Description

The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories - Agatha Christie

Stories

• The Regatta Mystery
• The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest
• How Does Your Garden Grow?
• Problem at Pollensa Bay
• Yellow Iris
• Miss Marple Tells a Story
• The Dream
• In a Glass Darkly
• Problem at Sea

The Regatta Mystery (the title story) has Mr Parker Pyne catch a diamond thief during regatta festivities at Dartmouth harbour.

The Mystery of the Bagdad Chest concerns how a dead body found its way into the titular chest in the midst of a dance party. Arthur Hastings chronicles Hercule Poirot's unravelling of the mystery.

How Does Your Garden Grow? is a line from the nursery rhyme "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary", which Poirot is reminded of when visiting a country house with a beautifully maintained garden whose mistress has just died – after writing a cryptic letter requesting his help.

The Problem at Pollensa Bay concerns a mother's dislike for her son's fiancee. The problem is solved (non-violently) by fellow vacationer Parker Pyne.

In Yellow Iris, Poirot follows an anonymous phone call to a restaurant table laden with the favourite flower of a woman who died mysteriously four years before. This story was expanded and made into the full-length mystery Sparkling Cyanide, featuring Colonel Race instead of Poirot.

Miss Marple Tells a Story is written in the first person by the elderly sleuth, who recalls solving (without leaving her own chair) a seemingly impossible murder.

In The Dream, an eccentric millionaire tells Poirot of a troubling dream in which he kills himself – and is found dead a week later.

In a Glass Darkly is the only story in the collection not to feature one of Christie's detectives (it is told by an anonymous narrator), and the only one to invoke the supernatural. Its title alludes to the phrase "Through a glass darkly", used by the Apostle Paul to describe how we currently view the world.

In Problem at Sea, a rich woman is found dead in her cabin on a luxury ship off the shore of Alexandria. The story concludes with Poirot saying: "I do not approve of murder."