Death Comes As the End

by Agatha Christie

Esa laughed—an old woman’s spiteful cackle. “Ah, well,” she said, “there’s no fool like an old fool.”

And although he knew well that his own estimate of himself was the true one and his mother’s a maternal idiosyncrasy of no importance—yet her attitude never failed to puncture his happy conceit of himself.

Men are made fools by the gleaming limbs of women, and lo, in a minute they are become discoloured cornelians. . . .”

“A trifle, a little, the likeness of a dream, and death comes as the end . . .”

No, Renisenb, what I said was true enough—people are always themselves. Satipy, like Sobek, was all bold words and talk. She, indeed, might go on from talk to action—but I think she is one of those who cannot know a thing or what it is like until it has happened. In her life up to that particular day, she had never had anything to fear. When fear came, it took her unawares. She learned then that courage is the resolution to face the unforeseen—and she had not got that courage.”

Nofret dead has done more for us than Nofret living. But now that the debt is paid, let everyone return to their everyday tasks.”

She might be safer unknowing, but no human creature could be content to have it that way. She wanted to know.

It may be that there must always be growth—and that if one does not grow kinder and wiser and greater, then the growth must be the other way, fostering the evil things.

Or it may be that the life they all led was too shut in, too folded back upon itself—without breadth or vision.

Like most bullying women, she was a coward.

once the heart is opened to evil—evil blossoms like poppies amongst the corn.

“Is no one what they seem?”

And your mind, Renisenb, is not like the minds of the rest of your family. It does not turn in upon itself, seeking to encase itself in narrow walls. Your mind is like my mind, it looks over the River, seeing a world of changes, of new ideas—seeing a world where all things are possible to those with courage and vision. . . .”