My Mother's Kiss by Frances Harper - 265 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

Frances Harper


Not just as an author and poet, but Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an activist too. She was an influential abolitionist, suffragist, and reformer and she also co-founded the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. To her credit is being the first African American woman to publish a short story.



Born on September 24, 1825 in Baltimore, Maryland, Frances was brought up by her aunt and uncle, Henrietta and William Watkins. It was a strong influence from her uncle which infused in her a zeal to be anything but an ordinary woman. William Watkins was an outspoken abolitionist, advocated self-taught medicine, organised a black literary society and established his own school in 1820.


Later in her youth, Frances was very attracted to books, literary articles and education. That's why at the young age of twenty-one, she wrote her first small volume of poetry called Forest Leaves. At twenty-six years old, she became the first woman instructor at Union Seminary, a school for free African Americans in Ohio. Later in Philadelphia in 1854, she had compiled her second small volume of poetry called Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects.


In 1859, Harper published a short story in the Anglo-African Magazine called “The Two Offers.” This short story about women’s education became the first short story published by an African American woman.


In 1860 she got married, but her husband died a few years later. Not one to be tied down to domestic life, Frnaces travelled across the country, touring places, lecturing and showing emphasis on education as well as fighting for the rights of black people.


Known throughout her lifetime and even after her life as ‘The Bronze Muse,’ , she died on February 22, 1911 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

My Mother's Kiss by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

William Still, in his 1871 publication The Underground Railroad, called his colleague and friend Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, "the leading colored poet in the United States”.


The poem My Mother's Kiss is about a very tender relationship shared by a mother with her child. In another poem by Harper,n “The Slave Mother,” a work from her first volume of poetry, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854), a very tough bond is explored. The latter poem might have been written at a difficult time both in Harper’s life or in the civil unrest in America plagued by racism.


According to Sarah Elizabeth Bennison, in her paper ‘The Poetry and Activism of Frances Ellen Watkins’, Harper used the image of motherhood throughout her poetry to portray black women generally in a favorable light and specifically to reflect her self-conception as a mother who was also a poet.

My mother's kiss, my mother's kiss,

I feel its impress now;

As in the bright and happy days

She pressed it on my brow.


The poem explores the viewpoint of a child about her relationship with her mother. Mother here is a delicate lady, one who has capably managed her house and her children. The poem goes through several stages of the daughter’s life as well.

The Affair of the Pink Pearl - Agatha Christie - 264 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

The Affair of the Pink Pearl
— from Partners in crime


The Affair of the Pink Pearl is a short story written by Agatha Christie which was first published in The Sketch in October 1924. It was the second of a series of stories for the Sketch under the banner "Tommy and Tuppence" which formed a collection, later known as  Partners in Crime which came out in both the U.K. and the U.S. in 1929. In U.K. editions, it forms the 3rd chapter while in U.S. editions, this story is usually split into two as chapters 3 and 4.


Tommy and Tuppence have really benefited from the publicity over their last case. Now a family wants them to recover a lost pearl with their "24 hour service". Strangely enough, one member of the family doesn't seem keen for them to get involved.


Tommy sorts out a pile of books in the office. They are a number of volumes of famous detective stories and he thinks it would be a good idea to base their techniques on the different styles of their fictional counterparts and to learn from their modus operandi. He has also bought a good camera for taking photographs of footprints and "all that sort of thing".

They receive a client. It is a young woman named Miss Kingston Bruce. She lives in Wimbledon with her parents and last night one of their guests lost a valuable pink pearl. They do not wish to call in the police yet and the Blunts were recommended to them by Lawrence St. Vincent who was also one of the guests.

The Beresfords travel to Wimbledon and meet Colonel Kingston Bruce. He proudly tells them that Lady Laura Barton, daughter of the late Earl of Carroway, is staying with them together with an American couple, Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Betts, who wanted to meet a titled lady. During a bridge game after dinner, the clasp of Mrs. Betts' pearl pendant necklace broke. She laid it down on a small table and forgot to take it upstairs. The next morning, the necklace was still there but the pearl itself had gone. Aside from the Kingston Bruce's, the Betts, Lady Laura and St. Vincent, the only other guest was a Mr. Rennie who is paying court to Miss Kingston Bruce. Her father doesn't like or trust the man as he is a socialist. No one has been allowed to leave the house since the pearl was discovered to be missing except for their daughter when she went to the Blunts. They are given approval to search the house as part of their investigations.

Tommy tries to look impressive by using his new camera whilst Tuppence tactfully questions the servants. They overhear a scrap of conversation between Mrs. Kingston Bruce and her daughter about someone hiding a teaspoon in their muff and wonder who this can be. Later on, Tuppence ferrets out of Lady Laura's French maid, Elise, that her employer is something of a kleptomaniac and five times in the past items have gone missing when she had been staying at friend's houses. They start searching Lady Laura's bedroom and bathroom, momentarily getting stuck in the latter room when Elise cannot open the door. Tommy takes pictures in the bedroom with Elise's assistance and then quietly tells Tuppence that he has an idea and has to go out to pursue it. In the meantime, she is not to let Lady Laura out of the house.

