FOREWORD By Capatain Arthur Hastings£¬O.B.E. In this narrative of mine I have departed from my usual practice of relating only those incidents and scenes at which I myself was present. Certain chapters£¬therefore£¬are written in the third person. I wish to assure my readers that I can vouch for the occurrences related in these chapters.If I have taken a certain poetic licence in describing the thoughts and feelings of various persons£¬it is because I believe I have set them down with a reasonable amount of accuracy.I may add that they have been "vetted"by my friend Hercule Poirot himself. In conclusion£¬I will say that if I have described at too great length some of the secondary personal relationships which arose as a consequence of this strange series of crimes£¬it is because the human and personal elements can never be ignored.Hercule Poirot once taught me in a very dramatic manner that romance can be a by-product of crime. As to the solving of the ABC mystery£¬I can only say that in my opinion Poirot showed real genius in the way he tackled a problem entirely unlike any which had previously come his way.