The Oracle at Delphi

Parker Pyne is travelling incognito under the name of Mr Thompson. In Delphi, he learns that someone else calling himself Parker Pyne is being consulted my Mrs Peters, who refers to him as ‘the good gentleman.’ But who is this imposter and what does he want with Mrs Peters?

Agatha Christie had travelled to Delphi on her honeymoon with Max Mallowan and remembered the place with great affection. She wrote in her autobiography, “It struck me as so unbelievably beautiful that we went round trying to select a site where we might build a little house one day. We marked out three, I remember. It was a nice dream: I don’t know that we believed in it ourselves even at the time.”

This story first appeared in the UK in Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine, and was later included in the 1934 collection Parker Pyne Investigates.

It has never been adapted.