Prologue
New Year’s Resolutions
Before I properly knew any of the inhabitants of the house with three names, I knew what each of their New Year’s resolutions was for 1933. Let me tell you, it is as good a way as any to get to know a person. If deeper or accelerated acquaintance is what you’re after, then December 31 is the perfect day on which to meet somebody for the first time, for you will hear all about which habit they wish to abandon or introduce as soon as January rolls around.
I expect you would not believe me if I told you it is possible to solve a murder simply by reading a list of all the suspects’ New Year’s resolutions, while knowing no more about any of them.
Unlikely as it sounds, it is the truth. Though I do not intend to imply any comprehension of motive or anything like that. What I mean to say is that if one sought merely to separate the guilty from the innocent, let me assure you that on the small Greek island of Lamperos, as the hour staggered toward the summit of the final day of December, it was entirely possible to work out who had committed murder and who had not if one only read with sufficient care the list of resolutions I have provided below— and, indeed, that is why I plan to share that list with you before I tell you anything else, though I admit it is an unconventional way to begin a story.
pects précisément as you yourself met them?” he said, eyes glowing green and bright. “The resolutions they wrote down were the first significant morsels of information we had about them, n’est-ce pas? The words they each dropped into the bowl?”
Since Poirot and I were part of the assembled company at Liakada Bay that night, I shall include us on the list for completeness’ sake— and also to give you two reliable examples of what one might write on such an occasion if one were not planning to commit murder.
Here, then, are the collected New Year’s resolutions of the people present that night, December 31, 1932, at Liakada Bay:
- Edward Catchpool (your narrator: Inspector Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard, since I neglected to introduce myself at the start)— to swim in the sea every single day, without exception and irrespective of temperature or weather.
- Hercule Poirot— to discontinue the practice of proceeding directly from one event or appointment to another. Instead, to reserve time, in between bouts of activity, in which to do nothing at all, or for spontaneous, unplanned outings.
- Nash Athanasiou (real name Nathaniel, our host on Lamperos and leader of the group at what he called “The House of Perpetual Welcome,” what the Liakada Bay locals called Spíti Athanasiou, and what the exclusively English and American residents of the house all called The Spitty)— to complete ten practical assignments, to be devised for him by Austin Lanyon and Matthew Fair, (his two closest friends and chief advisors at the house), designed to turn him into a better living example of the fruits of the spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Long-suffering, Gentleness, Goodness, Meekness, Temperance, Faith and the most important one: Forgiveness. (One assignment for each “fruit’, he specified, and the challenges should be maximally taxing.)
- Austin Lanyon— to read and attempt to write poetry every day.
- Matthew Fair— to be tidier, less forgetful and more punctual.
- Olive Haslop— to be open, always, to learning new things and being proven wrong, and never to allow closed-mindedness to afflict her.
- Rhoda Haslop— to write a formal essay on the topic of the greatest of all the fruits of the spirit, Forgiveness, in order to understand it more thoroughly and practice it more effectively.
- Charles Counsell— to say nothing in someone’s absence, to a third party, that he would not be equally willing to say in their presence.
- Thirza Davis— to create a better and fairer world by never giving up on sound reason or justice.
- Betlinde (called “Belty” by everybody) Ricks— to wake earlier and not waste the start of any glorious day in this beautiful Greek paradise.
- Pearl St. Germain— to have said “yes” to a proposal of marriage from the man she loves by this time next year, having first persuaded him his resolution should be to make that proposal without further delay.
That was without doubt the hardest list I have ever had to type, and not only because the words “a proposal of marriage from the man she loves” in relation to the romance-addled Pearl St. Germain made me wince as my fingers tapped them into existence on the page. No, what made a particular agony of the task was my ability to see so clearly now what I did not perceive at the time. Today, the wickedness and the guilt positively leap from the page, but they did nothing of the sort last New Year’s Eve, nor in the days that followed. Poirot didn’t spot it either, though he is the shrewdest, most keen-eyed man I know. He, of course, was the one who pointed it out eventually— though not, sadly, in time to save the lives that were lost.
All of which is to say: while it is and always was possible to work out from the above list who was planning to commit murder, not all possibilities are realized, and that one, fatally, was not.
Furthermore, when Poirot finally worked out the truth, the list played no part in leading him to the correct conclusion.
Why? That is easy to answer: because, like me, he was comprehensively distracted by the twelfth resolution— the one I have not included in the above list, which contained not merely the word “murder” and the prospective victim’s name, but also the clearly stated intention to commit that crime.
