Welcome to All About Agatha, the podcast in which we read and rank all 66 of Agatha

of Agatha Christie's novels.

I'm Kemper Donovan. I'm Catherine Broback. And this week we are not reading a novel. We are reading a short story, The Adventure of the Cheap Flats. It was the third of Ag of the Christie's short stories published. the In so far as there is a victim in this story and there kind of isn't we only have

Luigi Val darno who's a young Italian who works in some ambiguous capacity

for a department within the American government

where for whatever reason he has access to top secret naval plans which go

missing and then Val darno is found two days later, shot to death in New York, and da da da, he's without the plans.

But, but I mean, the real victim in this story, as the title, The Adventure of the cheap flat might tell you are bargain

hunters everywhere. The cheap flat is always too good to be true. Yeah so you could

say that the real victims in this story are Mr and Mrs Robinson, this couple who

lucked into a ridiculously cheap flat in fashionable Knights Bridge. The name of the building is Monteague

mansions. It's very well to do. They are basically bragging at a party to one

Captain Hastings, among others, about what a great deal they've gotten on their place

Ultimately we have to look at mr and mrs. Robinson as suspicious because they got a really cheap flat.

And then as far as suspects go outside of Mr. and Mrs. Robinson,

we have a Miss Elsa Hart who we do not meet but we hear about and

she's a young DC concert singer who was involved with the deceased Luigi Val d'Artagnno and who disappeared at the same time of his death.

And American government officials have quote unquote reasons to believe that she might actually

be an accomplished international spy now

on route to England. And then the only other suspects really are the big notion of

Italian secret societies, whether the Comora or the Mafia, who are after this Elsa Hart for the missing naval papers.

Val darno, the one who was found dead, was likely affiliated with one of these secret societies.

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