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And then she smiled. It was a very nice smile — like a happy young nannie.

‘All right,’ she said.

She crossed the room to Hercule Poirot.

‘I was rude, too,’ she said. ‘The day I came here when you were having breakfast. I said to you that you were too old to help me. That was a rude thing to say. And it wasn’t true…’

She put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him.

‘You’d better get us a taxi,’ she said to Stillingfleet.

Dr Stillingfleet nodded and left the room. Mrs Oliver collected a handbag and a fur stole and Norma slipped on a coat and followed her to the door.

‘Madame, un petit moment —’

Mrs Oliver turned. Poirot had collected from the recesses of the sofa a handsome coil of grey hair.

Mrs Oliver exclaimed vexedly: ‘It’s just like everything that they make nowadays, no good at all! Hairpins, I mean. They just slip out, and everything falls off!’

She went out frowning.

A moment or two later she poked her head round the door again. She spoke in a conspiratorial whisper:

‘Just tell me — it’s all right, I’ve sent her on down — did you send that girl to this particular doctor on purpose?’

‘Of course I did. His qualifications are —’

‘Never mind his qualifications. You know what I mean. He and she — Did you?’

‘If you must know, yes.’

‘I thought so,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘You do think of things, don’t you.’

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.’

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