THE MOST POPULAR WRITER of detective fiction who ever lived (her sales in all languages are reported to have surpassed four billion copies), Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller Christie’s (1890–1976) remarkably proficient first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), is generally given credit as the landmark volume that initiated what has been called the Golden Age of mystery fiction. This era, bracketed by the two world wars, saw the rise of the fair-play puzzle story and the series detective, whether an official member of the police department (such as Freeman Wills Croft’s Inspector French), a private detective (like Christie’s Hercule Poirot, who made his debut in her first novel and stars in “The Dream”), or an amateur sleuth (like Anthony Berkeley’s Roger Sheringham, Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey, and E. C. Bentley’s Philip Trent). But it was Christie who towered above the others, outselling, out-producing, and outliving the rest. Perhaps surprisingly, the manuscript of her first novel had been rejected by several publishing houses, and John Lane, the eventual publisher, held it for more than a year before deciding to offer only one hundred twenty-five dollars for it. Encouraged by the sale, Christie went on to write more than a hundred books and plays. The shy and reclusive author wrote the longest continuously running play of all time, The Mousetrap (since it opened in 1952, there have been more than twenty-five thousand performances—with no closing in sight), as well as one of the best, Witness for the Prosecution (less successful but infinitely superior, it opened in 1953, winning the Edgar, and was adapted for the brilliant motion picture starring Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power, and Marlene Dietrich).
“The Dream” was first published in The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1939). It was first published in England in The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and a Selection of Entrees (London, Collins, 1960). It was adapted as a 1989 episode of the London Weekend Television series Agatha Christie’s Poirot, starring David Suchet.