Mystery Quiz: Can You Guess the Agatha Christie short story?
A banker. A letter. A front door. He never comes back. Four clues from a classic Agatha Christie short story — can you guess it before the spoiler reveal?
Think It Over
Before you scroll, take a breath. You have:
- A vanished banker who left every personal item behind.
- A staged country pond that gives up nothing.
- A safe stripped clean from the inside.
- A bearded stranger that the police can't quite account for.
If you've read this one before, you'll feel it click into place right around clue four. If you haven't — what's your guess? Don't overthink it. Christie almost always tells you the answer in plain English; she just does it with such polite British misdirection that you turn the page anyway.
Watch a quick video with the Reveal at the End:
👇 Last chance to guess. Spoilers below. 👇
Spoiler Reveal
This week's mystery is "The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim" — story nine in Poirot Investigates (1924), Christie's first short-story collection and an absolute master class in less-is-more plotting.
How Poirot Solves It (Without Leaving the Tea Table)
Inspector Japp is convinced one of two things must be true: either Davenheim is dead in a ditch, or his business rival, Mr. Lowen, has done him in. Poirot, naturally, finds both options insulting.
He never visits the estate. He never interviews a single witness in person. He sips chocolate, asks Hastings to bring him newspapers, and quietly notices what nobody else has — the small, ordinary domestic details that should be there and aren't, and the small, ordinary details that are there and shouldn't be.
The solution, when it comes, lands so cleanly that you suspect it of being too easy. Davenheim is not missing. Davenheim never could be missing — because the man Scotland Yard is hunting and the man Scotland Yard already has in custody are the same person, in two different costumes.
The disappearance was the alibi. The pond was the misdirection. The empty safe was the prize, already tucked away to fund a comfortable second life.
It's a story about how a respectable man's identity is mostly built out of what other people expect to see. Take that scaffolding away — change one beard, swap one suit — and the man who was always there can simply walk past you in his own driveway.
Why This One Belongs On Your Cozy Mystery Re-Read List
- It's an armchair mystery in the truest sense. Poirot doesn't move. Neither do you. The puzzle is laid out in conversation and you either see it or you don't. The conceit is similar to the Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout.
- It plays fair. Every clue you need is on this corkboard. Christie didn't hide a thing.
- It's short. A perfect tea-and-blanket Sunday read. Twenty pages and you're out.
- It's the prototype for half a century of "did he really vanish?" mysteries that came after it. Once you spot the trick, you'll start noticing it everywhere.
Loved This? Plot Your Own.
If today's quiz scratched the cozy-mystery itch, you'll love what we do every week. We design Cover Up the Murder — a six-day mystery plotting game where instead of solving the crime, you build the suspects to hide the killer. It's Clue meets a writers' room meets a very nice cup of Earl Grey.