The Hollow (23 page)

She nodded.

“You yourself know the truth, then?”

Her eyes opened very wide.

“Oh, yes, I've known for a long time. I'd
like
to tell you. And then we could agree that—well, that it was all over and done with.”

She smiled at him.

“Is it a bargain, M. Poirot?”

It was quite an effort for Hercule Poirot to say:

“No, Madame, it is not a bargain.”

He wanted—he wanted, very badly, to let the whole thing drop, simply because Lady Angkatell asked him to do so.

Lady Angkatell sat very still for a moment. Then she raised her eyebrows.

“I wonder,” she said. “I wonder if you really know what you are doing.”

M
idge, lying dry-eyed and awake in the darkness, turned restlessly on her pillows. She heard a door unlatch, a footstep in the corridor outside passing her door. It was Edward's door and Edward's step. She switched on the lamp by her bed and looked at the clock that stood by the lamp on the table. It was ten minutes to three.

Edward passing her door and going down the stairs at this hour in the morning. It was odd.

They had all gone to bed early, at half past ten. She herself had not slept, had lain there with burning eyelids and with a dry, aching misery racking her feverishly.

She had heard the clock strike downstairs—had heard owls hoot outside her bedroom window. Had felt that depression that reaches its nadir at 2 a.m. Had thought to herself: “I can't bear it—I can't bear it. Tomorrow coming—another day. Day after day to be got through.”

Banished by her own act from Ainswick—from all the loveliness and dearness of Ainswick which might have been her very own possession.

But better banishment, better loneliness, better a drab and uninteresting life, than life with Edward and Henrietta's ghost. Until that day in the wood she had not known her own capacity for bitter jealousy.

And after all, Edward had never told her that he loved her. Affection, kindliness, he had never pretended to more than that. She had accepted the limitation, and not until she had realized what it would mean to live at close quarters with an Edward whose mind and heart had Henrietta as a permanent guest, did she know that for her Edward's affection was not enough.

Edward walking past her door, down the front stairs. It was odd—very odd. Where was he going?

Uneasiness grew upon her. It was all part and parcel of the uneasiness that The Hollow gave her nowadays. What was Edward doing downstairs in the small hours of the morning? Had he gone out?

Inactivity at last became too much for her. She got up, slipped on her dressing gown, and, taking a torch, she opened her door and came out into the passage.

It was quite dark, no light had been switched on. Midge turned to the left and came to the head of the staircase. Below all was dark too. She ran down the stairs and after a moment's hesitation switched on the light in the hall. Everything was silent. The front door was closed and locked. She tried the side door but that, too, was locked.

Edward, then, had not gone out. Where could he be?

And suddenly she raised her head and sniffed.

A whiff, a very faint whiff of gas.

The baize door to the kitchen quarters was just ajar. She went through it—a faint light was shining from the open kitchen door. The smell of gas was much stronger.

Midge ran along the passage and into the kitchen. Edward was lying on the floor with his head inside the gas oven, which was turned full on.

Midge was a quick, practical girl. Her first act was to swing open the shutters. She could not unlatch the window, and, winding a glass cloth round her arm, she smashed it. Then, holding her breath, she stooped down and tugged and pulled Edward out of the gas oven and switched off the taps.

He was unconscious and breathing queerly, but she knew that he could not have been unconscious long. He could only just have gone under. The wind sweeping through from the window to the open door was fast dispelling the gas fumes. Midge dragged Edward to a spot near the window where the air would have full play. She sat down and gathered him into her strong young arms.

She said his name, first softly, then with increasing desperation. “Edward, Edward,
Edward….
”

He stirred, groaned, opened his eyes and looked up at her. He said very faintly: “Gas oven,” and his eyes went round to the gas stove.

“I know, darling, but why—
why?
”

He was shivering now, his hands were cold and lifeless. He said: “Midge?” There was a kind of wondering surprise and pleasure in his voice.

She said: “I heard you pass my door. I didn't know…I came down.”

He sighed, a very long sigh as though from very far away. “Best way out,” he said. And then, inexplicably until she remembered Lucy's conversation on the night of the tragedy, “
News of the World.
”

“But, Edward, why,
why?
”

He looked up at her, and the blank, cold darkness of his stare frightened her.