Some time later Tommy returns with Inspector Marriot of Scotland Yard. They go straight back to the bathroom and cut the cake of soap in half. Inside it is the pearl. The reason Elise couldn't open the door was that she had soap on her hands after depositing the pearl there. Tommy's photographs included one of the maid and she handled one of the glass slides, thus leaving her fingerprints. The Yard have identified her from their records as a missing criminal and arrested her. Being the maid of a lady suspected of kleptomania was the best cover she could have.

Image - Collins Detective Novel - (1929) first printing


Source - Agathawikifandom

A Pot of Tea - Agatha Christie - 263 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

A Pot of Tea 
— from Partners in crime


A Pot of Tea is a short story written by Agatha Christie which was first published under the title "Publicity" in The Sketch in September 1924. It was the first of a series of stories for the Sketch under the banner "Tommy and Tuppence" which formed a loosely contiguous story collection. This story was subsequently compiled and split into two, forming the first two chapters of the collection Partners in Crime which came out in both the U.K. and the U.S. in 1929.



Prudence ("Tuppence") Beresford, who has been married to Tommy for six years, is bored with life, although not with her husband. She carelessly discusses what exciting things she would wish to happen to her, mainly adventures involving German spies or spying trips to Bolshevik Russia. Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Carter who asks them to take over The International Detective Agency whose manager, Theodore Blunt, is now in prison. 

Blunt and his agency is apparently being used as a "letter box" by international agents who do not know the real Blunt has been apprehended and might continue to send mail to the place. In his guise as "Mr. Blunt" Tommy is to look out for letters written on blue paper, with a Russian stamp on them from a supposed ham merchant anxious to trace his refugee wife. They will have a number 16 written under the stamp and they are also to be alert for any other references to said number. In the meantime, the agency is free to undertake any other cases which may come their way.

A few days later, the two have installed themselves in the office. Tommy's alias is Mr. Blunt while Tuppence is his confidential secretary, Miss Robinson. The porter from their flat, Albert (Mrs. Vandemeyer's lift boy from The Secret Adversary) is their office boy. After a week of divorce cases, which Tuppence finds distasteful, they receive a visit from Lawrence St. Vincent. He is the nephew of and heir to the Earl of Cheriton. He has fallen in love with a young girl called Janet who works in a hat shop in Brooks Street but she has disappeared from the shop and has not been seen at her lodgings. St. Vincent heard several mentions of the detective agency from Janet and now wants them to find her. In conversation with Tuppence, St. Vincent admits that he intends to ask Janet to marry him as soon as she is found.

The Beresfords take on the case which Tuppence solves with ease--because it is all a publicity stunt she has arranged. Janet is a friend of hers from her wartime nursing days who was working at the hatshop where Tuppence makes her purchases. She is being romanced by St. Vincent. Tuppence asked Janet to make the mentions of "Blunt" detective agency and then disappear. St. Vincent would ask them to take on the case (for which they get publicity) and they would "find" Janet, provoking St. Vincent into a proposal of marriage. Tuppence had earlier maneuvered the conversation with St. Vincent around to him saying he intends to ask her to marry him.




Adapted from Agathawiki fandom

The Thumbmark of St. Peter - Agatha Christie - 262 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

The Thumbmark of St. Peter

This is a short story written by Agatha Christie and first published in The Royal Magazine in May 1928 in the UK. It is the sixth short story of the Tuesday Night Club story collection.

The husband, Geoffrey Denman, of Miss Marple’s niece, Mabel, dies. The doctor assumes it was from eating poisoned mushrooms. Mabel is cleared of wrongdoing, but the general gossip is that she probably killed her husband. Denman had a violent temper and also had a history of insanity in his family. Before he died, he made some rambling statements about fish. Miss Marple is called in to assist and throw light on the case.

This is the final story to be told at the regular meeting of the Tuesday Night Club and comes from Miss Marple’s life.

Arriving at her niece’s house which Mabel shares with two servants her a nursemaid for her mentally-ill father-in-law, Miss Marple learns that her widowed niece was the subject of gossip to the effect that she murdered her husband and no one in the area would now talk to her. Geoffrey had been taken ill in the night and died soon after the doctor arrived but the old locum had not raised the alarm about the manner of death. It was thought that he had died after eating poisoned mushrooms. The two servants told Miss Marple that Denman had been unable to swallow and was rambling before he died about fish.

 An exhumation order was granted followed by an autopsy that proved totally without any evidence that his wife is to be suspected. Miss Marple wonders if Geoffrey had committed suicide and used a knowledge of medicine gained in a previous period of his life to do so. Totally confused by the problem, she was in the high street and in something of a silent prayer for guidance when she opened her eyes and saw a fresh haddock in the fishmonger’s window with its characteristic black spots known as the "thumb mark of St. Peter". She realised that the solution lay in the mysterious words uttered by Geoffrey as he lay dying.

