It's time for Part Seven of my latest Tale for Our Time: The Secret Adversary, with Agatha Christie venturing from country-house murders at St Mary Mead into the high stakes of post-Great War politics.
Mike Clifson, a Mark Steyn Club member from Cartagena (no, not the Cartagena of "Cartagena hookers" fame, the one in Spain) writes:
I haven't thanked you for the enjoyable listening! I haven't reread this book for about forty years and first read it under ten about seventy-five years ago with a rather cub-scout idea of the byplay between the heroine and the hero which I rather skipped thru ....
I had not expected listening to be more enjoyable than rereading again on a plane flight or during yet another burst of flu, but it sure is, and the excellence of the performer brings out the tradecraft and early freshness of the composer.
Hat off to you!
Thank you very much, Mike. Don't skip the byplay, though: it's rather good.
In tonight's episode, Tuppence is elsewhere, and Tommy discovers that tracking multiple persons at Waterloo Station requires sufficient manpower:
He rang up the Ritz and asked for Julius Hersheimmer. There was a click and a buzz. Oh, if only the young American was in his room! There was another click, and then "Hello" in unmistakable accents came over the wire.
"That you, Hersheimmer? Beresford speaking. I'm at Waterloo. I've followed Whittington and another man here. No time to explain. Whittington's off to Bournemouth by the 3.30. Can you get there by then?"
The reply was reassuring.
"Sure. I'll hustle."
The telephone rang off. Tommy put back the receiver with a sigh of relief. His opinion of Julius's power of hustling was high.
Can't beat a Yank for effective hustling. Well, in 1921, that is...
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can listen to me read Part Seven of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in. And, if you're playing catch-up on The Secret Adversary, you can start fresh with Part One and have a good old binge-listen here.
Programming note: please swing by SteynOnline this weekend for a rather special musical event.
If you'd like to join Mike in The Mark Steyn Club, we'd love to have you along for our eighth season. So do click here for more info - and don't forget, for fellow fans of classic fiction and/or poetry, our Steyn Club Gift Membership.