Hickory Dickory Dock. Агата Кристи

      

      Hickory Dickory Dock

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by

      Collins 1955

      Agatha Christie® Poirot® Hickory Dickory Dock™

      Copyright © 1955 Agatha Christie Mallowan. All rights reserved

       www.agathachristie.com

      Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

      Title lettering by Ghost Design

      Cover photograph © GS/Gallery Stock

      Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008129552

      Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780007422388

      Version: 2017-04-13

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       CHAPTER 1

       CHAPTER 2

       CHAPTER 3

       CHAPTER 4

       CHAPTER 5

       CHAPTER 6

       CHAPTER 7

       CHAPTER 8

      

       CHAPTER 9

      

       CHAPTER 10

      

       CHAPTER 11

      

       CHAPTER 12

      

       CHAPTER 13

      

       CHAPTER 14

      

       CHAPTER 15

      

       CHAPTER 16

      

       CHAPTER 17

      

       CHAPTER 18

      

       CHAPTER 19

      

       CHAPTER 20

      

       CHAPTER 21

      

       CHAPTER 22

      

       CHAPTER 23

      

       Also by Agatha Christie

      

       About the Publisher

       CHAPTER 1

      Hercule Poirot frowned.

      ‘Miss Lemon,’ he said.

      ‘Yes, M. Poirot?’

      ‘There are three mistakes in this letter.’

      His voice held incredulity. For Miss Lemon, that hideous and efficient woman, never made mistakes. She was never ill, never tired, never upset, never inaccurate. For all practical purposes, that is to say, she was not a woman at all. She was a machine—the perfect secretary. She knew everything, she coped with everything. She ran Hercule Poirot’s life for him, so that it, too, functioned like a machine. Order and method had been Hercule Poirot’s watchwords from many years ago. With George, his perfect manservant, and Miss Lemon, his perfect secretary, order and method ruled supreme in his life. Now that crumpets were baked square as well as round, he had nothing about which to complain.

      And yet, this morning, Miss Lemon had made three mistakes in typing a perfectly simple letter, and moreover, had not even noticed those mistakes. The stars stood still in their courses!

      Hercule Poirot held out the offending document. He was not annoyed, he was merely bewildered. This was one of the things that could not happen—but it had happened!

      Miss