Death in the Clouds - Agatha Christie [44]
‘Tell me,’ the woman resumed her stare, ‘are you the girl who gave evidence at the inquest yesterday—the girl who was in the aeroplane?’
‘Yes, Madam.’
‘How too terribly thrilling! Tell me about it.’
Jane did her best to please.
‘Well, Madam, it was all rather dreadful, really—’ She plunged into narration, answering questions as they came. What had the old woman looked like? Was it true that there were two French detectives aboard and that the whole thing was mixed up with the French Government scandals? Was Lady Horbury on board? Was she really as good-looking as everyone said? Who did she, Jane, think had actually done the murder? They said the whole thing was being hushed up for Government reasons, and so on and so on…
This first ordeal was only a forerunner of many others all on the same lines. Everyone wanted to be done by ‘the girl who was on the plane’. Everyone was able to say to their friends, ‘My dear, positively too marvellous. The girl at my hairdresser’s is the girl…Yes, I should go there if I were you—they do your hair very well…Jeanne, her name is…rather a little thing, big eyes. She’ll tell you all about it if you ask her nicely…’
By the end of the week Jane felt her nerves giving way under the strain. Sometimes she felt that if she had to go through the recital once again she would scream or attack her questioner with the dryer.
However, in the end she hit upon a better way of relieving her feelings. She approached M. Antoine and boldly demanded a rise of salary.
‘You ask that? You have the impudence, when it is only out of kindness of heart that I keep you here, after you have been mixed up in a murder case? Many men, less kindhearted than I, would have dismissed you immediately.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ said Jane coolly. ‘I’m a draw in this place and you know it. If you want me to go, I’ll go. I’ll easily get what I want from Henri’s or the Maison Richet.’
‘And who is to know you have gone there? Of what importance are you anyway?’
‘I met one or two reporters at that inquest,’ said Jane. ‘One of them would give my change of establishment any publicity needed.’
Because he feared that this was indeed so, grumblingly M. Antoine agreed to Jane’s demands. Gladys applauded her friend heartily.
‘Good for you, dear,’ she said. ‘Ikey Andrew was no match for you that time. If a girl couldn’t fend for herself a bit I don’t know where we’d all be. Grit, dear, that’s what you’ve got, and I admire you for it.’
‘I can fight for my own hand all right,’ said Jane, her small chin lifting itself pugnaciously. ‘I’ve had to all my life.’
‘Hard lines, dear,’ said Gladys. ‘But keep your end up with Ikey Andrew. He likes you all the better for it, really. Meekness doesn’t pay in this life—but I don’t think we’re either of us troubled by too much of that.’
Thereafter Jane’s narrative, repeated daily with little variation, sank into the equivalent of a part played on the stage.
The promised dinner and theatre with Norman Gale had duly come off. It was one of those enchanting evenings when every word and confidence exchanged seemed to reveal a bond of sympathy and shared tastes.
They liked dogs and disliked cats. They both hated oysters and loved smoked salmon. They liked Greta Garbo and disliked Katharine Hepburn. They didn’t like fat women and admired really jet-black hair. They disliked very red nails. They disliked loud voices, noisy restaurants and negroes. They preferred buses to tubes.
It seemed almost miraculous that two people should have so many points of agreement.
One day at Antoine’s, opening her bag, Jane let a letter from Norman fall out. As she picked it up with a slightly heightened colour, Gladys pounced upon her.
‘Who’s your boy friend, dear?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ retorted Jane, her colour rising.
‘Don’t tell me! I know that letter isn’t from your mother’s great-uncle. I wasn’t born yesterday. Who is he, Jane?’
‘It’s someone—a man—that I met at Le Pinet. He’s a dentist.’
‘A dentist,’ said Gladys with lively distaste. ‘I suppose he’s got very white teeth and a smile.’
Jane was forced