Hercule Poirot 3-Book Collection 1: The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder on the Links, Poirot Investigates
The first three Hercule Poirot books see the former Belgian policeman tempted out of retirement to solve a series of outlandish murders in Britain and France, assisted by the redoubtable Captain Hastings, setting him on the path to becoming the World's Greatest Detective!THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLESAgatha Christie’s first ever novel. With impeccable timing Hercule Poirot, the renowned Belgian detective, makes his dramatic entrance on to the English crime stage.MURDER ON THE LINKSAn urgent cry for help brings Poirot to France. But he arrives too late to save his client, whose brutally stabbed body now lies face downwards in a shallow grave on a golf course.POIROT INVESTIGATESFirst there was the mystery of the film star and the diamond… then came the ‘suicide’ that was murder… the mystery of the absurdly chaep flat… a suspicious death in a locked gun-room… a million dollar bond robbery… the curse of a pharoah’s tomb… a jewel robbery by the sea… the abduction of a Prime Minister… the disappearance of a banker… a phone call from a dying man… and, finally, the mystery of the missing willl.What links these fascinating cases? Only the brilliant deductive powers of Hercule Poirot!
Читать Hercule Poirot 3-Book Collection 1: The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder on the Links, Poirot Investigates онлайн беплатно
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
The Mysterious Affair At Styles first published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head 1921
Murder On The Links first published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head 1923
Poirot Investigates first published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head 1924
Copyright © 1921, 1923, 1924 Agatha Christie Ltd. All rights reserved.
“Essay by Charles Osborne” excerpted from The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie. Copyright © 1982, 1999 by Charles Osborne. Reprinted with permission.
Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007431731
Version: 2017-04-11
Contents
Copyright
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
About Agatha Christie
The Agatha Christie Collection
www.agathachristie.com
About the Publisher
To my mother
Contents
1 I Go to Styles
2 The 16th and 17th of July
3 The Night of the Tragedy
4 Poirot Investigates
5 ‘It isn’t Strychnine, is it?’
6 The Inquest
7 Poirot Pays his Debts
8 Fresh Suspicions
9 Dr Bauerstein
10 The Arrest
11 The Case for the Prosecution
12 The Last Link
13 Poirot Explains
Credits
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 the world-wide notoriety which attended it, I have been asked, both by my friend Poirot and the family themselves, to write an account of the whole story. This, we trust, will effectually silence the sensational rumours which still persist.
I will therefore briefly set down the circumstances which led to my being connected with the affair.
I had been invalided home from the Front; and, after spending some months in a rather depressing Convalescent Home, was given a month’s sick leave. Having no near relations or friends, I was trying to make up my mind what to do, when I ran across John Cavendish. I had seen very little of him for some years. Indeed, I had never known him particularly well. He was a good fifteen years my senior, for one thing, though he hardly looked his forty-five years. As a boy, though, I had often stayed at Styles, his mother’s place in Essex.
We had a good yarn about old times, and it ended in his inviting me down to Styles to spend my leave there.
‘The mater will be delighted to see you again—after all those years,’ he added.
‘Your mother keeps well?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes. I suppose you know that she has married again?’
I am afraid I showed my surprise rather plainly. Mrs Cavendish, who had married John’s father when he was a widower with two sons, had been a handsome woman of middle-age as I remembered her. She certainly could not be a day less than seventy now. I recalled her as an energetic, autocratic personality, somewhat inclined to charitable and social notoriety, with a fondness for opening bazaars and playing the Lady Bountiful. She was a most generous woman, and possessed a considerable fortune of her own.
Their country-place, Styles Court, had been purchased by Mr Cavendish early in their married life. He had been completely under his wife’s ascendancy, so much so that, on dying, he left the place to her for her lifetime, as well as the larger part of his income; an arrangement that was distinctly unfair to his two sons. Their stepmother, however, had always been most generous to them; indeed, they were so young at the time of their father’s remarriage that they always thought of her as their own mother.
Lawrence, the younger, had been a delicate youth. He had qualified as a doctor but early relinquished the profession of medicine, and lived at home while pursuing literary ambitions; though his verses never had any marked success.
John practised for some time as a barrister, but had finally settled down to the more congenial life of a country squire. He had married two years ago, and had taken his wife to live at Styles, though I entertained a shrewd suspicion that he would have preferred his mother to increase his allowance, which would have enabled him to have a home of his own. Mrs Cavendish, however, was a lady who liked to make her own plans, and expected other people to fall in with them, and in this case she certainly had the whip hand, namely: the purse strings.
