The Hollow (14 page)

“Dear Edward,” said Lucy with complete appreciation.

She smiled at Midge and went out again.

“Seriously, Midge,” said Edward, “I am worried.”

She interrupted him:

“The damned woman pays me four pounds a week. That's all that matters.”

She brushed past him and went out into the garden.

Sir Henry was sitting in his usual place on the low wall, but Midge turned away and walked up towards the flower walk.

Her relations were charming, but she had no use for their charm this morning.

David Angkatell was sitting on the seat at the top of the path.

There was no overdone charm about David, and Midge made straight for him and sat down by him, noting with malicious pleasure his look of dismay.

How extraordinarily difficult it was, thought David, to get away from people.

He had been driven from his bedroom by the brisk incursion of housemaids, purposeful with mops and dusters.

The library (and the
Encyclopædia Britannica
) had not been the sanctuary he had hoped optimistically it might be. Twice Lady Angkatell had drifted in and out, addressing him kindly with remarks to which there seemed no possible intelligent reply.

He had come out here to brood upon his position. The mere weekend to which he had unwillingly committed himself had now lengthened out owing to the exigencies connected with sudden and violent death.

David, who preferred the contemplation of an Academic past or the earnest discussion of a Left Wing future, had no aptitude for dealing with a violent and realistic present. As he had told Lady Angkatell, he did not read the
News of the World.
But now the
News of the World
seemed to have come to The Hollow.

Murder! David shuddered distastefully. What would his friends think? How did one, so to speak,
take
murder? What was one's attitude? Bored? Disgusted? Lightly amused?

Trying to settle these problems in his mind, he was by no means pleased to be disturbed by Midge. He looked at her uneasily as she sat beside him.

He was rather startled by the defiant stare with which she returned his look. A disagreeable girl of no intellectual value.

She said, “How do you like your relations?”

David shrugged his shoulders. He said:

“Does one really
think
about relations?”

Midge said:

“Does one really think about anything?”

Doubtless, David thought,
she
didn't. He said almost graciously:

“I was analysing my reactions to murder.”

“It is certainly odd,” said Midge, “to be
in
one.”

David sighed and said:

“Wearisome.” That was quite the best attitude. “All the clichés that one thought only existed in the pages of detective fiction!”

“You must be sorry you came,” said Midge.

David sighed.

“Yes, I might have been staying with a friend of mine in London.” He added, “He keeps a Left Wing bookshop.”

“I expect it's more comfortable here,” said Midge.

“Does one really care about being comfortable?” David asked scornfully.

“There are times,” said Midge, “when I feel I don't care about anything else.”

“The pampered attitude to life,” said David. “If you were a worker—”

Midge interrupted him.

“I
am
a worker. That's just why being comfortable is so attractive. Box beds, down pillows—early-morning tea softly deposited beside the bed—a porcelain bath with lashings of hot water—and delicious bath salts. The kind of easy chair you really sink into….”

Midge paused in her catalogue.

“The workers,” said David, “should have all these things.”

But he was a little doubtful about the softly deposited early-morning tea, which sounded impossibly sybaritic for an earnestly organized world.

“I couldn't agree with you more,” said Midge heartily.

H
ercule Poirot, enjoying a mid-morning cup of chocolate, was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. He got up and lifted the receiver.

“'Allo?”

“M. Poirot?”

“Lady Angkatell?”

“How nice of you to know my voice! Am I disturbing you?”

“But not at all. You are, I hope, none the worse for the distressing events of yesterday?”

“No, indeed. Distressing, as you say, but one feels, I find, quite
detached.
I rang you up to know if you could possibly come over—an imposition, I know, but I am really in great distress.”

“But certainly, Lady Angkatell. Did you mean now?”

“Well, yes, I did mean now. As quickly as you can. That's very sweet of you.”

“Not at all. I will come by the woods, then?”

“Oh, of course—the shortest way. Thank you so much, dear M. Poirot.”

Pausing only to brush a few specks of dust off the lapels of his coat and to slip on a thin overcoat, Poirot crossed the lane and hurried along the path through the chestnuts. The swimming pool was deserted—the police had finished their work and gone. It looked innocent and peaceful in the soft misty autumn light.

