Read Online While the Light Lasts by Agatha Christie - Free Book Online

very successful with mental cases.
    â€˜Humour them, poor things,’ she would say comfortably.
    So she told Clare that she was a wardress from Pentonville Prison. Clare’s sentence, she said, had been commuted to penal servitude for life. A room was fitted up as a cell.
    â€˜And now, I think, we shall be quite happy and comfortable,’ said Nurse Lauriston to the doctor. ‘Round-bladed knives if you like, doctor, but I don’t think there’s the least fear of suicide. She’s not the type. Too self-centred. Funny how those are often the ones who go over the edge most easily.’

Afterword
    â€˜The Edge’ was first published in Pearson’s Magazine in February 1927, with the suggestive editorial comment that the story was ‘written just before this author’s recent illness and mysterious disappearance’. Late on the evening of 3 December 1926, Agatha Christie left her home in Berkshire. Early on the morning of the following day, her car was found, empty, at Newlands Corner near Shere in Surrey. Policemen and volunteers searched the countryside in vain, but a week and a half elapsed before various members of staff at a hotel in Harrogate realized that the guest who had registered under the name of Theresa Neele was in fact the missing novelist.
    After her return, Christie’s husband announced to the press that she had suffered ‘the most complete loss of memory’, but the circumstances surrounding this comparatively minor event in her life have givenrise to some speculation over the years. Even while Christie was missing, Edgar Wallace, the famous writer of thrillers, commented in a newspaper article that, if not dead, she ‘must be alive and in full possession of her faculties, probably in London. To put it vulgarly,’ Wallace continued, ‘her first intention seems to have been to “spite” an unknown person.’ Neele was the surname of the woman who went on to become the second wife of Archibald Christie and it has been suggested that, after abandoning her car in order to embarrass her husband, Christie spent the night of 3 December with friends in London before travelling to Harrogate. It has even been suggested that the disappearance was staged as some kind of bizarre publicity stunt. Nevertheless, although some aspects of the incident remain unclear, there is nothing to substantiate any of these various alternative ‘explanations’ which therefore are little more than idle speculation.

Christmas Adventure
    I
    The big logs crackled merrily in the wide, open fireplace, and above their crackling rose the babel of six tongues all wagging industriously together. The house-party of young people were enjoying their Christmas.
    Old Miss Endicott, known to most of those present as Aunt Emily, smiled indulgently on the clatter.
    â€˜Bet you you can’t eat six mince-pies, Jean.’
    â€˜Yes, I can.’
    â€˜No, you can’t.’
    â€˜You’ll get the pig out of the trifle if you do.’
    â€˜Yes, and three helps of trifle, and two helps of plum-pudding.’
    â€˜I hope the pudding will be good,’ said Miss Endicott apprehensively. ‘But they were only made three days ago. Christmas puddings ought to be made a long time before Christmas. Why, I remember when I was a child, I thought the last Collect before Advent–“Stirup, O Lord, we beseech Thee…”–referred in some way to stirring up the Christmas puddings!’
    There was a polite pause while Miss Endicott was speaking. Not because any of the young people were in the least interested in her reminiscences of bygone days, but because they felt that some show of attention was due by good manners to their hostess. As soon as she stopped, the babel burst out again. Miss Endicott sighed, and glanced towards the only member of the party whose years approached her own, as though in search of sympathy–a little man with a curious