The Mysterious Mr Quin (Agatha Christie Signature Edition)

The inimitable Agatha Christie intrigues, surprises, and delights with The Mysterious Mr. Quin—a riveting collection of short stories centered around the.
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The Blue Jar by Agatha Christie

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It's my first book by Agatha Christie. Almost every chapter has itsbown mystery As far as I've read it. Amazon's shipping was a day late but really onr day's wait was worth it. One person found this helpful. Most helpful customer reviews on Amazon. With their suggestion of the supernatural, Christie's adept characterizations, and impeccable plotting, these short stories are for connoisseurs of the short mystery. Sometimes the solution is obvious, but Christie's craftsmanship makes the journey as enjoyable on the fiftieth reading as on the first.

I've loved the Mr. Quinn stories for many years and am so pleased they're finally available for Kindle. Unlike a lot of Kindleized books, the formatting is great, and I found only a few missteps, such as out of place quotation marks and oddly broken lines. He has a helper, Harley Quin, who appears from nowhere and speaks for the dead who cannot speak for themselves.

Uncommon, especially in dust jacket. Harley Quin appears as the agent of discovery and justice, helping the bumbling, inquisitive Mr. Satterthwaite to unravel the murders and other mysteries that abound in high and mixed society. Though short and similar in atmosphere, these pieces show the master hand. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction Bleiler , p.

Queen, The Detective Short Story, p. Hubin , p. A fine copy in very good or better pictorial dust jacket with light wear at spine ends. A very nice copy. Finely bound by the Chelsea Bindery in full blue morocco, titles and box design to spine gilt, raised bands, rule to boards gilt, inner dentelles gilt, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. First edition, first impression.

Mystery Cove Book Shop Published: Quin Christie, Agatha W. Collins Sons and Co. Ltd, , London, Book very good, with slight wear and tear near spine ends, minor edgewear, slight fading on spine, slight spotting on boards, tiny sticker and ownership inscription on front paste-down, some discoloratiopn throughout some pages.. Bookbid Rare Books Published: Book condition is good. Gray boards have some spotting and edgewear. Sunning on endpages and some foxiing on first few pages; otherwise, interior is clean, tight and unmarked. Ships with Tracking Number!

Buy with confidence, excellent customer service! Quin Agatha Christie May not contain Access Codes or Supplements. World of Books Ltd Condition: Too proud to accept charity, she burnt it in front of his eyes. Rudge realizes he does not understand the Countess and turns his attentions back to Elizabeth. Quin and Satterthwaite are satisfied. Mr Satterthwaite is on holiday on a Spanish island. He often goes to the garden of a villa called La Paz, which stands on a high cliff overlooking the sea.

He loves the garden but the villa, which is shuttered and seems empty, intrigues him. After exchanging pleasantries with the gardener, Satterthwaite makes his way to the cliff edge and soon hears approaching footsteps. It is a young man in his eyes, a man of forty. The man says he expected to be alone.

He tells Satterthwaite that he came here the previous night and found someone there seemingly in fancy dress, in "a kind of Harlequin rig". Satterthwaite is surprised at this mention of his old friend and tells his new acquaintance that Mr Quin's appearances usually presage revelations and discoveries. The younger man comments that his appearance seemed very sudden, as if he came from the sea.

Anthony Cosden introduces himself and tells Satterthwaite of his life; he has been told that he has six months to live.

He visited the island about twenty years before, and makes clear he wants to die here by leaping off the cliff. Satterthwaite asks, "You will not do it tonight, to spare me suspicion of pushing you? Satterthwaite makes the case for living, but Cosden is resolute. Cosden leaves and Satterthwaite approaches the villa. Pulling open one of the closed shutters, he sees a troubled woman in traditional Spanish dress looking at him.

He stammers an apology which makes the woman realise that he is English, and she calls him back. She, too, is English, and she invites him into the house for tea as she wishes to talk to someone. She unburdens herself to Satterthwaite, telling him that she has lived here for the last twenty-three years, for all but the first year as a widow.

The Mysterious Mr. Quin (Harley Quin, #1) by Agatha Christie

She married an Englishman when she was eighteen and they moved into the villa. The marriage proved to be a dreadful mistake as her husband gloried in making her miserable, and their baby was stillborn. Some girls staying in the local hotel dared him to swim in the dangerous sea at the base of the cliff.

He drowned and his body was battered against the rocks as his wife watched. Soon afterwards, she had a brief affair with a young Englishman who was visiting the island, the result of which was a son. He is now grown up and happy. He is serious about a girl whose parents want to know his antecedents, and she has never told him he is illegitimate. To save him pain and scandal, she is planning to commit suicide to hide the truth from him forever.

Again, Satterthwaite finds himself persuading someone to live. He asks her to take no action for twenty-four hours, but to leave the shutter he opened unlatched and to wait there tonight. He returns to the hotel, finds Cosden, and refers obliquely to the shutter on the villa that he opened. Cosden understands his meaning and leaves. The next day Satterthwaite returns to La Paz and finds the Englishwoman there, her appearance transformed with happiness.

