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.Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club – A checklist of First Editions. Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15) 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 and 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 (one which has seen better times). Therefore, they 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 point in time, only a small income. Barbara enjoyed a trip to Egypt the previous winter with – and paid for by – a cousin. On this trip she met a young man called Jim Masterson, who is interested in courting her, but who would be put off if he saw their reduced circumstances.
Looking through the Morning Post, Mrs St. Vincent sees an advertisement for a house to let 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. It is sent up regularly from his Lordship's country seat of King's Cheviot – an old custom.
After three months, 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 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 who resembles 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 one. The real butler tells an astonished St Vincent family that the fake is in fact Lord Listerdale himself. His Lordship explains that, ashamed of his selfish life to date, he faked his relocation to Africa, and has since spent his time helping people like the St Vincents, whose lives have been reduced to something akin to begging. Over the past few months, he has fallen 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, had 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 generate 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 a man, Gerald Martin, at a friend's house, and after a whirlwind romance 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 in the picturesque Philomel 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 standing over him having committed the deed of murder, and Alix 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 that he does not know when she will 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 9:00 pm 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 9:00 pm 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 that he intends to kill her. Desperately keeping up a pretence of normality, she makes a supposed call to the butcher. It 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 though 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's 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 the London Waterloo station to a place he spots in an ABC guide called Rowland's Castle. He is sure that he will be welcomed with open arms by the feudal inhabitants. He is happily alone in the first class carriage when 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 for her actions. At the next station, she gets off the train. While 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, books into the same commercial hotel, 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 a martial arts manoeuvre. 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 that the package Elizabeth gave him is no longer under the pillow where he hid it. After breakfast, the package has returned to his room. Investigating its contents at last, George finds only a box with a wedding ring inside it. He hears from the chambermaid that she is unable to gain access to the black-bearded man's room and decides to gain access himself via a parapet outside the window. He deduces that the man escaped via the fire escape just before he hears a noise from inside the wardrobe. He investigates the source of the noise and is attacked from within by the ginger-haired man. The latter identifies himself as DI Jarrold of Scotland Yard.
The black-bearded man was called Mardenberg and was a foreign spy who secreted the plans of the Portsmouth Harbour defences behind the skirting board. His accomplice is a young girl, and George wonders if this could have been Elizabeth. He is on the train back to London when he reads of a secret wedding between the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Catonia and Lord Roland Gaigh. At the next station Elizabeth gets onto the train and explains events to George. She was acting as a decoy for Anastasia to throw the latter's uncle, who opposed the romance, off the scent, and the black-bearded man and the packet were simply a ruse to distract George, as he was so willing to be part of a mystery – another wedding ring could easily have been procured, and George's adventures with the spy were a remarkable coincidence.
George realises that Elizabeth is actually Lord Roland's sister. He proposes to her. His uncle will be delighted he is marrying into the aristocracy, and Elizabeth Gaigh's parents, with five daughters, will be delighted that she is marrying into money. She accepts.
Sing a Song of Sixpence