《Frightening Nights in Venice》Introduction to the original novel

The current show - Fright Nights in Venice - is very popular with the audience. The plot of each episode is fascinating and the characters are very consistent with the development of the storyline, making the audience constantly curious while watching., the following is some content compiled by the editor based on the introduction of the original novel - Fright Night in Venice.

《Horror Nights in Venice》The original novel is called: 《Murder on Halloween》.

At a Halloween party, Joyce, a vain thirteen-year-old girl, boasts that she has witnessed a murder.No one believed her and she left angrily.But her body was found hours later in the house, drowned in an apple-biting bucket.That night, Hercule Poirot was invited to find out who was behind the attack.But first he must determine whether he is investigating a murder or a serial murder...

Mrs. Oliver, a mystery novelist, was invited to stay at the home of her friend Judith in the Woodley community.One night, the two of them went to Mrs. Drake's house in the same community to help decorate the venue for a Halloween party held for the children in the community.

Mrs. Drake is the widow of Mr. Drake, a banker.The couple inherited all the inheritance from their aunt Mrs. Smith and moved to the property left by Mrs. Smith in the community.A few years ago, Mr. Drake, who had limited mobility due to polio, was hit by a passing car and died.Mrs. Drake, who is middle-aged and wealthy, has no children, is energetic and very charismatic, and is keen on organizing neighborhood gatherings in the community.This Halloween party was initiated by her to celebrate the children in the community who are about to enter middle school.The participants were basically children aged 12 or 13, as well as school teachers and mothers of children.

As a famous detective writer, the arrival of Mrs. Oliver made the children who arranged the scene very excited.The children chatted around Mrs. Oliver.A girl named Ann praised Mrs. Oliver's work very politely, but Ann's sister Joyce thought that the description of Mrs. Oliver's work was not bloody enough.Joyce admitted in public that she had witnessed the murder, and the children present laughed at her exaggeration and raised various questions.Joyce argued that she was too young to realize it was a murder.

The party started, and the children followed the customs of judging the witch's broomsticks made for Halloween, cutting ancient powder cakes, letting the witches use mirrors to predict the appearance of their future husbands for the girls, biting apples soaked in buckets, and grabbing raisins to make cakes.And lit the “fire dragon”, making Mrs. Drake's residence a noisy one throughout the night.

After the party, parents from each family prepared to take their children home, but Joyce could not be found.Everyone searched everywhere and found Joyce in the library, drowned in a bucket playing the apple-biting game.

Who did it?

Mrs. Oliver found Poirot and told him the whole story, especially the fact that Joyce said that he had witnessed the murder.

Poirot and Mrs. Oliver judged that what Joyce said must be true. Since she has lived in the community all year round, it must be related to the deaths that have occurred in the community in recent years.

Poirot's old friend, retired superintendent Spence, lives in the Woodley community.Poirot paid a visit to Spence.Spence also heard about Joyce's murder. He told Poirot that he moved here later, but his sister Elspeth had always lived in this community, so she knew the people and things in the community very well.

Poirot started a background check.He first visits Mrs. Drake, considered the spiritual leader of the community, who is furious about the murders in her home.She introduced Poirot to the attendees of the party and the schedule for the day.

Poirot successively visited the home and school of the deceased Joyce, and inquired about his daily performance with Joyce's mother, sister Ann and brother Leopold.He also visited Miss Emlyn, the principal of Joyce’s school, to learn about Joyce’s situation at school.During a visit to the school, Teacher Whittaker, who also attended the party, told Poirot that when she was breathing in the hall that night, she discovered that Mrs. Drake had been frightened by someone coming in and out of the library and knocked over the vase in her hand.My clothes got wet.As for this plot, Mrs. Drake did not tell Poirot when Poirot visited her.

Through visiting different channels, Poirot learned that Joyce was a child addicted to lying in the eyes of everyone. She often added other people's descriptions to her own imagination and then boasted about them, pretending to be her own experiences and telling them to others, causing others toattention.

If you can't find anything suspicious in Joyce's background check, let's start with the murder she claims to have seen.Poirot, along with Spence and Elspeth, analyze the backgrounds of those who have died in the Woodley community over the past few years.The deaths of several people were found to be suspicious.

After the death of Mrs. Drake's aunt, Mrs. Smith, the matter of her will caused an uproar in the community.Mrs. Smith was a very wealthy widow, and her nephew Drake and Mrs. Drake were both her relatives. Her property would definitely be left to the Drakes a hundred years later.Before her death, she made an addendum, declaring that she would leave all her property to the foreign girl Olga who took care of her.After Mrs. Smith's death, the lawyer discovered that the supplementary will was a forgery, and the forger was Olga, who often imitated Mrs. Smith's handwriting.After the incident, Olga left the community without saying goodbye, and no one knew her whereabouts.

