I regret exceedingly... said M. Hercule Poirot. He was interrupted. Not rudely interrupted. The interruption was suave, dexterous, persuasive rather than contradictory. Please don't refuse offhand, M. Poirot. There are grave issues of State. Your coo...
Salt I WROTE THE OBITUARY for the OBITUARIES editor. Her name was Lois Andrews. Breast cancer. She was only forty-five. One in eight women get breast cancer, an epidemic. Loiss parents had died years earlier. Dads cigarettes kept their promises. Moms...
Holmes was up before six and I found him in the hall pacing back and forth when I came down for breakfast just after half past seven. He swung around to face me. Ah, at last, he said critically. Go and question the child again, he commanded. Learn an...
There had been no cases of any interest for some weeks, and my friend Sherlock Holmes was bored by the trivia that came his way. His temper showed it to the degree where I was happy to accept an invitation from an old friend, Robert Hunt, a widower w...
Sitting well back in his chair, secure in his role of audience, Mr. Satterthwaite watched the drama unfold before his eyes Quietly and naturally, Mr. Quin was pulling the strings, setting his puppets in motion. A woman--yes, he murmured thoughtfully....
It was New Year's Eve. The elder members of the house party at Royston were assembled in the big hall. Mr. Satterthwaite was glad that the young people had gone to bed. He was not fond of young people in herds. He thought them uninteresting and crude...
Korbi was a punk like all punks. The kind that you dont know whether theyre uglier or stupider. And like all punks he had a beautiful girlfriend, who no one could understand what she was doing with him. She was a tall brunette, taller than him, and h...
Italo waved his left hand and the irritating drumming stopped. He took a long breath and closed his eyes. When I saw him standing tensely on the little wooden platform, wearing his glittering costume, almost touching the canvas ceiling of the tent, e...
Dad wouldnt buy me a Bart Simpson doll. Mum actually said yes, but Dad said I was spoiled. Why should we, eh? he said to Mum. Why should we buy him one? All it takes is one little squeak from him and you jump to attention. Dad said I had no respect f...
Theres this village in Uzbekistan that was built right smack at the mouth of Hell. The soil there isnt any good for farming, and the minerals arent too great either, so whatever small income the inhabitants can earn to make ends meet comes mostly fro...
On Bernadotte Avenue, right next to the Central Bus Station, theres a hole in the wall. There used to be an ATM there once, but it broke or something, or else nobody ever used it, so the people from the bank came in a pickup and took it, and never br...
About six months ago, in this armpit town outside Austin, Texas, Mickey Goodman of Tel Aviv killed a seventy-year-old minister and his wife. Goodman shot them in their sleep at point-blank range. To this day nobody knows how he got into the apartment...
This is the story about a bus driver who would never open the door of the bus for people who were late. Not for anyone. Not for repressed high school kids whod run alongside the bus and stare at it longingly, and certainly not for high-strung people...
It was a chill, rain-washed afternoon of a late August day, that indefinite season when partridges are still in security or cold storage, and there is nothing to hunt--unless one is bounded on the north by the Bristol Channel, in which case one may l...
IT was a hot afternoon, and the railway carriage was correspondingly sultry, and the next stop was at Templecombe, nearly an hour ahead. The occupants of the carriage were a small girl, and a smaller girl, and a small boy. An aunt belonging to the ch...
