Welcome to All About Agatha, the podcast dedicated to reading and ranking every single novel written by The Queen of Crime

Dame Agapha Christie.

I'm Kevin Brabeck. And this is our second

bonus episode in which we take a break from Christie's novels. Today we'll be

discussing Christie's second published short story, The Tragedy at Marston Manor,

which was first published on April 13, 1923 in the sketch magazine.

Diving right in, let's start with the murder victim of this story.

Our victim is Mr. Mel Travers of Marsden Manor.

He was found on his estate as he was out shooting rooks with his

rooked by his side. As one does. As one does and blood on his lips. He

recently took out a life insurance policy for 50,000 pounds which is actually the same amount of

money as in the adventure of the Western Star which is a huge amount of money.

I feel like Christy has she just has like 50,000 pounds i.e. a lot of money. She just sort of like used that as her catch-off for a lot of money in 1920.

Definitely seems that way.

So we're talking about, you know, half a million pounds, probably,

give or take in today's money.

And he was judged to be in good health at the time,

but he died mere months later.

So obviously the insurance company is that, like, yeah, that's pretty suspicious.

And that maybe he killed himself so that his wife could collect the policy because it seemed like he was maybe about to go bankrupt.

And Poiro is a friend of the director of the insurance company and a favor was called in and

he has been asked to investigate so he and Hastings take a train to Marsden Lee.

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