Бесконечная ночь / Endless Night

ENDLESS NIGHT
Комментарии и словарь  
А. Гопенко

УДК 372.8
ББК 
81.2 Англ 
К82
Agatha Christie
ENDLESS NIGHT
В оформлении обложки использован 
фрагмент орнамента Уильяма Морриса
Кристи, Агата.
К82		
Бесконечная ночь : книга для чтения на английском языке / А. Кристи. — Санкт-Петербург : КАРО, 
2024. — 320 с. — (Detective story).
ISBN 978-5-9925-1719-4.
Роман Агаты Кристи, которая предстает перед читателем тонким знатоком психологии человека, рассказывает о любви, которая 
окрыляет молодого небогатого парня и приводит его в проклятое 
поместье «Цыганское подворье».
Подробные комментарии и словарь помогут читателям следить за перипетиями сюжета.
УДК 372.8 
ББК 81.2 Англ
Endless Night © 1967  
Agatha Christie Limited.  
All rights reserved.
AGATHA CHRISTIE ©,   
аnd the Agatha Christie Signature
аre registered trade marks of
Agatha Christie Limited in the UK
and elsewhere. All rights reserved.
© КАРО, 2024 
Все права защищены
ISBN 978-5-9925-1719-4

To Nora Prichard 
from whom I first heard 
the legend of Gipsy’s Acre 
®

Every Night and every Morn  
Some to Misery are born.
Every Morn and every Night  
Some are born to Sweet Delight,  
Some are born to Sweet Delight,  
Some are born to Endless Night, 
William Blake  
Auguries of Innocence

BOOK I

CHAPTER 1 
In my end is my beginning... That’s a quotation I’ve 
often heard people say. It sounds all right — but what 
does it really mean?
Is there ever any particular spot where one 
can put one’s finger and say: ‘It all began that day, 
at such a time and such a place, with such an inci- 
dent?’ 
Did my story begin, perhaps, when I noticed 
the Sale Bill hanging on the wall of the George and 
Dragon, announcing Sale by Auction of that valuable 
property ‘The Towers’, and giving particulars of the 
acreage, the miles and furlongs 1, and the highly idealized portrait of ‘The Towers’ as it might have been 
perhaps in its prime, anything from eighty to a hundred years ago?
1	  furlong — британская и американская единица измерения расстояния, равная примерно 200 м 
6

I was doing nothing particular, just strolling 
along the main street of Kingston Bishop, a place of 
no importance whatever, killing time. I noticed the 
Sale Bill. Why? Fate up to its dirty work? Or dealing 
out its golden handshake of good fortune? 1 You can 
look at it either way.
Or you could say, perhaps, that it all had its beginnings when I met Santonix, during the talks I had with 
him; I can close my eyes and see: his flushed cheeks, 
the overbrilliant eyes, and the movement of the strong 
yet delicate hand that sketched and drew plans and 
elevations of houses. One house in particular, a beautiful house, a house that would be wonderful to own!
My longing for a house, a fine and beautiful 
house, such a house as I could never hope to have, 
flowered into life then. It was a happy fantasy shared 
between us, the house that Santonix would build for 
me — if he lasted long enough...
A house that in my dreams I would live in with 
the girl that I loved, a house in which just like a child’s 
silly fairy story we should live together ‘happy ever 
afterwards’. All pure fantasy, all nonsense, but it 
1	  Fate up to  its dirty work? Or dealing out  its golden 
handshake of good fortune? — На свою беду? Или судьба 
преподнесла мне счастливый билет? 
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started that tide of longing in me. Longing for something I was never likely to have.
Or if this is a love story — and it is a love story, 
I swear — then why not begin where I first caught 
sight of Ellie standing in the dark fir trees of Gipsy’s 
Acre?
Gipsy’s Acre. Yes, perhaps I’d better begin there, at 
the moment when I turned away from the Sale board 
with a little shiver because a black cloud had come 
over the sun, and asked a question carelessly enough 
of one of the locals, who was clipping a hedge in a desultory fashion nearby 1.
‘What’s this house, The Towers, like?’ 
I can still see the queer face of the old man, as he 
looked at me sideways and said:
‘That’s not what us calls it here. What sort of 
a name is that?’ He snorted disapproval. ‘It’s many 
a year now since folks lived in it and called it The 
Towers.’ He snorted again.
I asked him then what he called it, and again his 
eyes shifted away from me in his old wrinkled face in 
that queer way country folk have of not speaking to 
you direct, looking over your shoulder or round the 
1	  in a desultory fashion nearby — (зд.) резкими движениями 
8

corner, as it were, as though they saw something you 
didn’t; and he said:
‘It’s called hereabouts Gipsy’s Acre.’ 
‘Why is it called that?’ I asked.
‘Some sort of a tale. I dunno rightly. One says one 
thing, one says another.’ And then he went on, ‘Anyway, it’s where the accidents take place.’ 
‘Car accidents?’ 
‘All kinds of accidents. Car accidents mainly nowadays. It’s a nasty corner there, you see.’ 
‘Well,’ I said, ‘if it’s a nasty curve, I can well see 
there might be accidents.’ 
‘Rural Council put up a Danger sign, but it don’t do 
no good, that don’t. There are accidents just the same.’ 
‘Why Gipsy?’ I asked him.
Again his eyes slipped past me and his answer 
was vague. ‘Some tale or other. It was gipsies’ land 
once, they say, and they were turned off, and they put 
a curse on it.’ 
I laughed.
‘Aye,’ he said, ‘you can laugh but there’s places 
as is cursed. You smart-Alecks in town 1 don’t know 
about them. But there’s places as is cursed all right, 
and there’s a curse on this place. People got killed 
1	  You smart-Alecks in town — Вы, городские умники
9

here in the quarry when they got the stone out to 
build. Old Geordie he fell over the edge there one 
night and broke his neck.’ 
‘Drunk?’ I suggested.
‘He may have been. He liked his drop, he did. But 
there’s many drunks as fall — nasty falls — but it 
don’t do them no lasting harm. But Geordie, he got 
his neck broke. In there,’ he pointed up behind him 
to the pine-covered hill, ‘in Gipsy’s Acre.’ 
Yes, I suppose that’s how it began. Not that I paid 
much attention to it at the time. I just happened to 
remember it. That’s all. I think — that is, when I think 
properly — that I built it up a bit in my mind. I don’t 
know if it was before or later that I asked if there were 
still gipsies about there. He said there weren’t many 
anywhere nowadays. The police were always moving 
them on, he said. I asked:
‘Why doesn’t anybody like gipsies?’ 
‘They’re a thieving lot,’ he said, disapprovingly. 
Then he peered more closely at me. ‘Happen you’ve got 
gipsy blood yourself?’ he suggested, looking hard at me.
I said not that I knew of. It’s true, I do look a bit 
like a gipsy. Perhaps that’s what fascinated me about 
the name of Gipsy’s Acre. I thought to myself as I was 
standing there, smiling back at him, amused by our 
conversation, that perhaps I had a bit of gipsy blood.
10