The Hollow (10 page)

I

H
ercule Poirot flicked a last speck of dust from his shoes. He had dressed carefully for his luncheon party and he was satisfied with the result.

He knew well enough the kind of clothes that were worn in the country on a Sunday in England, but he did not choose to conform to English ideas. He preferred his own standards of urban smartness. He was not an English country gentleman. He was Hercule Poirot!

He did not, he confessed it to himself, really like the country. The weekend cottage—so many of his friends had extolled it—he had allowed himself to succumb, and had purchased Resthaven, though the only thing he had liked about it was its shape, which was quite square like a box. The surrounding landscape he did not care for though it was, he knew, supposed to be a beauty spot. It
was, however, too wildly asymmetrical to appeal to him. He did not care much for trees at any time—they had that untidy habit of shedding their leaves. He could endure poplars and he approved of a monkey puzzle—but this riot of beech and oak left him unmoved. Such a landscape was best enjoyed from a car on a fine afternoon. You exclaimed, “
Quel beau paysage!
” and drove back to a good hotel.

The best thing about Resthaven, he considered, was the small vegetable garden neatly laid out in rows by his Belgian gardener Victor. Meanwhile Françoise, Victor's wife, devoted herself with tenderness to the care of her employer's stomach.

Hercule Poirot passed through the gate, sighed, glanced down once more at his shining black shoes, adjusted his pale grey Homburg hat, and looked up and down the road.

He shivered slightly at the aspect of Dovecotes. Dovecotes and Resthaven had been erected by rival builders, both of whom had acquired a small piece of land. Further enterprise on their part had been swiftly curtailed by a National Trust for preserving the beauties of the countryside. The two houses remained representative of two schools of thought. Resthaven was a box with a roof, severely modern and a little dull. Dovecotes was a riot of half-timbering and Olde Worlde packed into as small a space as possible.

Hercule Poirot debated within himself as to how he should approach The Hollow. There was, he knew, a little higher up the lane, a small gate and a path. This, the unofficial way, would save a half-mile
détour
by the road. Nevertheless Hercule Poirot, a stickler for etiquette, decided to take the longer way round and approach the house correctly by the front entrance.

This was his first visit to Sir Henry and Lady Angkatell. One
should not, he considered, take shortcuts uninvited, especially when one was the guest of people of social importance. He was, it must be admitted, pleased by their invitation.

“
Je suis un peu snob,
” he murmured to himself.

He had retained an agreeable impression of the Angkatells from the time in Baghdad, particularly of Lady Angkatell.
“Une originale!”
he thought to himself.

His estimation of the time required for walking to The Hollow by road was accurate. It was exactly one minute to one when he rang the front doorbell. He was glad to have arrived and felt slightly tired. He was not fond of walking.

The door was opened by the magnificent Gudgeon, of whom Poirot approved. His reception, however, was not quite as he had hoped. “Her ladyship is in the pavilion by the swimming pool, sir. Will you come this way?”

The passion of the English for sitting out of doors irritated Hercule Poirot. Though one had to put up with this whimsy in the height of summer, surely, Poirot thought, one should be safe from it by the end of September! The day was mild, certainly, but it had, as autumn days always had, a certain dampness. How infinitely pleasanter to have been ushered into a comfortable drawing room with, perhaps, a small fire in the grate. But no, here he was being led out through french windows across a slope of lawn, past a rockery and then through a small gate and along a narrow track between closely planted young chestnuts.

It was the habit of the Angkatells to invite guests for one o'clock, and on fine days they had cocktails and sherry in the small pavilion by the swimming pool. Lunch itself was scheduled for one thirty, by which time the most unpunctual of guests should have
managed to arrive, which permitted Lady Angkatell's excellent cook to embark on soufflés and such accurately timed delicacies without too much trepidation.

To Hercule Poirot, the plan did not commend itself.

“In a little minute,” he thought, “I shall be almost back where I started.”

With an increasing awareness of his feet in his shoes, he followed Gudgeon's tall figure.