“Because I know I've never been any good. Always a failure. Always ineffectual. It's men like Christow who do things. They get there and women admire them. I'm nothing—I'm not even quite alive. I inherited Ainswick and I've enough to live on—otherwise I'd have gone under. No good at a career—never much good as a writer. Henrietta didn't want me. No one wanted me. That day—at the Berkeley—I thought—but it was the same story. You couldn't care either, Midge. Even for Ainswick you couldn't put up with me. So I thought better get out altogether.”

Her words came with a rush. “Darling, darling, you don't understand. It was because of Henrietta—because I thought you still loved Henrietta so much.”

“Henrietta?” He murmured it vaguely, as though speaking of someone infinitely remote. “Yes, I loved her very much.”

And from even farther away she heard him murmur:

“It's so cold.”

“
Edward
—my darling.”

Her arms closed round him firmly. He smiled at her, murmuring:

“You're so warm, Midge—you're so warm.”

Yes, she thought, that was what despair was. A cold thing—a
thing of infinite coldness and loneliness. She'd never understood until now that despair was a cold thing. She had thought of it as something hot and passionate, something violent, a hot-blooded desperation. But that was not so.
This
was despair—this utter outer darkness of coldness and loneliness. And the sin of despair, that priests talked of, was a cold sin, the sin of cutting oneself off from all warm and living human contacts.

Edward said again: “You're so warm, Midge.” And suddenly with a glad, proud confidence she thought: “But that's what he
wants
—that's what I can give him!” They were all cold, the Angkatells. Even Henrietta had something in her of the will-o'-the-wisp, of the elusive fairy coldness in the Angkatell blood. Let Edward love Henrietta as an intangible and unpossessable dream. It was warmth, permanence, stability that was his real need. It was daily companionship and love and laughter at Ainswick.

She thought: “What Edward needs is someone to light a fire on his heart—and
I
am the person to do that.”

Edward looked up. He saw Midge's face bending over him, the warm colouring of the skin, the generous mouth, the steady eyes and the dark hair that lay back from her forehead like two wings.

He saw Henrietta always as a projection from the past. In the grown woman he sought and wanted only to see the seventeen-year-old girl he had first loved. But now, looking up at Midge, he had a queer sense of seeing a continuous Midge. He saw the school-girl with her winged hair springing back into two pigtails, he saw its dark waves framing her face now, and he saw exactly how those wings would look when the hair was not dark any longer but grey.

“Midge,” he thought, “is
real.
The only real thing I have ever known…” He felt the warmth of her, and the strength—dark,
positive, alive,
real!
“Midge,” he thought, “is the rock on which I can build my life.”

He said: “Darling Midge, I love you so, never leave me again.”

She bent down to him and he felt the warmth of her lips on his, felt her love enveloping him, shielding him, and happiness flowered in that cold desert where he had lived alone so long.

Suddenly Midge said with a shaky laugh:

“Look, Edward, a blackbeetle has come out to look at us. Isn't he a
nice
blackbeetle? I never thought I could like a blackbeetle so much!”

She added dreamily: “How odd life is. Here we are sitting on the floor in a kitchen that still smells of gas all amongst the black-beetles, and feeling that it's heaven.”

He murmured dreamily: “I could stay here forever.”

“We'd better go and get some sleep. It's four o'clock. How on earth are we to explain that broken window to Lucy?” Fortunately, Midge reflected, Lucy was an extraordinarily easy person to explain things to!

Taking a leaf out of Lucy's own book, Midge went into her room at six o'clock. She made a bald statement of fact.

“Edward went down and put his head in the gas oven in the night,” she said. “Fortunately I heard him, and went down after him. I broke the window because I couldn't get it open quickly.”

Lucy, Midge had to admit, was wonderful.

She smiled sweetly with no sign of surprise.

“Dear Midge,” she said, “you are always so practical. I'm sure you will always be the greatest comfort to Edward.”

After Midge had gone, Lady Angkatell lay thinking. Then
she got up and went into her husband's room, which for once was unlocked.

“Henry.”

“My dear Lucy! It's not cockcrow yet.”

“No, but listen, Henry, this is really important. We must have electricity installed to cook by and get rid of that gas stove.”

“Why, it's quite satisfactory, isn't it?”

“Oh, yes, dear. But it's the sort of thing that gives people ideas, and everybody mightn't be as practical as dear Midge.”

She flitted elusively away. Sir Henry turned over with a grunt. Presently he awoke with a start just as he was dozing off. “Did I dream it,” he murmured, “or did Lucy come in and start talking about gas stoves?”

