"Strychnine in the Soup" is a short story by the British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse. A part of the Mr. Mulliner series, the story was first published in 1932 in Strand Magazine. It also appears in the collections Mulliner Nights and Wodehouse on Crime. A BBC TV adaptation of the story aired on 9 April 1976 starring John Alderton as Cyril Mulliner and Pauline Collins as Amelia Bassett as part of the Wodehouse Playhouse series of short stories.
Overview
Cyril Mulliner, an interior decorator with a passion for mystery stories, finds a handful of his flesh being twisted by the lovely Amelia Bassett at a showing of The Grey Vampire and the two fall instantly in love with each other. Fate, however, has thrown a spanner in the works, in the form of Amelia's mother, Lady Bassett, a well-known big game hunter and explorer, who objects to an interior decorator as a son-in-law, preferring that Amelia marry Lester Mapledurham ("pronounced 'Mum'"), another well-known big game hunter and explorer. The plot twists and turns (and thickens) but Cyril wins Amelia in the end, thanks to a wandering copy of the new Inspector Mould mystery, Strychnine in the Soup.