8 things you surely didn't know about Agatha Christie

1] Agatha Christie, as a child (then Agatha Miller) cried one whole day after her pet canary Dickie flew away. It was only late in the evening that they discovered that the impish Dickie was merely hiding over the curtain pole.

2] The young Agatha, once, hid her French book since she was quite fed up of the subject and her French tutor. Later, she was caught when her mother cleverly announced a chocolate as a reward to anyone who finds it. As Agatha recalls, her greed for chocolates was her undoing.

3] Agatha credits her sister Madge for introducing Holmes into her life. It was Madge who narrated to Agatha her first Sherlock Holmes story- The Blue Carbuncle. The Blue Carbuncle, The Red-headed League and The Five Orange Pips were Agatha’s favorites.

4] Bathing was one of the joys of Agatha’s life and she enjoyed it throughout her life, though rheumatism made it slightly less enjoyable for her during her twilight years.

5] Speaking of the celebrated author Charles Dickens, Agatha writes, “Our first Dickens was Nicholas Nickleby, and my favourite character was the old gentleman who courted Mrs Nickleby by throwing vegetable marrows over the wall. Can this be one of the reasons why I made Hercule Poirot retire to grow vegetable marrows? Who can say? My favourite Dickens of all was Bleak House, and still is.”

6] Once Agatha received a direct proposal by a man (one Mr. S) in an empty coach in a train. She told him no in an icy coldness and he leant back in gloom, both feeling miserable and awkward over the next 2 hours of train journey.

7] When pushed by her mother, Agatha wrote her first story ‘The House of Beauty’ towards her late teens.

8] She sketched her character of Alfred Inglethorpe (in her first novel ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’) on a bearded man she saw in a tram. 

Information compiled from An Autobiography of Agatha Christie