Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot - The Complete Short Stories

The Complete

Short Stories

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © 1999 Agatha Christie Ltd.

Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006513773

Ebook Edition © JULY 2011 ISBN 9780007438969

Version: 2018-11-05

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction : Enter Hercule Poirot

1. The Affair at the Victory Ball

2. The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan

3. The King of Clubs

4. The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim

5. The Plymouth Express

6. The Adventure of the Western Star

7. The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor

8. The Kidnapped Prime Minister

9. The Million Dollar Bond Robbery

10. The Adventure of the Cheap Flat

11. The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge

12. The Chocolate Box

13. The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb

14. The Veiled Lady

15. The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly

16. The Market Basing Mystery

17. The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman

18. The Case of the Missing Will

19. The Incredible Theft

20. The Adventure of the Clapham Cook

21. The Lost Mine

22. The Cornish Mystery

23. The Double Clue

24. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

25. The Lemesurier Inheritance

26. The Under Dog

27. Double Sin

28. Wasps’ Nest

29. The Third-Floor Flat

30. The Mystery of the Spanish Chest

31. Dead Man’s Mirror

32. How Does Your Garden Grow?

33. Problem at Sea

34. Triangle at Rhodes

35. Murder in the Mews

36. Yellow Iris

37. The Dream

38. Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds

39. The Labours of Hercules – Foreword

40. The Nemean Lion

41. The Lernean Hydra

42. The Arcadian Deer

43. The Erymanthian Boar

44. The Augean Stables

45. The Stymphalean Birds

46. The Cretan Bull

47. The Horses of Diomedes

48. The Girdle of Hyppolita

49. The Flock of Geryon

50. The Apples of the Hesperides

51. The Capture of Cerberus

Postscript : Poirot and the Regatta Mystery

Keep Reading

Appendix : Short Story Chronology

Also in this Series: Agatha Christie

Poirot in the Orient

Poirot: The French Collection

Poirot: The War Years

Poirot: The Complete Battles of Hastings: Volume 1

Poirot: The Complete Battles of Hastings: Volume 2

Miss Marple Omnibus: Volume I

Miss Marple Omnibus: Volume II

Miss Marple Omnibus: Volume III

Also Available: Agatha Christie

The Mary Westmacott Collection: Volume One

The Mary Westmacott Collection: Volume Two

Also in this Series: Agatha Christie

The Complete Quin & Satterthwaite Love Detectives

Also Available: Agatha Christie

Come, Tell Me How You Live

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Who could I have as a detective? I reviewed such detectives as I had met and admired in books. There was Sherlock Holmes, the one and only – I should never be able to emulate him . There was Arsene Lupin – was he a criminal or a detective? Anyway, not my kind. There was the young journalist Rouletabille in The Mystery of the Yellow Room – that was the sort of person whom I would like to invent: someone who hadn’t been used before. Who could I have? A schoolboy? Rather difficult. A scientist? What did I know of scientists? Then I remembered our Belgian refugees. We had quite a colony of Belgian refugees living in the parish of Tor. Why not make my detective a Belgian? I thought. There were all types of refugees. How about a refugee police officer? A retired police officer. Not too young a one. What a mistake I made there. The result is that my fictional detective must really be well over a hundred by now.

Anyway, I settled on a Belgian detective. I allowed him slowly to grow into his part. He should have been an inspector, so that he would have a certain knowledge of crime. He would be meticulous, very tidy, I thought to myself, as I cleared away a good many untidy odds and ends in my own bedroom. A tidy little man. I could see him as a tidy little man, always arranging things, liking things in pairs, liking things square instead of round. And he should be very brainy – he should have little grey cells of the mind – that was a good phrase: I must remember that – yes, he would have little grey cells. He would have rather a grand name – one of those names that Sherlock Holmes and his family had. Who was it his brother had been? Mycroft Holmes.

How about calling my little man Hercules? He would be a small man – Hercules: a good name. His last name was more difficult. I don’t know why I settled on the name Poirot, whether it just came into my head or whether I saw it in some newspaper or written on something – anyway it came. It went well not with Hercules but Hercule – Hercule Poirot. That was all right – settled, thank goodness.

Hercule Poirot had been quite a success in The Mysterious Affair at Styles , so it was suggested that I should continue to employ him. One of the people who liked Poirot was Bruce Ingram, editor at the time of The Sketch . He got in touch with me, and suggested that I should write a series of Poirot stories for The Sketch . This excited me very much indeed. At last I was becoming a success. To be in The Sketch – wonderful! He also had a fancy drawing made of Hercule Poirot which was not unlike my idea of him, though he was depicted as a little smarter and more aristocratic than I had envisaged him. Bruce Ingram wanted a series of twelve stories. I produced eight before long, and at first it was thought that that would be enough, but in the end it was decided to increase them to twelve, and I had to write another four rather more hastily than I wanted.

It had escaped my notice that not only was I now tied to the detective story, I was also tied to two people: Hercule Poirot and his Watson, Captain Hastings. I quite enjoyed Captain Hastings. He was a stereotyped creation, but he and Poirot represented my idea of a detective team. I was still writing in the Sherlock Holmes tradition – eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp.