“The Regatta Mystery” was first published as “Poirot and the Regatta Mystery” in the USA in the Chicago Tribune, 3 May 1936, and then in Strand Magazine, June 1936. It first appeared in its current form in the American book The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories, published by Dodd, Mead, June 1939.
Mr. Isaac Pointz removed a cigar from his lips and said approvingly:
“Pretty little place.”
Having thus set the seal of his approval upon Dartmouth harbour, he replaced the cigar and looked about him with the air of a man pleased with himself, his appearance, his surroundings and life generally.
As regards the first of these, Mr. Isaac Pointz was a man of fifty-eight, in good health and condition with perhaps a slight tendency to liver. He was not exactly stout, but comfortable-looking, and a yachting costume, which he wore at the moment, is not the most kindly of attires for a middle-aged man with a tendency to embonpoint. Mr. Pointz was very well turned out—correct to every crease and button—his dark and slightly Oriental face beaming out under the peak of his yachting cap. As regards his surroundings, these may have been taken to mean his companions—his partner Mr. Leo Stein, Sir George and Lady Marroway, an American business acquaintance Mr. Samuel Leathern and his schoolgirl daughter Eve, Mrs. Rustington and Evan Llewellyn.
