leavesdancing:

teaforlupin:

alcarohtareseere:

alcarohtareseere:

Hear me out, though.

Agatha Christie has this really interesting and, imo, underrated series of short tales that has been referred to as “Quin and Satterthwaite: Love Detectives.” Our pov character is Mr. Satthertwhite, who is initially described as such:

“
Mr. Satterthwaite was sixty-two– a little bent, dried-up man with a peering face oddly elf like, and an intense and inordinate interest in other people’s lives. All his life, so to speak, he had sat in the front row of the stalls watching various dramas of human nature unfold before him. His role had always been that of the onlooker. Only now,with old age holding him in its clutch, he found himself increasingly critical of the drama submitted to him. He demanded now something a little out of the common.”

But later we also get these:

“The masculine side of Mr. Satterthwaite spoke there, but the feminine side (for Mr. Satterthwaite had a large share of femininity) was equally interested in another question. Why did Mrs. Portal dye her hair?  No other man would probably have known that she dyed her hair, but Mr. Satterthwaite knew.”

“
Mr. Satterthwaite had a very feminine side to his nature”

You see why I headcanon this character as nb, right?

So, the thing is that
Satterthwaite keeps running into this dude:

“Framed in the doorway stood a man’s figure, tall and slender. To Mr. Satterthwaite, watching, he appeared by some curious effect of the stained glass above the door, to be dressed in every colour of the rainbow. Then,as he stepped forward, he showed himself to be a thin dark man dressed  in motoring clothes.

“

Mr. Harley Quin always appears, by some trick of light, to be dressed as a harlequin. That is because he’s some sort of spirit who is, honestly, really bad at passing as human (if he’s even trying. By the point in which a person refuses a ride home by saying “thanks, but I’ll go back by the same path I came from” and walking towards an abyss, I think it’s fair to say he’s no longer concerned with pretending to be human.) He’s really mysterious, as ghosts or fae or whatever the hell he actually is, tend to be. But he is mostly benevolent, and has a soft spot for distressed lovers. That’s where the connection comes in. He chose
Satterthwaite

as his human agent.

Satterthwaite

keeps running into situations in which a crime has been commited, or some really strange misunderstanding is happening, and as a result a couple’s happiness is being threatened. Alone, Satterthwaite

can’t make heads or tails of the mystery. But then Quin materializes out of nowhere, and they talk things through, and somehow Quin acts as a catalyst. He never gives away the solution, but somehow, by talking with him Satterthwaite solves the puzzle and realizes which action must be taken to make justice and let the couple reach its happy ending.

And ever since the idea of a 21st century version of these characters struck me a few months ago, I can’t stop thinking about it? A series in which a spirit played by a dark skinned actor (I know that Agatha Christie likely used “dark” to mean dark hair, but 8 years old me pictured Quin as black, and that’s how I’ll always see him) gets a bored elderly nb person to help him to solve mysteries and rescue couples, who in this version would also be really diverse? Can someone please get on that?

@covecaller I’m thinking about this again, and it’s all your fault, due to your posts about nb detectives.

This is an amazing idea??? OMG

Also, I can’t TELL you how much I adore the Harley Quin stories and yet they seem to get sidelined, both popularly and in more academic examinations, even those that are specifically concerned with looking at gender (at least the ones I’ve come across)

But guys MR SATTERTHWAITE AND HARLEY QUIN ARE SO QUEER and Mr Satterthwaite LOVES Harley Quin so much?????? I have never been so moved by an emotional bond in a Christie story *gross sobbing*

How have I never heard of these? I’ve read the Poirot and Miss Marple and even the Tommy and Tuppence stories! *goes to google Mr Satterthwaite*

Joining in with the love for the Satterthwaite/Quin stories! Other good stuff to know:

Supposedly these were among Christie’s own favourite characters, but her publishers didn’t let her write as many as she wanted to.

Quin is pretty strongly implied in the later stories to be Hermes; in some cases he’s there to conduct someone to the afterlife, when Satterthwaite can’t save them.

There’s a fair bit of fic on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Mysterious%20Mr*d*%20Quin%20-%20Agatha%20Christie/works