Poirot and the Regatta Mystery by Agatha Christie

Author:Agatha Christie [Christie, Agatha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Traditional British
ISBN: 9780062129598
Google: sNzb-2qn1tMC
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The Morning Star had vanished into space …

Hercule Poirot looked thoughtfully at the dark tragic face of the young man opposite him.

‘Eh bien?’ he said. ‘What is it you want of me?’

Evan Llewellyn did not pause for a moment. His reply came like lightning.

‘The truth.’

Poirot caressed his magnificent moustaches thoughtfully.

‘You are sure of that – eh?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘I ask,’ explained Poirot, ‘because it is a stock reply, that, of – oh, so many people. And when I produce the truth for them they are sometimes not pleased at all. They are sometimes dismayed and sometimes embarrassed and sometimes completely – ah yes, I have it – flabbergasted. What a word, that! A word that pleases me greatly.’

‘It’s the truth I want,’ repeated Evan.

‘But – pardon me – it was not your diamond that was stolen, M. Llewellyn. You wish to employ me to recover the property of somebody else – and that somebody not, I fancy, a person wholly sympathetic to you.’

‘It’s not old Pointz I’m worrying about.’

Poirot looked at him inquiringly. Evan went on:

‘I’ve come to you because of a remark you once made – or were said to have made. Someone repeated it to me.’

‘And what was that remark?’

‘That it was not the guilty who mattered – but the innocent. That made me feel there might be – hope.’

Poirot nodded his head gently.

‘Ah yes, I begin to see … I begin to see …’

‘I’m innocent! But unless the real truth gets out nobody is ever going to think so.’

Poirot was silent a moment. Then he said quietly:

‘Are you quite certain that the facts are exactly as you have recounted them. There is nothing that you have omitted?’

Evan considered a moment.

‘I don’t think I’ve left out anything. Pointz brought out the diamond and passed it round – that wretched American child stuck it on her ridiculous bag and when she came to look at the bag, the diamond was gone. It wasn’t on anyone – old Pointz himself even was searched – he insisted upon it – and I’ll swear it was nowhere in that room! And nobody went out of the room.’

‘The waiters? The maître d’hôtel?’ suggested Poirot.

Llewellyn shook his head.

‘They went out before the girl began messing about with the diamond, and afterwards Pointz locked the door so as to keep them out. No, it lies between one of us.’

‘It would certainly seem so,’ said Poirot. ‘A pretty little problem.’

‘That damned evening paper!’ said Evan Llewellyn bitterly. ‘I saw it come into their minds – that that was the only way –’

‘Repeat me that again very exactly.’

‘It was perfectly simple. I threw open the window, whistled to the man, threw down a copper and he tossed me up the paper. And there it is, you see – the only possible way the diamond could have left that room – thrown by me to an accomplice waiting in the street below.’

Poirot shook his head.

‘Not the only possible way.’

‘What other way can you suggest?’

‘Since you say you did not throw it out, there must have been some other way!’

‘Oh, I see.

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