Curtain - Agatha Christie [11]
Major Allerton now. I dwelt on him appraisingly. A nasty fellow if I ever saw one! The sort of fellow who would skin his grandmother. And all glossed over with this superficial charm of manner. He was talking now – telling a story of his own discomfiture and making everybody laugh with his rueful appreciation of a joke at his expense.
If Allerton was X, I decided, his crimes had been committed for profit in some way.
It was true that Poirot had not definitely said that X was a man. I considered Miss Cole as a possibility. Her movements were restless and jerky – obviously a woman of nerves. Handsome in a hag-ridden kind of way. Still, she looked normal enough. She, Mrs Luttrell and Judith were the only women at the dinner table. Mrs Franklin was having dinner upstairs in her room, and the nurse who attended to her had her meals after us.
After dinner I was standing by the drawing-room window looking out into the garden and thinking back to the time when I had seen Cynthia Murdoch, a young girl with auburn hair, run across that lawn. How charming she had looked in her white overall . . .
Lost in thoughts of the past, I started when Judith passed her arm through mine and led me with her out of the window on to the terrace.
She said abruptly: ‘What’s the matter?’
I was startled. ‘The matter? What do you mean?’
‘You’ve been so queer all through the evening. Why were you staring at everyone at dinner?’
I was annoyed. I had had no idea I had allowed my thoughts so much sway over me.
‘Was I? I suppose I was thinking of the past. Seeing ghosts perhaps.’
‘Oh, yes, of course you stayed here, didn’t you, when you were a young man? An old lady was murdered here, or something?’
‘Poisoned with strychnine.’
‘What was she like? Nice or nasty?’
I considered the question.
‘She was a very kind woman,’ I said slowly. ‘Generous. Gave a lot to charity.’
‘Oh, that kind of generosity.’
Judith’s voice sounded faintly scornful. Then she asked a curious question: ‘Were people – happy here?’
No, they had not been happy. That, at least, I knew. I said slowly: ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they felt like prisoners. Mrs Inglethorp, you see, had all the money – and – doled it out. Her stepchildren could have no life of their own.’
I heard Judith take a sharp breath. The hand on my arm tightened.
‘That’s wicked – wicked. An abuse of power. It shouldn’t be allowed. Old people, sick people, they shouldn’t have the power to hold up the lives of the young and strong. To keep them tied down, fretting, wasting their power and energy that could be used – that’s needed. It’s just selfishness.’
‘The old,’ I said drily, ‘have not got a monopoly of that quality.’
‘Oh, I know, Father, you think the young are selfish. So we are, perhaps, but it’s a clean selfishness. At least we only want to do what we want ourselves, we don’t want everybody else to do what we want, we don’t want to make slaves of other people.’
‘No, you just trample them down if they happen to be in your way.’
Judith squeezed my arm. She said: ‘Don’t be so bitter! I don’t really do much trampling – and you’ve never tried to dictate our lives to any of us. We are grateful for that.’
‘I’m afraid,’ I said honestly, ‘that I’d have liked to, though. It was your mother who insisted you should be allowed to make your own mistakes.’
Judith gave my arm another quick squeeze. She said: ‘I know. You’d have liked to fuss over us like a hen! I do hate fuss. I won’t stand it. But you do agree with me, don’t you, about useful lives being sacrificed to useless ones?’
‘It does sometimes happen,’ I admitted. ‘But there’s no need for drastic measures . . . It’s up to anybody just to walk out, you know.’
‘Yes, but is it? Is it?’
Her tone was so vehement that I looked at her in some astonishment. It was too dark to see her face clearly. She went on, her voice low and troubled: ‘There’s so much – it’s difficult – financial considerations, a sense of responsibility, reluctance to hurt someone you’ve been