Dead Man's Folly - Agatha Christie [77]
There was a long pause.
Mrs Folliat sat quite still in her chair. At last she roused herself and spoke. Her voice had the coldness of ice.
‘Your whole story is quite fantastic, M. Poirot. I really think you must be mad…All this is entirely in your head, you have no evidence whatsoever.’
Poirot went across to one of the windows and opened it. ‘Listen, Madame. What do you hear?’
‘I am a little deaf…What should I hear?’
‘The blows of a pick axe…They are breaking up the concrete foundation of the Folly…What a good place to bury a body – where a tree has been uprooted and the earth is already disturbed. A little later, to make all safe, concrete over the ground where the body lies, and, on the concrete, erect a Folly…’ He added gently: ‘Sir George’s Folly…The Folly of the owner of Nasse House.’
A long shuddering sigh escaped Mrs Folliat.
‘Such a beautiful place,’ said Poirot. ‘Only one thing evil…The man who owns it…’
‘I know.’ Her words came hoarsely. ‘I have always known…Even as a child he frightened me…Ruthless…Without pity…And without conscience…But he was my son and I loved him…I should have spoken out after Hattie’s death…But he was my son. How could I be the one to give him up? And so, because of my silence – that poor silly child was killed…And after her, dear old Merdell…Where would it have ended?’
‘With a murderer it does not end,’ said Poirot.
She bowed her head. For a moment or two she stayed so, her hands covering her eyes.
Then Mrs Folliat of Nasse House, daughter of a long line of brave men, drew herself erect. She looked straight at Poirot and her voice was formal and remote.
‘Thank you, M. Poirot,’ she said, ‘for coming to tell me yourself of this. Will you leave me now? There are some things that one has to face quite alone…’
E-Book Extras
The Poirots
Essay by Charles Osborne
The Poirots
The Mysterious Affair at Styles; The Murder on the Links; Poirot Investigates; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; The Big Four; The Mystery of the Blue Train; Black Coffee; Peril at End House; Lord Edgware Dies; Murder on the Orient Express; Three-Act Tragedy; Death in the Clouds; The ABC Murders; Murder in Mesopotamia; Cards on the Table; Murder in the Mews; Dumb Witness; Death on the Nile; Appointment with Death; Hercule Poirot’s Christmas; Sad Cypress; One, Two, Buckle My Shoe; Evil Under the Sun; Five Little Pigs; The Hollow; The Labours of Hercules; Taken at the Flood; Mrs McGinty’s Dead; After the Funeral; Hickory Dickory Dock; Dead Man’s Folly; Cat Among the Pigeons; The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding; The Clocks; Third Girl; Hallowe’en Party; Elephants Can Remember; Poirot’s Early Cases; Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Captain Arthur Hastings, invalided in the Great War, is recuperating as a guest of John Cavendish at Styles Court, the ‘country-place’ of John’s autocratic old aunt, Emily Inglethorpe—she of a sizeable fortune, and so recently remarried to a man twenty years her junior. When Emily’s sudden heart attack is found to be attributable to strychnine, Hastings recruits an old friend, now retired, to aid in the local investigation. With impeccable timing, Hercule Poirot, the renowned Belgian detective, makes his dramatic entrance into the pages of crime literature.
Of note: Written in 1916, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was Agatha Christie’s first published work. Six houses rejected the novel before it was finally published—after puzzling over it for eighteen months before deciding to go ahead—by The Bodley Head.
Times Literary Supplement: ‘Almost too ingenious…very clearly and brightly told.