Skip to main content

Book Review: Strychnine in the Cognac by Ruskin Bond

Strychnine in the Cognac by Ruskin Bond is a short murder mystery which directly or indirectly features the adventures of Miss Ripley-Bean. This story has been covered under the book Death Under the Deodars of Ruskin Bond.


In this story, the murder mystery is neither solved by any detective or Miss Ripley Bean. As we know that in the book Death Under the Deodars it has been shown clearly that Miss Ripley-Bean lives in one of the small rooms of the hotel. The story is between the actor Dilip Roy and his actress wife Rosie. They have come to Mussoorie in the hotel Royal place to while away the summer. After summer, Dilip Roy has a shooting schedule in Switzerland.

Things are not good between them. They often quarrel. In the hotel, Dilip Roy remains silent and rude to many, while Rosie interacts with people and soon befriends Miss Ripley-Bean because both ladies share love for gardening. Nandu, the owner of the hotel, is on the seventh heaven because of the stars living in his hotel. Unable to control his excitement, he one evening gifts a new bottle of cognac to Rosie – the actress. Because of the rift in the relationship, both actors drink their liquor separately. It comes out that Dilip Roy is in love with an actress who lives in Bandra and he wants to get rid of his wife. So, they don’t trust each other.

After a week or so, Dilip Roy goes to Bombay and from there he flies out to Switzerland for the shooting. Rosie remains in the hotel and enjoys the company of Miss Ripley-Bean. Rosie drinks cognac every evening after dinner. One day she doesn’t get up – she was found unconsciousness. Doctors somehow save her and the bottle of cognac goes for test. And it comes out that the bottle of cognac has Strychnine pills, dissolving slowly. If Rosie had continued drinking it for couple of more days, she would have died for sure. Rosie knows that the poison was mixed by her husband, who is in Switzerland for a shooting. This way he will have never been caught by the police because of his absence at the time of crime

Dilip Roy loves eating hazelnut chocolates. After a week, news breaks out that the actor has died of sudden heart-attack. Rosie feels relieved. Later, Rosie takes Miss Ripley-Bean in the bar for wine celebration. She orders the most expensive wine for her. As Rosie confides in Miss Ripley-Bean, she tells her that she had added the cyanide in one of the chocolate packs of the actor. She knew that the actor would die whenever he stumbled upon that pack. He died in Switzerland, so Rosie is free from all suspicions.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should
67 comments
Read more

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo
64 comments
Read more

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r
23 comments
Read more