The Coming of Mr. Quin: A Short Story for #AgathaChristieSS24, with a topic of discussion!

♣️ This is the beginning of the beginning. Agatha Christie published her first short story in 1924, this story. And after that, she quite regularly published no less than 166 others, besides her novels, in the span of more than forty years.

♣️ The Coming of Mr. Quin is also the beginning of our acquaintance with the charismatic but elusive Harley Quin. He was Christie's most favorite character, inspired by her fascination of theater and performance - in particular - the Italian Commedia dell'arte, as well as the supernatural. It is also the first appearance of old Mr. Satterthwaite, the connoisseur of human nature.

♣️ It's New Year's Eve, and Mr. Satterthwaite is guest in a dinner party at Royston Hall. The night is dark and cold. Near midnight there's a knock on the door. A tall and dark stranger by the name of Mr. Harley Quin enters. His car has caught a problem, and while his chauffeur's repairing it, he invites himself to the warmth of a glass of drink and the blazing fire.

♣️ The conversation soon drifts into the death of Royston Hall's previous owner some years ago. Derek Capel had committed suicide, seemingly without reasonable cause. He had even got engaged to a mysterious woman whose identity he never revealed. Mr. Quin unwittingly guides the other guests to review the sequence of events around the suicide (all the guests and the host were present on that fatal night). While Mr. Satterthwaite, with his deep understanding of human nature, and with the help of Mr. Quin's hints, solves the mystery.

♣️ As usual, it's a simple solution. The key to get to the answer is just connecting the (seemingly) uneventful events as pieces of a puzzle. Once you put them into place, then voila... you get the solution. After years of reading Christie, I know that she won't put something, no matter trivial it is, if it's not important to the case; every detail counts.

What an appropriate story to kick off our fun #AgathaChristieSS24! Now, I have a topic for discussion for this one:

We know what Mr. Quin meant for Agatha Christie, but I'm curious... 

What do you think is Mr. Quin's role in this story?

(and in more stories to come)

Be creative, imaginative, think out of the box, and all that.

I personally like to think Mr. Quin as the embodiment of chronological and analytical thinking - a quality which great detectives should own. Mr. Satterthwaite has a quality of being good detective. His understanding of psychology and attention to details are great. He also has the ability to detach himself from the scene, and view it from outsider's perspective. Unfortunately, Mr. Satterthwaite is too imaginative, and lacks of chronological thinking. Hence, with a little prompt from Mr. Quin, he'd eventually see the truth. In a way, the combination of both men would result in the character of Hercule Poirot.

And you, what do YOU think? You can slip the answer in your post(s), if you hadn't done any, or just leave your thoughts on the comment box below. :)

You just found out about #AgathaChristieSS24 and would have wanted to join in? There's still plenty of time for you to read and post the January stories! Or, if this month would be too hectic for you to read one or two short stories, you can always join in anytime of the year - no strings attach, and just have fun!

This is the initial post, if you want to know more about this event, and this is the January post where you can leave link to your post(s) for this month.