Questioning the servants further, they stated that the words were to do with a "heap" or "pile" of some fish whose name probably began with "c". Checking a list of poisons, Miss Marple found one called Pilocarpine and read that it is also an antidote for atropine poisoning. Based on her own eyedrops which contain atropine sulphate she confronted the elderly Mr. Denman and accused him of murdering his son. The old insane man laughingly confessed the crime, committed because he overheard his son planning to put him in an asylum. He emptied his eye solution into his son’s bedside glass of water knowing that Geoffrey would drink it in the night. Mr Denman is committed to an asylum after all and the Tuesday Club congratulates Miss Marple on her success although Raymond points out there is one thing she doesn’t know. 

His aunt corrects him – she knows that he proposed to Joyce earlier in the evening!



A Miss Marple illustration

The Bloodstained Pavement - Agatha Christie - 261 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

The Bloodstained Pavement 

- from the Miss Marple : the complete short stories

The short story was written by Agatha Christie and first published in The Royal Magazine in March 1928 in the UK. In the U.S., the story was first published in Detective Story Magazine in June 1928. It is the fourth short story of the Tuesday Night Club story collection.

Joyce, the main protagonist, is painting a picture of the picturesque village Palhar with Arms, an inn she is staying at, when a couple - Denis and Margery, arrives. After that a woman dressed in scarlet arrives, whom the husband, Denis, recognizes as Carol, an old friend of his. The three of them talk and make plans to go rowing to a nearby cave.

Carol, disliking boats, agreed to walk to the spot and meet the couple at the cave. That afternoon Joyce had returned to her painting, spotted two bathing suits drying in the sun from the balcony of the pub and assumed that the three people had returned.

A local man engaged her in somewhat unwanted conversation and distracted her from her work. Before she realised what she had done, Joyce seemed to have painted in bloodstains on the pavement in front of the pub and was astonished to find that she had captured reality – there did seem to be bloodstains on the pavement that were not there a short time before. Before she could take any action, Denis emerged from the pub and asked Joyce and the local man if they had seen Carol return. The three had met at the cave, as agreed, and Carol had supposedly walked back to the inn but not arrived, although her car was still there. Denis and Margery drove off and Joyce inspected the pavement – only to find the bloodstains gone.

Two days later, she read in the paper that Margery had disappeared while bathing in the sea and a week later her body was found washed up with a blow to the head, supposedly caused when she dived into the water on some rocks.

As the Tuesday Club is discussing the case, the men of the club feel that there is very little in the story to go on but Miss Marple points out that they do not appreciate the point about clothes as she and Joyce do. The bloodstains were on the pavement, dripping from one of the bathing suits which was scarlet in colour. The criminals didn't realise that when they hung them up to dry. Joyce confirms her point and finishes the story: a year later, at an east coast resort, she saw the same set up again with Denis, Carol and another woman, supposedly Denis' new wife.

Joyce goes to the police station and reports suspicious activity. A Scotland Yard inspector was already there investigating Denis who, under several names, had married women, insured their lives for large sums, and then killed them in a conspiracy with Carol – his real wife. The woman that Joyce saw in Rathole at the time that the bloodstains were on the pavement wasn't Margery but Carol in disguise. When they killed the real Margery during the trip to the cave, blood must have got itself onto the scarlet bathing suit.

A Miss Marple illustration

The Tuesday Night Club - Agatha Christie - 260 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

Agatha Christie


The most translated author in the world. The all-time best-selling author in France, with over 40 million copies sold in French. Her stage play, The Mousetrap, holds the record for the longest initial run in the world, opening at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on 25 November 1952.

Order of the British Empire, DBE - Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa  was an English crime fiction writer. One of the recognised and popular authors in the world, with a legacy that still continues.

Agatha also wrote romance novels under the name Mary Westmacott, but is best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays.



The Tuesday Night Club by Agatha Christie - from the Miss Marple : the complete short stories collection. 


The tale first appeared in The Royal Magazine in the United Kingdom in 1927, and it was Miss Marple's first appearance in print. The title was altered to The Solving Six and was first published in Detective Story Magazine in June 1928, in the United States.
It was initially published in book form in Faber and Faber's Best Detective Stories of the Year collection in 1928 and later collected in The Thirteen Problems (UK title- the short stories collection) in 1932.


A Tuesday Night Club is newly formed by Miss Marple and her friends. Every Tuesday, the members get together for a very informal gathering and take turns narrating an actual mystery. The other members of the club have to then attempt to solve it. Sir Henry Clithering begins the first discussion by recounting how three people got sick after being poisoned at dinner and one of them died.


Tuesday Night Club conducts its first investigation. Three people got unwell after eating tinned lobster for supper and canned trifle for dessert. Mrs. Jones is pronounced dead. Although botulism is suspected, the Tuesday Night Club seeks to go in there deeper to investigate.

 

Agatha Christie