It was at that moment from just ahead of him that he heard a little cry. It increased, somehow, his dissatisfaction. It was incongruous, in some way unfitting. He did not classify it, nor indeed think about it. When he thought about it afterwards he was hard put to it to remember just what emotions it had seemed to convey. Dismay? Surprise? Horror? He could only say that it suggested, very definitely, the unexpected.

Gudgeon stepped out from the chestnuts. He was moving to one side, deferentially, to allow Poirot to pass and at the same time clearing his throat preparatory to murmuring, “M. Poirot, my lady” in the proper subdued and respectful tones when his suppleness became suddenly rigid. He gasped. It was an unbutlerlike noise.

Hercule Poirot stepped out on to the open space surrounding the swimming pool, and immediately he, too, stiffened, but with annoyance.

It was too much—it was really too much! He had not suspected such cheapness of the Angkatells. The long walk by the road, the disappointment at the house—and now
this!
The misplaced sense of humour of the English!

He was annoyed and he was bored—oh, how he was bored.
Death was not, to him, amusing. And here they had arranged for him, by way of a joke, a set piece.

For what he was looking at was a highly artificial murder scene. By the side of the pool was the body, artistically arranged with an outflung arm and even some red paint dripping gently over the edge of the concrete into the pool. It was a spectacular body, that of a handsome fair-haired man. Standing over the body, revolver in hand, was a woman, a short, powerfully built, middle-aged woman with a curiously blank expression.

And there were three other actors. On the far side of the pool was a tall young woman whose hair matched the autumn leaves in its rich brown; she had a basket in her hand full of dahlia heads. A little farther off was a man, a tall, inconspicuous man in a shooting coat, carrying a gun. And immediately on his left, with a basket of eggs in her hand, was his hostess, Lady Angkatell.

It was clear to Hercule Poirot that several different paths converged here at the swimming pool and that these people had each arrived by a different path.

It was all very mathematical and artificial.

He sighed.
Enfin,
what did they expect him to do? Was he to pretend to believe in this “crime?” Was he to register dismay—alarm? Or was he to bow, to congratulate his hostess: “Ah, but it is very charming, what you arrange for me here?”

Really, the whole thing was very stupid—not
spirituel
at all! Was it not Queen Victoria who had said: “We are not amused?” He felt very inclined to say the same: “I, Hercule Poirot, am not amused.”

Lady Angkatell had walked towards the body. He followed, conscious of Gudgeon, still breathing hard, behind him. “He is not
in the secret, that one,” Hercule Poirot thought to himself. From the other side of the pool, the other two people joined them. They were all quite close now, looking down on that spectacular sprawling figure by the pool's edge.

And suddenly, with a terrific shock, with that feeling as of blurring on a cinematograph screen before the picture comes into focus, Hercule Poirot realized that this artificially set scene had a point of reality.

For what he was looking down at was, if not a dead, at least a dying man.

It was not red paint dripping off the edge of the concrete, it was blood. This man had been shot, and shot a very short time ago.

He darted a quick glance at the woman who stood there, revolver in hand. Her face was quite blank, without feeling of any kind. She looked dazed and rather stupid.

“Curious,” he thought.

Had she, he wondered, drained herself of all emotion, all feeling, in the firing of the shot? Was she now all passion spent, nothing but an exhausted shell? It might be so, he thought.

Then he looked down on the shot man, and he started. For the dying man's eyes were open. They were intensely blue eyes and they held an expression that Poirot could not read but which he described to himself as a kind of intense awareness.

And suddenly, or so it felt to Poirot, there seemed to be in all this group of people only one person who was really alive—the man who was at the point of death.

Poirot had never received so strong an impression of vivid and intense vitality. The others were pale shadowy figures, actors in a remote drama, but this man was
real.

John Christow opened his mouth and spoke. His voice was strong, unsurprised and urgent.

“
Henrietta
—” he said.

Then his eyelids dropped, his head jerked sideways.

