The Big Four

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

Collins 1927

Agatha Christie® Poirot® The Big Four™

Copyright © 1927 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.

www.agathachristie.com

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Title lettering by Ghost Design

Cover layout design © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2016. Title lettering by Ghost Design. Cover photograph © Andrew Proudlove/Arcangel Images

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: 9780008164904

Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780007422166

Version: 2017-04-12

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

CHAPTER 1: The Unexpected Guest

CHAPTER 2: The Man From the Asylum

CHAPTER 3: We Hear More About LI Chang Yen

CHAPTER 4: The Importance of a Leg of Mutton

CHAPTER 5: Disappearance of a Scientist

CHAPTER 6: The Woman on the Stairs

CHAPTER 7: The Radium Thieves

CHAPTER 8: In the House of the Enemy

CHAPTER 9: The Yellow Jasmine Mystery

CHAPTER 10: We Investigate at Croftlands

CHAPTER 11: The Chess Problem

CHAPTER 12: The Baited Trap

CHAPTER 13: The Mouse Walks in

CHAPTER 14: The Peroxide Blonde

CHAPTER 15: The Terrible Catastrophe

CHAPTER 16: The Dying Chinaman

CHAPTER 17: Number Four Wins a Trick

CHAPTER 18: In the Felsenlabyrinth

Also by Agatha Christie

About the Publisher

I have met people who enjoy a channel crossing; men who can sit calmly in their deckchairs and, on arrival, wait until the boat is moored, then gather their belongings together without fuss and disembark. Personally, I can never manage this. From the moment I get on board I feel that the time is too short to settle down to anything. I move my suitcases from one spot to another, and if I go down to the saloon for a meal, I bolt my food with an uneasy feeling that the boat may arrive unexpectedly whilst I am below. Perhaps all this is merely a legacy from one’s short leaves in the war, when it seemed a matter of such importance to secure a place near the gangway, and to be amongst the first to disembark lest one should waste precious minutes of one’s three or five days’ leave.

On this particular July morning, as I stood by the rail and watched the white cliffs of Dover drawing nearer, I marvelled at the passengers who could sit calmly in their chairs and never even raise their eyes for the first sight of their native land. Yet perhaps their case was different from mine. Doubtless many of them had only crossed to Paris for the weekend, whereas I had spent the last year and a half on a ranch in the Argentine. I had prospered there, and my wife and I had both enjoyed the free and easy life of the South American continent, nevertheless it was with a lump in my throat that I watched the familiar shore draw nearer and nearer.

I had landed in France two days before, transacted some necessary business, and was now en route for London. I should be there some months—time enough to look up old friends, and one old friend in particular. A little man with an egg-shaped head and green eyes—Hercule Poirot! I proposed to take him completely by surprise. My last letter from the Argentine had given no hint of my intended voyage—indeed, that had been decided upon hurriedly as a result of certain business complications—and I spent many amused moments picturing to myself his delight and stupefaction on beholding me.

He, I knew, was not likely to be far from his headquarters. The time when his cases had drawn him from one end of England to the other was past. His fame had spread, and no longer would he allow one case to absorb all his time. He aimed more and more, as time went on, at being considered a ‘consulting detective’—as much a specialist as a Harley Street physician. He had always scoffed at the popular idea of the human bloodhound who assumed wonderful disguises to track criminals, and who paused at every footprint to measure it.

‘No, my friend Hastings,’ he would say, ‘we leave that to Giraud and his friends. Hercule Poirot’s methods are his own. Order and method, and “the little grey cells”. Sitting at ease in our own armchairs we see the things that these others overlook, and we do not jump to the conclusion like the worthy Japp.’