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  He stopped.

  ‘What is it, sir?’

  ‘Be silent, mon ami. I have the kind of little idea–colossal, stupendous–that always comes sooner or later to Hercule Poirot. But if so–if that’s it–Oh, Lord, I hope I’m in time.’

  He raced out of the Park, Albert hard on his heels, inquiring breathlessly as he ran, ‘What’s up, sir? I don’t understand.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Tommy. ‘You’re not supposed to. Hastings never did. If your grey cells weren’t of a very inferior order to mine, what fun do you think I should get out of this game? I’m talking damned rot–but I can’t help it. You’re a good lad, Albert. You know what Tuppence is worth–she’s worth a dozen of you and me.’

  Thus talking breathlessly as he ran, Tommy reentered the portals of the Blitz. He caught sight of Evans, and drew him aside with a few hurried words. The two men entered the lift, Albert with them.

  ‘Third floor,’ said Tommy.

  At the door of No. 318 they paused. Evans had a pass key, and used it forthwith. Without a word of warning, they walked straight into Mrs Van Snyder’s bedroom. The lady was still lying on the bed, but was now arrayed in a becoming negligee. She stared at them in surprise.

  ‘Pardon my failure to knock,’ said Tommy pleasantly. ‘But I want my wife. Do you mind getting off that bed?’

  ‘I guess you’ve gone plumb crazy,’ cried Mrs Van Snyder.

  Tommy surveyed her thoughtfully, his head on one side.

  ‘Very artistic,’ he pronounced, ‘but it won’t do. We looked under the bed–but not in it. I remember using that hiding-place myself when young. Horizontally across the bed, underneath the bolster. And that nice wardrobe trunk all ready to take away the body in later. But we were a bit too quick for you just now. You’d had time to dope Tuppence, put her under the bolster, and be gagged and bound by your accomplices next door, and I’ll admit we swallowed your story all right for the moment. But when one came to think it out–with order and method–impossible to drug a girl, dress her in boys’ clothes, gag and bind another woman, and change one’s own appearance–all in five minutes. Simply a physical impossibility. The hospital nurse and the boy were to be a decoy. We were to follow that trail, and Mrs Van Snyder was to be pitied as a victim. Just help the lady off the bed, will you, Evans? You have your automatic? Good.’

  Protesting shrilly, Mrs Van Snyder was hauled from her place of repose. Tommy tore off the coverings and the bolster.

  There, lying horizontally across the top of the bed was Tuppence, her eyes closed, and her face waxen. For a moment Tommy felt a sudden dread, then he saw the slight rise and fall of her breast. She was drugged–not dead.

  He turned to Albert and Evans.

  ‘And now, Messieurs,’ he said dramatically, ‘the final coup!’

  With a swift, unexpected gesture he seized Mrs Van Snyder by her elaborately dressed hair. It came off in his hand.

  ‘As I thought,’ said Tommy. ‘No. 16!’

  II

  It was about half an hour later when Tuppence opened her eyes and found a doctor and Tommy bending over her.

  Over the events of the next quarter of an hour a decent veil had better be drawn, but after that period the doctor departed with the assurance that all was now well.

  ‘Mon ami, Hastings,’ said Tommy fondly. ‘How I rejoice that you are still alive.’

  ‘Have we got No. 16?’

  ‘Once more I have crushed him like an egg-shell–in other words, Carter’s got him. The little grey cells! By the way, I’m raising Albert’s wages.’

  ‘Tell me all about it.’

  Tommy gave her a spirited narrative, with certain omissions.

  ‘Weren’t you half frantic about me?’ asked Tuppence faintly.

  ‘Not particularly. One must keep calm, you know.’

  ‘Liar!’ said Tuppence. ‘You look quite haggard still.’

  ‘Well, perhaps, I was just a little worried, darling. I say–we’re going to give it up now, aren’t we?’

  ‘Certainly we are.’

  Tommy gave a sigh of relief.

  ‘I hoped you’d be sensible. After a shock like this –’

  ‘It’s not the shock. You know I never mind shocks.’

  ‘A rubber bone–indestructible,’ murmured Tommy.

  ‘I’ve got something better to do,’ continued Tuppence. ‘Something ever so much more exciting. Something I’ve never done before.’

  Tommy looked at her with lively apprehension.

  ‘I forbid it, Tuppence.’

  ‘You can’t,’ said Tuppence. ‘It’s a law of nature.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Tuppence?’

  ‘I’m talking,’ said Tuppence, ‘of Our Baby. Wives don’t whisper nowadays. They shout. OUR BABY! Tommy, isn’t everything marvellous?’

  About Agatha Christie

  Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in 100 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Mrs Christie is the author of eighty crime novels and short story collections, nineteen plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.

  Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was written towards the end of World War I (during which she served in the Voluntary Aid Detachments). In it she created Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian investigator who was destined to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. After having been rejected by a number of houses, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was eventually published by The Bodley Head in 1920.

  In 1926, now averaging a book a year, Agatha Christie wrote her masterpiece. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the first of her books to be published by William Collins and marked the beginning of an author-publisher relationship that lasted for fifty years and produced over seventy books. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was also the first of Agatha Christie’s works to be dramatised—as Alibi—and to have a successful run in London’s West End. The Mousetrap, her most famous play, opened in 1952 and runs to this day at St Martin’s Theatre in the West End; it is the longest-running play in history.

  Agatha Christie was made a Dame in 1971. She died in 1976, since when a number of her books have been published: the bestselling novel Sleeping Murder appeared in 1976, followed by An Autobiography and the short story collections Miss Marple’s Final Cases; Problem at Pollensa Bay; and While the Light Lasts. In 1998, Black Coffee was the first of her plays to be novelised by Charles Osborne, Mrs Christie’s biographer.

  Credits

  Cover by www.juliejenkinsdesign.com © HarperCollins/Agatha Christie Ltd 2007

  The Agatha Christie Collection

  Christie Crime Classics

  The Man in the Brown Suit

  The Secret of Chimneys

  The Seven Dials Mystery

  The Mysterious Mr Quin

  The Sittaford Mystery

  The Hound of Death

  The Listerdale Mystery

  Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

  Parker Pyne Investigates

  Murder Is Easy

  And Then There Were None

  Towards Zero

  Death Comes as the End

  Sparkling Cyanide

  Crooked House

  They Came to Baghdad

  Destination Unknown

  Spider’s Web *

  The Unexpected Guest *

  Ordeal by Innocence

  The Pale Horse

  Endless Night

  Passenger To Frankfurt

  Problem at Pollensa Bay

  While the Light Lasts

  Hercule Poirot Investigates

  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 Tr
ain

  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

  Miss Marple Mysteries

  The Murder at the Vicarage

  The Thirteen Problems

  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’s Final Cases

  Tommy & Tuppence

  The Secret Adversary

  Partners in Crime

  N or M?

  By the Pricking of My Thumbs

  Postern of Fate

  Published as Mary Westmacott

  Giant’s Bread

  Unfinished Portrait

  Absent in the Spring

  The Rose and the Yew Tree

  A Daughter’s a Daughter

  The Burden

  Memoirs

  An Autobiography

  Come, Tell Me How You Live

  Play Collections

  The Mousetrap and Selected Plays

  Witness for the Prosecution and Selected Plays

  * novelised by Charles Osborne

  www.agathachristie.com

  For more information about Agatha Christie, please visit the official website.

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the authors’ imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  PARTNERS IN CRIME. Copyright © 1929 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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 March 2008 ISBN 9780061749056

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