Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow:
Trotter: (Leaning on the refectory table) Those simple actions took you rather a long time, didn’t they, Mr. Ralston?
Giles: I don’t think so. (He moves away to the stairs)
Trotter: I should say you definitely – took your time over them.
Giles: I was thinking about something.
Trotter: Very well. Now then, Mr. Wren, I’ll have your account of where you were.
(i) What ‘simple actions’ of Giles was Trotter referring to?
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Giles checking on the (telephone) extension/ looking out of the window for signs that the wires had been cut.
Where had Giles been?
Upstairs in the bedroom (Giles and Mollie’s room)
Who had sent him there?
Trotter
(ii) How did Christopher Wren account for his whereabouts at the time of the murder?
- Christopher Wren said he’d been in the kitchen
- Gone to see if he could help Mollie Ralston with any cooking/ he loved to cook.
- After that went upstairs to his bedroom – wanted to be alone / wanted to brush his hair.
(iii) Where was Paravicini at that time?
In the drawing room
What was he doing?
- playing the piano softly
- picking out the tune of ‘Three Blind Mice’/ playing a haunting tune.
(iv) Whom did Giles accuse of having committed the murder?
Christopher Wren
On what did he base this accusation?
Only Christopher fits the description / of the eldest of the three children at Longridge Farm/ Calls him mentally unstable / abnormal / now 23 years old.
(v) Mollie shared her suspicions regarding the identity of the murderer with Trotter, later in this scene.
Whom did she suspect of being the murderer?
Major Metcalf
What reasons did she give for her suspicion?
- Felt Major Metcalf might be the father of the children – the father had been a sergeant serving abroad.
- What if he had come back – maybe after being a prisoner with the Japanese – found his wife died and children had gone through terrible suffering and one had died?
- He might have gone ‘off his head’ and wanted revenge.