Music Welcome to Snuescast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us on snuescast.com and follow us on Instagram at snuescast to find behind the scenes content. If you'd like to get an email once a week with upcoming sleep stories and other news, subscribe to the newsletter at snoozecast.com. This episode is dedicated to our listener, Carrie, and by Tattered Works of Fiction. Tonight, we'll read from the 1924 Detective novel, The Man in the Brown Suit, written by Agatha Christie, and adapted by Snewscast. We will open with a mysterious and glamorous prologue set in Paris, regarding a dancer and account. Then we will learn about young Anne Beddingfield, who decides to live a life of freedom and adventure. She moves to London on her own and soon finds life to be more adventurous and expected. Let's get cozy.

Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. You're bad.

Now, take a few deep breaths. Prologue Nadina, the Russian dancer who had taken Paris by storm, swayed to the sound of the applause, bowed and bowed again. Her narrow black eyes narrowed themselves still more. The long line of her scarlet mouth curved faintly upwards. Enthusiastic Frenchman continued to beat the ground appreciatively as the curtain fell with a swish, hiding the reds and blues and magenta of the bizarre decours. In a swirl of blue and orange draperies, the dancer left the stage. A bearded gentleman received her enthusiastically in his arms. It was the manager. magnificentificent pati, magnificent. He cried, tonight you have surpassed yourself. He kissed her gallantly on both cheeks in a somewhat matter of fact manner. Madam Nadina accepted the tribute with the ease of long habit and passed on to her dressing room, where bouquets were heaped carelessly everywhere. Marvelous garments, a futuristic design hung on pegs, and the air was hot and sweet with the scent of the mast blossoms and with more sophisticated perfumes and essences. There was a dressing assistant who ministered to her mistress, talking incessantly and pouring out a stream of fulsome compliments. A knock at the door interrupted the flow. The assistant went to answer it and returned with a card in her hand. Let me see. The dancer stretched out a languid hand, but at the sight of the name on the card, Count Sergius Polović, a sudden flicker of interest came into her eyes. The assistant brought the exquisitely wispy, corn-colored robe, trimmed in her mind. Nadina slipped into it, and sat smiling to herself. While one long white hand beat a slow tattoo on the glass of the dressing table. The count was prompt to avail himself of the privilege accorded to him. A man of medium height, very slim, very elegant, very pale, extraordinarily weary, in feature little to take hold of, a man difficult to recognize again if one left his mannerisms out of account. He bowed over the dancer's hand with exaggerated courtliness. The dresser was wearing a white dresser. Accented Count addressed the Russian Accented Dancer before she went out, closing the door behind her. Alone with her visitor, a subtle change came over Nadina's smile. The count's eyes roamed gently round the disordered room. A rather peculiar smile played over the dancer's face. Chapter 1 1 Narrated by Anne Beddingfield I'd always longed for adventures. You see, my life had such a dreadful sameness. My father, Professor Beddingfield, was one of England's greatest living authorities on primitive man. He really was a genius. Everyone admits that. His mind dwelt in paleolithic times, and the inconvenience of life for him was that his body inhabited the modern world. Papa did not care for modern man, even Neolithic man he despised as a mere herder of cattle. Unfortunately, one cannot entirely dispense with modern men. One is forced to have some kind of truck with butchers and bakers and milkmen and green grocers. Therefore, Papa being immersed in the past, Mama having died when I was a baby, it felt to me to undertake the practical side of living. Frankly, I hate Paleolithic Man, and though I typed and revised most of Papa's Neanderthal man and his ancestors, Neanderthal men film myself with loathing, and I always reflect what a fortunate circumstance it was that they became extinct in remote ages. I do not know whether Papa gassed my feelings on the subject, probably not, and in any case, he would not have been interested. The opinion of other people never entrusted him in the slightest degree. I think it was really a sign of his greatness. In the same way, he lived quite detached from the necessities of daily life. He ate what was put before him in an exemplary fashion, but seemed mildly pained when the question of paying for it arose. We never seemed to have any money. His celebrity was not of the kind that brought in a cash return. Although he was a fellow of almost every important society, and had rose of letters after his name, the general public scarcely knew of his existence and his long, learned books, though adding signally to the sum total of human knowledge, had no attraction for the masses. Only on one occasion did he leap into the public gaze. He had read a paper before some society on the subject of the young of the chimpanzee. Shortly afterwards, a reporter called to see Papa and endeavored to induce him to write a series of popular articles on the theory. I have seldom seen Papa so angry. He turned the reporter out of the house with scant ceremony, much to my secret sorrow, as we were particularly short of money at that moment. In fact, for a moment I meditated running after the young man and informing him that my father had changed his mind and would send the articles in question, I could easily have ridden them myself, and the probabilities were that Papa would never have learnt of the transaction. However, I rejected this course as being too risky, so I merely put on my best hat and went sadly down the village to interview our justly irate grocer. The reporter from the Daily Budget was the only young man who ever came to our house. There were times when I envied Emily, our little servant, who walked out whenever occasion offered with a large large sailor, to whom she was a fience. She also walked out occasionally, with the green grocers young man, and the chemists' assistant. I reflected sadly that I had no one to keep my hand in. All Papa's friends were aged professors, usually with long beards. I yearned for adventure, for love, for romance, and I seemed condemned to an existence of drop utility. The village possessed a lending library full of tattered works of fiction, and I enjoyed and perils and love-making at second hand.