Outside in the passage, Lady Angkatell went into the bathroom and put a kettle on the gas ring. Sometimes, she knew, people liked an early cup of tea. Fired with self-approval, she returned to bed and lay back on her pillows, pleased with life and with herself.

Edward and Midge at Ainswick—the inquest over. She would go and talk to M. Poirot again. A nice little man….

Suddenly another idea flashed into her head. She sat upright in bed. “I wonder now,” she speculated, “if she has thought of
that.
”

She got out of bed and drifted along the passage to Henrietta's room, beginning her remarks as usual long before she was within earshot.

“—and it suddenly came to me, dear, that you
might
have overlooked that.”

Henrietta murmured sleepily: “For heaven's sake, Lucy, the birds aren't up yet!”

“Oh, I know, dear, it
is
rather early, but it seems to have been a very disturbed night—Edward and the gas stove and Midge and the kitchen window—and thinking of what to say to M. Poirot and everything—”

“I'm sorry, Lucy, but everything you say sounds like complete gibberish. Can't it wait?”

“It was only the holster, dear. I thought, you know, that you might not have thought about the holster.”

“Holster?” Henrietta sat up in bed. She was suddenly wide awake. “What's this about a holster?”

“That revolver of Henry's was in a holster, you know. And the holster hasn't been found. And of course nobody may think of it—but on the other hand somebody might—”

Henrietta swung herself out of bed. She said:

“One always forgets something—that's what they say! And it's true!”

Lady Angkatell went back to her room.

She got into bed and quickly went fast asleep.

The kettle on the gas ring boiled and went on boiling.

G
erda rolled over to the side of the bed and sat up.

Her head felt a little better now but she was still glad that she hadn't gone with the others on the picnic. It was peaceful and almost comforting to be alone in the house for a bit.

Elsie, of course, had been very kind—very kind—especially at first. To begin with, Gerda had been urged to stay in bed for breakfast, trays had been brought up to her. Everybody urged her to sit in the most comfortable armchair, to put her feet up, not to do anything at all strenuous.

They were all so sorry for her about John. She had stayed cowering gratefully in that protective dim haze. She hadn't wanted to think, or to feel, or to remember.

But now, every day, she felt it coming nearer—she'd have to start living again, to decide what to do, where to live. Already Elsie was showing a shade of impatience in her manner. “Oh, Gerda, don't be so
slow!
”

It was all the same as it had been—long ago, before John came and took her away. They all thought her slow and stupid. There was nobody to say, as John had said: “I'll look after you.”

Her head ached and Gerda thought: “I'll make myself some tea.”

She went down to the kitchen and put the kettle on. It was nearly boiling when she heard a ring at the front door.

The maids had been given the day out. Gerda went to the door and opened it. She was astonished to see Henrietta's rakish-looking car drawn up to the kerb and Henrietta herself standing on the doorstep.

“Why, Henrietta!” she exclaimed. She fell back a step or two. “Come in. I'm afraid my sister and the children are out but—”

Henrietta cut her short. “Good, I'm glad. I wanted to get you alone. Listen, Gerda,
what did you do with the holster?
”

Gerda stopped. Her eyes looked suddenly vacant and uncomprehending. She said: “Holster?”

Then she opened a door on the right of the hall.

“You'd better come in here. I'm afraid it's rather dusty. You see, we haven't had much time this morning.”

Henrietta interrupted again urgently.

She said: “Listen, Gerda, you've got to tell me. Apart from the holster everything's all right—absolutely watertight. There's nothing to connect you with the business. I found the revolver where you'd shoved it into that thicket by the pool. I hid it in a place where you couldn't possibly have put it—and there are fingerprints on it which they'll never identify. So there's only the holster. I must know what you did with that?”

She paused, praying desperately that Gerda would react quickly.

She had no idea why she had this vital sense of urgency, but it was there. Her car had not been followed—she had made sure of that. She had started on the London road, had filled up at a garage and had mentioned that she was on her way to London. Then, a little farther on, she had swung across country until she had reached a main road leading south to the coast.

Gerda was still staring at her. The trouble with Gerda, thought Henrietta, was that she was so slow.

“If you've still got it, Gerda, you must give it to me. I'll get rid of it somehow. It's the only possible thing, you see, that can connect you now with John's death.
Have
you got it?”

