Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie [52]
‘If I say what you want me to say, it will be all lies and not true. She made that Will. She wrote it down there. She told me to go out of the room while the others signed it.’
‘There is evidence against you, you know. There are people who will say that Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe often did not know what she was signing. She had several documents of different kinds, and she did not always re-read what was put before her.’
‘Well, then she did not know what she was saying.’
‘My dear child,’ said Mr Fullerton, ‘your best hope is the fact that you are a first offender, that you are a foreigner, that you understand the English language only in a rather rudimentary form. In that case you may get off with a minor sentence—or you may, indeed, get put on probation.’
‘Oh, words. Nothing but words. I shall be put in prison and never let out again.’
‘Now you are talking nonsense,’ Mr Fullerton said.
‘It would be better if I ran away, if I ran away and hid myself so that nobody could find me.’
‘Once there is a warrant out for your arrest, you would be found.’
‘Not if I did it quickly. Not if I went at once. Not if someone helped me. I could get away. Get away from England. In a boat or a plane. I could find someone who forges passports or visas, or whatever you have to have. Someone who will do something for me. I have friends. I have people who are fond of me. Somebody could help me to disappear. That is what I needed. I could put on a wig. I could walk about on crutches.’
‘Listen,’ Mr Fullerton had said, and he had spoken then with authority, ‘I am sorry for you. I will recommend you to a lawyer who will do his best for you. You can’t hope to disappear. You are talking like a child.’
‘I have got enough money. I have saved money.’ And then she had said, ‘You have tried to be kind. Yes, I believe that. But you will not do anything because it is all the law—the law. But someone will help me. Someone will. And I shall get away where nobody will ever find me.’
Nobody, Mr Fullerton thought, had found her. He wondered—yes; he wondered very much—where she was or could be now.
Chapter 14
Admitted to Apple Trees, Hercule Poirot was shown into the drawing-room and told that Mrs Drake would not be long.
In passing through the hall he heard the hum of female voices behind what he took to be the dining-room door.
Poirot crossed to the drawing-room window and surveyed the neat and pleasant garden. Well laid out, kept studiously in control. Rampant autumn michaelmas daisies still survived, tied up severely to sticks; chrysanthemums had not yet relinquished life. There were still a persistent rose or two scorning the approach of winter.
Poirot could discern no sign as yet of the preliminary activities of a landscape gardener. All was care and convention. He wondered if Mrs Drake had been one too many for Michael Garfield. He had spread his lures in vain. It showed every sign of remaining a splendidly kept suburban garden.
The door opened.
‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Monsieur Poirot,’ said Mrs Drake.
Outside in the hall there was a diminishing hum of voices as various people took their leave and departed.
‘It’s our church Christmas fête,’ explained Mrs Drake. ‘A Committee Meeting for arrangements for it and all the rest of it. These things always go on much longer than they ought to, of course. Somebody always objects to something, or has a good idea—the good idea usually being a perfectly impossible one.’
There was a slight acerbity in her tone. Poirot could well imagine that Rowena Drake would put things down as quite absurd, firmly and definitely. He could understand well enough from remarks he had heard from Spence’s sister, from hints of what other people had said and from various other sources, that Rowena Drake was that dominant type of personality whom everyone expects to run the show, and whom nobody has much affection for while she is doing