Hickory Dickory Dock

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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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

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 Lemon took the letter. She looked at it. For the first time in his life, Poirot saw her blush; a deep ugly unbecoming flush that dyed her face right up to the roots of her strong grizzled hair.

‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘I can’t think how—at least, I can. It’s because of my sister.’

‘Your sister?’

Another shock. Poirot had never conceived of Miss Lemon’s having a sister. Or, for that matter, having a father, mother, or even grandparents. Miss Lemon, somehow, was so completely machine made—a precision instrument so to speak—that to think of her having affections, or anxieties, or family worries, seemed quite ludicrous. It was well known that the whole of Miss Lemon’s heart and mind was given, when she was not on duty, to the perfection of a new filing system which was to be patented and bear her name.

‘Your sister?’ Hercule Poirot repeated, therefore, with an incredulous note in his voice.

Miss Lemon nodded a vigorous assent.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned her to you. Practically all her life has been spent in Singapore. Her husband was in the rubber business there.’

Hercule Poirot nodded understandingly. It seemed to him appropriate that Miss Lemon’s sister should have spent most of her life in Singapore. That was what places like Singapore were for. The sisters of women like Miss Lemon married men in Singapore, so that the Miss Lemons of this world could devote themselves with machine-like efficiency to their employers’ affairs (and of course to the invention of filing systems in their moments of relaxation).

‘I comprehend,’ he said. ‘Proceed.’

Miss Lemon proceeded.

‘She was left a widow four years ago. No children. I managed to get her fixed up in a very nice little flat at quite a reasonable rent—’

(Of course Miss Lemon would manage to do just that almost impossible thing.)

‘She is reasonably well off—though money doesn’t go as far as it did, but her tastes aren’t expensive and she has enough to be quite comfortable if she is careful.’

Miss Lemon paused and then continued: