Classic Tales of Mystery Read online

  Classic Tales

  of Mystery

  Classic Tales

  of Mystery

  Canterbury Classics

  An imprint of Printers Row Publishing Group

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  Canterbury Classics, Editorial Department, at the above address.

  Publisher: Peter Norton • Associate Publisher: Ana Parker

  Senior Developmental Editor: April Graham Farr

  Editor: Dan Mansfield • Editorial Team: Traci Douglas

  Senior Product Manager: Kathryn C. Dalby

  Production Team: Jonathan Lopes, Rusty von Dyl

  Cover and endpaper designer: Catherine Courtenaye

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64517-182-9

  eBook Edition: April 2020

  Editor’s Note: These works have been published in their original form

  to preserve the authors’ intent and style.

  CONTENTS

  The Murder on the Links

  Agatha Christie (1923)

  The Murders in the Rue Morgue

  Edgar Allan Poe (1841)

  Whose Body?

  Dorothy Sayers (1923)

  The Adventure of the Creeping Man

  Arthur Conan Doyle (1923)

  The Blue Cross

  G. K. Chesterton (1910)

  The Coin of Dionysius

  Ernest Bramah (1914)

  The Anthropologist at Large

  R. Austin Freeman (1909)

  The Thirty-nine Steps

  John Buchan (1915)

  The Murder on

  the Links

  Agatha Christie

  1. A Fellow Traveller

  I believe that a well-known anecdote exists to the effect that a young writer, determined to make the commencement of his story forcible and original enough to catch and rivet the attention of the most blasé of editors, penned the following sentence:

  “‘Hell!’ said the Duchess.”

  Strangely enough, this tale of mine opens in much the same fashion. Only the lady who gave utterance to the exclamation was not a Duchess!

  It was a day in early June. I had been transacting some business in Paris and was returning by the morning service to London where I was still sharing rooms with my old friend, the Belgian ex-detective, Hercule Poirot.

  The Calais express was singularly empty—in fact, my own compartment held only one other traveller. I had made a somewhat hurried departure from the hotel and was busy assuring myself that I had duly collected all my traps when the train started. Up till then I had hardly noticed my companion, but I was now violently recalled to the fact of her existence. Jumping up from her seat, she let down the window and stuck her head out, withdrawing it a moment later with the brief and forcible ejaculation “Hell!”

  Now I am old-fashioned. A woman, I consider, should be womanly. I have no patience with the modern neurotic girl who jazzes from morning to night, smokes like a chimney, and uses language which would make a Billingsgate fishwoman blush!

  I looked up now, frowning slightly, into a pretty, impudent face, surmounted by a rakish little red hat. A thick cluster of black curls hid each ear. I judged that she was little more than seventeen, but her face was covered with powder, and her lips were quite impossibly scarlet.

  Nothing abashed, she returned my glance, and executed an expressive grimace.

  “Dear me, we’ve shocked the kind gentleman!” she observed to an imaginary audience. “I apologize for my language! Most unladylike, and all that, but Oh, Lord, there’s reason enough for it! Do you know I’ve lost my only sister?”

  “Really?” I said politely. “How unfortunate.”

  “He disapproves!” remarked the lady. “He disapproves utterly—of me, and my sister—which last is unfair, because he hasn’t seen her!”

  I opened my mouth, but she forestalled me.

  “Say no more! Nobody loves me! I shall go into the garden and eat worms! Boohoo! I am crushed!”

  She buried herself behind a large comic French paper. In a minute or two I saw her eyes stealthily peeping at me over the top. In spite of myself I could not help smiling, and in a minute she had tossed the paper aside, and had burst into a merry peal of laughter.

  “I knew you weren’t such a mutt as you looked,” she cried.

  Her laughter was so infectious that I could not help joining in, though I hardly cared for the word “mutt.” The girl was certainly all that I most disliked, but that was no reason why I should make myself ridiculous by my attitude. I prepared to unbend. After all, she was decidedly pretty …

  “There! Now we’re friends!” declared the minx. “Say you’re sorry about my sister—”

  “I am desolated!”

  “That’s a good boy!”

  “Let me finish. I was going to add that, although I am desolated, I can manage to put up with her absence very well.” I made a little bow.

  But this most unaccountable of damsels frowned and shook her head.

  “Cut it out. I prefer the ‘dignified disapproval’ stunt. Oh, your face! ‘Not one of us,’ it said. And you were right there—though, mind you, it’s pretty hard to tell nowadays. It’s not every one who can distinguish between a demi and a duchess. There now, I believe I’ve shocked you again! You’ve been dug out of the backwoods, you have. Not that I mind that. We could do with a few more of your sort. I just hate a fellow who gets fresh. It makes me mad.”

  She shook her head vigorously.

  “What are you like when you’re mad?” I inquired with a smile.

  “A regular little devil! Don’t care what I say, or what I do, either! I nearly did a chap in once. Yes, really. He’d have deserved it too. Italian blood I’ve got. I shall get into trouble one of these days.”

