id="ud25e88d8-50b8-5579-86aa-21341c361a89">
AGATHA CHRISTIE
Hercule Poirot
and
the Greenshore Folly
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly © Mathew Prichard 2013
Foreword from Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks © John Curran 2009
AGATHA CHRISTIE® and POIROT® are registered trade marks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and/or elsewhere. All rights reserved.
Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007546398
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007546404
Version: 2017-04-11
CONTENTS
Copyright
Introduction by Tom Adams
Preface by Mathew Prichard
Foreword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
‘Agatha Christie and The Greenshore Folly’ by John Curran
About the Author
Also by Agatha Christie
About the Publisher
MORE THAN half a century ago – 1962 to be precise – my impressively-named and enthusiastic agent, Virgil Pomfret, took me to meet the art director of Fontana Paperbacks, Patsy Cohen. On her desk was a copy of The Collector, John Fowles’ first published novel. It had been commissioned by Tony Colwell, art director at Jonathan Cape, and was my first serious attempt at trompe l’oeil painting for jacket art. It was a good time to be producing art for book covers. Good art was notably lacking in this field, particularly for paperbacks. In fact, the general standard was pretty dire, and the time was ripe for raising the bar. Up to then I had enjoyed doing serious paintings for hardback jackets, which included John Fowles’ The Magus, Patrick White’s Vivisector and David Storey’s Saville. Paperback covers were more often than not the poor second class products of publishers’ lists (with exceptions such as the original typographical Penguin covers), but virtually no serious attempt had been made to commission good art for paperbacks. However with the enthusiastic encouragement of Mark Collins, Virgil Pomfret and Patsy Cohen, I think we succeeded in doing just that.
From 1962 onwards, my relationship with Agatha Christie developed and prospered as I produced more than a hundred cover paintings for her books over twenty-five years. To begin with I simply enjoyed doing a good job. There were inevitably some failures and I know that I didn’t always please Agatha or her family. I am frequently asked if I met Agatha. I’m afraid the answer is no. Arrangements were made for various meetings; I did meet Rosalind Hicks, her daughter, Edmund Cork, her agent, and other members of her entourage, but Agatha’s legendary reticence and occasional illness prevented her from accepting invitations for us to meet. In retrospect I think it was just as well; it might have been embarrassing for both of us to discuss the likes and dislikes of various cover images. Nevertheless, for me it is a niggling regret. More recently, since my exhibition of Agatha Christie cover paintings at Torquay Museum in 2012, I have on several occasions met Mathew Prichard, a devoted and eloquent advocate of his grandmother’s achievements. Mathew and his wife Lucy have been a tower of strength and gratifyingly appreciative of my work. They helped and encouraged me in my recent endeavours on Agatha’s behalf, in particular while working on the cover painting for Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly, and they arranged with the National Trust to make Greenway House and garden available for my research. Once, after a delightful lunch with Mathew and Lucy at Ferry Cottage, and with my wife, the children’s writer Georgie Adams, we were taken on a memorable boat trip on the River Dart.
I was delighted when David Brawn, Publisher of Agatha Christie at HarperCollins, asked me to do this special cover painting for a so-far unpublished story. It is a shorter version of the excellent Dead Man’s Folly and a great excuse for me to revisit Greenway. Agatha’s second husband Max Mallowan described Greenway as ‘this little paradise’, and it was for Agatha ‘the loveliest place in the world’. And it is. The handsome, foursquare, no-nonsense Georgian house