There was a pause and then Gerda slowly nodded her head.

“Didn't you know it was madness to keep it?” Henrietta could hardly conceal her impatience.

“I forgot about it. It was up in my room.”

She added: “When the police came up to Harley Street I cut it in pieces and put it in the bag with my leather work.”

Henrietta said: “That was clever of you.”

Gerda said: “I'm not quite so stupid as everybody thinks.” She put her hand up to her throat. She said: “John—
John!
” Her voice broke.

Henrietta said: “I know, my dear, I know.”

Gerda said: “But you can't know…John wasn't—he wasn't—” She stood there, dumb and strangely pathetic. She raised her eyes suddenly to Henrietta's face. “It was all a lie—everything! All the things I thought he was. I saw his face when he followed that woman out that evening. Veronica Cray. I knew he'd cared for her, of course, years ago before he married me, but I thought it was all over.”

Henrietta said gently:

“But it
was
all over.”

Gerda shook her head.

“No. She came there and pretended that she hadn't seen John for years—but I saw John's face. He went out with her. I went up to bed. I lay there trying to read—I tried to read that detective story that John was reading. And John didn't come. And at last I went out….”

Her eyes seemed to be turning inwards, seeing the scene.

“It was moonlight. I went along the path to the swimming pool. There was a light in the pavilion. They were
there
—John and that woman.”

Henrietta made a faint sound.

Gerda's face had changed. It had none of its usual slightly vacant amiability. It was remorseless, implacable.

“I'd trusted John. I'd believed in him—as though he were God. I thought he was the noblest man in the world. I thought he was everything that was fine and noble. And it was all a
lie!
I was left with nothing at all. I—I'd
worshipped
John!”

Henrietta was gazing at her fascinated. For here, before her eyes, was what she had guessed at and brought to life, carving it out of wood. Here was The Worshipper. Blind devotion thrown back on itself, disillusioned, dangerous.

Gerda said: “I couldn't bear it! I had to kill him! I
had
to—you do see that, Henrietta?”

She said it quite conversationally, in an almost friendly tone.

“And I knew I must be careful because the police are very clever. But then I'm not really as stupid as people think! If you're
very slow and just stare, people think you don't take things in—and sometimes, underneath, you're laughing at them! I knew I could kill John and nobody would know because I'd read in that detective story about the police being able to tell which gun a bullet has been fired from. Sir Henry had shown me how to load and fire a revolver that afternoon. I'd take
two
revolvers. I'd shoot John with one and then hide it, and let people find me holding the other, and first they'd think
I
'd shot him and then they'd find he couldn't have been killed with that revolver and so they'd say I hadn't done it after all!”

She nodded her head triumphantly.

“But I forgot about the leather thing. It was in the drawer in my bedroom. What do you call it, a holster? Surely the police won't bother about that
now!
”

“They might,” said Henrietta. “You'd better give it to me, and I'll take it away with me. Once it's out of your hands, you're quite safe.”

She sat down. She felt suddenly unutterably weary.

Gerda said: “You don't look well. I was just making tea.”

She went out of the room. Presently she came back with a tray. On it was a teapot, milk jug and two cups. The milk jug had slopped over because it was over-full. Gerda put the tray down and poured out a cup of tea and handed it to Henrietta.

“Oh, dear,” she said, dismayed, “I don't believe the kettle can have been boiling.”

“It's quite all right,” said Henrietta. “Go and get that holster, Gerda.”

Gerda hesitated and then went out of the room. Henrietta leant
forward and put her arms on the table and her head down on them. She was so tired, so dreadfully tired. But now it was nearly done. Gerda would be safe, as John had wanted her to be safe.

She sat up, pushed the hair off her forehead and drew the teacup towards her. Then at a sound in the doorway she looked up. Gerda had been quite quick for once.

But it was Hercule Poirot who stood in the doorway.

“The front door was open,” he remarked as he advanced to the table, “so I took the liberty of walking in.”

“You!” said Henrietta. “How did you get here?”

“When you left The Hollow so suddenly, naturally I knew where you would go. I hired a very fast car and came straight here.”

“I see.” Henrietta sighed. “You would.”

“You should not drink that tea,” said Poirot, taking the cup from her and replacing it on the tray. “Tea that has not been made with boiling water is not good to drink.”

“Does a little thing like boiling water really matter?”

Poirot said gently: “Everything matters.”

