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“That's a curious thing for him to say,” said MacWhirter dryly.

“So you see,” said Audrey, “you are a miracle. My special miracle.”

MacWhirter said earnestly:

“I'd not like you to feel you're under an obligation to me. I'm going right out of your life—”

“Must you?” said Audrey.

He stared at her. The colour came up, flooding her ears and temples.

She said:

“Won't you take me with you?”

“You don't know what you're saying!”

“Yes, I do. I'm doing something very difficult—but that matters to me more than life or death. I know the time is very short. By the way, I'm conventional, I should like to be married before we go!”

“Naturally,” said MacWhirter, deeply shocked. “You don't imagine I'd suggest anything else.”

“I'm sure you wouldn't,” said Audrey.

MacWhirter said:

“I'm not your kind. I thought you'd marry that quiet fellow who's cared for you so long.”

“Thomas? Dear True Thomas. He's too true. He's faithful to the image of a girl he loved years ago. But the person he really cares for is Mary Aldin, though he doesn't know it yet himself.”

MacWhirter took a step towards her. He spoke sternly.

“Do you mean what you're saying?”

“Yes…I want to be with you always, never to leave you. If you go I shall never find anybody like you, and I shall go lonely all my days.”

MacWhirter sighed. He took out his wallet and carefully examined its contents.

He murmured:

“A special licence comes expensive. I'll need to go to the Bank first thing tomorrow.”

“I could lend you some money,” murmured Audrey.

“You'll do nothing of the kind. If I marry a woman, I pay for the licence. You understand?”

“You needn't,” said Audrey softly, “look so stern.”

He said gently as he came towards her:

“Last time I had my hands on you, you felt like a bird—struggling to escape. You'll never escape now….”

She said:

“I shall never want to escape.”

The
Agatha Christie
Collection

THE HERCULE POIROT MYSTERIES

Match your wits with the famous Belgian detective.

 

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Murder on the Links

Poirot Investigates

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Big Four

The Mystery of the Blue Train

Peril at End House

Lord Edgware Dies

Murder on the Orient Express

Three Act Tragedy

Death in the Clouds

The A.B.C. Murders

Murder in Mesopotamia

Cards on the Table

Murder in the Mews and Other Stories

Dumb Witness

Death on the Nile

Appointment with Death

Hercule Poirot's Christmas

Sad Cypress

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

Evil Under the Sun

Five Little Pigs

The Hollow

The Labors of Hercules

Taken at the Flood

The Underdog and Other Stories

Mrs. McGinty's Dead

After the Funeral

Hickory Dickory Dock

Dead Man's Folly

Cat Among the Pigeons

The Clocks

Third Girl

Hallowe'en Party

Elephants Can Remember

Curtain: Poirot's Last Case

 

Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com

The
Agatha Christie
Collection

THE MISS MARPLE MYSTERIES

Join the legendary spinster sleuth from St. Mary Mead in solving murders far and wide.

 

The Murder at the Vicarage

The Body in the Library

The Moving Finger

A Murder Is Announced

They Do It with Mirrors

A Pocket Full of Rye

4:50 From Paddington

The Mirror Crack'd

A Caribbean Mystery

At Bertram's Hotel

Nemesis

Sleeping Murder

Miss Marple: The Complete Short Story Collection

 

THE TOMMY AND TUPPENCE MYSTERIES

Jump on board with the entertaining crime-solving couple from Young Adventurers Ltd.

 

The Secret Adversary

Partners in Crime

N or M?

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Postern of Fate

 

Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com

The
Agatha Christie
Collection

Don't miss a single one of Agatha Christie's stand-alone novels and short-story collections.

 

The Man in the Brown Suit

The Secret of Chimneys

The Seven Dials Mystery

The Mysterious Mr. Quin

The Sittaford Mystery

Parker Pyne Investigates

Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Murder Is Easy

The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories

And Then There Were None

Towards Zero

Death Comes as the End

Sparkling Cyanide

The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories

Crooked House

Three Blind Mice and Other Stories

They Came to Baghdad

Destination Unknown

Ordeal by Innocence

Double Sin and Other Stories

The Pale Horse

Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories

Endless Night

Passenger to Frankfurt

The Golden Ball and Other Stories

The Mousetrap and Other Plays

The Harlequin Tea Set

 

Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in 100 foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott.

She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with her debut novel
The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
With
The Murder in the Vicarage,
published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.

Many of Christie's novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series.
The Mousetrap,
her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film adaptations are
Murder on the Orient Express
(1974) and
Death on the Nile
(1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie.

Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain's highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010.

 

www.AgathaChristie.com

 

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

T
HE
A
GATHA
C
HRISTIE
C
OLLECTION

The Man in the Brown Suit

The Secret of Chimneys

The Seven Dials Mystery

The Mysterious Mr. Quin

The Sittaford Mystery

Parker Pyne Investigates

Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Murder Is Easy

The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories

And Then There Were None

Towards Zero

Death Comes as the End

Sparkling Cyanide

The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories

Crooked House

Three Blind Mice and Other Stories

They Came to Baghdad

Destination Unknown

Ordeal by Innocence

Double Sin and Other Stories

The Pale Horse

Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories

Endless Night

Passenger to Frankfurt

The Golden Ball and Other Stories

The Mousetrap and Other Plays

The Harlequin Tea Set

The Hercule Poirot Mysteries

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Murder on the Links

Poirot Investigates

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Big Four

The Mystery of the Blue Train

Peril at End House

Lord Edgware Dies

Murder on the Orient Express

Three Act Tragedy

Death in the Clouds

The A.B.C. Murders

Murder in Mesopotamia

Cards on the Table

Murder in the Mews and Other Stories

Dumb Witness

Death on the Nile

Appointment with Death

Hercule Poirot's Christmas

Sad Cypress

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

Evil Under the Sun

Five Little Pigs

The Hollow

The Labors of Hercules

Taken at the Flood

The Underdog and Other Stories

Mrs. McGinty's Dead

After the Funeral

Hickory Dickory Dock

Dead Man's Folly

Cat Among the Pigeons

The Clocks

Third Girl

Hallowe'en Party

Elephants Can Remember

Curtain: Poirot's Last Case

The Miss Marple Mysteries

The Murder at the Vicarage

The Body in the Library

The Moving Finger

A Murder Is Announced

They Do It with Mirrors

A Pocket Full of Rye

4:50 from Paddington

The Mirror Crack'd

A Caribbean Mystery

At Bertram's Hotel

Nemesis

Sleeping Murder

Miss Marple: The Complete Short Story Collection

The Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries

The Secret Adversary

Partners in Crime

N or M?

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Postern of Fate

Memoir

An Autobiography

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

AGATHA CHRISTIE
®
TOWARDS ZERO
™
. Copyright © 2011 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved.
Towards Zero
was first published in 1944.

TOWARDS ZERO
. Copyright © 1944. Published by permission of G.P. Putnam's Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-06-207354-9

EPub Edition © MAY 2011 ISBN: 978-0-06-200676-9

11 12 13 14 15

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BOOK: Towards Zero
12.54Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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