Chapter 1
Arrival on Lamperos
The island of Lamperos, positioned in the Aegean Sea between the larger islands of Skiathos and Skopelos, was quite the most beautiful place I had ever visited— and the wonder of it started before one even arrived. As our boat sailed closer on the last day of the year of 1932, I could scarcely believe the vivid colors that sprang forth to greet us. Living in England, one imagines that Mother Nature is a more cautious, understated sort. It turns out that she is far more flamboyant off the coast of Greece: positively riotous when it comes to the brightness of every color. If it were not for the chill in the air, I should not have believed this was winter.
“Look, Poirot!” were the only words I could manage as I gazed at the azure sea and sands so blond they were almost white. “It is perfect.” We had almost reached the shore, and the port of Lamperos Town. I could see tiny figures in the distance— between ten and twenty people, no doubt waiting for the boat to take them back out to mainland Greece: the reverse of the journey Poirot and I had just undertaken.
“Yes, perfect— if one enjoys a large amount of sand and cold, salty water,” my Belgian friend replied. The green that normally confined itself to his eyes had spread to the rest of his face, I noticed, though I had asked him twice if he was feeling seasick and he had denied it. “Also, roads too rocky and uneven for motorcars,” he grumbled. “Do you know, Catchpool, that the only dependable means of getting around Lamperos are by foot, by bicycle or on a horse? There is only one short road— one!— along which motor vehicles would be able to drive. They do not, for there is nowhere for them to go at either end. Then why build such a road in the first place? It is madness, Catchpool.”
It all sounded wonderful to me. An island this small with a circumference made up almost entirely of beaches and bays— it was my idea of heaven on earth. In the approach to Christmas last year, Poirot and I had spent some time on the Norfolk coast. Ever since, I had been unable to banish from my mind the knowledge that some people— ordinary folk like me, not only the especially wealthy— lived their entire lives within easy strolling distance of the sea. My new awareness of this inconvenient fact was becoming rather a problem, since my job as a police inspector was at the undeniably landlocked Scotland Yard, and my favorite of all my friends, Hercule Poirot, was also very happily resident in London.
Determined to warn me in even more detail, he went on, “Do you know, also, that the horses here are particularly small? They have the special little native breed— the Lamperos Ponies, they call them. Less than four feet in height.”
“Sounds ingenious to me,” I said merrily. “One wouldn’t want huge beasts lumbering about on a tiny island.”
“And have I told you— no, I do not believe I have— that when we arrive at the port, we will nevertheless not yet have arrived? Even after all of these buses and boats we have already endured?”
He had a point there. I had never before undertaken a journey requiring quite so many transportation changes in such a short space of time. Before the gloriousness of Lamperos at close range had perked me up, I had been feeling quite exhausted, having engaged in what felt like a year’s worth of damp and inelegant clambering into and out of various moving contraptions.
“At the port of Lamperos Town, our friend Monsieur Nash will meet us with a smaller boat, to take us around the island to his home, Spíti Athanasiou,” said Poirot. “It is the most straightforward way to get there, I am told— but why, Catchpool, can we not be taken straight to Liakada Bay in this boat? That is what I would like to know.”
“Tell me more about the island,” I said, preparing to approve of every aspect and characteristic of the place. “And stop encouraging
me to resent our destination in advance. It was very kind of you to invite me to tag along, and I’m afraid you won’t succeed in spoiling it for me, no matter how grumpy you are. I’ve been looking forward to this holiday.”
I knew I did not need to remind Poirot that this was my hard-earned, post-Christmas break after a cheerless week spent in my childhood home with my parents, who seemed lately to dislike each other every bit as much as they disapproved of me. Had he not invited me to join him on his New Year’s holiday on a Greek island precisely to cheer me up after that very ordeal?
He had been far more enthusiastic then: “Mon ami,” he had said, gripping my arm. “You will love the tiny island of Lamperos. We will be staying in the most beautiful place there, Liakada Bay. It has sunshine all day long, even throughout the winter, and the house that will accommodate us is said to be the most extraordinary architectural creation. There are large stone terraces extending out from most of the rooms, on many different levels. Our host will be a young monsieur by the name of Nathaniel Athanasiou, known as Nash. He has told me he wishes for my friend Catchpool to be the very good friend of him also. Others live in the house too— all of whom wish to be our very good friends even before they have met us. Does that not sound appealing?”
