32 MISS MAR PLE- Agatha Christie - short stories

suspected him. He said it was a sudden temptation. He too loved Diana Ashley, but he was only a poor struggling barrister. With Richard out of the way and inheriting his title and estates, he saw a wonderful prospect opening up before him. The dagger had jerked out of his belt as he knelt down by his cousin, and almost before he had time to think, he drove it in and returned it to his belt again. He stabbed himself later in order to divert suspicion. He wrote to me on the eve of starting on an expedition to the South Pole in case, as he said, he should never come back. I do not think that he meant to come back, and I know that, as Miss Mar-pie has said, his crime profited him nothing. 'For five years,' he wrote, 'I have lived in Hell. I hope, at least that I may expiate my crime by dying honourably.'" There was a pause. "And he did die honourably," said Sir Henry. "You have changed the names in your story, Dr. Pender, but I think I recognize the man you mean." "As I said," went on the old clergyman, "I do not think that explanation quite covers the facts. I still think there was an evil influence in that grove, an influence that directed Elliot Haydon's action. Even to this day I can never think without a shudder of The Idol House of Astarte." Ingots of Gold I do not know that the story that I am going to tell you is a fair one," said Raymond West, "because I can't give you the solution of it. Yet the facts were so interesting and so curious that I should like to propound it to you as a problem, and perhaps between us we may arrive at some logical conclusion. "The date of these happenings was two years ago, when I went down to spend Whitsuntide with a man called John Newman, in Cornwall." ' "Cornwall?" said Joyce Lemprire sharply. "Yes. Why?" "Nothing. Only it's odd. My story is about a place in Cornwall, tooa little fishing village called Rathole. Don't tell me yours is the same?" "No. My village is called Polperran. It is situated on the west coast of Cornwall; a very wild and rocky spot. I had been introduced a few weeks previously and had found him a most interesting companion. A man of intelligence and independent means, he was possessed of a romantic imagination. As a result of his latest hobby he had taken the lease of Pol House. He was an authority on Elizabethan times, and he described to me in vivid and graphic language the rout of to download complete story http://www.4shared.com/get/ouTsKRL4/Agatha_Christie-uk-Complete_sh.html