The House of Dreams

John Seagrove, a young city clerk, awakes early one morning in his London bedsit desperately clinging to a dream that has just transformed his life. The next day at dinner at his boss’s house he meets the enigmatic Allegra Kerr. Falling in love with her at first sight John instantly realises this is the overwhelming joy his dream had foreshadowed but could darker forces be at work?

First published in 1926 in The Sovereign Magazine but not in a collection until 1997, this story has a very strong supernatural theme. It is a reworking of an unpublished story Agatha Christie wrote in her teens, The House of Beauty. She considered the original the first thing she'd written with any promise.

It was published in While the Light Lasts and Other Stories (UK) and also in The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories (US).