Poirot took a quick look into the pavilion. The platinum fox cape, he noted, had been removed. But the six boxes of matches still stood upon the table by the settee. He wondered more than ever about those matches.

“It is not a place to keep matches—here in the damp. One box, for convenience, perhaps—but not six.”

He frowned down on the painted iron table. The tray of glasses had been removed. Someone had scrawled with a pencil on the table—a rough design of a nightmarish tree. It pained Hercule Poirot. It offended his tidy mind.

He clicked his tongue, shook his head, and hurried on towards the house, wondering at the reason for this urgent summons.

Lady Angkatell was waiting for him at the french windows and swept him into the empty drawing room.

“It was nice of you to come, M. Poirot.”

She clasped his hand warmly.

“Madame, I am at your service.”

Lady Angkatell's hands floated out expressively. Her wide, beautiful eyes opened.

“You see, it's all so difficult. The inspector person is interviewing—no, questioning—taking a statement—what
is
the term they use?—
Gudgeon.
And really our whole life here depends on
Gudgeon, and one does so sympathize with him. Because naturally it is terrible for him to be questioned by the police—even Inspector Grange, who I do feel is really nice and probably a family man—boys, I think, and he helps them with Meccano in the evenings—and a wife who has everything spotless but a little overcrowded….”

Hercule Poirot blinked as Lady Angkatell developed her imaginary sketch of Inspector Grange's home life.

“By the way his moustache droops,” went on Lady Angkatell, “I think that a home that is too spotless might be sometimes depressing—like soap on hospital nurses' faces. Quite a
shine!
But that is more in the country where things lag behind—in London nursing homes they have lots of powder and really
vivid
lipstick. But I was saying, M. Poirot, that you really must come to lunch
properly
when all this ridiculous business is over.”

“You are very kind.”

“I do not mind the police myself,” said Lady Angkatell. “I really find it all quite interesting. ‘Do let me help you in any way I can,' I said to Inspector Grange. He seems rather a bewildered sort of person, but methodical.

“Motive seems so important to policemen,” she went on. “Talking of hospital nurses just now, I believe that John Christow—a nurse with red hair and an upturned nose—quite attractive. But of course it was a long time ago and the police might not be interested. One doesn't really know how much poor Gerda had to put up with. She is the loyal type, don't you think? Or possibly she believes what is told her. I think if one has not a great deal of intelligence, it is wise to do that.”

Quite suddenly, Lady Angkatell flung open the study door and
ushered Poirot in, crying brightly, “Here is M. Poirot.” She swept round him and out, shutting the door. Inspector Grange and Gudgeon were sitting by the desk. A young man with a notebook was in a corner. Gudgeon rose respectfully to his feet.

Poirot hastened into apologies.

“I retire immediately. I assure you I had no idea that Lady Angkatell—”

“No, no, you wouldn't have.” Grange's moustache looked more pessimistic than ever this morning. “Perhaps,” thought Poirot, fascinated by Lady Angkatell's recent sketch of Grange, “there has been too much cleaning or perhaps a Benares brass table has been purchased so that the good inspector he really cannot have space to move.”

Angrily he dismissed these thoughts. Inspector Grange's clean but overcrowded home, his wife, his boys and their addiction to Meccano were all figments of Lady Angkatell's busy brain.

But the vividness with which they assumed concrete reality interested him. It was quite an accomplishment.

“Sit down, M. Poirot,” said Grange. “There's something I want to ask you about, and I've nearly finished here.”

He turned his attention back to Gudgeon, who deferentially and almost under protest resumed his seat and turned an expressionless face towards his interlocutor.

“And that's all you can remember?”

“Yes, sir. Everything, sir, was very much as usual. There was no unpleasantness of any kind.”

“There's a fur cape thing—out in that summerhouse by the pool. Which of the ladies
did
it belong to?”

“Are you referring, sir, to a cape of platinum fox? I noticed it
yesterday when I took out the glasses to the pavilion. But it is not the property of anyone in this house, sir.”

