Five Little Pigs - Agatha Christie [56]
We got off at last. Caroline walked with Angela. And I walked with Amyas. And Elsa walked by herself—smiling.
I didn’t admire her myself—too violent a type—but I have to admit that she looked incredibly beautiful that afternoon. Women do when they’ve got what they want.
I can’t remember the events of that afternoon clearly at all. It’s all blurred. I remember old Merry coming out to meet us. I think we walked round the garden first. I remember having a long discussion with Angela about the training of terriers for ratting. She ate an incredible lot of apples, and tried to persuade me to do so too.
When we got back to the house, tea was going on under the big cedar tree. Merry, I remember, was looking very upset. I suppose either Caroline or Amyas had told him something. He was looking doubtfully at Caroline, and then he stared at Elsa. The old boy looked thoroughly worried. Of course Caroline liked to have Meredith on a string more or less, the devoted, platonic friend who would never, never go too far. She was that kind of woman.
After tea Meredith had a hurried word with me. He said:
“Look here, Phil, Amyas can’t do this thing!”
I said:
“Make no mistake, he’s going to do it.”
“He can’t leave his wife and child and go off with this girl. He’s years older than she is. She can’t be more than eighteen.”
I said to him that Miss Greer was a fully sophisticated twenty.
He said: “Anyway, that’s under age. She can’t know what she’s doing.”
Poor old Meredith. Always the chivalrous pukka sahib. I said:
“Don’t worry, old boy. She knows what she’s doing, and she likes it!”
That’s all we had the chance of saying. I thought to myself that probably Merry felt disturbed at the thought of Caroline being a deserted wife. Once the divorce was through she might expect her faithful Dobbin to marry her. I had an idea that hopeless devotion was really far more in his line. I must confess that that side of it amused me.
Curiously enough I remember very little about our visit to Meredith’s stink room. He enjoyed showing people his hobby. Personally I always found it very boring. I suppose I was in there with the rest of them when he gave a dissertation on the efficacy of coniine, but I don’t remember it. And I didn’t see Caroline pinch the stuff. As I’ve said, she was a very adroit woman. I do remember Meredith reading aloud the passage from Plato describing Socrates’ death. Very boring I thought it. Classics always did bore me.
There’s nothing much more I can remember about that day. Amyas and Angela had a first-class row, I know, and the rest of us rather welcomed it. It avoided other difficulties. Angela rushed off to bed with a final vituperative outburst. She said A, she’d pay him out. B, she wished he were dead. C, she hoped he’d die of leprosy, it would serve him right. D, she wished a sausage would stick to his nose, like in the fairy story, and never come off. When she’d gone we all laughed, we couldn’t help it, it was such a funny mixture.
Caroline went up to bed immediately afterwards. Miss Williams disappeared after her pupil. Amyas and Elsa went off together into the garden. It was clear that I wasn’t wanted. I went for a stroll by myself. It was a lovely night.
I came down late the following morning. There was no one in the dining room. Funny the things you do remember. I remember the taste of the kidneys and bacon I ate quite well. They were very good kidneys. Devilled.
Afterwards I wandered out looking for everybody. I went outside, didn’t see anybody, smoked a cigarette, encountered Miss Williams running about looking for Angela, who had played truant as usual when she ought to have been mending a torn frock. I went back into the hall and realized that Amyas and Caroline were having a set-to in the library. They were talking very