Triangle at Rhodes: A Hercule Poirot Short Story

Triangle at Rhodes: A Hercule Poirot Short Story Agatha Christie A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time as an ebook.This electric short story begins in October on the island of Rhodes, a veritable paradise of privacy, beauty and calm, or so Hercule Poirot has imagined. The reality is quite startlingly different; as each woman lies bathing in the bright sun the idyll is disturbed by the arrival of famed Chanel beauty Valentine Chantry and a ripple of malice is felt across the island. Captivated by her wiles and immaculate good looks one young married man falters, closely watched by Valentine’s brooding husband and all before the holidaymakers and the watchful eye of Poirot. Amidst the heady pink gins and close quarters Poirot senses that someone has murder in their heart, and he guesses right. Everything comes to a tragic pinnacle and only Poirot the quiet observer can piece together what has happened within this lover’s triangle. Triangle at Rhodes A Short Story by Agatha Christie Copyright (#u9f8a76bd-36a2-5a6d-829e-00d345d1f912) Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) Copyrig© 2011 Agatha Christie Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, 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 e-books. EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780007451968 Version: 2017-04-19 Contents Cover (#u4355575c-3154-55e8-94f9-c51141b38930) Title Page (#ub75f8b99-7edb-5fe2-a9fc-848de18ca2cf) Copyright Triangle at Rhodes Related Products (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Triangle at Rhodes (#ulink_0a7905b8-d005-51d2-8461-dbce592e2ebd) ‘Triangle at Rhodes’ was first published in the USA in This Week, 2 February 1936, then as ‘Poirot and the Triangle at Rhodes’ in The Strand, May 1936. Hercule Poirot sat on the white sand and looked out across the sparkling blue water. He was carefully dressed in a dandified fashion in white flannels and a large panama hat protected his head. He belonged to the old-fashioned generation which believed in covering itself carefully from the sun. Miss Pamela Lyall, who sat beside him and talked ceaselessly, represented the modern school of thought in that she was wearing the barest minimum of clothing on her sun-browned person. Occasionally her flow of conversation stopped whilst she reanointed herself from a bottle of oily fluid which stood beside her. On the farther side of Miss Pamela Lyall her great friend, Miss Sarah Blake, lay face downwards on a gaudily-striped towel. Miss Blake’s tanning was as perfect as possible and her friend cast dissatisfied glances at her more than once. ‘I’m so patchy still,’ she murmured regretfully. ‘M. Poirot – would you mind? Just below the right shoulder-blade – I can’t reach to rub it in properly.’ M. Poirot obliged and then wiped his oily hand carefully on his handkerchief. Miss Lyall, whose principal interests in life were the observation of people round her and the sound of her own voice, continued to talk. ‘I was right about that woman – the one in the Chanel model – it is Valentine Dacres – Chantry, I mean. I thought it was. I recognized her at once. She’s really rather marvellous, isn’t she? I mean I can understand how people go quite crazy about her. She just obviously expects them to! That’s half the battle. Those other people who came last night are called Gold. He’s terribly good-looking.’ ‘Honeymooners?’ murmured Sarah in a stifled voice. Miss Lyall shook her head in an experienced manner. ‘Oh, no – her clothes aren’t new enough. You can always tell brides! Don’t you think it’s the most fascinating thing in the world to watch people, M. Poirot, and see what you can find out about them by just looking?’ ‘Not just looking, darling,’ said Sarah sweetly. ‘You ask a lot of questions, too.’ ‘I haven’t even spoken to the Golds yet,’ said Miss Lyall with dignity. ‘And anyway I don’t see why one shouldn’t be interested in one’s fellow-creatures? Human nature is simply fascinating. Don’t you think so, M. Poirot?’ This time she paused long enough to allow her companion to reply. Without taking his eyes off the blue water, M. Poirot replied: ‘?a depend.’ Pamela was shocked. ‘Oh, M. Poirot! I don’t think anything’s so interesting – so incalculable as a human being!’ ‘Incalculable? That, no.’ ‘Oh, but they are. Just as you think you’ve got them beautifully taped – they do something completely unexpected.’ Hercule Poirot shook his head. ‘No, no, that is not true. It is most rare that anyone does an action that is not dans son caract?re. It is in the end monotonous.’ ‘I don’t agree with you at all!’ said Miss Pamela Lyall. She was silent for quite a minute and a half before returning to the attack. ‘As soon as I see people I begin wondering about them – what they’re like – what relations they are to each other – what they’re thinking and feeling. It’s – oh, it’s quite thrilling.’ ‘Hardly that,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘Nature repeats herself more than one would imagine. The sea,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘has infinitely more variety.’ Sarah turned her head sideways and asked: ‘You think that human beings tend to reproduce certain patterns? Stereotyped patterns?’ ‘Pr?cis?ment,’ said Poirot, and traced a design in the sand with his finger. ‘What’s that you’re drawing?’ asked Pamela curiously. ‘A triangle,’ said Poirot. But Pamela’s attention had been diverted elsewhere. ‘Here are the Chantrys,’ she said. A woman was coming down the beach – a tall woman, very conscious of herself and her body. She gave a half-nod and smile and sat down a little distance away on the beach. The scarlet and gold silk wrap slipped down from her shoulders. She was wearing a white bathing-dress. Pamela sighed. ‘Hasn’t she got a lovely figure?’ But Poirot was looking at her face – the face of a woman of thirty-nine who had been famous since sixteen for her beauty. He knew, as everyone knew, all about Valentine Chantry. She had been famous for many things – for her caprices, for her wealth, for her enormous sapphire-blue eyes, for her matrimonial ventures and adventures. She had had five husbands and innumerable lovers. She had in turn been the wife of an Italian count, of an American steel magnate, of a tennis professional, of a racing motorist. Of these four the American had died, but the others had been shed negligently in the divorce court. Six months ago she had married a fifth time – a commander in the navy. He it was who came striding down the beach behind her. Silent, dark – with a pugnacious jaw and a sullen manner. A touch of the primeval ape about him. She said: ‘Tony darling – my cigarette case …’ He had it ready for her – lighted her cigarette – helped her to slip the straps of the white bathing-dress from her shoulders. She lay, arms outstretched in the sun. He sat by her like some wild beast that guards its prey. Pamela said, her voice just lowered sufficiently: ‘You know they interest me frightfully … He’s such a brute! So silent and – sort of glowering. I suppose a woman of her kind likes that. It must be like controlling a tiger! I wonder how long it will last. She gets tired of them very soon, I believe – especially nowadays. All the same, if she tried to get rid of him, I think he might be dangerous.’ Another couple came down the beach – rather shyly. They were the newcomers of the night before. Mr and Mrs Douglas Gold as Miss Lyall knew from her inspection of the hotel visitors’ book. She knew, too, for such were the Italian regulations – their Christian names and their ages as set down from their passports. Mr Douglas Cameron Gold was thirty-one and Mrs Marjorie Emma Gold was thirty-five. Miss Lyall’s hobby in life, as has been said, was the study of human beings. Unlike most English people, she was capable of speaking to strangers on sight instead of allowing four days to a week to elapse before making the first cautious advance as is the customary British habit. She, therefore, noting the slight hesitancy and shyness of Mrs Gold’s advance, called out: ‘Good morning, isn’t it a lovely day?’ Mrs Gold was a small woman – rather like a mouse. She was not bad-looking, indeed her features were regular and her complexion good, but she had a certain air of diffidence and dowdiness that made her liable to be overlooked. Her husband, on the other hand, was extremely good-looking, in an almost theatrical manner. Very fair, crisply curling hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, narrow hips. He looked more like a young man on the stage than a young man in real life, but the moment he opened his mouth that impression faded. He was quite natural and unaffected, even, perhaps, a little stupid. Mrs Gold looked gratefully at Pamela and sat down near her. ‘What a lovely shade of brown you are. I feel terribly underdone!’ ‘One has to take a frightful lot of trouble to brown evenly,’ sighed Miss Lyall. She paused a minute and then went on: ‘You’ve only just arrived, haven’t you?’ ‘Yes. Last night. We came on the Vapo d’Italia boat.’ ‘Have you ever been to Rhodes before?’ ‘No. It is lovely, isn’t it?’ Her husband said: ‘Pity it’s such a long way to come.’ ‘Yes, if it were only nearer England –’ In a muffled voice Sarah said: ‘Yes, but then it would be awful. Rows and rows of people laid out like fish on a slab. Bodies everywhere!’ ‘That’s true, of course,’ said Douglas Gold. ‘It’s a nuisance the Italian exchange is so absolutely ruinous at present.’ ‘It does make a difference, doesn’t it?’ The conversation was running on strictly stereotyped lines. It could hardly have been called brilliant. A little way along the beach, Valentine Chantry stirred and sat up. With one hand she held her bathing-dress in position across her breast. She yawned, a wide yet delicate cat-like yawn. She glanced casually down the beach. Her eyes slanted past Marjorie Gold – and stayed thoughtfully on the crisp, golden head of Douglas Gold. She moved her shoulders sinuously. She spoke and her voice was raised a little higher than it need have been. ‘Tony darling – isn’t it divine – this sun? I simply must have been a sun worshipper once – don’t you think so?’ Her husband grunted something in reply that failed to reach the others. Valentine Chantry went on in that high, drawling voice. ‘Just pull that towel a little flatter, will you, darling?’ She took infinite pains in the resettling of her beautiful body. Douglas Gold was looking now. His eyes were frankly interested. Mrs Gold chirped happily in a subdued key to Miss Lyall. ‘What a beautiful woman!’ Pamela, as delighted to give as to receive information, replied in a lower voice: ‘That’s Valentine Chantry – you know, who used to be Valentine Dacres – she is rather marvellous, isn’t she? He’s simply crazy about her – won’t let her out of his sight!’ Mrs Gold looked once more along the beach. Then she said: ‘The sea really is lovely – so blue. I think we ought to go in now, don’t you, Douglas?’ He was still watching Valentine Chantry and took a minute or two to answer. Then he said, rather absently: ‘Go in? Oh, yes, rather, in a minute.’ Marjorie Gold got up and strolled down to the water’s edge. Valentine Chantry rolled over a little on one side. Her eyes looked along at Douglas Gold. Her scarlet mouth curved faintly into a smile. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/agata-kristi/triangle-at-rhodes-a-hercule-poirot-short-story/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. 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