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Rumour is indeed the nine-headed Hydra of Lernea which cannot be exterminated because as fast as one head is cropped off two grow in its place.’
Lol okay
‘So I was to begin with. It is like in the old legend of the Lernean Hydra. Every time a head was cut off, two heads grew in its place. So, to begin with, the rumours grew and multiplied. But you see my task, like that of my namesake Hercules, was to reach the first–the original head. Who had started this rumour?
Words had become to him a means of obscuring facts–not of revealing them. He was an adept in the art of the useful phrase–that is to say the phrase that falls soothingly on the ear and is quite empty of meaning.
were curiously alike, were quite immobile. Over their shoulders they wore loose cloaks that flapped in the wind like the wings of two big birds. Harold thought to himself. ‘They are like birds–’ he added almost without volition, ‘birds of ill omen.’
‘All a lot of nonsense! Think I’ll go and see if I can get a rabbit–’
God this is such a bad book
It represented a lanky girl with her hair in two limp plaits. It was not a posed photograph, the subject had clearly been caught unawares. She was in the act of eating an apple, her lips were parted, showing slightly protruding teeth confined by a dentist’s plate. She wore spectacles. Japp said: ‘Plain-looking kid–but then they are plain at that age! Was at my dentist’s yesterday. Saw a picture in the Sketch of Marcia Gaunt, this season’s beauty. I remember her at fifteen when I was down at the Castle over their burglary business. Spotty, awkward, teeth sticking out, hair all lank and anyhow.
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Lol a kid has gone missing but because it's a girl we're going to spend some time talking about how pretty she is
Poirot said thoughtfully: ‘There is no young man in the case?’ Japp gesticulated towards the snapshot. ‘Does she look like it?’
Ffs
‘Miss Jordan and Miss Butters–two middle-aged spinsters going to Switzerland. Nothing wrong with them, highly respectable, well known in Hampshire where they come from. Two French commercial travellers, one from Lyons, one from Paris. Both respectable middle-aged men.
I don't think i noticed how obsessed Agatha Christie is with respectability.
Miss Lavinia Pope was a very different person from her second-in-command, Miss Burshaw. Miss Pope had personality. Miss Pope was awe inspiring. Even should Miss Pope unbend graciously to parents, she would still retain that obvious superiority to the rest of the world which is such a powerful asset to a schoolmistress.
Nice
The room in which she received Poirot was the room of a woman of culture. It had graceful furniture, flowers, some framed, signed photographs of those of Miss Pope’s pupils who were of note in the world–many of them in their presentation gowns and feathers. On the walls hung reproductions of the world’s artistic masterpieces and some good watercolour sketches. The whole place was clean and polished to the last degree. No speck of dust, one felt, would have the temerity to deposit itself in such a shrine. Miss Pope received Poirot with the competence of one whose judgement seldom fails.
Nice to have reminders of why this woman is considered a great writer.
Miss Pope did not look distressed. She took disaster as it should be taken, dealing with it competently and thereby reducing it almost to insignificance.
‘Mon Dieu!’ he murmured. ‘Here indeed is the attack by the Amazons!’
Yaaar
‘And yet, mon cher, I have a feeling that this is the tenth Labour of Hercules, and that this Dr Andersen is the Monster Geryon whom it is my mission to destroy.’
‘How many heads has the Shepherd?’ ‘Three heads, a head of gold, a head of silver, a head of sounding brass.’ ‘How many bodies have the Sheep?’ ‘Three bodies, a body of flesh, a body of corruption, and a body of light.’
Geryon reference
‘Mademoiselle, this Dr Andersen had perfected a scheme of exploitation and murder–scientific murder. Most of his life has been spent in bacteriological research. Under a different name he has a chemical laboratory in Sheffield. There he makes cultures of various bacilli. It was his practice, at the Festivals, to inject into his followers a small but sufficient dose of Cannabis Indica–which is also known by the names of Hashish or Bhang. This gives delusions of grandeur and pleasurable enjoyment. It bound his devotees to him. These were the Spiritual Joys that he promised them.’
