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Appointment with Death
Agatha Christie
A repugnant Amercian widow is killed during a trip to Petra…Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sat the corpse of Mrs Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist was the only sign of the fatal injection that had killed her.With only 24 hours available to solve the mystery, Hercule Poirot recalled a chance remark he’d overheard back in Jerusalem: ‘You see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?’ Mrs Boynton was, indeed, the most detestable woman he’d ever met…
Copyright (#ulink_9abb0a97-6f9f-5851-8de1-ec6dfaa7a00a)
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.
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1938
Copyright © 1938 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved.
www.agathachristie.com (http://www.agathachristie.com/)
Agatha Christie 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
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
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007119356
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007422142
Version: 2017-07-18
To Richard and Myra Mallock to remind them of their journey to Petra
Contents
Cover
Title Page (#ufb83a7a3-160c-5b2a-9ad9-4164d3a0a606)
Copyright (#ulink_32fc0119-d513-5925-aeeb-5dfb53609998)
Dedication (#u6fc52529-2adb-51d0-b754-274734f12514)
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part II
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
E-book Extras
About Agatha Christie
The Agatha Christie Collection
www.agathachristie.com
About the Publisher
Part I (#ulink_e757407b-0602-52a1-8536-4575dc0c8417)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_a1f24205-f17a-572e-9af5-4738e61a2dc8)
‘You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?’
The question floated out into the still night air, seemed to hang there a moment and then drift away down into the darkness towards the Dead Sea.
Hercule Poirot paused a minute with his hand on the window catch. Frowning, he shut it decisively, thereby excluding any injurious night air! Hercule Poirot had been brought up to believe that all outside air was best left outside, and that night air was especially dangerous to the health.
As he pulled the curtains neatly over the window and walked to his bed, he smiled tolerantly to himself.
‘You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?’
Curious words for one Hercule Poirot, detective, to overhear on his first night in Jerusalem.
‘Decidedly, wherever I go, there is something to remind me of crime!’ he murmured to himself.
His smile continued as he remembered a story he had once heard concerning Anthony Trollope the novelist. Trollope was crossing the Atlantic at the time and had overheard two fellow passengers discussing the last published instalment of one of his novels.
‘Very good,’ one man had declared. ‘But he ought to kill off that tiresome old woman.’
With a broad smile the novelist had addressed them:
‘Gentlemen, I am much obliged to you! I will go and kill her immediately!’
Hercule Poirot wondered what had occasioned the words he had just overheard. A collaboration, perhaps, over a play or a book.
He thought, still smiling: ‘Those words might be remembered, one day, and given a more sinister meaning.’
There had been, he now recollected, a curious nervous intensity in the voice—a tremor that spoke of some intense emotional strain. A man’s voice—or a boy’s…
Hercule Poirot thought to himself as he turned out the light by his bed: ‘I should know that voice again…’
II
Their elbows on the window-sill, their heads close together, Raymond and Carol Boynton gazed out into the blue depths of the night. Nervously, Raymond repeated his former words: ‘You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?’
Carol Boynton stirred slightly. She said, her voice deep and hoarse: ‘It’s horrible…’
‘It’s not more horrible than this!’
‘I suppose not…’
Raymond said violently: ‘It can’t go on like this—it can’t…We must do something…And there isn’t anything else we can do…’
Carol said—but her voice was unconvincing and she knew it: ‘If we could get away somehow—?’
‘We can’t.’ His voice was empty and hopeless. ‘Carol, you know we can’t…’
The girl shivered. ‘I know, Ray—I know.’
He gave a sudden short, bitter laugh.
‘People would say we were crazy—not to be able just to walk out—’
Carol said slowly: ‘Perhaps we—are crazy!’
‘I dare say. Yes, I dare say we are. Anyway, we soon shall be…I suppose some people would say we are already—here we are calmly planning, in cold blood, to kill our own mother!’
Carol said sharply: ‘She isn’t our own mother!’
‘No, that’s true.’
There was a pause and then Raymond said, his voice now quietly matter-of-fact: ‘You do agree, Carol?’
Carol answered steadily: ‘I think she ought to die—yes…’
Then she broke out suddenly: ‘She’s mad…I’m quite sure she’s mad…She—she couldn’t torture us like she does if she were sane. For years we’ve been saying: “This can’t go on!” and it has gone on! We’ve said, “She’ll die some time”—but she hasn’t died! I don’t think she ever will die unless—’
Raymond said steadily: ‘Unless we kill her…’
‘Yes.’
