Murder Is Easy - Agatha Christie [32]
“Oh, Mr. Fitzwilliam, good morning.”
“Good morning,” said Luke. “Have you been admiring the beauties of Nature?”
Mr. Ellsworthy’s long, pale hands flew up in a reproving gesture.
“Oh, no, no—oh, dear me, no. I abhor Nature. Such a coarse, unimaginative wench. I have always held that one cannot enjoy life until one has put Nature in her place.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“There are ways!” said Mr. Ellsworthy. “In a place like this, a delicious provincial spot, there are some most delectable amusements if one has the goût—the flair. I enjoy life, Mr. Fitzwilliam.”
“So do I,” said Luke.
“Mens sana in corpore sano,” said Mr. Ellsworthy. His tone was delicately ironic. “I’m sure that’s so true of you.”
“There are worse things,” said Luke.
“My dear fellow! Sanity is the one unbelievable bore. One must be mad—deliciously mad—perverted—slightly twisted—then one sees life from a new and entrancing angle.”
“The leper’s squint,” suggested Luke.
“Ah, very good—very good—quite witty! But there’s something in it, you know. An interesting angle of vision. But I mustn’t detain you. You’re having exercise—one must have exercise—the public school spirit!”
“As you say,” said Luke, and with a curt nod walked on.
He thought:
“I’m getting too darned imaginative. The fellow’s just an ass, that’s all.”
But some indefinable uneasiness drove his feet on faster. That queer, sly, triumphant smile that Ellsworthy had had on his face—was that just imagination on his, Luke’s part? And his subsequent impression that it had been wiped off as though by a sponge the moment the other man caught sight of Luke coming towards him—what of that?
And with quickening uneasiness he thought:
“Bridget? Is she all right? They came up here together and he came back alone.”
He hurried on. The sun had come out while he was talking to Rose Humbleby. Now it had gone in again. The sky was dull and menacing, and wind came in sudden erratic little puffs. It was as though he had stepped out of normal everyday life into that queer half-world of enchantment, the consciousness of which had enveloped him ever since he came to Wychwood.
He turned a corner and came out on the flat ledge of green grass that had been pointed out to him from below and which went, he knew, by the name of the Witches’ Meadow. It was here, so tradition had it, that the witches had held revelry on Walpurgis Night and Hallowe’en.
And then a quick wave of relief swept over him. Bridget was here. She sat with her back against a rock on the hillside. She was sitting bent over, her head in her hands.
He walked quickly over to her. Lovely springing turf strangely green and fresh.
He said:
“Bridget?”
Slowly she raised her face from her hands. Her face troubled him. She looked as though she were returning from some far-off world, as though she had difficulty in adjusting herself to the world of now and here.
Luke said—rather inadequately:
“I say—you’re—you’re all right, aren’t you?”
It was a minute or two before she answered—as though she still had not quite come back from that far-off world that had held her. Luke felt that his words had to travel a long way before they reached her.
Then she said:
“Of course I’m all right. Why shouldn’t I be?”
And now her voice was sharp and almost hostile.
Luke grinned.
“I’m hanged if I know. I got the wind up about you suddenly.”
“Why?”
“Mainly, I think, because of the melodramatic atmosphere in which I’m living at present. It makes me see things out of all proportion. If I lose sight of you for an hour or two I naturally assume that the next thing will be to find your gory corpse in a ditch. It would be in a play or a book.”
“Heroines are never killed,” said Bridget.
“No, but—”
Luke stopped—just in time.
“What were you going to say?”
“Nothing.”
Thank goodness he had just stopped himself in time. One couldn’t very well say to an attractive young woman, “But you’re not the heroine.”
Bridget went on:
“They are abducted, imprisoned, left