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The ABC Murders
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1936
Copyright © 1936 Agatha Christie Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Photographers: Charlie Gray and Ben Blackall
Photography and title typography © Mammoth Screen and Agatha Christie Limited 2018.
BBC and the BBC logo are trade marks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence. Logo © BBC 1996
Agatha Chrisie 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: 9780007119295
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN 9780007421893
Version: 2018-11-23
To James Watts
One of my most sympathetic readers
Contents
Copyright
Foreword
1 The Letter
2 Not from Captain Hastings’ Personal Narrative
3 Andover
4 Mrs Ascher
5 Mary Drower
6 The Scene of the Crime
7 Mr Partridge and Mr Riddell
8 The Second Letter
9 The Bexhill-on-Sea Murder
10 The Barnards
11 Megan Barnard
12 Donald Fraser
13 A Conference
14 The Third Letter
15 Sir Carmichael Clarke
16 Not from Captain Hastings’ Personal Narrative
17 Marking Time
18 Poirot Makes a Speech
19 By Way of Sweden
20 Lady Clarke
21 Description of a Murderer
22 Not from Captain Hastings’ Personal Narrative
23 September 11th. Doncaster
24 Not from Captain Hastings’ Personal Narrative
25 Not from Captain Hastings’ Personal Narrative
26 Not from Captain Hastings’ Personal Narrative
27 The Doncaster Murder
28 Not from Captain Hastings’ Personal Narrative
29 At Scotland Yard
30 Not from Captain Hastings’ Personal Narrative
31 Hercule Poirot Asks Questions
32 And Catch a Fox
33 Alexander Bonaparte Cust
34 Poirot Explains
35 Finale
About Agatha Christie
The Agatha Christie Collection
By Captain Arthur Hastings, O.B.E.
In this narrative of mine I have departed from my usual practice of relating only those incidents and scenes at which I myself was present. Certain chapters, therefore, are written in the third person.
I wish to assure my readers that I can vouch for the occurrences related in these chapters. If I have taken a certain poetic licence in describing the thoughts and feelings of various persons, it is because I believe I have set them down with a reasonable amount of accuracy. I may add that they have been ‘vetted’ by my friend Hercule Poirot himself.
In conclusion, I will say that if I have described at too great length some of the secondary personal relationships which arose as a consequence of this strange series of crimes, it is because the human and personal elements can never be ignored. Hercule Poirot once taught me in a very dramatic manner that romance can be a by-product of crime.
As to the solving of the ABC mystery, I can only say that in my opinion Poirot showed real genius in the way he tackled a problem entirely unlike any which had previously come his way.
It was in June of 1935 that I came home