Albertina

In the novel Elephants Can Remember, Albertina is a foreign friend whom Ariadne Oliver recalled while attending the Famous Women Writers literary luncheon. Ariadne was dreading what kind of appropriate reply to give to various people who would come up to her to praise her writing and she recalled what Albertina once advised her.

Ariadne had been staying at a foreign embassy abroad and there Albertina had put her through "a kind of course" on what to do in such circumstances. According to Albertina, she had listened to how Ariadne responded to a journalist who came to interview her. Ariadne did not have the pride she ought to have in her work. She should not deprecate herself. She ought to have told the journalist that "Yes, I write well. I write better than anyone else who writes detective stories.”