I have been reading the short story of Agatha Christie’s book “Poirot Investigates”. This text is called “The Million Dollar Bond Robbery”. At the beginning, we could think that it is a slow story and sometimes bored, but that it is not right. The video is different and tell a similar but different story. On this blog, I am going to summarize (as I understood it) the short text, and also I am going to compare and give my opinion of the text and short video that we saw in our module of “Competencias Comunicativas”.
Poirot, as we know, is the main character of the series of stories of Agatha Christie’s book called “Poirot Investigates” and has many chapters, but we are going to focus this blog in one of them. In this opportunity, Poirot should discover who stole a million dollars which disappear from the “Olympia”. The money was custody for Philip Ridgeway, nephew of the president of the “London and Scottish Bank”. The reason why this money was on a ship like the “Olympia” was that the “London and Scottish Bank” wanted to expand its business to America and the destiny was New York. One day, this money mysteriously disappears, but this crime has a lot of weird things involucrate.
One day, a woman called Esmee Farquhar knocked the door of the private detective. She was the fiancée of Philip Ridgeway. She was in love with him and was worried about her future husband. It supposed that Philip was involucrate in the crime. For that reason, she went to talk to Poirot and left the problem to him. She told to Poirot the whole story. The money was on a special lock, to prevent the disappearance of the money. Nevertheless, the money was not on the special box, and that was the problem that should fixed Poirot. He and Captain Hastings (his kind of assistant) went to talk to Mr. Vavasour and Mr. Shaw, the first one was the Uncle Philip Ridgeway. Vavasour and Shaw had two of the keys from the lock; and two others were on colleagues hands. Now, the question is “Where was the money?” and anything knew about the million dollars. Another thing curious was that the box never was forced, on the contrary, was opened with one of the keys (but the padlock was forced) but the other two ones that have a key were in London, that is the mysterious thing. The people that were travelling in the ship were registered twice, but nothing could be found. The story of Ridgeway was confirmed by the two directors of the bank, and where was the money? That is still being mystery.
Poirot went to Liverpool, were the Olympia landed and talked to one of the persons who were in front of the big ship. Poirot discovered that apparently the bonds were sold immediately in New York, but the packet was just a dummy. The money should be in London and that package was false. In the reading version, Mr. Shaw is the responsible of the steal money.
The short movie and the reading are different in many aspects. First of all, the reading is focus on the main idea of the story and is trying to tell just central and concrete ideas. The “movie” that we saw in class, shows with many details the story and other things that in the reading are not telling. One of the differences is that Esmee in the reading version go to the office of Poirot and ask for help with the detective. In the video, Poirot receives a letter from the London and Scottish bank and for that way he knows the problem that the bank and the characters had with the million dollars. Another difference that we could find between the text and the short movie is that in the text we could not read about the poison tea and the almost shock. The video is very detailed in that kind of things, trying to show us aspects that give little anticipation which are interesting if we want to know the end of the story by ourselves.
One of the biggest differences that we could find between the text and the short movie is that in the second one we find another character: Miranda. She is the one that steal the money in the movie, but Mr. Shaw is the responsible in the text. They (in the movie) are technically involved. Miranda had the original key and gave a copy of the copy of the key to another person. She poisoned the tea, she travel in the Olympia (Queen Elizabeth in the movie) and opened the box with her key. The money was not found, and Miranda was not arrested.
I could say that this text and movie were very interesting and fun. Agatha Christie is one of the most important writers in her style, the investigation and mystery. We can see that in the text there is much vocabulary that we could use, and it is not normal in our speech. This series of stories are pretty antique and has complex words that we cannot use if we want to speak daily. If we want to write a blog or an essay much formal and we are trying to communicate a message to people that are more professional than us as students of English Pedagogy, the use and reading of this kind of texts give us a big help to our constantly knowledge. Many of the new words that I learned with this text are not normal at the business and work aspects, but are very useful if we want to write a letter to our boss in a not distant future. In my opinion, we should increase the reading of this kind of texts, because are interesting, fun and with a little piece of mystery. Also, the movie helps us to understand in a better way the text just read. It is a way to check our doubts.