And went to sleep dreaming of stern, silent rotations, and of strong men who always filled their opponent with a single blow. There was no one in the village who even looked as though he could fell in an opponent with a single blow or with several. There was the cinema too with a weekly episode of The Paroles of Pamela. Pamela was a magnificent young woman. Nothing daunted her. She fell out of airplanes, adventured in submarines, climbed skyscrapers, and crept about in the underworld without turning a hair. She was not really clever. The master criminal of the underworld caught her each time. But as he seemed loath to knock her on the head in a simple way, and always doomed her by some new and marvelous means. The hero was always able to rescue her at the beginning of the following weeks' episode. I used to come out with my head in a delirious whirl, And then I would get home and find a notice from the gas company, threatening to cut us off if the outstanding account was not paid. And yet, Though I did not suspect it, every moment was bringing adventure nearer to me. Chapter 2 It took some time in my adult life to dawn upon me that the thing I had always longed for, freedom, was mine for the taking, just as my father felt free to obsess over his digging. I was practically penniless, but free. doctor called upon me, and, after making various ridiculous excuses for failing to send in a proper bill for the health care of my late mother, he hummed in haught a good deal, and suddenly suggested that I should marry him. I was very much astonished. The doctor was nearer 40 than 30, and a round tubby little man. He was not at all like the hero of the perils of Pamela, and even less like a stern and silent rotation. I reflected a minute and then asked him why he wanted to marry me. That seemed to fluster him a good deal, and he murmured that a wife was a great help to a general practitioner. The position seemed even more unromantic than before, and yet something in me urged towards its acceptance. Safety. That was what I was being offered. Safety. And a comfortable home. Thinking it over now, I believe I did the little man and injustice. He was honestly in love with me. but a mistaken delicacy prevented him from pressing his suit on those lines. Anyway, my love of romance rebelled. It's extremely kind of you, I said, but it's impossible. Could never marry a man unless I loved him madly. You don't think, no, I don't. I said firmly. He sighed. But my dear child, what do you propose to do? adventures and see the world?" I replied, without the least hesitation. Dr. I'm going to London. If things happen anywhere, they happen in London. I shall keep my eyes open and you'll see something will turn up. hear of me next in China or Timbuktu. My few personal belongings were soon packed. I contemplated my hat sadly before putting it on. It had originally been what I call a merry hat, meaning by that the kind of hat a house made ought to wear on her day out, but doesn't. A limp thing of black straw with a suitably depressed brim. With the inspiration of genius,

I had kicked it once, punched it twice, dented in the crown, and affixed to it a thing like a cubist's dream of a jazz carrot. The result had been distinctly chic.

The carrot I had already removed, of course, and now I proceeded to undo the rest of my handiwork. The Mary hat resumed its former status with an additional battered appearance which made it even more depressing than formally. With a deep sigh I proceeded to do things to my hair. I have nice hair. It is black, a real black, not dark brown. And it grows well back from my forehead and down over the ears. With a ruthless hand, I dragged it upwards. As ears, my ears are quite alright.

