"I had a very good friend who woke up one evening to smoke billowing in her apartment," the actor, Alex Wolfe, said in his crisp London accent.
"Her fiance woke up, and they couldn't believe the flat was filled with smoke. They opened all the windows and went to the oven, nothing was on. They couldn't smell anything."
Wolfe's fellow actors - Hannah Fredericksen and Alex Rathgeber - leant in, hanging on every word.
"They turned the lights on, and it was still smokey," Wolfe went on eerily, "And then, within seconds, it disappeared.
"There was nothing to explain where the smoke came from; no smell, no fireworks, no nothing.
"But they lived above a funeral home, and they feel like it could have been something paranormal."
It was the perfect weather for a good mystery story.
Grey cloud rolled over the coast off Newcastle Ocean Baths on Tuesday evening, blown under a biting chill, as the last of the sun reflected off the odd ship looming like ghosts on the wine-dark water.
The three actors, adding to the atmosphere, were dressed in sharp '50s stylings appropriate for the roles they have been playing at the Civic for a little over a week.
Wolfe plays the rakish young architect Christopher Wren in Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap to Fredericksen's newlywed Monkswell Manor inheritor Mollie Ralston and her on-stage husband Giles, played by Rathgeber.
The play is famous; the longest-running show on London's West End, with a twist ending that has remarkably remained - for the most part - unspoiled by the millions of theatregoers who have taken it in.
The film rights for the production were sold to British producer John Woolf in 1956, four years after the production debuted, on the condition that the play would not be transmitted onto the screen until six months after the theatre run ended.
That was 68 years ago, and the play's run hasn't stopped yet. Notwithstanding a hiatus during the COVID pandemic, the production has been staged continuously since its debut, with more than 400 actors bringing the eight roles to life in somewhere north of 29,000 performances.
When a local woman is murdered, the guests of Monkswell Manor and its staff find themselves stranded during a snowstorm. It soon becomes clear that the killer is among them, and the seven strangers grow increasingly suspicious of one another. When a second murder takes place, tensions and fears escalate.
Our review: Agatha Christie's Mousetrap resonates with a new audience
Australian thespian Robyn Nevin directs the latest iteration of the famed whodunit, from arguably the queen of the mid-world-wars golden age of detective fiction, as its second Australian tour in as many years began in Newcastle on May 11 before departing on May 25.
"This is our first stop," Rathgeber said, "And to think that we get to perform at a beautiful old theatre like the Civic and spend our days at places like the Ocean Baths is just fantastic."
Wolfe has performed in productions of the same play in Vienna, his home of London on the West End, and now Australia.
"I have to say, (Australia) is a hot first," he said, "Robyn Nevin has really fine-tuned every nuance in the piece, and it's such a beautiful ensemble where we all get to have our moments."
The cast is rounded out with a pair of Australian theatre legends: renowned satirist Gerry Connolly, who plays the roguishly dashing Mr Paravinci, and Geraldine Turner, who embodies the acerbic guest at Monkswell Manor, Mrs Boyle.
"We sit and have cups of tea in the interval in Geraldine's dressing room," Fredericksen said, "You just wish you could be filming it; just the stories. They both have such a rich theatre background."
The actors put the play's record longevity down to the enduring captivation of a good mystery.
"I think experience theatre is what audiences really crave," Wolfe said, "The audience is put in the forefront of the mystery.
"It's great hearing everyone in the interval talking at the bar - people who don't even know each other - trying to solve it."
The trio are too practised to give anything away, but hint that in the world of the play, nothing is as it seems. At Monkswell Manor, everyone has something to hide, motives can never be taken at face value, and no one escapes suspicion.
The Mousetrap debuted on October 6, 1952, at the Theatre Royal in Nottingham. It opened in the West End on November 25, 1952 at the Ambassadors Theatre where it ran until March 23, 1974 before immediately transferring to the larger St Martin's Theatre next door where it continues.
A film adaptation - at least for the foreseeable future - appears unlikely.
