Closed Casket: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery
Hercule Poirot returns in another brilliant murder mystery that can only be solved by the eponymous Belgian detective and his ‘little grey cells’.‘What I intend to say to you will come as a shock . . .’Lady Athelinda Playford has planned a house party at her mansion in Clonakilty, County Cork, but it is no ordinary gathering. As guests arrive, Lady Playford summons her lawyer to make an urgent change to her will – one she intends to announce at dinner that night. She has decided to cut off her two children without a penny and leave her fortune to someone who has only weeks to live . . .Among Lady Playford’s guests are two men she has never met – the famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, and Inspector Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard. Neither knows why he has been invited . . . until Poirot starts to wonder if Lady Playford expects a murderer to strike. But why does she seem so determined to provoke, in the presence of a possible killer?When the crime is committed in spite of Poirot’s best efforts to stop it, and the victim is not who he expected it to be, will he be able to find the culprit and solve the mystery?Following the phenomenal global success of The Monogram Murders, which was published to critical acclaim following a co-ordinated international launch in September 2014, international best-selling crime writer Sophie Hannah has been commissioned by Agatha Christie Limited to pen a second fully-authorised Poirot novel. The new book marks the centenary of the creation of Christie’s world-famous detective Hercule Poirot, introduced in her first book The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
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Closed Casket
THE NEW HERCULE POIROT MYSTERY
SOPHIE HANNAH
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2016
Closed Casket™ is a trade mark of Agatha Christie Limited
and Agatha Christie®, Poirot® and the Agatha Christie Signature
are registered trade marks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK
and elsewhere.
Copyright © Agatha Christie Limited 2016
All rights reserved.
Jacket design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Sophie Hannah 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: 9780008134099
Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780008134112
Version: 2018-10-02
Table of Contents
Chapter 3: A Particular Interest in Death
Chapter 4: An Unexpected Admirer
Chapter 5: Tears Before Dinner
Chapter 8: A Stroll in the Gardens
Chapter 12: Sophie Points a Finger
Chapter 14: Lady Playford’s Two Lists
Chapter 15: Seeing, Hearing and Looking
Chapter 17: The Grandfather Clock
Chapter 21: The Casket Question
Chapter 24: Sophie Makes Another Accusation
Chapter 25: Shrimp Seddon and the Jealous Daughter
Chapter 26: Kimpton’s Definition of Knowledge
Chapter 31: Lady Playford’s Plan
Chapter 32: The Kidnapped Racehorse
Chapter 33: The Two True Things
Chapter 34: Motive and Opportunity
Chapter 35: Everyone Could Have But Nobody Did
Chapter 37: Poirot Wins Fair and Square
Michael Gathercole stared at the closed door in front of him and tried to persuade himself that now was the moment to knock, as the aged grandfather clock in the hall downstairs stuttered its announcement of the hour.
Gathercole’s instructions had been to present himself at four, and four it was. He had stood here—in this same spot on the wide first landing of Lillieoak—many times in the past six years. Only once had he felt less at ease than he did today. On that occasion he had been one of two men waiting, not alone as he was this afternoon. He still remembered every word of his conversation with the other man, when his preference would have been to recall none of it. Applying the self-discipline upon which he relied, he cast it from his mind.
He had been warned that he would find this afternoon’s meeting difficult. The warning had formed part of the summons, which was typical of his hostess. ‘What I intend to say to you will come as a shock …’
Gathercole did not doubt it. The prior notice was no use to him, for it contained no information about what sort of preparation might be in order.
His discomfort grew more pronounced when he consulted his pocket watch and noticed that by hesitating, and with all the taking out of the watch and putting it back in the waistcoat pocket, and pulling it out once more to check, he had made himself late. It was already a minute after four o’clock. He knocked.
Only one minute late. She would notice—was there anything she did not notice?—but with any luck she would not remark upon it.
‘Do come in, Michael!’ Lady Athelinda Playford sounded as ebullient as ever. She was seventy years old, with a voice as strong and clear as a polished bell. Gathercole had never encountered her in sober spirits. There was always, with her, a cause for excitement—often such morsels as would alarm a conventional person. Lady Playford had a talent for extracting as much amusement from the inconsequential as from the controversial.
Gathercole had admired her stories of happy children solving mysteries that confounded the local police since he had first discovered them as a lonely ten-year-old in a London orphanage. Six years ago, he had met their creator for the first time and found her as disarming and unpredictable as her books. He had never expected to go far in his chosen profession, but here he was, thanks to Athelinda Playford: still a relatively young man at thirty-six, and a partner in a successful firm of solicitors, Gathercole and Rolfe. The notion that any profitable enterprise bore his name was still perplexing to Gathercole, even after a number of years.
