雙語對照 | 書蟲二級《神秘女人——阿加莎·克里斯蒂》：8.阿加莎女爵士

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8.Dame Agatha

8．阿加莎女爵士

For the next twenty-five years, Agatha went with Max on all his archaeological journeys. She loved travelling, and those were the happiest years of her life. It was a good time for writing, too.

后來的25年里，馬克斯每次的考古之旅都有阿加莎陪伴。她喜歡旅行，那些年是她一生中最快樂的時光，同樣也是寫作的一段黃金時間。

'It's nice and quiet,' Agatha always said. 'There's no telephone!'

“多么美好寧靜啊，”阿加莎總是這樣說，“沒有電話！”

And visiting these interesting places gave her ideas for some of her best books—Death on the Nile, Appointment with Death, Murder in Mesopotamia, They Came to Baghdad.She was now one of the most popular detective-story writers in the world.

游覽那些名勝古跡賦予她的靈感促成了她最優(yōu)秀的幾本書的創(chuàng)作——《尼羅河上的慘案》、《死亡約會》、《美索不達(dá)米亞謀殺案》和《他們來到巴格達(dá)》。她成為世界上最受歡迎的偵探小說家之一。

One of the many people who enjoyed her books was Queen Mary, the mother of the King of England. One day, in 1946, Agatha had a letter from the British Broadcasting Corporation in London.

她眾多的忠實讀者之一便是英國國王的母親，瑪麗王后。1946年的一天，阿加莎接到了倫敦英國廣播公司的一封信。

'They want me to write a play for Queen Mary's 80th birthday!' she told Max. 'A play for the radio.'

“他們想讓我為瑪麗王后的80歲生日寫一個劇本！”她告訴馬克斯，“一個廣播劇。”

'Then you must do it,' said Max.

“那你必須寫了。”馬克斯說。

Agatha's play for radio was called Three Blind Mice. Later, she wrote the play again, for a London theatre. This time it was much longer, and she gave it a new name: The Mousetrap.

阿加莎的廣播劇名叫《三只盲鼠》。后來她又為倫敦一家劇院改寫了這個劇本，把它的時間加長了很多，并且取了一個新名字：《老鼠夾》。

It is a very famous play. It opened in 1952, and has been in one or other of the London theatres ever since then. In 1997, 45 years later, people were still going to see the play.

這個劇本非常有名。它于1952年開演，從那以后總有一家或幾家倫敦劇院里在上演這部劇。1997年，在它首演45年后，人們依然去看這部劇。

Why? It's a very good murder mystery, of course, but there is another story about The Mousetrap, too. Every night, at the end of the play, one of the actors talks to the people in the theatre, and says, 'Please don't tell your friends who did the murder in this play. They must come to the theatre and see the play themselves!'

為什么呢？當(dāng)然這是一個寫得很好的神秘謀殺案，可是關(guān)于《老鼠夾》這部劇還有另外一個故事。每晚，在劇末都會有一個演員對劇場里的觀眾說：“請不要告訴您的朋友們劇中的兇手是誰。他們必須親自來劇院觀看！”

And everybody keeps the secret of the murderer's name—and so more and more people go to see the play.

大家都保守住了兇手是誰的秘密，于是就有越來越多的人來觀看這部劇了。

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In 1971, Queen Elizabeth made Agatha a Dame of the British Empire—a very high honour for a woman in Britain.

1971年，伊麗莎白女王冊封阿加莎為英國女爵士——一個對英國女人來說非常高的榮譽。

But why was Agatha Christie so famous? Perhaps it is because she was a wonderful story-teller. She planned her murder mysteries very carefully, putting a clue here, a clue there. And they are clever clues, so it is not easy to guess the name of the murderer. Who did it? We want to know, and by the end of the book, everything falls tidily into place—and we have the answer. And of course the stories are not really about murder and death—they are puzzles, with comfortable endings, because it is pleasing to read that the detective always catches the criminal. For an hour or two, we can escape from real life, which is often neither tidy nor comfortable.

但是阿加莎·克里斯蒂的名氣為什么這么大呢？可能因為她是一名很棒的小說家。她總是這一條線索、那一條線索地非常巧妙地布置這些神秘的謀殺案，并且這些線索都極其隱秘，所以不易猜出兇手是誰。我們想知道是誰干的，卻一直要到書末，一切都水落石出的時候，才能找到答案。當(dāng)然這些故事不只是關(guān)于謀殺和死亡——它們是一些謎團，有著令人滿意的結(jié)局，因為人們總是很高興看到偵探能抓獲罪犯。就在那么一兩個小時里，我們可以暫時逃離既不井井有條又不讓人滿意的現(xiàn)實生活。

Agatha Christie died on the 12th of January, 1976. During her life, she wrote sixty-seven detective novels, ten books of short stories, thirteen plays, six novels that were not about crime (using the name 'Mary Westmacott'), and two books about her life. Many films were made from her books; the most famous one is Murder on the Orient Express, made in 1974.

阿加莎·克里斯蒂于1976年1月12日去世。她一生中寫過67部偵探小說，10本短篇小說集，13個劇本，6部非犯罪題材的小說（以“瑪麗·韋斯特馬科特”這個名字出版的），還有兩部自傳。她的書被拍成多部電影，最著名的是1974年拍攝的《東方快車謀殺案》。

Today, millions of her books, in more than forty different languages, are still sold in every country of the world, from China to Nicaragua. Agatha Christie was, perhaps, the greatest detective-story writer of all time—a woman of mystery, both in books and in life.

如今，她的書被譯成40多種不同的文字，從中國到尼加拉瓜，在世界上每一個國家都可以買得到，銷售量達(dá)千百萬冊。阿加莎·克里斯蒂或許將永遠(yuǎn)是一位偵探小說巨匠——一個在書中、生活中同樣神秘的女人。

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broadcasting n. sending out programmes on radio or television. （無線電或電視節(jié)目）廣播。

corporation n. business company. 公司。

mousetrap n. trap for catching mice. 捕鼠器。

honour n. reputation for greatness, good behaviour, truth fulness, etc. 榮譽；名譽；信譽。

tidily adv. arranged neatly and in order. 安排或排列整齊地。

fall into place (of a set of facts or series of events) begin to make sense in relationship to each other. （指一系列事實或事件）開始有頭緒。

puzzle n. question that is difficult to understand or answer; mystery. 難題；謎一般的事物。

criminal n. person who commits a crime or crimes. 犯人；罪犯。