Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie [78]
“What is best man, please?”
“The bridegroom, Len here for instance, gives you a ring to keep for him, and he and you go to church very smartly dressed and at the right moment he asks you for the ring and you give it to him, and he puts it on my finger, and the organ plays the wedding march and everybody cries. And there we are.”
“You mean that you and Mr. Len are to be married?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Sally!”
“Unles, of course, Len doesn’t care for the idea.”
“Sally! But you don’t know—about my father—”
“So what? Of course I know. So your father’s nuts. All right, so are lots of people’s fathers.”
“It isn’t a hereditary type of mania. I can assure you of that, Sally. If you only knew how desperately unhappy I’ve been about you.”
“I did just have a tiny suspicion.”
“In Africa,” said Mr. Akibombo, “in old days, before atomic age and scientific thought had come, marriage customs very curious and interesting. I tell you—”
“You’d better not,” said Sally. “I have an idea they might make both Len and me blush, and when you’ve got red hair it’s very noticeable when you blush.”
II
Hercule Poirot signed the last of the letters that Miss Lemon had laid before him.
“Très bien,” he said gravely. “Not a single mistake.”
Miss Lemon looked slightly affronted.
“I don’t often make mistakes, I hope,” she said.
“Not often. But it has happened. How is your sister, by the way?”
“She is thinking of going on a cruise, M. Poirot. To the northern capitals.”
“Ah,” said Hercule Poirot.
He wondered if—possibly—on a cruise—?
Not that he himself would undertake a sea voyage—not for any inducement. . . .
The clock behind him struck one.
“The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down
Hickory, dickory, dock,”
declared Hercule Poirot.
“I beg your pardon, M. Poirot?”
“Nothing,” said Hercule Poirot.
About the Author
Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott.
She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. With The Murder in the Vicarage, published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.
Many of Christie’s novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film adaptations are Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie.
Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain’s highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010.
www.AgathaChristie.com
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as