Question

Read the extract given below and answer tire 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? Where had Giles been? Who had sent him there? 

(ii) How did Christopher Wren account for his whereabouts at the time of tire murder? 

(iii} Where was Paravicini at that time? What was he doing?

(iv) Whom did Giles accuse of having committed the murder? On what did he base this accusation? 

(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? What reasons did she give for the suspicion?

Answer 1

(i) Trotter had sent Giles to his bedroom upstairs to see whether the extension telephone was working or not. It was a simple action for which, according to Trotter, Giles took more time than was required. Giles had been in his bedroom upstairs. Trotter had sent him there.

(ii) Christopher Wren told Trotter that at the time of the murder, he was in the kitchen. He had gone there to see if he could help Mollie Ralston in her cooking. After that, he had gone upstairs to his bedroom.

(iii) At the time of murder, Paravicini was in the drawing-room. He was playing the piano.

(iv) Giles openly accused Christopher Wren of having committed the murder. His accusation was based on the fact that Christopher was of the same age as the eldest of those three children would be now. Secondly, he was mentally abnormal very much like the suspected murderer of Culver Street.

(v) Mollie suspected Major Metcalf of being the murderer. She told Trotter that the murderer could be a middle-aged person probably the father of the ill-treated children. Her supposition was that after being a prisoner with the Japanese, were treated in his absence at Longridge Farm, he might have decided to take revenge.