Hercule Poirot's Christmas - Agatha Christie [83]
‘George would. He’s frightfully curious about money matters. But of course he couldn’t say so. He’d have had to be actually in the dock before he’d have owned up to that.’
Alfred said:
‘Are you making another garden?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is it this time?’
‘I think,’ said Lydia, ‘it’s an attempt at the Garden of Eden. A new version—without any serpent—and Adam and Eve are definitely middle-aged.’
Alfred said gently:
‘Dear Lydia, how patient you have been all these years. You have been very good to me.’
Lydia said:
‘But, you see, Alfred, I love you…’
VI
Colonel Johnson said:
‘God bless my soul!’ Then he said:
‘Upon my word!’ And finally, once more: ‘God bless my soul!
He leaned back in his chair and stared at Poirot. He said plaintively:
‘My best man! What’s the police coming to?’
Poirot said:
‘Even policemen have private lives! Sugden was a very proud man.’
Colonel Johnson shook his head.
To relieve his feelings he kicked at the logs in the grate. He said jerkily:
‘I always say—nothing like a wood fire.’
Hercule Poirot, conscious of the draughts round his neck, thought to himself:
‘Pour moi, every time the central heating…’
E-Book Extras
The Poirots
Essay by Charles Osborne
A Christie for Christmas by Carolyn Hart
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.’
2. The Murder on the Links (1923)
“For God’s sake, come!” But by the time Hercule Poirot can respond to Monsieur Renauld’s plea, the millionaire is already dead—stabbed in the back, and lying in a freshly dug grave on the golf course adjoining his estate. There is no lack of suspects: his wife, whose dagger did the deed; his embittered son; Renauld’s mistress—and each feels deserving of the dead man’s fortune. The police think they’ve found the culprit. Poirot has his doubts. And the discovery of a second, identically murdered corpse complicates matters considerably. (However, on a bright note, Captain Arthur Hastings does meet his future wife.)
The New York Times: ‘A remarkably good detective story…warmly recommended.’
Literary Review: ‘Really clever.’
Sketch: ‘Agatha Christie never lets you down.’
3. Poirot Investigates (1924)
A movie star, a diamond; a murderous ‘suicide’; a pharaoh’s curse upon his tomb; a prime minister