I haven’t posted a Jason update in a long while. To catch you all up, he’s finished all his Pathway courses . . . except the dreaded Math. He’ll be taking that one come January. In the meantime, he’s enjoying some freedom, and the only assignment he has these days is to learn how to make his own grilled cheese sandwiches. He’s halfway there and I’ll be posting about that next Friday, complete with pictures.
(Part of the reason we’re not pushing the driving, the math, or the mission right now is that we’re getting ready to list our house and looking into moving to Southern Utah. We want to downsize, be closer to both our families, and give Jason more opportunities to meet other LDS singles. But more about all of that in future posts.)
As I wrote on Monday, to help pass the time while driving down to Salt Lake City (and then on to St. George), I reviewed Agatha Christie’s writing methodology with Jason and proposed we give it a try. He agreed and so, first, we had to come up with a plausible victim who would have enemies.
JASON: How about Lady Tremaine?
ME: Who?
JASON: You know, the stepmother from Disney’s “Cinderella?”
ME: Oh, yeah. Okay, she’ll do. Now we need to come up with the murder method.
He thought about that for a minute and shrugged. So I prodded his recollection of her fondness for shopping.
ME: We could kill her off during a shopping trip in town.
JASON: Huh? How?
ME: Let’s see . . . since Agatha Christie was into poison, let’s come up with a really sneaky way to poison her while shopping.
JASON: (No response)
ME: Okay, how about this? . . . The killer applies an odorless poison to a dress Lady Tremaine has admired before, counting on the fact that she’ll likely try it on. Once she does, the toxic concoction seeps into her skin and 2-3 days later, she’s dead.
JASON: Cool!
Now that we had the victim and the method all set, we had to determine the killer.
JASON: It can’t be Cinderella and it can’t be the Prince. That would just be wrong.
ME: Okay, who else wouldn’t like Lady Tremaine? Who else would have a motive and yet probably be overlooked by the reader?
JASON: Maybe Anastasia would work.
ME: Who?
JASON: You know, the younger daughter. The one who was sort of kind to Cinderella . . . at least in the sequels.
ME: That’s good. People probably wouldn’t suspect her because of that. But what would her motive be? Doesn’t she like her mother?
JASON: Well, in the sequels, we find out that she doesn’t really like her mother’s iron grip on her life and that she just wants to be free to marry for love, not money. So that could be her motive.
ME: Perfect! Now we need to figure out the motives for all the rest of the characters (not including the animals).
JASON: Okay. Drizella, the eldest daughter, could have done it because she wants to inherit the family fortune sooner rather than later after her mother dies naturally.
ME: (Nodding) Good. Go on.
JASON: Who else is there?
ME: How about the dress shopkeeper? That’s where the murder takes place. Wouldn’t she naturally be a suspect?
JASON: I guess, but what would her motive be?
ME: I know. She could have done it because Lady Tremaine hasn’t been paying her bills on time and the woman is about to lose her shop.
JASON: Hmm . . . that will do.
Finally, we needed to come up with the right detective to ferret out all the clues, with the help of Cinderella and the Prince, of course. Thinking back on the movie, that left only one possibility. It was apparent to me, but I had to bring Jason around to the realization.
ME: Okay, Jason, who was the one in the film who went all over the countryside asking questions?
JASON: Huh?
ME: You know, he had a glass slipper and . . .
JASON: Oh, you mean the Grand Duke?
ME: Exactly. Even though he’s kind of a bumbling fool, he’s the perfect type to put people off their guard while secretly he’s observing their behavior and asking all kinds of innocent questions.
JASON: You mean his clumsiness is just an act?
ME: Precisely. Now all we have to do is sit down and plot it out.
Et voilá. An Agatha Christie-styled murder mystery. Anyone want to write it? (We won’t for fear of being sued by Disney. Although perhaps Jason might give it a go as a piece of fan fiction. I’ll let you know if he does, but I can’t promise to post it here. He keeps his fan fiction private.)
In any case, it was a fun exercise and took a good bit longer in the car than it took you to read about it here. By the way, Jason helped create this post, so give him half the credit, okay?
Originally posted 2013-08-23 06:00:17.