Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder’s Reviews > Hallowe'en Party > Status Update

“Doubtless,” said Hercule Poirot, “it would give the recipe for treatment of tired feet.”
“Plenty of them, I should think. But why don’t you wear proper country shoes?”
“Madame, I like to look soigné in my appearance.”
“Well, then you’ll have to go on wearing things that are painful, and grin and bear it,” said Mrs. Oliver.

“Now comfort is really the great thing. Once you’ve passed, say, fifty, comfort is the only thing that matters.”
“Madame, chère Madame, I do not know that I agree with you.”
“Well, you’d better,” said Mrs. Oliver. “If not, you will suffer a great deal, and it will be worse year after year.”

“Monsieur Hercule Poirot?”
He made his own assessment of the visitor. An elderly man, a foreigner, very dapper in his dress, unsuitably attired as to the feet in patent leather shoes which were, so Mr. Fullerton guessed shrewdly, too tight for him. Faint lines of pain were already etching themselves round the corners of his eyes. A dandy, a fop, a foreigner ...

“I pay my tribute. The tribute of an old man who is approaching a time when the end of his own work is come.”
“But at the moment you are still carrying it on?”
“You know who I am, then?” Poirot was pleased indubitably. He liked people to know who he was. Nowadays, he feared, most people did not.

“Are we making any progress?” said Mrs. Oliver as they left the house.
“None whatever,” said Hercule Poirot. “That is interesting,” he said thoughtfully.
Mrs. Oliver looked as though she didn’t agree with him.