有科学可信度的投毒场景外，克里斯蒂的小说中还出现了许多医生和药剂师——有时是受害者，有时是凶手——这表明她早年与医学界的接触从未离开过她的记忆。

“如果你不感兴趣，就做不好这些事，”克里斯蒂的曾孙普里查德说。“我不认为她在第一次世界大战初期住进医院时就知道自己会对此感兴趣，但我认为她的兴趣与日俱增，而且伴随了她一生。”