The Labors of Hercules (Hercule Poirot, #27)

by Agatha Christie

It’s not a man’s working hours that are important—it’s his leisure hours. That’s the mistake we all make.

“It would be easier if it were one. There is nothing so intangible, so difficult to pin down, as the source of a rumour.”

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.

Professor MacLeod had said: “Ferrier was once one of my students. He’s a sound man.” That was all, but to Hercule Poirot it represented a good deal. If MacLeod called a man sound it was a testimonial to character compared with which no popular or press enthusiasm counted at all.

We have muddled and blundered. But we have stood for the tradition of doing one’s best—and we have stood, too, for fundamental honesty. Our disaster is this—that the man who was our figurehead, the Honest Man of the People, par excellence—turns out to have been one of the worst crooks of this generation.”

Edward Ferrier took a deep breath. For a moment Hercule Poirot came nearer to being physically assaulted than at any other time in his career. “My wife! You dared to use her—” Fortunately, perhaps, Mrs. Ferrier herself entered the room at this moment. “Well,” she said. “That went off very well.” “Dagmar, did you—know all along?” “Of course, dear,” said Dagmar Ferrier. And she smiled, the gentle, maternal smile of a devoted wife. “And you never told me!” “But, Edward, you would never have let M. Poirot do it.”

Hercule Poirot, if you sit there looking like an owl and saying nothing, I shall throw something at you.”

Miss Carnaby turned to Poirot. “That was a terrible moment in the teashop. I didn’t know what to do. I just had to act on the spur of the moment.” “You were magnificent,” said Poirot warmly. “For a moment I thought that either you or I had taken leave of our senses. I thought for one little minute that you meant it.”