The Seven Dials Mystery (30 page)

“I'm very tough,” said Bundle. “And also rather lucky. What I can't get over is Loraine being in it. She was such a gentle little thing.”

“Ah!” said the Superintendent. “So was the Pentonville murderess that killed five children. You can't go by that. She's got bad blood in her—her father ought to have seen the inside of a prison more than once.”

“You've got her too?”

Superintendent Battle nodded.

“I daresay they won't hang her—juries are softhearted. But young Thesiger will swing all right—and a good thing too—a more utterly depraved and callous criminal I never met.”

“And now,” he added, “if your head isn't aching too badly, Lady Eileen, what about a little celebration? There's a nice little restaurant round the corner.”

Bundle heartily agreed.

“I'm starving, Superintendent Battle. Besides,” she looked round. “I've got to get to know all my colleagues.”

“The Seven Dials,” said Bill. “Hurrah! Some fizz is what we need. Do they run to fizz at this place, Battle?”

“You won't have anything to complain of, sir. You leave it to me.”

“Superintendent Battle,” said Bundle, “you are a wonderful man. I'm sorry you're married already. As it is, I shall have to put up with Bill.”

Thirty-four

L
ORD
C
ATERHAM
A
PPROVES

“F
ather,” said Bundle, “I've got to break a piece of news to you. You're going to lose me.”

“Nonsense,” said Lord Caterham. “Don't tell me that you're suffering from galloping consumption or a weak heart or anything like that, because I simply don't believe it.”

“It's not death,” said Bundle. “It's marriage.”

“Very nearly as bad,” said Lord Caterham. “I suppose I shall have to come to the wedding, all dressed up in tight uncomfortable clothes, and give you away. And Lomax may think it necessary to kiss me in the vestry.”

“Good heavens! You don't think I'm going to marry George, do you?” cried Bundle.

“Well, something like that seemed to be in the wind last time I saw you,” said her father. “Yesterday morning, you know.”

“I'm going to be married to someone a hundred times nicer than George,” said Bundle.

“I hope so, I'm sure,” said Lord Caterham. “But one never knows. I don't feel you're really a good judge of character, Bundle. You told me that young Thesiger was a cheerful inefficient, and from all I hear now it seems that he was one of the most efficient criminals of the day. The sad thing is that I never met him. I was thinking of writing my reminiscences soon—with a special chapter on murderers I have met—and by a purely technical oversight, I never met this young man.”

“Don't be silly,” said Bundle. “You know you haven't got the energy to write reminiscences or anything else.”

“I wasn't actually going to write them myself,” said Lord Caterham. “I believe that's never done. But I met a very charming girl the other day and that's her special job. She collects the material and does all the actual writing.”

“And what do you do?”

“Oh, just give her a few facts for half an hour every day. Nothing more than that.” After a slight pause, Lord Catherham said: “She was a nice-looking girl—very restful and sympathetic.”

“Father,” said Bundle, “I have a feeling that without me you will run into deadly danger.”

“Different kinds of danger suit different kinds of people,” said Lord Caterham.

He was moving away, when he turned back and said over his shoulder:

“By the way, Bundle, who
are
you marrying?”

“I was wondering,” said Bundle, “when you were going to ask me that. I'm going to marry Bill Eversleigh.”

The egoist thought it over for a minute. Then he nodded in complete satisfaction.

“Excellent,” he said. “He's scratch, isn't he? He and I can play together in the foursomes in the Autumn Meeting.”

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.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

www.AgathaChristie.com

T
HE
A
GATHA
C
HRISTIE
C
OLLECTION

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

Three Blind Mice and Other Stories

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

Taken at the Flood

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 Remember

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