Gray Robert Brown

But I think it's fair to say that The Rose and the Yew Tree is very much a World War II book.

So, we teased this at the beginning, but excitingly, maybe, Mark, I think we need to drop the word secret from the title of this podcast, because this is, in fact, the final time the Westmacob book comes out as a secret, right?

Oh, how fascinating.

So, do you mean to tell me that they may have consulted similar paperwork in Washington, D.C.

that we were consulting in that episode?

Very possibly.

How funny.

Because, of course, they have different laws about assigning or claiming.

It's almost like the sort of game that Christie plays with the reader with her puzzle mysteries.

Well, and when Rose and the Yew Tree is set, interestingly.

Yeah.

like so many things it's never as cut and dried as the story that you get told right like it yeah people i mean but die hard agatha fans have known for some time that this is the moment that quote unquote all is revealed but as you say really the rumblings were and i remember you saying and you probably said it in the giant spread episode you've certainly said it to me in the past about how there were

adverts for Giant's Bread directly below adverts for Agatha Christie in the British press.

You draw the line between the dots.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, you've written here, Christie's freedom to write with the searing honesty that the Westmacott books allowed would soon come to an end.

And I think it's interesting what she said about she was really hiding it from the people she knew.

And now the cat's out of the bag for most of those.

Like people had guessed, hadn't they, from early Westmacotts.

I mean, it's interesting to speculate, I think, as we move into the next two after this, does that change who Mary Westmacott is?