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CURTAIN: POIROT’S LAST CASE

A Hercule Poirot Mystery
 

Chapter 1

IWho is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old ex-perience, or feeling an old emotion?

‘I have done this before …’

Why do those words always move one so profoundly?

That was the question I asked myself as I sat in the train watching theflat Essex landscape outside.

How long ago was it that I had taken this selfsame journey? Had felt (ri-diculously) that the best of life was over for me! Wounded in that war thatfor me would always be the war – the war that was wiped out now by asecond and a more desperate war.

It had seemed in 1916 to young Arthur Hastings that he was already oldand mature. How little had I realized that, for me, life was only then be-ginning.

I had been journeying, though I did not know it, to meet the man whoseinfluence over me was to shape and mould my life. Actually, I had beengoing to stay with my old friend, John Cavendish, whose mother, recentlyremarried, had a country house named Styles. A pleasant renewing of oldacquaintanceships, that was all I had thought it, not foreseeing that I wasshortly to plunge into all the dark embroilments of a mysterious murder.

It was at Styles that I had met again that strange little man, HerculePoirot, whom I had first come across in Belgium.

How well I remembered my amazement when I had seen the limpingfigure with the large moustache coming up the village street.

Hercule Poirot! Since those days he had been my dearest friend, his in-fluence had moulded my life. In company with him, in the hunting downof yet another murderer, I had met my wife, the truest and sweetest com-panion any man could have had.

She lay now in Argentine soil, having died as she would have wished,with no long drawn out suffering, or feebleness of old age. But she had lefta very lonely and unhappy man behind her.

Ah! If I could go back – live life all over again. If this could have beenthat day in 1916 when I first travelled to Styles … What changes had takenplace since then! What gaps amongst the familiar faces! Styles itself hadbeen sold by the Cavendishes. John Cavendish was dead, though his wife,Mary (that fascinating enigmatical creature), was still alive, living inDevonshire. Laurence was living with his wife and children in SouthAfrica. Changes – changes everywhere.

But one thing, strangely enough, was the same. I was going to Styles tomeet Hercule Poirot.

How stupefied I had been to receive his letter, with its heading StylesCourt, Styles, Essex.

I had not seen my old friend for nearly a year. The last time I had seenhim I had been shocked and saddened. He was now a very old man, andalmost crippled with arthritis. He had gone to Egypt in the hopes of im-proving his health, but had returned, so his letter told me, rather worsethan better. Nevertheless, he wrote cheerfully …

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