The Labours of Hercules. Агата Кристи
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Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by
Collins 1947
Copyright © 1947 Agatha Christie Ltd.
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author is asserted
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 ebooks.
Ebook Edition 2010 ISBN: 9780007422418
Version: 2018-04-09
To Edmund Cork
of whose labours on behalf of
Hercule Poirot I am deeply appreciative
this book is affectionately dedicated
Contents
Copyright
Foreword
1 The Nemean Lion
2 The Lernean Hydra
3 The Arcadian Deer
4 The Erymanthian Boar
5 The Augean Stables
6 The Stymphalean Birds
7 The Cretan Bull
8 The Horses of Diomedes
9 The Girdle of Hyppolita
10 The Flock of Geryon
11 The Apples of the Hesperides
12 The Capture of Cerberus
E-Book Extras
About Agatha Christie
The Agatha Christie Collection
Foreword
Hercule Poirot’s flat was essentially modern in its furnishings. It gleamed with chromium. Its easy-chairs, though comfortably padded, were square and uncompromising in outline.
On one of these chairs sat Hercule Poirot, neatly–in the middle of the chair. Opposite him, in another chair, sat Dr Burton, Fellow of All Souls, sipping appreciatively at a glass of Poirot’s Château Mouton Rothschild. There was no neatness about Dr Burton. He was plump, untidy, and beneath his thatch of white hair beamed a rubicund and benign countenance. He had a deep wheezy chuckle and the habit of covering himself and everything round him with tobacco ash. In vain did Poirot surround him with ashtrays.
Dr Burton was asking a question.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Why Hercule?’
‘You mean, my Christian name?’
‘Hardly a Christian name,’ the other demurred. ‘Definitely pagan. But why? That’s what I want to know. Father’s fancy? Mother’s whim? Family reasons? If I remember rightly–though my memory isn’t what it was–you had a brother called Achille, did you not?’
Poirot’s mind raced back over the details of Achille Poirot’s career. Had all that really happened?
‘Only for a short space of time,’ he replied.
Dr Burton passed tactfully from the subject of Achille Poirot.
‘People should be more careful how they name their children,’ he ruminated. ‘I’ve got godchildren. I know. Blanche, one of ’em is called–dark as a gypsy! Then there’s Deirdre, Deirdre of the Sorrows–she’s turned out merry as a grig. As for young Patience, she might as well have been named Impatience and be done with it! And Diana–well, Diana–’ the old classical scholar shuddered. ‘Weighs twelve stone now–and she’s only fifteen! They say it’s puppy fat–but it doesn’t look that way to me. Diana! They wanted to call her Helen, but I did put my foot down there. Knowing what her father and mother looked like! And her grandmother for that matter! I tried hard for Martha or Dorcas or something sensible–but it was no good–waste of breath. Rum people, parents…’
He began to wheeze gently–his small fat face crinkled up.
Poirot looked at him inquiringly.
‘Thinking of an imaginary conversation. Your mother and the late Mrs Holmes, sitting sewing little garments or knitting: “Achille, Hercule, Sherlock, Mycroft…”’
Poirot failed to share his friend’s amusement.
‘What I understand you to mean is, that in physical appearance I do not resemble a Hercules?’
Dr Burton’s eyes swept over Hercule Poirot, over his small neat person attired in striped trousers, correct black jacket and natty bow tie, swept up from his patent leather shoes to his egg-shaped head and the immense moustache that adorned his upper lip.
‘Frankly, Poirot,’ said Dr Burton, ‘you don’t! I gather,’ he added, ‘that you’ve never had much time to study the Classics?’
‘That is so.’
‘Pity. Pity. You’ve missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the Classics if I had my way.’
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
‘Eh bien, I have got on very well without them.’
‘Got on! Got on! It’s not a question of getting on. That’s the wrong view altogether. The Classics aren’t a ladder leading to quick success like a modern correspondence course! It’s not a man’s working hours that are important–it’s his leisure hours. That’s the mistake we all make. Take yourself now, you’re getting on, you’ll be wanting to get out of things, to take things easy–what are you going to do then with your leisure hours?’
Poirot was ready with his reply.
‘I am going to attend–seriously–to the cultivation of vegetable marrows.’
Dr Burton was taken aback.
‘Vegetable marrows? What d’yer mean? Those great swollen green things that taste of water?’
‘Ah,’ Poirot spoke enthusiastically. ‘But that is the whole point of it. They need not taste of water.’
‘Oh! I know–sprinkle ’em with cheese, or minced onion or white sauce.’
‘No, no–you are in error. It is my idea that the actual flavour of the marrow itself can be improved. It can be given,’ he screwed up his eyes, ‘a bouquet–’
‘Good God, man, it’s not a claret.’ The word bouquet reminded Dr Burton of the glass at his elbow. He sipped and savoured. ‘Very good wine, this. Very sound. Yes.’ His head nodded in approbation. ‘But this vegetable marrow business–you’re not serious? You don’t mean’ –he spoke in lively horror–‘that you’re actually going to stoop’ –his hands descended in sympathetic horror on his own plump stomach–‘stoop, and fork dung on the things, and feed ’em with strands