Punch Bowls For Sale
Punch Bowls For Sale
The Listerdale Mystery is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by William Collins and Sons in June 1934. The book retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6). The collection did not appear in the US however all of the stories contained within it did appear in other collections only published there.
The collection is notable for the first book appearance of the story Philomel Cottage which was turned into a highly successful play, two feature films and was also televised twice in the UK.
Plot summaries
The Listerdale Mystery
Mrs St. Vincent is a genteel lady living in reduced circumstances with her son and daughter, Rupert and Barbara. After her husband's financial speculations went wrong, he died and they were forced to vacate the house which had been in their family for generations. They now live in rooms in a boarding house which has seen better times and, due to these surroundings, are unable to entertain people of similar class and upbringing. Rupert has just started a job in the city with excellent prospects but, at this moment in time, only a small income. Barbara had enjoyed a trip to Egypt the previous winter with, and paid for by, her richer cousin where she met a young man called Jim Masterson who is interested in courting her but who would be put off if he saw their circumstances. Looking through the
Morning Post
, Mrs St. Vincent sees an advert for a house for rent in Westminster, furnished and with a nominal rent. Although she thinks she has little chance of being able to afford the house she goes to see the house agents and then the house itself and is instantly taken with it and pleasantly surprised at its very low rent. The agents offer her the house for a six-month rental. Barbara is delighted but Rupert is suspicious – the house belonged to Lord Listerdale who disappeared eighteen months previously and supposedly turned up in East Africa, supplying his cousin, Colonel Carfax with power of attorney. They take the house and are looked after in style by Quentin, the butler, whose wages are paid for by Lord Listerdale's estate, as are the wages of the two other servants. Delicious food regularly turns up on the table which has been sent up regularly from his Lordship's country seat of King's Cheviot – an old custom.
After three month's Mrs St. Vincent is very happy in the house and Jim has proposed to Barbara. Rupert still entertains his suspicions and is somewhat convinced that Listerdale is not in Africa but has perhaps been murdered and his body is hidden in the house. Rupert also suspects Quentin of being part of whatever plot has occurred. Rupert goes on a motorcycling holiday which takes him near to King's Cheviot. Spotting someone like Quentin, he questions the man who tells him he is really called Quentin, was butler to Lord Listerdale but retired on a pension to an estate cottage some time before. Rupert brings the real butler to London and confronts the fake. The real butler tells an astonished St. Vincent family that the fake is in fact Lord Listerdale himself. His Lordship tells them that ashamed with his selfish life to date, he faked his relocation to Africa and he since spent his time helping people like the St. Vincent's who have been reduced to something akin to begging in their life. Over the past few months, he has grown in love with Mrs St. Vincent and now proposes marriage to the delighted lady...
Philomel Cottage
Alix Martin is a woman in her mid-thirties who has worked as a shorthand typist for fifteen years. For most of that time she has had an understanding with a fellow clerk by the name of Dick Windyford but as both are short of funds and, at various times having family dependants, romance and marriage have been out of the question and never spoken of. Two events happen suddenly; a distant cousin of Alix dies leaving her enough money to give her an income of a couple of hundred pounds a year however her financial independence seems to annoy Dick, and at much the same time Alix meets and has a whirlwind romance with Gerald Martin, a man she meets at a friend's house and they are engaged within a week and married soon after. Dick is furious and warns Alix that she knows nothing whatsoever about her new husband...
A month after they are married, Gerald and Alix are living at Philomel Cottage, a picturesque cottage. It is isolated but fitted with all modern conveniences. Alix has some anxieties – she has a recurring dream in which Gerald lies dead on the floor, Dick stands over him having committed the deed of murder but Alix is grateful for the act. She is troubled that the dream is a warning. By coincidence Dick phones her. He is staying at a local inn and wishes to call on her. She puts him off, afraid of what Gerald's reaction might be. After the call she chats to the gardener, George, and during the course of the conversation is told two strange things; Gerald has told George that Alix is going to London the next day and he doesn't know when she'll be returning (although she knows nothing about this) and that the cost of the cottage was two thousand pounds. Gerald had told Alix that it was three thousand and she gave him part of her inheritance to make up the difference. Alix finds Gerald's pocket diary dropped in the garden and looks through it, seeing her husband's meticulous entries for everything he does in his life. An appointment is marked down for 9.00pm that night but no indication is given as to what will happen at that time...
Alix suddenly has doubts about her husband which only increase when he gives her a cryptic warning about prying into his past life. He is also furious that George made the comment about going to London. He claims the 9.00pm entry was to remind him to develop photographs in his dark room but he has now decided not to carry out this chore. The next day, driven by questions and insecurities, Alix starts to search through her husband's papers in two locked drawers and in one of them finds newspaper clippings from America dated seven years previously which report on a swindler, bigamist and suspected murderer called LeMaitre. Although found not guilty of murder, he was imprisoned on other charges and escaped four years before. Alix seems to recognise LeMaitre from the photographs – it is Gerald! He returns to the cottage, carrying a spade, supposedly to do work in the cellar but Alix is convinced he intends to kill her. Desperately keeping up a pretence of normality, she makes a supposed call to the butcher which is in fact a coded call for help to Dick at the inn. Gerald tries to get her to join him in the cellar but she plays for time telling Gerald that she is in fact an unsuspected murderess who killed two previous husbands by poisoning them with hyoscine which induces the symptoms of heart failure. Gerald had been complaining that his coffee was bitter and he is convinced that she has now poisoned him. At that moment, Dick and a policeman arrive at the cottage as Alix runs out. The policeman investigates inside and reports that there is a man in a chair who is dead, looking as if he has had a bad fright...
The Girl in the Train
George Rowland is a mildly dissolute young man who is dependent on his rich uncle for both his keep and his job at the family city firm. Annoyed with his nephew's late night carousing, his uncle sacks him. Annoyed in turn with his uncle, George makes plans to leave home. Abandoning ambitious plans to go to the colonies, George decides instead to travel by train from Waterloo to a place he spots in an ABC guide called Rowland's Castle where he is sure he will be welcomed with open arms by the feudal inhabitants. Happily alone in the first class carriage, a girl jumps onto the train begging to be hidden. George chivalrously hides her under the train seat before a moustached foreign man appears at the window and "demands" his niece back. George calls a platform guard who detains the foreign man and the train departs.
The girl introduces herself as Elizabeth but tells George that she can't give him an explanation of her actions. At the next station, she gets off the train. Speaking to George through the window, she spots a man with a small dark beard further down the platform getting into the train and tells George to keep an eye on him and to guard safely a package that she hands to him.
George follows the bearded man down to Portsmouth where he books into the same commercial hotel as him and watches him carefully. He is aware that there is another ginger-haired man carefully watching both of them. He follows the bearded man as he goes on a quick walk through the streets which ends up taking them both back to their hotel with no sign of any assignation. George wonders if the bearded man has spotted that he is being watched. His suspicions grow further when the ginger-haired man returns to the hotel, also seemingly after a night's walk. His puzzlement increases when two foreign men call at the hotel and ask George (although calling him "Lord Rowland") where the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Catonia, a small Balkan state, has gone to. The younger of the two men grows violent but George is able to subdue him with Jujutsu. The two men leave uttering threats.
That night, George watches the black-bearded man as he secretes a small packet behind the skirting board in the bathroom. Returning to his own room, George finds the package Elizabeth gave him has gone from its hiding place under the pillow. After breakfast, the package has returned to his room but, investigating its contents at last, George finds only a box with a wedding ring i
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