Welcome to She Done It. I'm Caroline Crampton.

Like a lot of murder mystery fans, I consider myself a bit of an expert in the fictional

art of murder. I've read enough who done it now to think that I know how to use phrases

like time of death and rigor mortis at least. But of course, the real science behind these

stories is far more nuanced and complex than a crime writer can necessarily reflect.

And that's why I'm delighted to welcome, as my guest today, a long time friend of the

show, Carla Valentine, who's going to give us a crash course in forensics as it relates

to the work of Agatha Christie, a queen of crime, yes, but also someone with a surprisingly

deep understanding of what happens to the body after death.

Carla is a trained mortuary technician and the technical curator at Bath's Pathology

Museum in London. She's also the author of Murder Isn't Easy, the forensics of Agatha

Christie. When did you first get interested in forensic science?

I was a really strange child. I got interested in it very early on because I loved biology

when I was about sort of six or seven. And then when I started to learn that you could actually

use biology to solve crimes, you know, as forensic science, I thought it was fantastic.

And I just wanted to do that for the rest of my life. So I must have only been about eight,

eight or nine. And coincidentally, it was around the same time that I picked up an Agatha Christie

book from the library. Right, yes, because that was going to be my next question,

how did that connect to your childhood introduction to Agatha Christie?

So the first one that I picked up, the first Agatha Christie book that I picked up from the

library was the body in the library. And I think in that particular story, there are so many

different forensic clues and there's so much going on with the body itself and this sort of

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