There was a sound behind him and Gerda came into the room. She had a workbag in her hands. Her eyes went from Poirot's face to Henrietta's.

Henrietta said quickly:

“I'm afraid, Gerda, I'm rather a suspicious character. M. Poirot seems to have been shadowing me. He thinks that I killed John—but he can't prove it.”

She spoke slowly and deliberately. So long as Gerda did not give herself away.

Gerda said vaguely: “I'm so sorry. Will you have some tea, M. Poirot?”

“No, thank you, Madame.”

Gerda sat down behind the tray. She began to talk in her apologetic, conversational way.

“I'm so sorry that everybody is out. My sister and the children have all gone for a picnic. I didn't feel very well, so they left me behind.”

“I am sorry, Madame.”

Gerda lifted a teacup and drank.

“It is all so very worrying. Everything is so worrying. You see, John always arranged
everything
and now John is gone…” Her voice tailed off. “Now John is gone.”

Her gaze, piteous, bewildered, went from one to the other.

“I don't know what to do without John. John looked after me. He took care of me. Now he is gone, everything is gone. And the children—they ask me questions and I can't answer them properly. I don't know what to say to Terry. He keeps saying: ‘Why was Father killed?' Some day, of course, he will find out why. Terry always has to
know.
What puzzles me is that he always asks
why,
not
who!
”

Gerda leaned back in her chair. Her lips were very blue.

She said stiffly:

“I feel—not very well—if John—John—”

Poirot came round the table to her and eased her sideways down in the chair. Her head dropped forward. He bent and lifted her eyelid. Then he straightened up.

“An easy and comparatively painless death.”

Henrietta stared at him.

“Heart? No.” Her mind leaped forward. “Something in the tea. Something she put there herself. She chose that way out?”

Poirot shook his head gently.

“Oh, no, it was meant for
you.
It was in
your
teacup.”

“For
me?
” Henrietta's voice was incredulous. “But I was trying to help her.”

“That did not matter. Have you not seen a dog caught in a trap—it sets its teeth into anyone who touches it. She saw only that you knew her secret and so you, too, must die.”

Henrietta said slowly:

“And you made me put the cup back on the tray—you meant—you meant
her
—”

Poirot interrupted her quietly:

“No, no, Mademoiselle. I did not
know
that there was anything in your teacup. I only knew that there
might
be. And when the cup was on the tray it was an even chance if she drank from that or the other—if you call it chance. I say myself that an end such as this is merciful. For her—and for two innocent children.”

He said gently to Henrietta: “You are very tired, are you not?”

She nodded. She asked him: “When did you guess?”

“I do not know exactly. The scene was set; I felt that from the first. But I did not realize for a long time that it was set
by Gerda Christow
—that her attitude was stagey because she was, actually, acting a part. I was puzzled by the simplicity and at the same time the complexity. I recognized fairly soon that it was
your
ingenuity that I was fighting against, and that you were being aided and abetted by your relations as soon as they understood what you wanted done!” He paused and added: “Why did
you
want it done?”

“Because John asked me to! That's what he meant when he said ‘
Henrietta.
' It was all there in that one word. He was asking me
to protect Gerda. You see, he loved Gerda. I think he loved Gerda much better than he ever knew he did. Better than Veronica Cray. Better than me. Gerda
belonged
to him, and John liked things that belonged to him. He knew that if anyone could protect Gerda from the consequences of what she'd done, I could. And he knew that I would do anything he wanted, because I loved him.”

“And you started at once,” said Poirot grimly.

“Yes, the first thing I could think of was to get the revolver away from her and drop it in the pool. That would obscure the fingerprint business. When I discovered later that he had been shot with a different gun, I went out to look for it, and naturally found it at once because I knew just the sort of place Gerda would have put it. I was only a minute or two ahead of Inspector Grange's men.”

She paused and then went on: “I kept it with me in that satchel bag of mine until I could take it up to London. Then I hid it in the studio until I could bring it back, and put it where the police would not find it.”

“The clay horse,” murmured Poirot.

“How did you know? Yes, I put it in a sponge bag and wired the armature round it, and then slapped up the clay model round it. After all, the police couldn't very well destroy an artist's masterpiece, could they? What made you know where it was?”

“The fact that you chose to model a horse. The horse of Troy was the unconscious association in your mind. But the fingerprints—how did you manage the fingerprints?”