When Tommy finally arrives at San Souci – as Mr Meadowes he is absolutely stunned to find Tuppence already installed, in the guise of a Mrs Blenkensop. Tommy bids a fond farewell to his understanding wife, and to add colour to the lie, takes a train to Scotland, before turning around and heading back South to the boarding house Sans Souci in the seaside town of Leahampton. Grant asks Tommy to keep his mission a secret even from Tuppence and invents a dull desk job for him in Scotland to explain away his absence. The only thing the intelligence service know are the code names N and M the final words of a murdered man and the name of a boarding house on the south coast. Grant asks Tommy to undertake a secret, covert operation, he needs someone whose face is unknown. Mr Grant wastes no time in taking Tommy into his confidence, a conspiracy of fifth columnists, activities which threaten Britain’s European campaign. “ ‘…All we know about them is that these two are Hitler’s most highly trusted agents and that in a code message we managed to decipher towards the beginning of the war there occurred this phrase – suggest N or M for England.

Sensing that their visitor would rather speak to Tommy alone, Tuppence makes her excuses. So, when a Mr Grant ‘a friend’ of Lord Easthampton (the real name of Mr Carter) Tommy and Tuppence know immediately that it is no social call. The pair have been feeling very much out of things for a while, yet know they still have a lot to offer, are desperate to do something to help the war effort. They have been married for a long time, have two grown up children, and have, in the past undertaken work of a secretive nature for ‘Mr Carter’ the former chief of Intelligence.

N or M? takes place in the spring of 1940, Tommy and Tuppence who original readers first encountered as bright young things, trying to shake off the horrors of the First World War, are now middle aged in the early months of another war. Admittedly I have seen some poor reviews of that last novel – so perhaps I shouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to read it. A few months ago, I read By the Pricking of My Thumbs which takes place a few years after this one, an excellent mystery – and I have had the final novel Postern of Fate for years but have never read it. It appears I have read the Tommy and Tuppence novels in completely the wrong order – but I don’t suppose that matters. With Poirot’s ridiculous fastidiousness, ‘little grey cells’ boastful confidence, and Miss Marple’s old lady nosiness (all of which I still love) there is something about Tommy and Tuppence that is a breath of fresh air. Agatha Christie unfortunately only wrote four full length novels and a collection of short stories about Tommy and Tuppence – which is a crying shame. I’ve read Agatha Christie on and off since I was about eleven – but it was more recently that I discovered a particular fondness for Tommy and Tuppence Beresford.

Agatha christie books n or m