Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie [84]
‘Wait,’ she said, ‘wait. There is something you don’t know. I’m not Betterton’s wife. Betterton’s wife, Olive Betterton, died at Casablanca. Jessop persuaded me to take her place.’
He wheeled round staring at her.
‘You’re not Olive Betterton?’
‘No.’
‘Good lord,’ said Andy Peters. ‘Good lord!’ He dropped heavily into a chair beside her. ‘Olive,’ he said, ‘Olive, my darling.’
‘Don’t call me Olive. My name’s Hilary. Hilary Craven.’
‘Hilary?’ He said it questioningly. ‘I’ll have to get used to that.’ He put his hand over hers.
At the other end of the terrace Jessop, discussing with Leblanc various technical difficulties in the present situation, broke off in the middle of a sentence.
‘You were saying?’ he asked absently.
‘I said, mon cher, that it does not seem to me that we are going to be able to proceed against this animal of an Aristides.’
‘No, no. The Aristides always win. That is to say they always manage to squirm out from under. But he’ll have lost a lot of money, and he won’t like that. And even Aristides can’t keep death at bay for ever. I should say he’ll be coming up before the Supreme Justice before very long, from the look of him.’
‘What was it attracting your attention, my friend?’
‘Those two,’ said Jessop. ‘I sent Hilary Craven off on a journey to a destination unknown, but it seems to me that her journey’s end is the usual one after all.’
Leblanc looked puzzled for a moment then he said:
‘Aha! yes! your Shakespeare!’
‘You Frenchmen are so well read,’ said Jessop.
About the Author
Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in 100 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 19 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.
Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was written towards the end of the First World War, in which she served as a VAD. In it she created Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian detective who was destined to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. It was eventually published by The Bodley Head in 1920.
In 1926, after averaging a book a year, Agatha Christie wrote her masterpiece. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the first of her books to be published by Collins and marked the beginning of an author-publisher relationship which lasted for 50 years and well over 70 books. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was also the first of Agatha Christie’s books to be dramatised–under the name Alibi–and to have a successful run in London’s West End. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history.
Agatha Christie was made a Dame in 1971. She died in 1976, since when a number of books have been published posthumously: the bestselling novel Sleeping Murder appeared later that year, followed by her autobiography and the short story collections Miss Marple’s Final Cases, Problem at Pollensa Bay and While the Light Lasts. In 1998 Black Coffee was the first of her plays to be novelised by another author, Charles Osborne.
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The Agatha Christie Collection
The Man In The Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
The Hound of Death
The Listerdale Mystery
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Parker Pyne Investigates
Murder Is Easy
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death