Curtain - Agatha Christie [48]
Poirot permitted himself to be wheeled out also, and he was in good spirits too. I think he liked seeing the Luttrells on such a friendly footing with each other. The Colonel was looking years younger. His manner seemed less vacillating, he tugged less at his moustache. He even suggested that there might be some bridge that evening.
‘Daisy here misses her bridge.’
‘Indeed I do,’ said Mrs Luttrell.
Norton suggested it would be tiring for her.
‘I’ll play one rubber,’ said Mrs Luttrell, and added with a twinkle: ‘And I’ll behave myself and not bite poor George’s head off.’
‘My dear,’ protested her husband, ‘I know I’m a shocking player.’
‘And what of that?’ said Mrs Luttrell. ‘Doesn’t it give me grand pleasure badgering and bullying you about it?’
It made us all laugh. Mrs Luttrell went on: ‘Oh, I know my faults, but I’m not going to give them up at my time of life. George has just got to put up with me.’
Colonel Luttrell looked at her quite fatuously.
I think it was seeing them both on such good terms that led to a discussion on marriage and divorce that took place later in the day.
Were men and women actually happier by reason of the greater facilities afforded for divorce, or was it often the case that a temporary period of irritation and estrangement – or trouble over a third person – gave way after a while to a resumption of affection and friendliness?
It is odd sometimes to see how much at variance people’s ideas are with their own personal experiences.
My own marriage had been unbelievably happy and successful, and I am essentially an old-fashioned person, yet I was on the side of divorce – of cutting one’s losses and starting afresh. Boyd Carrington, whose marriage had been unhappy, yet held for an indissoluble marriage bond. He had, he said, the utmost reverence for the institution of marriage. It was the foundation of the state.
Norton, with no ties and no personal angle, was of my way of thinking. Franklin, the modern scientific thinker, was, strangely enough, resolutely opposed to divorce. It offended, apparently, his ideal of clear-cut thinking and action. One assumed certain responsibilities. Those must be carried through and not shirked or set aside. A contract, he said, is a contract. One enters upon it of one’s own free will, and must abide by it. Anything else resulted in what he called a mess. Loose ends, half-dissolved ties.
Leaning back in his chair, his long legs kicking vaguely at a table, he said: ‘A man chooses his wife. She’s his responsibility until she dies – or he does.’
Norton said rather comically: ‘And sometimes – Oh blessed death, eh?’
We laughed, and Boyd Carrington said: ‘You needn’t talk, my lad, you’ve never been married.’
Shaking his head, Norton said: ‘And now I’ve left it too late.’
‘Have you?’ Boyd Carrington’s glance was quizzical. ‘Sure of that?’
It was just at that moment that Elizabeth Cole joined us. She had been up with Mrs Franklin.
I wondered if it was my fancy, or did Boyd Carrington look meaningly from her to Norton, and was it possible that Norton blushed?
It put a new idea into my head and I looked searchingly at Elizabeth Cole. It was true that she was still a comparatively young woman. Moreover she was quite a handsome one. In fact a very charming and sympathetic person who was capable of making any man happy. And she and Norton had spent a good deal of time together of late. In their hunts for wild flowers and birds, they had become friends; I remembered how she had spoken of Norton being such a kind person.
Well, if so, I was glad for her sake. Her starved and barren girlhood would not stand in the way of her ultimate happiness. The tragedy that had shattered her life would not have been enacted in