The Love Detectives: An Agatha Christie Short Story

Mr. Satterthwaite and Colonel Melrose are comfortably ensconced in the Colonel’s study temperately listening to each other’s differing passions when the phone suddenly interrupts them. Someone has been murdered and the Colonel, the county chief constable, is going to let Satterthwaite accompany him to the scene of the crime. But, such differing fellows have, as imagined, rather opposing outlooks on why Sir James Dwighton has been bashed over the head with a blunt instrument. But when Mr. Quin appears, Satterthwaite is delighted as ever and soon regales him with his romantic impression of the facts at hand. In the ancient house of Alderly the red haired beauty Laura Dwighton and the couple’s guest, the very attractive Mr Paul Delangua have, rumour has it, engaged in an illicit affair and he has been thrown out by the disgruntled Sir James. But the facts of the murder all seem to add up too nicely and what’s more everyone is confessing to it.