Curso

Have You Got Everything You Want? (Plot Summary)
By Agatha Christie
A young, attractive woman named Elsie Jeffries boards the Orient Express at the Gare de Lyon. She is shown to her compartment but is obviously in something of a mental quandary. Once the journey has started she makes her way to the restaurant car and spots that the suitcase in the next door compartment to hers is labelled"Parker Pyne" and this triggers something in her memory. She checks the personal column of The Times but doesn't see what she expected to see there. Going to the restaurant car again she is placed on the same table as the owner of the case and strikes up a conversation with him and asks him if he is the same Parker Pyne of The Times' adverts. He confirms that he is and he asks her if she is unhappy.She confesses that she is and the cause is her husband of the past eighteen months. He is a sober and puritanical soul who has been working in Constantinople for two weeks and she is on her way to join him. One week ago, in his study, she found a piece of blotting paper on which was part of a message which referred to her and used the words, "just before Venice would be the best time." She cannotimagine what is going to happen to her when the train reaches this point. Pyne checks when they will arrive at Venice and promises to help.
The next day they are almost at the appointed spot when there is a cry of "Fire!" The two rush out in the corridor where a Slavic woman is pointing to the smoke coming out of one of the compartments further down the train. The conductor assures the passengersthat there is no emergency but, suspicious, Pyne returns to Elsie's compartment and finds the Slavic woman there, supposedly recovering from the shock but Pyne refuses to let her leave when she wishes to and, when Elsie returns, asks her to sort through her belongings. She does so and finds that her jewellery has gone. The Slavic woman is detained at Venice but the jewels are not found on her andshe has to be released. On the way to Trieste, Pyne and Elsie discuss the puzzle of where the jewels could possibly be as no one else had the opportunity to take them and the Slavic woman could not have thrown them to someone outside the train as they were on the bridge passing over the sea and they have not been hidden in the compartment. Pyne decides that he must send a telegram at Trieste...The train reaches Stamboul and Pyne meets Edward Jeffries and asks Elsie to meet him at the Tokatlian Hotel in thirty minutes time. She does so and he hands all of her jewellery back to her but refuses to say how he recovered it. He leaves the hotel and goes to a café where Edward Jeffries joins him by appointment. It was Jeffries who received Pyne's telegram and handed the jewels back. Pyne tellshim about his wife finding the message on the blotter and puts it to Jeffries that the jewels were actually taken by him before he left London, leaving paste copies behind. It was these that had to be "stolen" again and disappear at some other point but in a way that would not bring an accusation on any innocent person. The point before Venice is the only time on the journey that the jewels couldbe taken and thrown into water and not end up in land where they could be found. He suspects Jeffries is not a thief but a victim and the young husband confesses that he has been blackmailed for some time by a Mrs. Rossiter who Jeffries shared a bedroom with in the West Indies, on the purely innocent grounds of protecting her from her supposedly violent husband. It was a scam and Jeffries hasbeen suffering ever since. Needing the money for the latest demand, he "stole" his wife's jewels. Pyne tells him to leave the blackmailer to him and to confess all to his wife, except for the fact of being scammed in the West Indies. He is sure Elsie will be delighted to believe that she has reformed a rake.

Death on the Nile (Plot summary)
By Agatha Christie
Parker Pyne is about to start a...