The Mysterious Mr Quin by Agatha Christie

 

The Mysterious Mr Quin by Agatha Christie

 

short stories, published  1930

This short story collection was one of my earliest Christie reads, and a great favourite. The tales feature the elderly Mr Satterthwaite (distressingly, he turns out to be younger than I am now, but he was old back then…) – a snobbish, rather dried-up observer of life. (Apart from these stories, he also features in Three Act Tragedy, and has a small role in Dead Man’s Mirror, one of the novellas in Murder in the Mews).

His friend Mr Harley Quin flits in and out of his life, turning up at pivotal points in other people’s dramas: his influence, and Mr Satterthwaite’s long experience of life, combine to solve crimes.

The stories are simple, but they still exert their magic on me: I can see that a lifetime of fascinations - with Riviera riffraff, casinos, harlequins, and posh love triangles - had their seeds in this book. All of them were memorable and entrancing on a re-read, and I was shocked to see how many of them had influenced my views of life.

For instance: Casinos are not really glamorous places, and gambling is awful – but try telling that to someone who enjoyed The Soul of the Croupier (that title!) at an impressionable age. 

The character of Aspasia Glen, ‘The Woman with Scarf’, seems to prefigure a participant in Lord Edgware Dies. (though not in plot terms)

I also enjoy old houses where apparent supernatural happenings have a simpler explanation. And on a TV quiz programme in recent years, an answer was suggested that a young woman had been killed in a certain way in one of these stories. Oh no, I said, instantly and automatically, that’s wrong

 

SPOILER

 

… she was strangled with a ukulele string and it was made to look as though she had committed suicide. I mean, at that time it must have been 30 years since I read this throwaway, lesser story, how come I remember that and not more useful stuff? (I have told this story before, because of its connection with Richard Osman of the Thursday Murder Club and, obv, because I'm so proud of it).

There is a character called Moira – always of interest to me, I think the name appears in Christie only twice, here and in Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

If I see a steam train and the smoke rises into the sky, I think of The Sign in the Sky, where it forms a particularly wonderful clue…

Of all my obsessions, though, harlequins and commedia dell’arte are the most featured round here, and I do think that started with this book.

Harlequins have appeared on the blog many many times, I have an amazing collection of pictures – Edward Hopper to Nijinsky via a clown playing Hamlet, and I have collected my Commedia dell’Arte pictures on a Pinterest board here.

There is a Josephine Bell crime story which explains that ‘harlequin’ was the default, most common choice of costume for men attending a fancy dress ball… and we all know Lord Peter Wimsey dressed as one in Murder Must Advertise. There’s a Fr Brown story…

There is a collection post on commedia dell'arte here, which features these Mr Quin short stories.

‘The very faint bistre shadows under her eyes were most effective… she was dressed in a very daring creation of black and white’

-    Bistre is a brownish-yellow pigment made from the soot of burnt wood. It featured in this previous post also about the 1920s: ‘Her makeup - A dead pallor with just a tinge of bistre – chic, chic.’

Black and white dress from NYPL.

SLIGHT SPOILER OF ONE STORY:

There was a recent online discussion of items that, as a child, you feared would be a threat and of great importance, but which turned out not to feature much in life. The starter example was, splendidly, quicksands, One fear I had from this book was that someone might put poison into a glass container, which would crack when a certain note was sung during a radio broadcast. This has not proved a major problem in adulthood.

There is mention of a house called Greenways – Christie’s own holiday house, which she knew of but had not yet bought when the story was written – is called Greenway.

Charcoal drawing of women at a gaming table – Library of Congress

Watercolour of harlequin – Library of Congress

There are two more stories in the oeuvre (ie not included in this book), which were very hard to find in the UK when I was first reading Christie – you can now read them in various anthologies.

The Harlequin Teaset: not published till 1971, though have seen reference to its being written in the 1950s. this is a much later story featuring Harley Quin and Satterthwaite – it has some good ideas in it, but lost in a Christie farrago of a complex family  history with people marrying, having children, re-marrying and her usual interest in inheritance of both money and family traits. One too many plot elements I would say.

The Love Detectives  Magazine publication 1926 in US and UK, she must have chosen not to include in this book, so waited till a US anthology in 1950. Not published again in UK till 1991. Is very much a lesser story – no atmosphere to speak of, and an entirely predictable plot.