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Hickory Dickory Dock
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by
Collins 1955
Agatha Christie® Poirot® Hickory Dickory Dock™
Copyright © 1955 Agatha Christie Mallowan. All rights reserved
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Title lettering by Ghost Design
Cover photograph © GS/Gallery Stock
Agatha Christie 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.
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Source ISBN: 9780008129552
Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780007422388
Version: 2017-04-13
Contents
Hercule Poirot frowned.
‘Miss Lemon,’ he said.
‘Yes, M. Poirot?’
‘There are three mistakes in this letter.’
His voice held incredulity. For Miss Lemon, that hideous and efficient woman, never made mistakes. She was never ill, never tired, never upset, never inaccurate. For all practical purposes, that is to say, she was not a woman at all. She was a machine—the perfect secretary. She knew everything, she coped with everything. She ran Hercule Poirot’s life for him, so that it, too, functioned like a machine. Order and method had been Hercule Poirot’s watchwords from many years ago. With George, his perfect manservant, and Miss Lemon, his perfect secretary, order and method ruled supreme in his life. Now that crumpets were baked square as well as round, he had nothing about which to complain.
And yet, this morning, Miss Lemon had made three mistakes in typing a perfectly simple letter, and moreover, had not even noticed those mistakes. The stars stood still in their courses!
Hercule Poirot held out the offending document. He was not annoyed, he was merely bewildered. This was one of the things that could not happen—but it had happened!
Miss