She and Cosden, reunited after twenty years, are to be married that day by the Consul, and she will introduce her son to his father. She refuses to believe that Cosden will die. She will make sure he lives. Satterthwaite walks to the cliff top and is not surprised to find Quin there. Quin tells him that the man who drowned in the sea twenty years ago truly loved his wife — almost to the point of madness — and the desire to make amends for past transgressions can sometimes be so strong that a messenger can be found. As Satterthwaite leaves, Quin walks back towards the cliff edge, disappearing from view.

She is "beautiful, unscrupulous, completely callous, interested solely in herself. Lady Stranleigh asks Satterthwaite to check on her daughter, Margery, as he is returning to England. Lately she reports hearing voices in the night at Abbot's Mede in Wiltshire. Margery is seeking psychic researchers and Satterthwaite knows how to handle them.

The Mysterious Mr. Quin

On the train home, Satterthwaite meets Mr Quin. Quin tells him that he will be at the "Bells and Motley" inn where Satterthwaite can call on him. Give back what you have stolen. The long time servant Clayton sleeps in the next room now, but she has not heard the voices when Margery does.

The night before he arrived, Margery dreamt that a spike was entering her throat and the voice murmured, "You have stolen what is mine. Satterthwaite speaks with Clayton, a blue-eyed, grey-haired woman who also survived the Uralia , who is alarmed at the events of last night. Margery's friend Marcia Keane and a family cousin Roley Vavasour have been staying at the house since the voices started. Lady Stranleigh writes to thank Margery for the chocolates she sent and tells her that she has been laid low by food poisoning. Margery tells Satterthwaite she did not send her mother chocolates, but neither she nor her mother make the connection that Satterthwaite does, that the mysterious chocolates are the source of the food poisoning.

After speaking to the medium's spirit guide , the voice of Lady Stranleigh's sister Beatrice comes through. Satterthwaite tries her with a question from long ago that only she will know, and she answers correctly. The spirit of Beatrice says "Give back what is not yours. Roley is the next heir to the title and estates should Lady Stranleigh die. He has asked Margery to marry him but she has refused, being engaged to the local curate.

Lady Stranleigh wires that she is arriving home early, so Satterthwaite returns to London. Once there, he learns that Lady Stranleigh was found dead in her bath at Abbot's Mede. His friend listens to the entire tale but tells Satterthwaite that he has solved these matters himself before when he is in full possession of the facts, and he can do so now.

In Abbot's Mede, the sad Margery is drawing up a new will and asks him to be the second witness, Clayton being the first.


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Alice Clayton, her full name, reminds Satterthwaite she is the same maid who, many years earlier, he had kissed in a hotel's passage. He remembers Alice had brown eyes. He tells Margery that the woman she knows as Clayton, with blue eyes, is her Aunt Beatrice. She has a scar where she was struck on the head during the sinking of the Uralia and he imagines this blow destroyed her memory at the time. Her avaricious sister used the opportunity to say her elder sister drowned so she might inherit the family money.

It is only now that Beatrice's memory is returning, thus persecuting her niece, and then killing her younger sister. The two go to Clayton's room but find the woman dead from heart failure.

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As Satterthwaite says, "Perhaps it is best that way. Not caring for Cavalleria Rusticana , he deliberately arrives late so as to see only Pagliacci. He arrives just before the interval, when he bumps into Mr Quin. He invites Quin to watch the second opera with him in his private box, from where they spot an absolutely beautiful-looking girl in the stalls before the lights go down. In the next interval they spot the girl sitting with an earnest-looking young man, and see that they are joined by another young man whose arrival appears to have generated some tension in the group.

At the end of the evening Satterthwaite makes his own way to where his chauffeur-driven car is parked when he again sees the three people from the Opera House.


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Almost immediately a fight breaks out between the two young men and Satterthwaite rescues the girl from the fracas. At her home, she tells him her name is Gillian West, the intense man is Philip Eastney, and the other is Charlie Burns; and she hopes that Eastney has not hurt Burns. Satterthwaite promises to find out and assuage her fears.

The next Sunday, Satterthwaite is in Kew Gardens when his path again crosses that of Gillian West and Charlie Burns, and he finds that the two have just become engaged. The next Thursday, Satterthwaite goes back to Chelsea at Gillian's invitation and has tea with her. To her relief, Eastney has accepted the news with good grace and given her two wedding presents. One is a new radio and the other is an unusual glass sculpture which is topped off by a bubble-like iridescent ball.

Eastney has also made a strange request — that Gillian stay at home tonight and listen to the broadcast of music on the radio. Satterthwaite is uneasy as he leaves Gillian, feeling that the appearance of Quin at Covent Garden must mean that there is unusual business afoot, but he cannot place exactly what is going to happen. Wanting to discuss his fears with Quin, he goes to the Arlecchino restaurant where he met him once before see: The Sign in the Sky.

