Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be hosting another edition of our Clubland Q&A taking questions from Steyn Clubbers live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - that's 8pm Greenwich Mean Time/9pm Central European.
~Thank you for your many kind comments on our autumn Tale for Our Time. There are seventy-three others in our extensive archive. The seventieth-fourth, however, is Agatha Christie's second Hercule Poirot whodunnit The Murder on the Links.
Our last-photocopier-in-the-woods scenario draws a little closer each day. Pat Smith, a Pennsylvania Steyn Clubber, was in the middle of Tales for Our Time when the Internet went down:
Hi Mark
I hope the destabilizing stabilization results in improvement. I was catching up on Murder on the Links when Cloudfare burst. I quickly realized that in addition to getting our future Steyn missives via fax machine in the woods we will also need for you to establish a 1-800 call in line for us to hear Tales of our Time. While I was never one to pay $1.99 a minute to hear a girl pretend that she finds me wonderful, I would happily pay that sum to hear you do the voice of Marthe Daubreuil.
Oh, my. Perhaps I should open up a Marthe Daubreuil OnlyFans page. Might help with the costs of the Michael E Mann appeal.
In tonight's episode, Captain Hastings inches closer to the truth:
"Georges Conneau disappeared twenty years ago, but we have no reason to believe that he is dead."
"Aucunement," agreed Poirot. "Proceed."
"Therefore we will assume that he is alive."
"Exactly."
"Or that he was alive until recently."
"De mieux en mieux!"
"We will presume," I continued, my enthusiasm rising, "that he has fallen on evil days. He has become a criminal, an apache, a tramp—a what you will. He chances to come to Merlinville. There he finds the woman he has never ceased to love."
"Eh eh! The sentimentality," warned Poirot.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Nineteen of The Murder on the Links simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
We're now halfway through our ninth season of Tales for Our Time and have built up quite an archive. So, if you've a chum who's a fan of classic fiction in audio form, don't forget the perfect birthday present: a Mark Steyn Club gift membership.
Please join me tomorrow both for Clubland Q&A and for Part Twenty of The Murder on the Links.