  “Well,” I begged, “don’t get mad with me.”

  “I shan’t. I like you—did the first moment I set eyes on you. But you looked so disapproving that I never thought we should make friends.”

  “Well, we have. Tell me something about yourself.”

  “I’m an actress. No—not the kind you’re thinking of, lunching at the Savoy covered with jewellery, and with their photograph in every paper saying how much they love Madame So and So’s face cream. I’ve been on the boards since I was a kid of six—tumbling.”

  “I beg your pardon,” I said puzzled.

  “Haven’t you seen child acrobats?”

  “Oh, I understand.”

  “I’m American born, but I’ve spent most of my life in England. We got a new show now—”

  “We?”

  “My sister and I. Sort of song and dance, and a bit of patter, and a dash of the old business thrown in. It’s quite a new idea, and it hits them every time. There’s to be money in it—”

  My new acquaintance leaned forward, and discoursed volubly, a
great many of her terms being quite unintelligible to me. Yet I found myself evincing an increasing interest in her. She seemed such a curious mixture of child and woman. Though perfectly worldly-wise, and able, as she expressed it, to take care of herself, there was yet something curiously ingenuous in her single-minded attitude towards life, and her whole-hearted determination to “make good.” This glimpse of a world unknown to me was not without its charm, and I enjoyed seeing her vivid little face light up as she talked.

  We passed through Amiens. The name awakened many memories. My companion seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of what was in my mind.

  “Thinking of the War?”

  I nodded.

  “You were through it, I suppose?”

  “Pretty well. I was wounded once, and after the Somme they invalided me out altogether. I had a half fledged Army job for a bit. I’m a sort of private secretary now to an M. P.”

  “My! That’s brainy!”

  “No, it isn’t. There’s really awfully little to do. Usually a couple of hours every day sees me through. It’s dull work too. In fact, I don’t know what I should do if I hadn’t got something to fall back upon.”

  “Don’t say you collect bugs!”

  “No. I share rooms with a very interesting man. He’s a Belgian—an ex-detective. He’s set up as a private detective in London, and he’s doing extraordinarily well. He’s really a very marvellous little man. Time and again he has proved to be right where the official police have failed.”

  My companion listened with widening eyes.

  “Isn’t that interesting, now? I just adore crime. I go to all the mysteries on the movies. And when there’s a murder on I just devour the papers.”

  “Do you remember the Styles Case?” I asked.

  “Let me see, was that the old lady who was poisoned? Somewhere down in Essex?”

  I nodded.

  “That was Poirot’s first big case. Undoubtedly, but for him, the murderer would have escaped scot-free. It was a most wonderful bit of detective work.”

  Warming to my subject, I ran over the heads of the affair, working up to the triumphant and unexpected denouement. The girl listened spellbound. In fact, we were so absorbed that the train drew into Calais station before we realized it.

  “My goodness gracious me!” cried my companion. “Where’s my powder-puff ?”

  She proceeded to bedaub her face liberally, and then applied a stick of lip salve to her lips, observing the effect in a small pocket glass, and betraying not the faintest sign of selfconsciousness.

  “I say,” I hesitated. “I dare say it’s cheek on my part, but why do all that sort of thing?”

  The girl paused in her operations, and stared at me with undisguised surprise.

  “It isn’t as though you weren’t so pretty that you can afford to do without it,” I said stammeringly.

  “My dear boy! I’ve got to do it. All the girls do. Think I want to look like a little frump up from the country?” She took one last look in the mirror, smiled approval, and put it and her vanity-box away in her bag. “That’s better. Keeping up appearances is a bit of a fag, I grant, but if a girl respects herself it’s up to her not to let herself get slack.”

  To this essentially moral sentiment, I had no reply. A point of view makes a great difference.

  I secured a couple of porters, and we alighted on the platform. My companion held out her hand.

  “Good-bye, and I’ll mind my language better in future.”

  “Oh, but surely you’ll let me look after you on the boat?”

  “Mayn’t be on the boat. I’ve got to see whether that sister of mine got aboard after all anywhere. But thanks all the same.”

  “Oh, but we’re going to meet again, surely? I—” I hesitated. “I want to meet your sister.”

  We both laughed.

  “That’s real nice of you. I’ll tell her what you say. But I don’t fancy we’ll meet again. You’ve been very good to me on the journey, especially after I cheeked you as I did. But what your face expressed first thing is quite true. I’m not your kind. And that brings trouble—I know that well enough …”

  Her face changed. For the moment all the light-hearted gaiety died out of it. It looked angry—revengeful …

  “So good-bye,” she finished, in a lighter tone.

  “Aren’t you even going to tell me your name?” I cried, as she turned away.

  She looked over her shoulder. A dimple appeared in each cheek. She was like a lovely picture by Greuze.

  “Cinderella,” she said, and laughed.

