The Unexpected Guest (play)
The Unexpected Guest is a 1958 play by crime writer Agatha Christie.
The play opened in the West End at the Duchess Theatre on 12 August 1958 after a previous try-out at the Bristol Hippodrome. It was directed by Hubert Gregg.
Plot summary
On a foggy night, Michael Starkwedder enters the home of the Warwicks through a window in the study. He finds the dead body of Richard Warwick, and finds Warwick's wife, Laura, holding a gun that supposedly killed him. Despite the murder being obvious, and overwhelming evidence pointing towards it, Starkwedder does not believe she killed him, and she soon tells him she's innocent.
The two decide to place the blame on an enemy from the past, MacGregor, a man whose son was run over by Richard while he was drunk. As the story progresses, the two fake the fact that they were just finding out about the murder, and others in the house were introduced. It is revealed Laura was having an affair due to Richard's cruel nature, and was vouching for the man she was cheating with when she claimed to have killed Richard. But there are other suspects as well – Warwick's mother, his simple half-brother, the sinister Angell or the apparently goody-goody Miss Bennett.
Unexpected Guest
Unexpected Guest may refer to:
Film
Literature
Music
See also
The Unexpected Guest (novel)
The Unexpected Guest is a novelization by Charles Osborne of the 1958 play of the same name by crime fiction writer Agatha Christie and was first published in the UK by HarperCollins on September 6, 1999, and on October 1, 1999 in the US by St. Martin's Press.
The book was written following the successful publication of the novelisation of the 1930 play Black Coffee in the previous year. Like that book, the novelisation is a straightforward transfer of the stage lines and directions of Christie's script into a written narrative. Osborne chose not to add characters, lines or scenes which would alter in any substantial way what had been presented on the stage forty-one years earlier although minor amendments were made to produce suitable chapter endings.
The following year, Spider's Web underwent a similar novelization process, again by Osborne.
Plot
On a foggy night, a man called Michael Starkwedder breaks down near an isolated house and, entering it, finds the body of a dead man slumped in a chair. A woman stands over the corpse, gun in hand, and confesses to the murder. She gives her name to be Laura Warwick, the wife of the dead man. She explains the he was abusive, and always had his drink. Michael decides not to turn her in to the police, and the two decide to come up with a cover-up story to protect Laura. In the end, the settle on an enemy from the past, by the name of MacGreggor. His son was run over by Richard Warwick, the dead man, several years ago. They slip a paper in Richard's pocket with the date of the accident, saying "Paid in full." Then, they stage the murder so it appears to have been recent, alerting the residents of the building.
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