I was looking for a project I began some time ago — needed a reference from it — and I stumbled upon this small, aborted file on my hard drive dated June ’96. I guess at one point I began to outline a book idea for an Agatha Christie/Hercule Poirot spoof. Looks like it could have been quite the smash hit parody too. Oh well.
I think that I was going to write the Alphonse character for me, if the film rights were bought. Dork.
I have no idea why some characters are red, some green, and some black. Guess I’ll go pop some gingko-bilbo-baggins pills now ‘er wotevah they’s called…
PERSONÆ DRAMATIQUES
Mrs. Florigale Alsbury-Britchet—Runs the “Harrow-on-the-Hill Bide-a-Wee”. Strongminded, no nonsense. Humourless. Ponderous. Widow. Needs money for new curtains. Feels the customers won’t come to her place because she has musty curtains.
Col. Abercrombie Pendragon—Corpulent. Stodgy. War rackateer. “Colonel Mustard” type. Sputters a lot. Ends most statements with, “What?”
Mrs. Myrmidonia Pendragon—His mute wife. Rotund. Occasional bouts of Turret’s however. There are sure to be clues in there somewhere.
Miss Persephone Blighted—Rich playgirl up from London. “Little Black Dress.” Secret misanthrope. She is the killer because people are annoying to her.
Dick Whithers—American. Falls in love with Persephone. Extravagant but poor. Wants to impress her. Into fast cars, faking knowledge of good wines. Total ‘ho.
Miss Lucretia Jammiedodger—Spinster. Flighty ditz. Rambles on and on about her girlhood in Suriname or some unlikely place. She has many pretty things. Too many. Knick-knacks. One of which was a Fabergé egg. 100% dingbat.
Alphonse Götterdämmerung—Pianist. Needed money to get through Liszt school. Leo.
Frangelica Desperanto—Shady Italian dame. (Alphonse in drag, actually.) Constantly comments about how beautiful Alphonse’s music is.
Maurice Wetterhouse—Stalwart queen. Quentin Crisp-ish. Wants pretty things. Orders people about languidly with a lot of shoo-shoo hand movements.
Martin Hopperpenny—Hercule’s companion. Story told from his POV, possibly narrated by him.
Setting: England, late 1930’s.
Hercule Poirot goes to the Bide-a-Wee Inn to stop a killing that he has prophesied.
Martin is called to the inn by Poirot and asked to bring his phonograph records of Berlioz’s Requiem. Poirot is grave and urges him to hurry, and not forget the phonograph records. Martin, who is a make-up artist for the motion picture industry, drops everything to go to him…
Man, talk about cliffhangers! What a page turner. I wonder what happened next.
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