The Christies had a one-day honeymoon, and then he had to return to his unit and Agatha went back to live with mother and Aunti-Grannie at Ashfield. She continued to live there until September 1918, reunited with her husband for only rare and brief leaves. The Christies spent only a matter of weeks together in the next few years due to the war. While Archie served in the Royal Flying Corps unit, Agatha worked first as a volunteer nurse at the local hospital and then, as a hospital dispensing pharmacist. It was hard, grueling, uncertain work. The hours were long, and there was never enough food to go around for the staff. Archie didn’t approve of this type of work. He wanted a wife who was carefree and beautiful, untroubled by the woes of the world. Clara shared this same view, and for once Archie and Clara were both working on the same side. What is important for the history of detective fiction is that working in the dispensary gave her a working knowledge of poisons.
Agatha eventually, because of Archie’s feelings about the work, quit her job as a nurse. She was talking to her sister one day about a mystery novel, and Agatha said that she didn’t care for the book that her sister was reading. Madge then dared Agatha to write something better… and she did. She wrote her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, while at Ashfield. However, when she would hit writing blocks, her mother would tell her to take some time off from being there and go stay in a hotel for a couple of two weeks to have complete concentration. She would walk on the moors, and act all the scenes out loud and go back to the hotel and finish writing the scenes.
“The reader who wants to discover the solution to an Agatha Christie mystery can learn three valuable lessons from studying the solution to The Mysterious Affair at Styles. First, give careful consideration to every mention of a written document, and analyze any text included in the novel with special care. Second, be suspicious of material clues, especially if they appear in the textual equivalent of neon lights. Third, place more reliance on your knowledge of novels, particularly detective novels, than of science.”
Perhaps the best example of Agatha Christie’s ability to use elements from existing tradition of detective fiction and forge something new and original is her creation of Hercule Poirot, the second most famous fictional detective after Sherlock Holmes. The Great Detective is described like this: Poirot was an extraordinary looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet, four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was incredible. I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound.”
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