Broooo
‘Its intrinsic value is certainly considerable. The workmanship is exquisite (it is said to have been made by Benvenuto Cellini). The design represents a tree round which a jewelled serpent is coiled and the apples on the tree are formed of very beautiful emeralds.’ Poirot murmured with an apparent quickening of interest: ‘Apples?’
‘If you were faced, Georges,’ said Poirot, ‘with the necessity of conducting investigations in five different parts of the globe, how would you set about it?’ ‘Well, sir, air travel is very quick, though some say as it upsets the stomach. I couldn’t say myself.’ ‘One asks oneself,’ said Hercule Poirot, ‘what would Hercules have done?’ ‘You mean the bicycle chap, sir?’ ‘Or,’ pursued Hercule Poirot, ‘one simply asks, what did he do? And the answer, Georges, is that he travelled energetically. But he was forced in the end to obtain information–as some say–from Prometheus–others from Nereus.’
The formidable woman said with asperity: ‘And what else would it be?’ Hercule Poirot did not attempt to answer that. He said to the dragon: ‘I would like to see the Mother Superior.’
Know who I am, shir, do you know, I shay? Atlas, thatsh who I am–Atlas of the Dublin Sun…been tipping winnersh all the season…Didn’t I give Larry’s Girl? Twenty-five to one–twenty-five to one. Follow Atlas and you can’t go wrong.’
‘Be quiet. It is not the weight of the world that you have to support–only the weight of Hercule Poirot.’
And then there was the extraordinary fact that no one had ever tried to dispose of the cup. That looked, you see, as though it were in a place where ordinary material values did not apply. I remembered that Patrick Casey’s daughter was a nun.’
This is a pretty solid deduction.
‘Send this back to the Convent.’
No repose, thought Poirot, no feminine grace! His elderly soul revolted from the stress and hurry of the modern world. All these young women who surrounded him–so alike, so devoid of charm, so lacking in rich, alluring femininity! He demanded a more flamboyant appeal. Ah! to see a femme du monde, chic, sympathetic, spirituelle–a woman with ample curves, a woman ridiculously and extravagantly dressed! Once there had been such women. But now–now–
Why is Agatha Christie such a dude
It was also the station of what seemed to be about a hundred and fifty other people, since it happened to be Piccadilly Circus. Like a great tidal wave they flowed out on to the platform. Presently Poirot was again jammed tightly on an escalator being carried upwards towards the surface of the earth. Up, thought Poirot, from the Infernal Regions…How exquisitely painful was a suitcase rammed into one’s knees from behind on an ascending escalator!
Ooh didn't see that coming. London Underground is the Underworld.
He descended the stairs. At the foot was a tank of water with scarlet lilies. Spanning it was a bridge shaped like a boat. Poirot crossed by it.
Styx?
The Countess Rossakoff sighed. Following out a train of thought of her own, she murmured, ‘And yet she is not really bad-looking…’ ‘She does not make the most of herself,’ said Poirot judicially.
Exhausting how we're constantly talking about women's looks.
‘We have all kinds here,’ said the Countess. ‘That is as it should be, is it not? The gates of Hell are open to all?’ ‘Except, possibly, to the poor?’ Poirot suggested. The Countess laughed. ‘Are we not told that it is difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Naturally, then, he should have priority in Hell.’
Okay that was a good one.
‘It amazes me that you–who are young, and who could look pretty if you took the trouble–well, it amazes me that you do not take the trouble! You wear the heavy coat and skirt with the big pockets as though you were going to play the game of golf. But it is not here the golf links, it is the underground cellar with the temperature of 71 Fahrenheit, and your nose it is hot and shines, but you do not powder it, and the lipstick you put it on your mouth without interest, without emphasizing the curve of the lips! You are a woman, but you do not draw attention to the fact of being a woman. And I
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