But there is no doubt about it. Ears are not the fashion nowadays. They are like the queen of Spain's legs, and Professor Peterson's young day. When I had finished, I looked almost unbelievably like the kind of orphan that walks out in a line with a little bonnet and a red cloak. On the whole the rest of the day passed off well. I decided now that I was in London, I was to start at once, to look for something to do. When I went to bed, I stared earnestly at my face in the glass. Was I really good looking, as some people said? Honestly, I couldn't say I thought so. I hadn't got a straight grecian nose, or a rosebud mouth, or any of the things you want to have. It is true that a curate once told me that my eyes were like imprisoned sunshine in a dark, dark wood. But curates always know so many quotations and fire them off at random. I'd much prefer to have Irish blue eyes than dark green ones with yellow flecks. Still, green is a good color for adventuruses. I brushed back my hair and pulled it well down over my ears again. I put a lot of powder on my face so that the skin seemed even whiter than usual. I fished about until I found some old lip-sav, and I put oceans of it on my lips. Then I did under my eyes with burnt cork. Finally I draped a red ribbon over my bare shoulder, stuck a scarlet feather in my hair, and placed a cigarette in one corner of my mouth. The whole effect pleased me very much. Anna the Adventurous, I settle out nodding at my reflection. Anna the Adventurous. Episode 1. The House in Kensington. Girls are foolish things. In the succeeding weeks, I was a good deal board. The lady of the house I was staying and her friends seemed to me to be supremely uninteresting. They talked for hours of themselves and their children, and of the difficulties of getting good milk for the children, and of what they said to the dairy when the milk wasn't good, then they would move on to servants, and the difficulties of getting good servants and of what they had said to the woman at the registry office and of what the woman at the registry office had said to them. They never seemed to read the papers or to care about what went on in the world. They disliked traveling. Everything was so different to England. The Riviera was alright of course, because one met all ones friends there. I listened and contained myself with difficulty. Most of these women were rich. The whole wide, beautiful world was theirs to wander in, and they deliberately stayed in dirty, dull London, and talked about milkmen and servants. I think now, looking back, that I was perhaps a shade intolerant, but they were stupid. Stupid even at their chosen job. Most of them kept the most extraordinarily inadequate and muddled housekeeping accounts. My affairs did not progress very fast. The house and furniture had all been sold now, and the amount realized had just covered our debts. As yet, I had not been successful in finding a post. Not that I really wanted one, I had the firm conviction that if I went about looking for adventure, adventure would meet me halfway. It is a theory of mine that one always gets what one wants. My theory was about to be proved in practice. It was early in January, the 8th to be exact. I was returning from an unsuccessful interview with a lady who said she wanted a secretary companion, But really seemed to require a strong char woman who would work 12 hours a day for 25 pounds a year. Having parted with mutual veiled impolitenesses, I walked down Edgar Road and across Hyde Park to St. George's Hospital. There, I entered Hyde Park Corner Tube Station and took a ticket to Gloucester Road.

Once on the platform, I walked to the extreme end of it. My inquiring mind wished to satisfy itself as to whether there really were points and in opening between the two tunnels just beyond the station in the direction of Down Street. I was foolishly pleased to find I was right. There were not many people on the platform and at the extreme end there was only myself and one man. As I passed him I sniffed dubiously. If there is one smell I cannot bear it is that of moth balls. This man's heavy overcoat simply wreaked of them. And yet most men begin to wear their winter overcoats before January. And consequently, this time the smell ought to have worn off. The man was beyond me, standing close to the edge of the tunnel. He seemed lost in thought, and I was able to stare at him without rudeness. He was a small, thin man, very brown of face, with light blue eyes and a small, dark beard. come from abroad, I did just. That's why his overcoat smells so. He's come from India. Not an officer, or he wouldn't have a beard.

Perhaps a tea planter. At this moment, the man turned as though to retrace his steps along the platform, he glanced at me, and then his eyes went on to something behind me, and his face changed. He stood a step backwards, as though involuntarily recoiling from some danger, forgetting that he was standing on the edge of the platform and went down and over. People came running up. Two station officials seemed to materialize from nowhere and took command. I remained where I was, rooted to the spot by a sort of horrible fascination. Part of me was appalled, and another part of me was cool and dispassionately interested in the methods applied for lifting the man back onto the platform. A tall man with a brown beard pressed past me and bent over the body. Suddenly, I turned blindly and ran up the stairs again towards the lift. I must get out into the open air. The lift was just about to go up. Another having descended. And the man in front of me broke into a run. As he did so, he dropped a piece of paper. I stopped, picked it up, and ran after him. But the lift gates clanged in my face, and I was left holding the paper in my hand. By the time the second left reached the street level, there was no sign of my quarry. I hoped it was nothing important that he had lost. And for the first time, I examined it. It was a plain half-sheet of note paper with some figures and words scrolled upon it in pencil.