Death in the Clouds - Agatha Christie [45]
‘He’s got a very brown face and very blue eyes.’
‘Anyone can have a brown face,’ said Gladys. ‘It may be the seaside or it may come out of a bottle, 2s. 11d. at the chemist’s. Handsome Men are Slightly Bronzed. The eyes sound all right. But a dentist! Why, if he was going to kiss you you’d feel he was going to say, “Open a little wider, please”.’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Gladys.’
‘You needn’t be so touchy, my dear. I see you’ve got it badly. Yes, Mr Henry, I’m just coming…Drat Henry! Thinks he’s God Almighty, the way he orders us girls about!’
The letter had been to suggest dinner on Saturday evening. At lunch-time on Saturday when Jane received her augmented pay she felt full of high spirits.
‘And to think,’ said Jane to herself, ‘that I was worrying so, that day coming over in the aeroplane. Everything’s turned out beautifully…Life is really too marvellous.’
So full of exuberance did she feel that she decided to be extravagant and lunch at the Corner House and enjoy the accompaniment of music to her food.
She seated herself at a table for four, where there were already a middle-aged woman and a young man sitting. The middle-aged woman was just finishing her lunch. Presently she called for her bill, picked up a large collection of parcels and departed.
Jane, as was her custom, read a book as she ate. Looking up as she turned a page, she noticed the young man opposite her staring at her very intently, and at the same moment realized that his face was vaguely familiar to her.
Just as she made these discoveries the young man caught her eye and bowed.
‘Excuse me, Mademoiselle, you do not recognize me?’
Jane looked at him more attentively. He had a fair boyish-looking face, attractive more by reason of its extreme mobility than because of any actual claim to good looks.
‘We have not been introduced, it is true,’ went on the young man, ‘unless you call murder an introduction and the fact that we both gave evidence in the coroner’s court.’
‘Of course,’ said Jane. ‘How stupid of me! I thought I knew your face. You are—?’
‘Jean Dupont,’ said the man and gave a funny, rather engaging little bow.
A remembrance flashed into Jane’s mind of a dictum of Gladys’s, expressed perhaps without undue delicacy.
‘If there’s one fellow after you, there’s sure to be another. Seems to be a law of Nature. Sometimes it’s three or four.’
Now Jane had always led an austere, hard-working life (rather like the description after the act of girls who were missing—‘She was a bright, cheerful girl with no men friends, etc.’). Jane had been ‘a bright, cheerful girl with no men friends’. Now it seemed that men friends were rolling up all round. There was no doubt about it, Jean Dupont’s face as he leaned across the table held more than mere interested politeness. He was pleased to be sitting opposite Jane. He was more than pleased—he was delighted.
Jane thought to herself with a touch of misgiving:
‘He’s French, though. You’ve got to look out with the French, they always say so.’
‘You’re still in England, then,’ said Jane, and silently cursed herself for the extreme inanity of her remark.
‘Yes. My father has been to Edinburgh to give a lecture there, and we have stayed with friends also. But now—tomorrow—we return to France.’
‘I see.’
‘The police, they have not made an arrest yet?’ said Jean Dupont.
‘No, there’s not even been anything about it in the papers lately. Perhaps they’ve given it up.’
Jean Dupont shook his head. ‘No, no, they will not have given it up. They work silently’—he made an expressive gesture—‘in the dark.’
‘Don’t,’ said Jane uneasily. ‘You give me the creeps.’
‘Yes, it is not a very nice feeling, to have been so close when a murder was committed…’ He added, ‘And I was closer than you were. I was very close indeed. Sometimes I do not like to think of that…’
‘Who do you think did it?’ asked Jane. ‘I’ve wondered and wondered.’
Jean Dupont shrugged his shoulders.
‘It was not I. She was far too ugly!’
‘Well,’ said Jane, ‘I suppose you would rather kill an ugly woman than a good-looking