I should probably have questioned him more extensively before agreeing to come to Lamperos, but I did not, largely because of the proximity of the sea to the house he had described. I had learned something about myself in the past year: days when I swim amid foaming waves and get to plunge my feet into the sand of the seabed and smell that tang of salt in the air are better days for me than when I do not, by a considerable order of magnitude. I had swum daily while Poirot and I were in Norfolk last December, but the house we had stayed in was atop a cliff, and getting all the way down and up again was a somewhat hazardous enterprise. Poirot, as a result, had known exactly what to tell me about the prospective Greek holiday: “At Liakada Bay, the sea is an easy walk from the house, I am told. Mere footsteps away. And remember, unlike Norfolk, Lamperos has the sunshine every day.”
This struck me as a little implausible, but Poirot insisted: “It is rumored to be Greece’s sunniest island. Also, you will not be bothered by the jellyfish in winter. They only come in the summer.”
spicious, but did not.
“I do not know a great deal about Lamperos,” Poirot said now in response to my request to hear more about the island. “All I know is . . .” I smiled at his definition of “not knowing a great deal,” as he settled into his narration: Lamperos was prone to earthquakes, so we would need to watch out for them, though it was extremely unlikely that one would coincide with our visit. Equally unlikely was that we would suffer the same fate as whichever daughter of a Greek god it was who had first been turned into a wolf, then kidnapped and brought to Lamperos, only to be kidnapped back again; I could not remember all the details, as I hadn’t given the tale my full attention.
Much more recently, the famous English war poet, James Gresham-Graham, author of “If, for a better day . . .”, died in 1915 at the age of 18 on a French hospital ship that was moored off the island’s coast. He was buried on Lamperos, just a short walk from Liakada Bay. “Then more death came to these shores,” Poirot said sadly. “In 1918, nearly half of the island’s inhabitants died of the Spanish Flu. The population of two thousand was reduced to only one thousand.”
Some of those, I imagined, lived in the little white houses I could see dotted all over what Poirot had described as “the famous Lamperos Mountain” and the surrounding hills.
No sooner had we disembarked from the boat than we were met by our host, Nathaniel Athanasiou, a tall, thin man with hair and eyes so dark they looked black. He wore a blue suit that might once have been smart but was now shabby, and had a slightly nervous manner when he insisted that Poirot and I call him Nash; it had been his nickname since childhood, he told us in a justificatory tone, as if afraid of our ridicule. “At least until we get to The Spitty,” he added. “That is what we all call the house. Spíti is ‘house’ in Greek. Once we arrive there, I am Próti Foní.”
I frowned to myself as he and Poirot walked on ahead, wondering what these words meant. Surely not that we would be required to start calling him something different once we arrived at his home . . .
“This is Rasmus, and that is his beloved Pelagia.” Nash pointed to a man with tanned skin who might have been anywhere between fifty and seventy, and who had neither hair nor eyebrows. He was standing about twenty feet away, leaning against a dilapidated mess of splintering wood that seemed to be trying to pass itself off as a boat. I heard a sharp intake of breath from Poirot, by my side.
Having looked around for Rasmus’s female companion and spotted nobody at all— he seemed to have placed himself where he was in order to avoid proximity to all other people— I worked out that Pelagia must be the name of his boat. This proved an accurate guess.
“Shall we hop on board?” Nash suggested. As the three of us approached, Rasmus nodded and climbed back onto his craft without looking at any of us or uttering a single word. “He speaks no English,” Nash explained, “but he somehow understands everything. I have been told he is from Estonia, but also that he was born in Norway. I don’t suppose it matters. The wonderful thing about Rasmus is that he is always ready to take one back and forth between Liakada Bay and Lamperos Town, and to any of the island’s other bays and coves. He really is a marvel. I cannot tell you what language he speaks, however. He does not tend to say much in any tongue and seems only to understand direct instructions to him. He won’t understand any of what I am saying now, for instance. It’s only when he is required to assist us that our words seem to make sense to him.”
As he placed his first foot into the Pelagia, leaning on my arm, Poirot murmured, “Que Dieu nous protège.” His skin looked suddenly quite green again as the frothing waves started to rock us back and forth.
“Do not worry, the boat is quite safe,” Nash assured him, looking and sounding worried himself. It felt almost as if he intended to imply that the boat was perhaps the only safe thing . . . but I told myself not to be so fanciful. Surely, on a beautiful island like Lamperos, there could be no cause for alarm, especially when one was off, as Poirot and I were, to spend some time in the company of those so keen to befriend us.
Nash’s comportment became no more relaxed as we set off out to sea, however. He started to recite a number of facts, sounding as if he had rehearsed them in advance: first Poirot and I would have the chance to unpack, then to rest. After that there would be dinner on the terrace with everybody, followed by New Year’s Eve festivities and games . . .
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