Agatha Christie

decide what you want out of it. What

The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as ‘The Styles Case’ has now somewhat subsided. Nevertheless, in view of

‘Go and see what’s been happening in that room.’ He laid Alix carefully down on a couch and bent over her. ‘My little girl,’ he murmured. ‘My poor little girl. What have they been doing to you?’ Her eyelids fluttered and her lips just murmured his name. Dick was aroused by the policeman’s touching him on the arm. ‘There’s nothing in that room, sir, but a man sitting in a chair. Looks as though he’d had some kind of bad fright, and –’ ‘Yes?’ ‘Well, sir, he’s – dead.’ They were startled by hearing Alix’s voice. She spoke as though in some kind of dream, her eyes still closed. ‘And presently,’ she said, almost as though she were quoting from something, ‘he died –’

It was in June of 1935 that I came home from my ranch in South America for a stay of about six months. It had been a difficult time for us out there. Like everyone else, we had suffered from world depression. I had various affairs to see to in England that I felt could only be successful if a personal touch was introduced. My wife remained to manage the ranch. I need hardly say that one of my first actions on reaching England was to look up my old friend, Hercule Poirot.

Hercule Poirot gave the house a steady appraising glance. His eyes wandered a moment to its surroundings, the shops, the big factory building on the right, the blocks of cheap mansion flats opposite. Then once more his eyes returned to Northway House, relic of an earlier age – an age of space and leisure, when green fields had surrounded its well-bred arrogance. Now it was an anachronism, submerged and forgotten in the hectic sea of modern London, and not one man in fifty could have told you where it stood.