ABC Murders - Agatha Christie [44]
“Poirot,” I said. “Your mind is incurably sentimental.”
“That is the last thing my mind is. You are the sentimental one, Hastings.”
I was about to argue the point hotly, but at that moment the door opened.
To my astonishment it was Thora Grey who entered.
“Forgive me for coming back,” she said composedly. “But there was something that I think I would like to tell you, M. Poirot.”
“Certainly, mademoiselle. Sit down, will you not?”
She took a seat and hesitated for just a minute as though choosing her words.
“It is just this, M. Poirot. Mr. Clarke very generously gave you to understand just now that I had left Combeside by my own wish. He is a very kind and loyal person. But as a matter of fact, it is not quite like that. I was quite prepared to stay on—there is any amount of work to be done in connection with the collections. It was Lady Clarke who wished me to leave! I can make allowances. She is a very ill woman, and her brain is somewhat muddled with the drugs they give her. It makes her suspicious and fanciful. She took an unreasoning dislike to me and insisted that I should leave the house.”
I could not but admire the girl’s courage. She did not attempt to gloss over facts, as so many might have been tempted to do, but went straight to the point with an admirable candour. My heart went out to her in admiration and sympathy.
“I call it splendid of you to come and tell us this,” I said.
“It’s always better to have the truth,” she said with a little smile. “I don’t want to shelter behind Mr. Clarke’s chivalry. He is a very chivalrous man.”
There was a warm glow in her words. She evidently admired Franklin Clarke enormously.
“You have been very honest, mademoiselle,” said Poirot.
“It is rather a blow to me,” said Thora ruefully. “I had no idea Lady Clarke disliked me so much. In fact, I always thought she was rather fond of me.” She made a wry face. “One lives and learns.”
She rose.
“That is all I came to say. Goodbye.”
I accompanied her downstairs.
“I call that very sporting of her,” I said as I returned to the room. “She has courage, that girl.”
“And calculation.”
“What do you mean—calculation?”
“I mean that she has the power of looking ahead.”
I looked at him doubtfully.
“She really is a lovely girl,” I said.
“And wears very lovely clothes. That crêpe marocain and the silver fox collar—dernier cri.”
“You’re a man milliner, Poirot. I never notice what people have on.”
“You should join a nudist colony.”
As I was about to make an indignant rejoinder, he said, with a sudden change of subject:
“Do you know, Hastings, I cannot rid my mind of the impression that already, in our conversations this afternoon, something was said that was significant. It is odd—I cannot pin down exactly what it was…Just an impression that passed through my mind…That reminds me of something I have already heard or seen or noted….”
“Something at Churston?”
“No—not at Churston…Before that…No matter, presently it will come to me….”
He looked at me (perhaps I had not been attending very closely), laughed and began once more to hum.
“She is an angel, is she not? From Eden, by way of Sweden….”
“Poirot,” I said. “Go to the devil!”
Twenty
LADY CLARKE
There was an air of deep and settled melancholy over Combeside when we saw it again for the second time. This may, perhaps, have been partly due to the weather—it was a moist September day with a hint of autumn in the air, and partly, no doubt, it was the semi-shut-up state of the house. The downstairs rooms were closed and shuttered, and the small room into which we were shown smelt damp and airless.
A capable-looking hospital nurse came to us there pulling down her starched cuffs.
“M. Poirot?” she said briskly. “I am Nurse Capstick. I got Mr. Clarke’s letter saying you were coming.”
Poirot inquired after Lady Clarke’s health.
“Not at all bad really, all things considered.”
“All things considered,” I presumed, meant considering