I think I shall appoint you my literary executor. I’m sending you my diary. There’s nothing in it that would interest Race and his crowd, but I fancy that there are passages in it which may amuse you. Make use of it in any way you like. I suggest an article for the Daily Budget, “Criminals I have met.” I only stipulate that I shall be the central figure.
By this time I have no doubt that you are no longer Anne Beddingfeld, but Lady Eardsley, queening it in Park Lane. I should just like to say that I bear you no malice whatever. It is hard, of course, to have to begin all over again at my time of life, but, entre nous, I had a little reserve fund carefully put aside for such a contingency. It has come in very usefully and I am getting together a nice little connexion. By the way, if you ever come across that funny friend of yours, Arthur Minks, just tell him that I haven’t forgotten him, will you? That will give him a nasty jar.
On the whole I think I have displayed a most Christian and forgiving spirit. Even to Pagett. I happened to hear that he—or rather Mrs. Pagett—had brought a sixth child into the world the other day. England will be entirely populated by Pagetts soon. I sent the child a silver mug, and, on a postcard, declared my willingness to act as godfather. I can see Pagett taking both mug and postcard straight to Scotland Yard without a smile on his face!
Bless you, liquid eyes. Some day you will see what a mistake you have made in not marrying me.
Yours ever
Eustace Pedler
Harry was furious. It is the one point on which he and I do not see eye to eye. To him, Sir Eustace was the man who tried to murder me and whom he regards as responsible for the death of his friend. Sir Eustace’s attempts on my life have always puzzled me. They are not in the picture, so to speak. For I am sure that he always had a genuinely kindly feeling towards me.
Then why did he twice attempt to take my life? Harry says “because he’s a damned scoundrel,” and seems to think that settles the matter. Suzanne was more discriminating. I talked it over with her, and she put it down to a “fear complex.” Suzanne goes in rather for psychoanalysis. She pointed out to me that Sir Eustace’s whole life was actuated by a desire to be safe and comfortable. He had an acute sense of self-preservation. And the murder of Nadina removed certain inhibitions. His actions did not represent the state of his feeling towards me, but were the result of his acute fears for his own safety. I think Suzanne is right. As for Nadina, she was the kind of woman who deserved to die. Men do all sorts of questionable things in order to get rich, but women shouldn’t pretend to be in love when they aren’t for ulterior motives.
I can forgive Sir Eustace easily enough, but I shall never forgive Nadina. Never, never, never!
The other day I was unpacking some tins that were wrapped in bits of an old Daily Budget, and I suddenly came upon the words, “The Man in the Brown Suit.” How long ago it seemed! I had, of course, severed my connexion with the Daily Budget long ago—I had done with it sooner than it had done with me. MY ROMANTIC WEDDING was given a halo of publicity.
My son is lying in the sun, kicking his legs. There’s a “man in a brown suit” if you like. He’s wearing as little as possible, which is the best costume for Africa, and is as brown as a berry. He’s always burrowing in the earth. I think he takes after Papa. He’ll have that same mania for Pleistocene clay.
Suzanne sent me a cable when he was born:
“Congratulations and love to the latest arrival on Lunatics’ Island. Is his head dolichocephalic or brachycephalic?”
I wasn’t going to stand that from Suzanne. I sent her a reply of one word, economical and to the point:
“Platycephalic!”
About the Author
Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott.
She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. With The Murder in the Vicarage, published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.
Many of Christie’s novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film adaptations are Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie.
Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain’s highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010.
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The Agatha Christie Collection
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr. Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
Parker Pyne Investigates
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Murder Is Easy
The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death Comes as the End
Sparkling Cyanide
The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories
Crooked House
They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Ordeal by Innocence
Double Sin and Other Stories
The Pale Horse
Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories
Endless Night
Passenger to Frankfurt
The Golden Ball and Other Stories
The Mousetrap and Other Plays
The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories
The Hercule Poirot Mysteries
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder on the Links
Poirot Investigates
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Big Four
The Mystery of the Blue Train
Peril at End House
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express
Three Act Tragedy
Death in the Clouds
The A.B.C. Murders
Murder in Mesopotamia
Cards on the Table
Murder in the Mews
Dumb Witness
Death on the Nile
Appointment with Death
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Sad Cypress
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
Evil Under the Sun
Five Little Pigs
The Hollow
The Labors of Hercules
The Under Dog and Other Stories
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead
After the Funeral
Hickory Dickory Dock
Dead Man’s Folly
Cat Among the Pigeons
The Clocks
Third Girl
Hallowe’en Party
Elephants Can Remem
ber
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
The Miss Marple Mysteries
The Murder at the Vicarage
The Body in the Library
The Moving Finger
A Murder Is Announced
They Do It with Mirrors
A Pocket Full of Rye
4:50 from Paddington
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
A Caribbean Mystery
At Bertram’s Hotel
Nemesis
Sleeping Murder
Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories
The Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries
The Secret Adversary
Partners in Crime
N or M?
By the Pricking of My Thumbs
Postern of Fate
Memoirs
An Autobiography
Come, Tell Me How You Live
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
AGATHA CHRISTIE® THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT™. Copyright © 1924 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.
THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT © 1924. Published by permission of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 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 ebook 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 ebooks.
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FIRST WILLIAM MORROW TRADE PAPERBACK PUBLISHED 2012.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-06-207437-9
Epub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN:978-0-06-200665-3
12 13 14 15 16 DIX/BVG 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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