Agatha Christie (3 page)

BOOK: Agatha Christie

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âYe-es,' said Mr Marvell slowly. âBut I don't see what you're driving at?'

âDon't you? I'm not so sure that I do myself. But I'm beginning to see. It's like the stick, Tuppence. You remember? One end of it pointed one way â but the other end always points the opposite way. It depends whether you get hold of it by the right end. Doors open â but they also shut. People go upstairs, but they also go downstairs. Boxes shut, but they also open.'

âWhat
do
you mean?' demanded Tuppence.

âIt's so ridiculously easy, really,' said Tommy. âAnd yet it's only just come to me. How do you know when a person's come into the house. You hear the door open and bang to, and if you're expecting any one to come in, you will be quite sure it is them. But it might just as easily be someone going
out
.'

âBut Miss Glen didn't go out?'

âNo, I know
she
didn't. But some one else did â the murderer.'

âBut how did she get in, then?'

âShe came in whilst Mrs Honeycott was in the kitchen talking to Ellen. They didn't hear her. Mrs Honeycott went back to the drawing-room, wondered if her sister had come in and began to put the clock right, and then, as she thought, she heard her come in and go upstairs.'

âWell, what about that? The footsteps going upstairs?'

âThat was Ellen, going up to draw the curtains. You remember, Mrs Honeycott said her sister paused before going up. That pause was just the time needed for Ellen to come out from the kitchen into the hall. She just missed seeing the murderer.'

âBut, Tommy,' cried Tuppence. âThe cry she gave?'

âThat was James Reilly. Didn't you notice what a high-pitched voice he has? In moments of great emotion, men often squeal just like a woman.'

âBut the murderer? We'd have seen him?'

âWe
did
see him. We even stood talking to him. Do you remember the sudden way that policeman appeared? That was because he stepped out of the gate, just after the mist cleared from the road. It made us jump, don't you remember? After all, though we never think of them as that, policemen are men just like any other men. They love and they hate. They marry â¦

âI think Gilda Glen met her husband suddenly just outside that gate, and took him in with her to thrash the matter out. He hadn't Reilly's relief of violent words, remember. He just saw red â and he had his truncheon handyÂ â¦'

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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