Peril at End House - Agatha Christie [19]
Bending over a flower-bed was a man in a faded Norfolk jacket. He straightened up as the gate creaked and turned to look at us. He was a man of about sixty, six foot at least, with a powerful frame and a weather-beaten face. His head was almost completely bald. His eyes were a vivid blue and twinkled. He seemed a genial soul.
‘Good-afternoon,’ he observed as we passed.
I responded in kind and as we went on up the drive I was conscious of those blue eyes raking our backs inquisitively.
‘I wonder,’ said Poirot, thoughtfully.
He left it at that without vouchsafing any explanation of what it was that he wondered.
The house itself was large and rather dreary looking. It was shut in by trees, the branches of which actually touched the roof. It was clearly in bad repair. Poirot swept it with an appraising glance before ringing the bell—an old-fashioned bell that needed a Herculean pull to produce any effect and which once started, echoed mournfully on and on.
The door was opened by a middle-aged woman—‘a decent woman in black’—so I felt she should be described. Very respectable, rather mournful, completely uninterested.
Miss Buckley, she said, had not yet returned. Poirot explained that we had an appointment. He had some little difficulty in gaining his point, she was the type that is apt to be suspicious of foreigners. Indeed I flatter myself that it was my appearance which turned the scale. We were admitted and ushered into the drawing-room to await Miss Buckley’s return.
There was no mournful note here. The room gave on the sea and was full of sunshine. It was shabby and betrayed conflicting styles—ultra modern of a cheap variety superimposed on solid Victorian. The curtains were of faded brocade, but the covers were new and gay and the cushions were positively hectic. On the walls were hung family portraits. Some of them, I thought, looked remarkably good. There was a gramophone and there were some records lying idly about. There were a portable wireless, practically no books, and one newspaper flung open on the end of the sofa. Poirot picked it up—then laid it down with a grimace. It was the St Loo Weekly Herald and Directory. Something impelled him to pick it up a second time, and he was glancing at a column when the door opened and Nick Buckley came into the room.
‘Bring the ice, Ellen,’ she called over her shoulder, then addressed herself to us.
‘Well, here I am—and I’ve shaken off the others. I’m devoured with curiosity. Am I the long-lost heroine that is badly wanted for the Talkies? You were so very solemn’—she addressed herself to Poirot—‘that I feel it can’t be anything else. Do make me a handsome offer.’
‘Alas! Mademoiselle—’ began Poirot.
‘Don’t say it’s the opposite,’ she begged him. ‘Don’t say you paint miniatures and want me to buy one. But no—with that moustache and staying at the Majestic, which has the nastiest food and the highest prices in England—no, it simply can’t be.’
The woman who had opened the door to us came into the room with ice and a tray of bottles. Nick mixed cocktails expertly, continuing to talk. I think at last Poirot’s silence (so unlike him) impressed itself upon her. She stopped in the very act of filling the glasses and said sharply:
‘Well?’
‘That is what I wish it to be—well, Mademoiselle.’ He took the cocktail from her hand. ‘To your good health, Mademoiselle—to your continued good health.’
The girl was no fool. The significance of his tone was not lost on her.
‘Is—anything the matter?’
‘Yes, Mademoiselle. This…’
He held out his hand to her with the bullet on the palm of it. She picked it up with a puzzled frown.
‘You know what that is?’
‘Yes, of course I know. It’s a bullet.’
‘Exactly. Mademoiselle—it was not a wasp that flew past your face this morning—it was this bullet.’
‘Do you mean—was some criminal idiot shooting bullets in a