Anne's Reviews > The Market Basing Mystery: a Hercule Poirot Short Story

Is a suicide sometimes just a suicide?
That's what Poirot wonders when he, Hastings, & Japp get called in to look at a potential locked room murder that has the local constable scratching his head.



Local constable?
Well, yes. Japp invited Poirot & Hastings to spend the weekend with him in Market Basing. While there, a wealthy but reclusive man is found dead in his mansion, and Constable Pollard seeks out the famous Scotland Yard detective and asks if he would be willing to lend his expertise. Of course, he gets a twofer with Poirot.



On the surface, it looks as though someone tried to make the murder of Walter Protheroe look like a suicide. The gun was found in the wrong hand, for starters. And then it's discovered that a man and his wife were there, the same evening as his suicide, trying to blackmail Protheroe over something that had happened years before. <--the hobo heard it all!
Thank goodness Inspector Japp is on the scene to solve the case!



Just kidding. It's up to Poirot to unravel the mystery at Market Basing.

Originally published in The Sketch magazine in 1923.
Read as part of the short story collection The Early Cases of Hercule Poirot.