Hercule Poirot knelt down, made sure, then rose to his feet, mechanically dusting the knees of his trousers.

“Yes,” he said. “He is dead.”

II

The picture broke up, wavered, refocused itself. There were individual reactions now—trivial happenings. Poirot was conscious of himself as a kind of magnified eyes and ears—recording. Just that,
recording.

He was aware of Lady Angkatell's hand relaxing its grip on her basket and Gudgeon springing forward, quickly taking it from her.

“Allow me, my lady.”

Mechanically, quite naturally, Lady Angkatell murmured:

“Thank you, Gudgeon.”

And then, hesitantly, she said:

“Gerda—”

The woman holding the revolver stirred for the first time. She looked round at them all. When she spoke, her voice held what seemed to be pure bewilderment.

“John's dead,” she said. “John's
dead.
”

With a kind of swift authority, the tall young woman with the leaf-brown hair came swiftly to her.

“Give that to me, Gerda,” she said.

And dexterously, before Poirot could protest or intervene, she had taken the revolver out of Gerda Christow's hand.

Poirot took a quick step forward.

“You should not do that, Mademoiselle—”

The young woman started nervously at the sound of his voice. The revolver slipped through her fingers. She was standing by the edge of the pool and the revolver fell with a splash into the water.

Her mouth opened and she uttered an “Oh” of consternation, turning her head to look at Poirot apologetically.

“What a fool I am,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

Poirot did not speak for a moment. He was staring into a pair of clear hazel eyes. They met his quite steadily and he wondered if his momentary suspicion had been unjust.

He said quietly:

“Things should be handled as little as possible. Everything must be left exactly as it is for the police to see.”

There was a little stir then—very faint, just a ripple of uneasiness.

Lady Angkatell murmured distastefully: “Of course. I suppose—yes, the police—”

In a quite, pleasant voice, tinged with fastidious repulsion, the man in the shooting coat said: “I'm afraid, Lucy, it's inevitable.”

Into that moment of silence and realization there came the sound of footsteps and voices, assured, brisk footsteps and cheerful, incongruous voices.

Along the path from the house came Sir Henry Angkatell and Midge Hardcastle, talking and laughing together.

At the sight of the group round the pool, Sir Henry stopped short, and exclaimed in astonishment:

“What's the matter? What's happened?”

His wife answered: “Gerda has—” She broke off sharply. “I mean—John is—”

Gerda said in her flat, bewildered voice:

“John has been shot. He's dead.”

They all looked away from her, embarrassed.

Then Lady Angkatell said quickly:

“My dear, I think you'd better go and—and lie down. Perhaps we had better all go back to the house? Henry, you and M. Poirot can stay here and—and wait for the police.”

“That will be the best plan, I think,” said Sir Henry. He turned to Gudgeon. “Will you ring up the police station, Gudgeon? Just state exactly what has occurred. When the police arrive, bring them straight out here.”

Gudgeon bent his head a little and said: “Yes, Sir Henry.” He was looking a little white about the gills, but he was still the perfect servant.

The tall young woman said: “Come, Gerda,” and putting her hand through the other woman's arm, she led her unresistingly away and along the path towards the house. Gerda walked as though in a dream. Gudgeon stood back a little to let them pass, and then followed carrying the basket of eggs.

Sir Henry turned sharply to his wife. “Now, Lucy, what is all this? What happened exactly?”

Lady Angkatell stretched out vague hands, a lovely helpless gesture. Hercule Poirot felt the charm of it and the appeal.

“My dear, I hardly know. I was down by the hens. I heard a shot that seemed very near, but I didn't really think anything about it. After all,” she appealed to them all, “one
doesn't!
And then I
came up the path to the pool and there was John lying there and Gerda standing over him with the revolver. Henrietta and Edward arrived almost at the same moment—from over there.”

She nodded towards the farther side of the pool, where two paths ran into the woods.

Hercule Poirot cleared his throat.

“Who are they, this John and this Gerda? If I may know,” he added apologetically.