“Whose is it, then?”

“It might possibly belong to Miss Cray, sir. Miss Veronica Cray, the motion picture actress. She was wearing something of the kind.”

“When?”

“When she was here the night before last, sir.”

“You didn't mention her as having been a guest here?”

“She was not a guest, sir. Miss Cray lives at Dovecotes, the—er—cottage up the lane, and she came over after dinner, having run out of matches, to borrow some.”

“Did she take away six boxes?” asked Poirot.

Gudgeon turned to him.

“That is correct, sir. Her ladyship, after having inquired if we had plenty, insisted on Miss Cray's taking half a dozen boxes.”

“Which she left in the pavilion,” said Poirot.

“Yes, sir, I observed them there yesterday morning.”

“There is not much that that man does not observe,” remarked Poirot as Gudgeon departed, closing the door softly and deferentially behind him.

Inspector Grange merely remarked that servants were the devil!

“However,” he said with a little renewed cheerfulness, “there's always the kitchenmaid. Kitchenmaids
talk
—not like these stuck-up upper servants.

“I've put a man on to make inquiries at Harley Street,” he went on. “And I shall be there myself later in the day. We ought to get something there. Daresay, you know, that wife of Christow's had a good bit to put up with. Some of these fashionable doctors and
their lady patients—well, you'd be surprised! And I gather from Lady Angkatell that there was some trouble over a hospital nurse. Of course, she was very vague about it.”

“Yes,” Poirot agreed. “She would be vague.”

A skilfully built-up picture…John Christow and amorous intrigues with hospital nurses…the opportunities of a doctor's life…plenty of reasons for Gerda Christow's jealousy which had culminated at last in murder.

Yes, a skilfully suggested picture, drawing attention to a Harley Street background—away from The Hollow—away from the moment when Henrietta Savernake, stepping forward, had taken the revolver from Gerda Christow's unresisting hand…Away from that other moment when John Christow, dying, had said “
Henrietta.
”

Suddenly opening his eyes, which had been half-closed, Hercule Poirot demanded with irresistible curiosity:

“Do your boys play with Meccano?”

“Eh, what?” Inspector Grange came back from a frowning reverie to stare at Poirot. “Why, what on earth? As a matter of fact, they're a bit young—but I was thinking of giving Teddy a Meccano set for Christmas. What made you ask?”

Poirot shook his head.

What made Lady Angkatell dangerous, he thought, was the fact that those intuitive, wild guesses of hers might be often right. With a careless (seemingly careless?) word she built up a picture—and if part of the picture was right, wouldn't you, in spite of yourself, believe in the other half of the picture?….

Inspector Grange was speaking.

“There's a point I want to put to you, M. Poirot. This
Miss Cray, the actress—she traipses over here borrowing matches. If she wanted to borrow matches, why didn't she come to your place, only a step or two away? Why come about half a mile?”

Hercule Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

“There might be reasons. Snob reasons, shall we say? My little cottage, it is small, unimportant. I am only a weekender, but Sir Henry and Lady Angkatell are important—they live here—they are what is called in the country. This Miss Veronica Cray, she may have wanted to get to know them—and after all, this was a way.”

Inspector Grange got up.

“Yes,” he said, “that's perfectly possible, of course, but one doesn't want to overlook anything. Still, I've no doubt that everything's going to be plain sailing. Sir Henry has identified the gun as one of his collection. It seems they were actually practising with it the afternoon before. All Mrs. Christow had to do was to go into the study and get it from where she'd seen Sir Henry put it and the ammunition away. It's all quite simple.”

“Yes,” Poirot murmured. “It seems all quite simple.”

Just so, he thought, would a woman like Gerda Christow commit a crime. Without subterfuge or complexity—driven suddenly to violence by the bitter anguish of a narrow but deeply loving nature.

And yet surely—
surely,
she would have had
some
sense of self-preservation. Or had she acted in that blindness—that darkness of the spirit—when reason is entirely laid aside?

He recalled her blank, dazed face.

He did not know—he simply did not know.

But he felt that he ought to know.