Agatha Christie a long-running character in Christie's works, appearing in 33 novels and 54 short stories. Miss Jane Marple, introduced in the short-story collection "The Thirteen Problems" in 1927, was based on Christie's grandmother and her "Ealing cronies". Both Jane and Gran "always expected the worst of everyone and everything, and were, with almost frightening accuracy, usually proved right." Marple appeared in 12 novels and 20 stories. During the Second World War, Christie wrote two novels, "Curtain" and "Sleeping Murder", intended as the last cases of these two great detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Both books were sealed in a bank
Agatha Christie TV reporters, some having travelled from as far away as South America. Thirty wreaths adorned Dame Agatha's grave, including one from the cast of her long-running play "The Mousetrap" and one sent 'on behalf of the multitude of grateful readers' by the Ulverscroft Large Print Book Publishers. She was survived by her only child, Rosalind Hicks (1919–2004), and only grandson, Mathew Prichard. Her husband, Max, died in 1978, aged 74, after having remarried in 1977. He was interred next to Agatha Christie. Christie had set up a private company, Agatha Christie Limited, to hold the rights to her works, and