from her aunt for many years and could not let the estate go to Katrina. Literary significance and reception Maurice Richardson in The Observer (22 September 1974) described Hastings as, "so dumb at times he makes Watson look like Leibnitz", and concluded, "Many date from an early period before she found herself as a Mystifier, but all communicate that unique Christie euphoria." Robert Barnard: "A late collection of early stories (most from the 'twenties), which had been published in the States but not in Britain. This may suggest discarded chips from the workshop, but in fact the standard here is distinctly higher than the stories in Poirot Investigates, which were the ones Christie did publish at the time." References or allusions References to other works The Submarine Plans mentions the events recounted in the 1923 short story The Kidnapped Prime Minister and also references the fictional prime minister of that story, David McAdam. Double Sin references the theatrical agent Joseph Aarons who had previously appeared in The Murder on the Links (1923). In The Market Basing Mystery, Hastings slightly misquotes the anonymous piece of doggerel verse which in full reads: The rabbit has a charming face: Its private life is a disgrace. I really dare not name to you The awful things that rabbits do; Things that your paper never prints – You only mention them in hints. They have such lost, degraded souls No wonder they inhabit holes; When such depravity is found It only can live underground. References to actual history, geography and current science The events depicted in The Chocolate Box occurred in 1893, when the debate over the separation of church and state in France was a hot issue. In The Chocolate Box story the exact date is not mentioned, but in the novel Peril at End House, chapter 15, Poirot says that the events took place in 1893. The events of the separation of church and state were wholly confined to the French state; the murdered man was in the French government but lived in an inherited house in Brussels. In the TV adaptation the Paul Déroulard murder takes place just prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. In Double Sin, Mary Durrant speaks of the miniatures she is transporting as being by Cosway. This is a reference to Richard Cosway (1742–1821), one of the most successful practitioners of that art of