After the Funeral - Agatha Christie [71]
Watching her, he had said:
“Yes, you will succeed. You will go ahead. How fortunate that you are not restricted, as so many are, by poverty. One cannot go far without the capital outlay. To have had these creative ideas and to have been frustrated by lack of means—that would have been unbearable.”
“I couldn’t have borne it! But I’d have raised money somehow or other—got someone to back me.”
“Ah! of course. Your uncle, whose house this was, was rich. Even if he had not died, he would, as you express it, have ‘staked’ you.”
“Oh no, he wouldn’t. Uncle Richard was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud where women were concerned. If I’d been a man—” A quick flash of anger swept across her face. “He made me very angry.”
“I see—yes, I see….”
“The old shouldn’t stand in the way of the young. I—oh, I beg your pardon.”
Hercule Poirot laughed easily and twirled his moustache.
“I am old, yes. But I do not impede youth. There is no one who needs to wait for my death.”
“What a horrid idea.”
“But you are a realist, Madame. Let us admit without more ado that the world is full of the young—or even the middle-aged—who wait, patiently or impatiently, for the death of someone whose decease will give them if not affluence—then opportunity.”
“Opportunity!” Susan said, taking a deep breath. “That’s what one needs.”
Poirot who had been looking beyond her, said gaily:
“And here is your husband come to join our little discussion…We talk, Mr. Banks, of opportunity. Opportunity the golden—opportunity who must be grasped with both hands. How far in conscience can one go? Let us hear your views?”
But he was not destined to hear the views of Gregory Banks on opportunity or on anything else. In fact he had found it next to impossible to talk to Gregory Banks at all. Banks had a curious fluid quality. Whether by his own wish, or by that of his wife, he seemed to have no liking for tête-à-têtes or quiet discussions. No, “conversation” with Gregory had failed.
Poirot had talked with Maude Abernethie—also about paint (the smell of ) and how fortunate it had been that Timothy had been able to come to Enderby, and how kind it had been of Helen to extend an invitation to Miss Gilchrist also.
“For really she is most useful. Timothy so often feels like a snack—and one cannot ask too much of other people’s servants but there is a gas ring in a little room off the pantry, so that Miss Gilchrist can warm up Ovaltine or Benger’s there without disturbing anybody. And she’s so willing about fetching things, she’s quite willing to run up and down stairs a dozen times a day. Oh yes, I feel that it was really quite Providential that she should have lost her nerve about staying alone in the house as she did, though I admit it vexed me at the time.”
“Lost her nerve?” Poirot was interested.
He listened whilst Maude gave him an account of Miss Gilchrist’s sudden collapse.
“She was frightened, you say? And yet could not exactly say why? That is interesting. Very interesting.”
“I put it down myself to delayed shock.”
“Perhaps.”
“Once during the war, when a bomb dropped about a mile from us, I remember Timothy—”
Poirot abstracted his mind from Timothy.
“Had anything particular happened that day?” he asked.
“On what day?” Maude looked blank.
“The day that Miss Gilchrist was upset.”
“Oh, that—no, I don’t think so. It seems to have been coming on ever since she left Lytchett St. Mary, or so she said. She didn’t seem to mind when she was there.”
And the result, Poirot thought, had been a piece of poisoned wedding cake. Not so very surprising that Miss Gilchrist was frightened after that… And even when she had removed herself to the peaceful country round Stansfield Grange, the fear had lingered. More than lingered. Grown. Why grown? Surely attending on an exacting hypochondriac like Timothy must be so exhausting that nervous fears would be likely to be swallowed up in exasperation?
But something in that house had made Miss Gilchrist afraid.