Leslie, a clerk at a law firm who worked for Mrs. Smith, was hacked to death. The murderer has not been found so far. Leslie had the experience of being arrested and imprisoned for forging documents.

A teacher named Jenny at Joyce's school was also murdered.

Are these events related to Joyce's death?

Poirot traveled around the community and met a cute little girl named Miranda.Miranda is the daughter of Mrs. Oliver's friend Judith.After the death of Judith's husband, a pilot, Judith moved Miranda with her to the Woodley community.She and Joyce are good friends who talk about everything, and Miranda also has a very good relationship with Michael, the landscape architect hired by Mrs. Smith.

By chance, Poirot meets Michael.Michael loves his profession very much. The garden he designed for Mrs. Smith was originally an abandoned quarry.Through continuous design and investment, this abandoned and gloomy place was built into a paradise on earth.Michael himself, like his works, has facial features as perfect as a Greek sculpture.Mrs. Smith was very satisfied with Michael's work and left the garden and the house in the garden to Michael in her will.Michael's ideal is to buy an uninhabited stone island in Greece and create a garden like this one.

Poirot found no valuable clues in the community.At this moment, Joyce's brother Leopold was drowned again.Could it be that Leopold had met the murderer and was therefore silenced?What Mrs. Drake told Poirot was that the person who was so shocked that she dropped the water bottle and entered the library was Leopold.

Did Leopold kill his sister?Or did he see the murderer at the scene?

One wave after another, just as Poirot racked his brains, Miranda encountered danger again, and the real murderer was preparing to kill her.Because Miranda was the one who witnessed the murder, but she told Joyce and Joyce exaggerated it.

The ending of the story is very shocking.The murderer is Miranda's biological father.And for his own obsession and desire for money, he ignored the family relationship between his father and daughter and only wanted to kill people and silence them.Agatha ends the work by quoting the ancient Greek allusion of Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter.

The world is full of wonders, and the parent-child relationship allows human beings to reproduce.What we see and hear are the hearts of parents in the universal society.No matter from the perspective of human beings' own animal attributes or social attributes, once they become parents, they will take care of and care for their children in every possible way.Children are the motivation for parents to strive for, and they are also the hope and future of the family.As the saying goes, a tiger cannot eat its venom.But in this work, the murderer only has himself, his own plans and future in mind.When there was a conflict between family love and money, the murderer chose murder as an illustration of the parent-child relationship.

The coldness and darkness of human nature are far beyond our understanding.

《Murder on Halloween》character relationships and chronological order of the cases

Joyce Reynolds: Miranda's friend

Mrs. Llewellyn-Smith: Rich

Leslie Ferrier: Good at Forgery

Janet White: School Teacher

Leopold Reynolds: Joyce's brother

Hugo Drake: Rowena's husband

Olga Seminova: exchange student

Judith Butler: Lady Oliver's friend

Miranda Butler: Judith's Daughter

Rowena Drake: Widow, niece-in-law of Mrs. Smith

Elizabeth Whitaker: Elementary School Teacher

Ann Reynolds: Joyce's sister

Michael Garfield: Mastering Gardening

《Halloween's Eve Murder》Excerpt

You're quite right, said Mrs. Oliver, you are really good at guessing sometimes.That's indeed what happened.I mean, if you see a fat woman sitting on the bus eating raisin bread, her lips are opening and closing, you can imagine who she is talking to or thinking about, a phone call to make later, or a letter to write.You look at her, observe her shoes, her shirt and hat, guess his age, see if he has a wedding ring, etc.And you get off the bus, you don't want to see her again, but you already have a story in your mind: a certain Mrs. Carnaby is riding the bus home, having just experienced a strange meeting somewhere, she saw a man in a cake shop, a man she had met once before and whom she heard was dead, but apparently he was not dead.Oh my god, Mrs. Oliver paused to catch her breath, you know it's true, I sat opposite a man like that on the bus when I left London and I came up with this story, it took shape.I can come up with a complete story in no time.I even know her name.Her name is Constance.Constance Carnaby.But there's one thing that will ruin it all.“ ”What's up?“ ”Okay, I said yes, if I bump into her again on another bus, or talk to her, or she talks to me, I start to understand her a little bit.This will ruin everything, no doubt about it.“ ”Yes, yes.The story must be yours, and the characters in it must be yours.She is your child.You create her, you get to know her, you know how she feels, you know where she lives, you know what she would do.But these are all from a real, live person, and if you traced what that person looked like in real life - well, there wouldn't be a story, would there?%

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