  But little did I think when and how I should see Cinderella again.

  2. An Appeal for Help

  It was five minutes past nine when I entered our joint sitting-room for breakfast on the following morning.

  My friend Poirot, exact to the minute as usual, was just tapping the shell of his second egg.

  He beamed upon me as I entered.

  “You have slept well, yes? You have recovered from the crossing so terrible? It is a marvel, almost you are exact this morning. Pardon, but your tie is not symmetrical. Permit that I rearrange him.”

  Elsewhere, I have described Hercule Poirot. An extraordinary little man! Height, five feet four inches, egg-shaped head carried a little to one side, eyes that shone green when he was excited, stiff military moustache, air of dignity immense! He was neat and dandified in appearance. For neatness of any kind, he had an absolute passion. To see an ornament set crooked, or a speck of dust, or a slight disarray in one’s attire, was torture to the little man until he could ease his feelings by remedying the matter. “Order” and “Method” were his gods. He had a certain disdain for tangible evidence, such as footprints and cigarette ash, and would maintain that, taken by themselves, they would never enable a detective to solve a problem. Then he would tap his egg-shaped head with absurd complacency, and remark with great satisfaction: “The true work, it is done from within. The little grey cells—remember always the little grey cells, mon ami !”

  I slipped into my seat, and remarked idly, in answer to Poirot’s greeting, that an hour’s sea passage from Calais to Dover could hardly be dignified by the epithet “terrible.”

  Poirot waved his egg-spoon in vigorous refutation of my remark.

  “Du tout ! If for an hour one experiences sensations and emotions of the most terrible, one has lived many hours! Does not one of your English poets say that time is counted, not by hours, but by heart-beats?”

  “I fancy Browning was referring to something more romantic than sea sickness, though.”

  “Because he was an Englishman, an Islander to whom la Manche was nothing. Oh, you English! With nous autres it is different. Figure to yourself that a lady of my acquaintance at the beginning of the war fled to Ostend. There she had a terrible crisis of the nerves. Impossible to escape further except by crossing the sea! And she had a horror—mais une horreur !—of the sea! What was she to do? Daily les Boches were drawing nearer. Imagine to yourself the terrible situation!”

  “What did she do?” I inquired curiously.

  “Fortunately her husband was homme pratique. He was also very calm, the crises of the nerves, they affected him not. Il l’a emportée simplement ! Naturally when she reached England she was prostrate, but she still breathed.”

  Poirot shook his head seriously. I composed my face as best I could.

  Suddenly he stiffened and pointed a dramatic finger at the toast rack.

  “Ah, par exemple, c’est trop fort!” he cried.

  “What is it?”

  “This piece of toast. You remark him not?” He whipped the offender out of the rack, and held it up for me to examine.

  “Is it square? No. Is it a triangle? Again no. Is it even round? No. Is it of any shape remotely pleasing to the eye? What symmetry have we here? None.”

  “It’s cut from a cottage loaf,” I explained soothingly.

  Poirot threw me a withering glance.

  “What an intelligence
has my friend Hastings!” he exclaimed sarcastically. “Comprehend you not that I have forbidden such a loaf—a loaf haphazard and shapeless, that no baker should permit himself to bake!”

  I endeavoured to distract his mind.

  “Anything interesting come by the post?”

  Poirot shook his head with a dissatisfied air.

  “I have not yet examined my letters, but nothing of interest arrives nowadays. The great criminals, the criminals of method, they do not exist. The cases I have been employed upon lately were banal to the last degree. In verity I am reduced to recovering lost lap-dogs for fashionable ladies! The last problem that presented any interest was that intricate little affair of the Yardly diamond, and that was—how many months ago, my friend?”

  He shook his head despondently, and I roared with laughter.

  “Cheer up, Poirot, the luck will change. Open your letters. For all you know, there may be a great case looming on the horizon.”

  Poirot smiled, and taking up the neat little letter opener with which he opened his correspondence he slit the tops of the several envelopes that lay by his plate.

  “A bill. Another bill. It is that I grow extravagant in my old age. Aha! a note from Japp.”

  “Yes?” pricked up my ears. The Scotland Yard Inspector had more than once introduced us to an interesting case.

  “He merely thanks me (in his fashion) for a little point in the Aberystwyth Case on which I was able to set him right. I am delighted to have been of service to him.”

  “How does he thank you?” I asked curiously, for I knew my Japp.

  “He is kind enough to say that I am a wonderful sport for my age, and that he was glad to have had the chance of letting me in on the case.”

  This was so typical of Japp, that I could not forbear a chuckle. Poirot continued to read his correspondence placidly.

  “A suggestion that I should give a lecture to our local Boy Scouts. The Countess of Forfanock will be obliged if I will call and see her. Another lap-dog without doubt! And now for the last. Ah—”

  I looked up, quick to notice the change of tone. Poirot was reading attentively. In a minute he tossed the sheet over to me.