Part 12 (2/2)

Borneo in a rubber planter's bungalow.”

”But the essential point on which the story turns is the same,” said Poirot.

”One of your neatest tricks. The rubber planter arranges his own murder--the

Cabinet Minister arranges the robbery of his own papers. At the last minute the

third person steps in and turns deception into reality.”

”I enjoyed your last, Mrs. Oliver,” said Superintendent Battle kindly. ”The

one where all the Chief Constables were shot simultaneously. You just slipped up

once or twice on official details. I know you're keen on accuracy, so I wondered

if-”

Mrs. Oliver interrupted him.

”As a matter of fact I don't care two pins about accuracy. Who is accurate?

n.o.body nowadays. If a reporter writes that a beautiful girl of twenty-two dies by

turning on the gas after looking out over the sea and kissing her favourite labrador,

Bob, good-bye, does anybody make a fuss because the girl was twenty-six, the

room faced inland, and the dog was a Sealyham terrier called Bonnie? If a journalist

can do that sort of thing, I don't see that it matters if I mix up police ranks and say a

revolver when I mean an automatic, and a dictograph when I mean a phonograph,

and use a poison that just allows you to gasp one dying sentence and no more.

What really matters is plenty of bodies! If the thing's getting a little dull, some more blood cheers it up. Somebody is going to tell something--and then they're

killed first! That always goes down well. It comes in all my books-camoufiaged

different ways, of course. And people like untraceable poisons, and idiotic police

inspectors and girls tied up in cellars with sewer gas or water pouring in (such a

troublesome way of killing any one really) and a hero who can dispose of anything

from three to seven villains single-handed. I've written thirty-two books by now--

and of course they're all exactly the same really, as M. Poirot seems to have

noticed--but n.o.body else has--and I only regret one thing--making my detective

a Finn. I don't really know anything about Finns and I'm always getting letters

from Finland pointing out something impossible that he's said or done. They seem

to read detective stories a good deal in Finland. I suppose it's the long winters with

no daylight. In Bulgaria and Roumania they don't seem to read at all. I'd have done better to have made him a Bulgar.”

She broke off.

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