Lord Edgware Dies - Agatha Christie [87]
I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy as I was those few weeks. My husband’s nephew being arrested made me feel just as safe as anything. And I was more proud of myself than ever for having thought of tearing that page out of Carlotta Adams’ letter.
The Donald Ross business was just sheer bad luck. I’m not quite sure now just how it was he spotted me. Something about Paris being a person and not a place. Even now I don’t know who Paris was – and I think it’s a silly name for a man anyway.
It’s curious how, when luck starts going against you, it keeps on going. I had to do something about Donald Ross quickly, and that did go all right. It mightn’t have, because I hadn’t time to be clever or think of making an alibi. I did think I was safe after that.
Of course Ellis told me you had sent for her and questioned her, but I gathered it was all something to do with Bryan Martin. I couldn’t think what you were driving at. You didn’t ask her whether she had called for the parcel in Paris. I suppose you thought if she repeated that to me I should smell a rat. As it was, it came as a complete surprise. I couldn’t believe it. It was just uncanny the way you seemed to know everything I’d done.
I just felt it was no good. You can’t fight against luck. It was bad luck, wasn’t it? I wonder if you are ever sorry for what you did. After all, I only wanted to be happy in my own way. And if it hadn’t been for me you would never have had anything to do with the case. I never thought you’d be so horribly clever. You didn’t look clever.
It’s funny, but I haven’t lost my looks a bit. In spite of all that dreadful trial and the horrid things that man on the other side said to me, and the way he battered me with questions.
I look much paler and thinner, but it suits me somehow. They all say I’m wonderfully brave. They don’t hang you in public any more, do they? I think that’s a pity.
I’m sure there’s never been a murderess like me before.
I suppose I must say goodbye now. It’s very queer. I don’t seem to realize things a bit. I’m going to see the chaplain tomorrow.
Yours forgivingly (because I must forgive my enemies, mustn’t I?).
Jane Wilkinson.
P.S. Do you think they will put me in Madame Tussauds?
About Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English and 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. Mrs Christie is the author of eighty crime novels and short story collections, nineteen 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 World War I (during which she served in the Voluntary Aid Detachments). In it she created Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian investigator who was destined to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. After having been rejected by a number of houses, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was eventually published by The Bodley Head in 1920.
In 1926, now 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 William Collins and marked the beginning of an author-publisher relationship that lasted for fifty years and produced over seventy books. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was also the first of Agatha Christie’s works to be dramatised — as Alibi — and to have a successful run in London’s West End. The Mousetrap, her most famous play, opened in 1952 and runs to this day at St Martin’s Theatre in the West End; it is the longest-running play in history.
Agatha Christie was made a Dame in 1971. She died in 1976, since when a number of her books have been published: the bestselling