Wind and rain howls through the trees, hammering the window panes, perhaps to fling one open. Crisp leaves rattle like tiny fists on the roof. Owls and ravens hover overhead. Then, the discovery of a body in the basement, and suddenly mystery happens. The game is afoot, as it were.

Ah, my favorite season. Not the dead body part. We romanticize that aspect since it’s nobody we know, just a necessary character. The poor unfortunate launches a plot full of intrigue. We want to sort out red herrings to see the truth and be free of chaos and puzzlement — to have wrongs righted and the criminal element put where they belong. There’s something about the unknown and ferreting out clues that appeal to a great lot of us.

Mystery is in the air this fall season. This year seems particularly fraught with one type or another. Agatha Christie’s characters have become daily companions. I love wandering through the heather in England, hunting clues with the Beresfords — Tommy and the intuitive Tuppence or alongside our matchless Belgian, Hercule Poirot, managing the bustle of a London dining establishment with panache.

Author Dame Agatha Christie said she saw Hercule Poirot just twice. Once he was lunching at the Savoy and once on a boat in the Canary Islands. (agathachristie.com) Who says characters aren’t real?

I just saw Mr. Poirot in Ashland. Despite a trail littered with trickery and deception, he ultimately solved “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” before us onstage at the Oregon Cabaret Theater. It was him! Oh, I know the playbill listed someone named Louis Lotorto, but it was Poirot incarnate. They can’t fool me all of the time. Seriously, fellow live theater fans, if you can manage a ticket to this one, do it. The acting is superb throughout. Not a clinker in the cast.

Those examples aren’t the only stalkers on my trail. It seems lately when I turn on Turner Classic Movies, there is some 1940s whodunit set to sway me from daily duties or bass practice. However, never think that because I love a mystery, I’m good at solving them. Oh, my, no.

I went through the door of the Cabaret Sunday afternoon set to attend every word and heed all clues — to use my “little gray cells,” as Poirot exemplifies so well. But my gray cells are no match for Dame Agatha Christie’s. Hers continue to dominate the world of mysteries, having written actively for over four decades and earning her the honor of bestselling novelist of all time. Only Shakespeare and the Bible have sold more volumes. Her play, “The Mousetrap,” is the longest running, ensnaring playgoers since 1952.

Mysteries are ever popular at local live theater venues. The Cabaret knows this well, having produced Poirot and Sherlock Holmes in recent past, and in next year’s lineup, “Clue” and another Holmes gem — “A Study in Scarlet.” I plan to engage.

Of course, I attend other plays, but a mystery always gets my attention. No matter how many times I watch, it’s ever-fresh and I’m surprised by the ending. I probably didn’t need to share that. Oh, yeah, the butler.

Maybe I’m having the genre thrust on me lately because I had the audacity to mention to a few friends and to God that I might like to try writing one. Was that celestial laughter I heard? Maybe not. Probably from the other place. I’ve always thought that mystery writers are among the most intelligent on Earth. I am instantly disadvantaged.

Maybe someday I will pen the story tumbling around my diminishing gray cell storehouse, and I will be able to sing with Jeannette MacDonald (feel free to mute) these words of emancipation for a problem well-solved.

“Ah, sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found thee.

Ah! At last I know the secret of it all:

all the longing, seeking, striving, waiting, yearning

The burning hopes, the joy and idle tears that fall …”

The song references romantic love, but doesn’t love lie at the root of this mystery called life? How about an eclipse, for example?