Work book 2nd term

1. Sad cypress<br />By Agatha Chrisrtie<br />Chapter 10th<br />Elinor Carlisle had a place , Hunterbury Hall, and a fortune from her aunt, who died in testate. Aunt´s name was Welman. Aunt had a nephew by marriage: Roderick Welman. He was engaged to Elinor Carlisle – long-standing business – known each other since children. There was a girl down at Hunterbury: Mary Gerrard, daughter of the lodgekeeper.<br />Old Mrs Welman had made a lot of fuss about her, paid for her education, etc.<br />Consequence is, girl was to outward seeming a lady.<br />Roderick Welman, it seems, fell for her. In consequence, engagement is broken off.<br />So, Elinor put up Hunterbury Hall for sale and came down to clear out her aunt`s personal possessions and so on.<br />Mary, whose father had just died, was clearing out the lodge.<br />In the morning Elinor met the former housekeeper, Mrs Bishop, who suggested coming up to the house to help her, but Elinor refused. Then she went to the grocer`s shop and bought some fish paste, and there she made a remark about food poisoning.<br />She went up to the house and about one o`clok she went down to the lodge, where Mary was busy with the District Nurse, a woman called Hopkins, helping her, and told them that she had made some sandwiches ready up at the house. They came up to the house with her,ate sandwiches, and about an hour or so later Mary was unconscious.<br />Autopsy reveled large dose of morphine had been taken a short time previously and police found a scrap of a label with morphia on it just where Elinor had been spreading the sandwiches.<br />BIOGRAPHY<br />Aghata Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan ( 1890-1976 ) mainly known as Agatha Christie was an English crime fiction writer. She also wrote romance novels under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her succesful West End theatre plays.<br />Her works, particularly featuring detectives Hercules Poirot or Miss Jane Marple have given her the title the “ Queen of Crime “ and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the genre.<br />Christie has been called the best selling writer of books of all time, and the best selling writer of kind second only to William Shakespeare . An estimated one billion copies of her novels have been sold in English, and another billion in 103 other languages.<br />Her stage play, “ The Mousetrap “ holds the record for the longest run ever in London, opening at the Ambassadors Theatre on 25 Novembre 1952 and as 2010 is still running after mor than 20.000 performances.<br />She was born in Torquay, Devon. Her father was a rich American stockbroker and her mather a British aristocrat who resorted to teaching her at home, encouraging her to write at a very young age.<br />Her first marriage was in 1914 and was hunhappy one, she divorced in 1928.<br />During World War I she worked at a hospital in a pharmacy, a job that influenced her work; many of the murders in her books are carried out with poisson.<br />In 1930 she married the archeologist Sir Max Mallowan, and her travels with him contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East.<br />In 1971 she was made a Dame Comander of the Order of the British Empire.<br />She died in 1976 at age 85 from natural causes.<br />