Welcome to All About Agatha.

I'm Camper Donovan.

I'm Catherine Brobeck.

And this is our first bonus episode where we do a short story as opposed to a novel and we are starting with Agath Christie's first published short story which is a Poirot and it's called the Adventure of the Western Star.

It was first published in the sketch magazine in the UK

in 1923, and it was a way for Agathacristy

to quench readers thirst for more Poiro in between novels.

So as we know, her first novel was a Poiro, the Mysterious Affairs Styles, and before

her second Poiro novel, Murder on the Links, which we'll be reading next,

came out.

This was a way to tide readers over, both in the UK and the US.

So we're going to start off doing a synopsis as always and I am going to get right to it.

Here we go.

The Poirot's London office, the American actress Mary Marvell shows him and his

associate Captain Hastings three letters hand delivered to her by a Chinaman her word

warning that the world famous Western Star Diamond will be stolen and return to its

rightful place as the left eye of a Chinese God by the full moon, which is in three days time.

Mary pays some credence to the letters since she remembers her husband, her fellow actor Gregory Rolf,

said he bought it from a China man in San Francisco three years earlier

Mary also directs Poiro and Hastings to a society paper that makes mention of the Star of the East a

second diamond owned by Lord Yardley rumored to be the right eye of this Chinese

God and the Western Stars Twin.

...