He paused. ‘You agree?’

‘Yes. Take them.’ She pushed them towards him, then said suddenly: ‘That schoolgirl—the one who found them—I’d like her to have one of them—which—what colour do you think she’d like?’

Mr Robinson reflected. ‘An emerald, I think—green for mystery. A good idea of yours. She will find that very thrilling.’

He rose to his feet.

‘I shall charge you for my services, you know,’ said Mr Robinson. ‘And my charges are pretty high. But I shan’t cheat you.’

She gave him a level glance.

‘No, I don’t think you will. And I need someone who knows about business, because I don’t.’

‘You seem a very sensible woman if I may say so. Now then, I’m to take these? You don’t want to keep—just one—say?’

He watched her with curiosity, the sudden flicker of excitement, the hungry covetous eyes—and then the flicker died.

‘No,’ said Alice. ‘I won’t keep—even one.’ She flushed. ‘Oh I daresay that seems daft to you—not to keep just one big ruby or an emerald—just as a keepsake. But you see, he and I—he was a Moslem but he let me read bits now and again out of the Bible. And we read that bit—about a woman whose price was above rubies. And so—I won’t have any jewels. I’d rather not…’

‘A most unusual woman,’ said Mr Robinson to himself as he walked down the path and into his waiting Rolls.

He repeated to himself,

‘A most unusual woman…’

E-Book Extras

The Poirots

Essay by Charles Osborne

The Poirots

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 ; Black Coffee ; Peril at End House ; Lord Edgware Dies ; Murder on the Orient Express ; Three-Act Tragedy ; Death in the Clouds ; The ABC 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 Labours of Hercules ; Taken at the Flood ; Mrs McGinty’s Dead ; After the Funeral ; Hickory Dickory Dock ; Dead Man’s Folly ; Cat Among the Pigeons ; The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding ; The Clocks ; Third Girl ; Hallowe’en Party ; Elephants Can Remember ; Poirot’s Early Cases ; Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

Captain Arthur Hastings, invalided in the Great War, is recuperating as a guest of John Cavendish at Styles Court, the ‘country-place’ of John’s autocratic old aunt, Emily Inglethorpe—she of a sizeable fortune, and so recently remarried to a man twenty years her junior. When Emily’s sudden heart attack is found to be attributable to strychnine, Hastings recruits an old friend, now retired, to aid in the local investigation. With impeccable timing, Hercule Poirot, the renowned Belgian detective, makes his dramatic entrance into the pages of crime literature.