The Labors of Hercules (Hercule Poirot, #27)

by Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot felt that familiar aching of the jaw when one longs to yawn and politeness forbids. He had felt the same sometimes when reading the parliamentary debates. But on those occasions there had been no need to restrain his yawns. He steeled himself to endure patiently. He felt, at the same time, a sympathy for Sir George Conway. The man obviously wanted to tell him something—and as obviously had lost the art of simple narration. 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.

“I know who you are, you know.” “Ah that, it is no secret!” Poirot waved a royal hand. He was not incognito, the gesture seemed to say. He was travelling as Himself.

“M. Hercule Poirot? I know your name, of course. I suppose you have come about this very unfortunate affair of Winnie King. A most distressing incident.” 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.

“Do you know, M. Poirot, I’m afraid—I really am afraid—that I must be a hardened criminal—if I may use such a term. Ideas come to me!” “What kind of ideas?” “The most extraordinary ideas! For instance, yesterday, a really most practical scheme for robbing a post office came into my head. I wasn’t thinking about it—it just came! And another very ingenious way for evading custom duties . . . I feel convinced—quite convinced—that it would work.” “It probably would,” said Poirot drily. “That is the danger of your ideas.”

Somehow I feel this was probably true of Agatha Christie herself!

“I am, of course, not at all clever,” explained Miss Carnaby. “But my powers of—of dissimulation are good. They have to be—otherwise one would be discharged from the post of companion immediately. And I have always found that to appear even stupider than one is, occasionally has good results.”

“It is!” she screamed. “But it is! Mon cher Hercule Poirot! We must meet again! I insist!” But Fate itself is not more inexorable than the behaviour of two escalators moving in an inverse direction. Steadily, remorselessly, Hercule Poirot was borne upward, and the Countess Vera Rossakoff was borne downwards.

“Miss Lemon, may I ask you a question?” “Of course, M. Poirot.” Miss Lemon took her fingers off the typewriter keys and waited attentively. “If a friend asked you to meet her—or him—in Hell, what would you do?” Miss Lemon, as usual, did not pause. She knew, as the saying goes, all the answers. “It would be advisable, I think, to ring up for a table,” she said. Hercule Poirot stared at her in a stupefied fashion. He said, staccato, “You—would—ring—up—for—a table?” Miss Lemon nodded and drew the telephone towards her.

The puns in this story are the best.

From the first I did not like that young lady with her scientific jargon and her coat and skirt with the big pockets. Yes, pockets. Unnatural that any woman should be so disdainful of her appearance!

Calm down there, Poirot