The Mysterious Mr.Quin (Agatha Christie Signature Edition)

Quin is not there, but Eastney is, and the two men talk — the younger man regaling Satterthwaite with tales of working in the testing and manufacture of poison gas during the war. Leaving the restaurant, Satterthwaite is still uneasy. He buys a paper for that evening's radio programmes and realises that Gillian West is in great danger. He rushes to her flat and drags her out before the tenor's voice reaches a peak during a performance of "The Shepherd's Song". A stray cat goes through the door to the flat and is found dead — killed by the gasses freed from the glass ball when it shattered as a result of the tenor singing.

Satterthwaite meets Eastney who is pacing on the Chelsea Embankment and tells him that he and Gillian removed a dead cat from the flat, i. The two men part, and a few minutes later a policeman asks Satterthwaite if he also heard what seemed like the sound of a large splash.

The police officer figures it is another person committing suicide. Mr Satterthwaite attends a showing at an art gallery by the rising young artist Frank Bristow. There he sees a painting called "The Dead Harlequin" which portrays a dead figure on a floor, and the same figure looking in through an open window at his own corpse. He buys the picture and meets the artist, whom he invites for dinner that night at his house.

The artist joins Satterthwaite and Colonel Monkton who was at Charnley the night fourteen years earlier when the previous Lord Charnley committed suicide. The house has a ghostly history, with the spectre of Charles I walking headless on the terrace and a weeping lady with a silver ewer seen whenever there is a tragedy in the family. The last death occurred at a fancy dress ball to celebrate the return from honeymoon of Lord Charnley and his new bride. Colonel Monkton was one of several people who stood at the top of a flight of stairs and saw Lord Charnley pass below.

A woman called out to him but he walked on as if in a daze. He passed through the Terrace Room and into the Oak Parlour that leads off it. Legends attached to the Oak Parlour include one of Charles I hiding in a priest hole there; duels taking place, with the bullet holes still in the wall; and a strange stain on the floor which reappears even when the wood is replaced.

The people on the stairs heard the door lock behind him and then a shot. They could not get into the Oak Parlour so they broke the door down to find the body with curiously little blood coming from it. Alix, Lord Charnley's widow, was pregnant and when their son was born, he automatically inherited, so no others gained by this death.

Satterthwaite receives an unexpected guest — Aspasia Glen, the celebrated performer. She wants to buy "The Dead Harlequin". Satterthwaite is pleased when Alix Charnley telephones him part way through their conversation, also wanting to buy the picture. Satterthwaite asks Alix Charnley to come round to the house immediately.

He introduces Miss Glen to his other guests and is not surprised to see that Mr Quin has arrived. When Alix joins them, she recognises Miss Glen. They relive that dreadful night and now, after fourteen years, Alix reveals that the reason for the suicide was a letter Lord Charnley received from a guest telling him that she was pregnant by him — just a month after his marriage to Alix. Monkton thinks that explains all, but Satterthwaite wants to know why Bristow's picture portrays the dead figure in the Terrace Room and not in the Oak Parlour.

This suicide may be a murder. He thinks the death occurred there and the body was put in the Oak Parlour afterwards. Satterthwaite points out that the figure seen in fancy dress could have been anyone. The only person who called him "Lord Charnley" was the woman who was allegedly pregnant by him, Monica Ford, in league with Hugo Charnley, hoping to be the Lord himself. A shot fired in the locked room would be just another bullet hole in the wall like those created by past duels, and there is a priest hole to hide the person just seen entering the room.

Any bloodstain on the floor of the Terrace Room would have been covered by a red Bokhara rug which was placed there on that night only, and the body then moved into the Oak Parlour. The stains could have been cleaned up by a lady with a jug and basin and if anyone saw her, she would have been taken for the resident ghost. The accused woman rushes out of Satterthwaite's house after confessing that she loved Hugo, and helped him with the murder, but he abandoned her soon after and is dead now. Alix is relieved, coming alive again. The letter to her husband was false.

She can tell her son that his father has no stain on his reputation. When the artist prepares to leave, Mr Quin has already slipped away. Frank Bristow may pursue the charming Alix. He reverses his view, and calls hostess Madge Keeley to resurrect his invitation to Laidell, another house party in the country. Arriving at Laidell, he learns that Madge is soon to announce her engagement. She quietly points out Roger Graham to him at dinner. David Keeley, a brilliant mathematician but socially quiet man affectionately called the invisible man, is Madge's father.

He notices that Roger seems distracted, and later hears from Mabelle that earlier in the day she saw a figure in the woods who could only have been Mr Quin. Taking this as his cue to speak with her, he finds out that she is blissfully happy. Gerard fetches her to play for the group on her ukulele.

The party breaks up for the night, heading to their respective rooms. In the morning, the household wakes to the news that Mabelle is dead, found by a maid hanging on the back of her bedroom door.