Reading progress update: I've read 76%.
Aww. This is so cute. Hercule and his countess.
These meditations had occupied Hercule Poirot on his homeward way until reaching Regent’s Park. He decided to traverse a part of the Park before taking a taxi on.
By experience, he knew to a nicety the moment when his smart patent leather shoes began to press painfully on his feet.
It was a lovely summer’s day and Poirot looked indulgently on courting nursemaids and their swains, laughing and giggling while their chubby charges profited by nurse’s inattention. Dogs barked and romped. Little boys sailed boats. And under nearly every tree was a couple sitting close together …
‘Ah! Jeunesse, Jeunesse,’ murmured Hercule Poirot, pleasurably affected by the sight.
They were chic, these little London girls. They wore their tawdry clothes with an air.
Their figures, however, he considered lamentably deficient.
Where were the rich curves, the voluptuous lines that had formerly delighted the eye of an admirer?
He, Hercule Poirot, remembered women … One woman, in particular—what a sumptuous creature—Bird of Paradise—a Venus …
What woman was there amongst these pretty chits nowadays, who could hold a candle to Countess Vera Rossakoff?
2
 - Agatha Christie)
