Agatha Christie - Closed Casket - The New Hercule Poirot Mystery

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2016

Closed Casket ™ is a trade mark of Agatha Christie Limited

and Agatha Christie®, Poirot® and the Agatha Christie Signature

are registered trade marks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK

and elsewhere.

Copyright © Agatha Christie Limited 2016

All rights reserved.

www.agathachristie.com

Jacket design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2016

Sophie Hannah asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008134099

Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780008134112

Version: 2018-10-02

For Mathew and James Prichard and family,

with love

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

Chapter 1: A New Will

Chapter 2: A Surprise Reunion

Chapter 3: A Particular Interest in Death

Chapter 4: An Unexpected Admirer

Chapter 5: Tears Before Dinner

Chapter 6: The Announcement

Chapter 7: The Reaction

Chapter 8: A Stroll in the Gardens

Chapter 9: King John

Chapter 10: Open Casket

Chapter 11: Overheard Voices

Chapter 12: Sophie Points a Finger

Part Two

Chapter 13: Enter the Gardaí

Chapter 14: Lady Playford’s Two Lists

Chapter 15: Seeing, Hearing and Looking

Chapter 16: Down in the Dumps

Chapter 17: The Grandfather Clock

Chapter 18: Unrequited

Chapter 19: Two Irises

Chapter 20: Cause of Death

Chapter 21: The Casket Question

Chapter 22: In the Orangery

Chapter 23: The Inquest

Part Three

Chapter 24: Sophie Makes Another Accusation

Chapter 25: Shrimp Seddon and the Jealous Daughter

Chapter 26: Kimpton’s Definition of Knowledge

Chapter 27: The Iris Story

Chapter 28: A Possible Arrest

Chapter 29: The Grubber

Chapter 30: More Than Fond

Chapter 31: Lady Playford’s Plan

Chapter 32: The Kidnapped Racehorse

Chapter 33: The Two True Things

Chapter 34: Motive and Opportunity

Chapter 35: Everyone Could Have But Nobody Did

Chapter 36: The Experiment

Chapter 37: Poirot Wins Fair and Square

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Also by Sophie Hannah

The Agatha Christie Collection

About the Publisher

Michael Gathercole stared at the closed door in front of him and tried to persuade himself that now was the moment to knock, as the aged grandfather clock in the hall downstairs stuttered its announcement of the hour.

Gathercole’s instructions had been to present himself at four, and four it was. He had stood here—in this same spot on the wide first landing of Lillieoak—many times in the past six years. Only once had he felt less at ease than he did today. On that occasion he had been one of two men waiting, not alone as he was this afternoon. He still remembered every word of his conversation with the other man, when his preference would have been to recall none of it. Applying the self-discipline upon which he relied, he cast it from his mind.

He had been warned that he would find this afternoon’s meeting difficult. The warning had formed part of the summons, which was typical of his hostess. ‘What I intend to say to you will come as a shock …’

Gathercole did not doubt it. The prior notice was no use to him, for it contained no information about what sort of preparation might be in order.

His discomfort grew more pronounced when he consulted his pocket watch and noticed that by hesitating, and with all the taking out of the watch and putting it back in the waistcoat pocket, and pulling it out once more to check, he had made himself late. It was already a minute after four o’clock. He knocked.

Only one minute late. She would notice—was there anything she did not notice?—but with any luck she would not remark upon it.

‘Do come in, Michael!’ Lady Athelinda Playford sounded as ebullient as ever. She was seventy years old, with a voice as strong and clear as a polished bell. Gathercole had never encountered her in sober spirits. There was always, with her, a cause for excitement—often such morsels as would alarm a conventional person. Lady Playford had a talent for extracting as much amusement from the inconsequential as from the controversial.

Gathercole had admired her stories of happy children solving mysteries that confounded the local police since he had first discovered them as a lonely ten-year-old in a London orphanage. Six years ago, he had met their creator for the first time and found her as disarming and unpredictable as her books. He had never expected to go far in his chosen profession, but here he was, thanks to Athelinda Playford: still a relatively young man at thirty-six, and a partner in a successful firm of solicitors, Gathercole and Rolfe. The notion that any profitable enterprise bore his name was still perplexing to Gathercole, even after a number of years.

His loyalty to Lady Playford surpassed all other attachments he had formed in his life, but personal acquaintance with his favourite author had forced him to admit to himself that he preferred shocks and startling about-turns to occur in the safely distant world of fiction, not in reality. Lady Playford, needless to say, did not share his preference.

He started to open the door.

‘Are you going to … Ah! There you are! Don’t hover. Sit, sit. We’ll get nowhere if we don’t start.’

Gathercole sat.

‘Hello, Michael.’ She smiled at him, and he had the strange sense he always had—as if her eyes had picked him up, turned him around and put him down again. ‘And now you must say, “Hello, Athie.” Go on, say it! After all this time, it ought to be a breeze. Not “Good afternoon, your ladyship”. Not “Good day, Lady Playford”. A plain, friendly “Hello, Athie”. Is that too much to manage? Ha!’ She clapped her hands together. ‘You look quite the hunted fox cub! You can’t understand why you’ve been invited to stay for a week, can you? Or why Mr Rolfe was invited too.’