Agatha Christie: The Indian hotel murder that inspired the queen of crime

Few things are more gripping than a family feud - especially when the relatives involved aren't yours and murder is part of the plot.

Agatha Christie, often called the "queen of crime", knew this better than most and her very first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, treats the reader to an intriguing tale of murder born out of familial strife.

Published in 1920, the whodunnit centres around the murder of a wealthy woman, Emily Inglethorp, whose second husband - 20 years younger than her - is viewed with suspicion by the entire Inglethorp clan, including by her friend and confidante, Evelyn Howard.

The book introduces one of Christie's most iconic characters - the eccentric detective, Hercule Poirot - and like her subsequent books, had multiple suspects, shocking twists, clues hidden in plain sight and the "big reveal" at the end, where the perpetrator of the crime is revealed.

But the novel is also singular in that it is widely thought to be inspired by a real-life murder that took place over a century ago in Mussoorie, a popular hill retreat in northern India.

In September 1911, Frances Garnett Orme, 49, was found dead in her room at the Savoy, an upmarket hotel built by an Irish barrister. A post-mortem report found that Orme had been poisoned with prussic acid - a cyanide-based poison. Her friend, Eva Mount Stephens, 36, was accused of murdering her.

The case made global headlines because of the "peculiarity of the circumstances surrounding it", as one Australian newspaper noted in 1912. British newspapers carried blow-by-blow accounts of the trial with headlines like 'Mussoorie murder trial', 'hotel mystery' and the 'crystal gazing trial'.

Indian author Ruskin Bond, who lives in Mussoorie and has written