The Capture of Cerberus

 BY AGATHA CHRISTIE

Hercule Poirot sipped his apéritif and looked out across the Lake of Geneva.

He sighed.

He had spent his morning talking to certain diplomatic personages, all in a state of high agitation, and he was tired. For he had been unable to offer them any comfort in their difficulties.

The world was in a very disturbed state - every nation alert and tense. At any minute the blow might fall - and Europe once more be plunged into war.

Hercule Poirot sighed. He remembered 1914 only too well. He had no illusions about war. It settled nothing. The peace it brought in its wake was usually only the peace of exhaustion - not a constructive peace.

He thought sadly to himself:

"If only a man could arise who would set enthusiasm for peace flaming through the world - as men have aroused enthusiasm for victory and conquest by force."

Then he reflected, with Latin commonsense, that these ideas of his were unprofitable. They accomplished nothing. To arouse enthusiasm was not his gift and never had been. Brains, he thought with his usual lack of modesty, were his speciality. And men with great brains were seldom great leaders or great orators. Possibly because they were too astute to be taken in by themselves.

"Ah well, one must be a philosopher," said Hercule Poirot to himself. "The deluge, it has not yet arrived. In the meantime this apéritif is good, the sun shines, the Lake is blue, and the orchestra plays not badly. Is that not enough?"

Extract from the unpublished story by Agatha Christie written in 1940. A completely different story, also called The Capture of Cerberus, was written and published in 1947 to complete The 12 Labours of Hercules.

Copyright © Christie Archive Trust 2009. To be published in Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks by John Curran, HarperCollins, in September 2009.