Peril at End House - Agatha Christie [79]
And then we all saw it! Framed in the doorway was a white shadowy figure. Nick Buckley…
She advanced slowly and noiselessly—with a kind of floating ethereal motion that certainly conveyed the impression of nothing human…
I realized then what an actress the world had missed. Nick had wanted to play a part at End House. Now she was playing it, and I felt convinced that she was enjoying herself to the core. She did it perfectly.
She floated forward into the room—and the silence was broken.
There was a gasping cry from the invalid chair beside me. A kind of gurgle from Mr Croft. A startled oath from Challenger. Charles Vyse drew back his chair, I think. Lazarus leaned forward. Frederica alone made no sound or movement.
And then a scream rent the room. Ellen sprang up from her chair.
‘It’s her!’ she shrieked. ‘She’s come back. She’s walking! Them that’s murdered always walks. It’s her! It’s her!’
And then, with a click the lights went on.
I saw Poirot standing by them, the smile of the ringmaster on his face. Nick stood in the middle of the room in her white draperies.
It was Frederica who spoke first. She stretched out an unbelieving hand—touched her friend.
‘Nick,’ she said. ‘You’re—you’re real!’
It was almost a whisper.
Nick laughed. She advanced.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m real enough. Thank you so much for what you did for my father, Mrs Croft. But I’m afraid you won’t be able to enjoy the benefit of that will just yet.’
‘Oh, my God,’ gasped Mrs Croft. ‘Oh, my God.’ She twisted to and fro in her chair. ‘Take me away, Bert. Take me away. It was all a joke, my dear—all a joke, that’s all it was. Honest.’
‘A queer sort of joke,’ said Nick.
The door had opened again and a man had entered so quietly that I had not heard him. To my surprise I saw that it was Japp. He exchanged a quick nod with Poirot as though satisfying him of something. Then his face suddenly lit up and he took a step forward towards the squirming figure in the invalid chair.
‘Hello-ello-ello,’ he said. ‘What’s this? An old friend! Milly Merton, I declare! And at your old tricks again, my dear.’
He turned round in an explanatory way to the company disregarding Mrs Croft’s shrill protests.
‘Cleverest forger we’ve ever had, Milly Merton. We knew there had been an accident to the car they made their last getaway in. But there! Even an injury to the spine wouldn’t keep Milly from her tricks. She’s an artist, she is!’
‘Was that will a forgery?’ said Vyse.
He spoke in tones of amazement.
‘Of course it was a forgery,’ said Nick scornfully. ‘You don’t think I’d make a silly will like that, do you? I left you End House, Charles, and everything else to Frederica.’
She crossed as she spoke and stood by her friend, and just at that moment it happened!
A spurt of flame from the window and the hiss of a bullet. Then another and the sound of a groan and a fall outside…
And Frederica on her feet with a thin trickle of blood running down her arm…
Chapter 20
J.
It was all so sudden that for a moment no one knew what had happened.
Then, with a violent exclamation, Poirot ran to the window. Challenger was with him.
A moment later they reappeared, carrying with them the limp body of a man. As they lowered him carefully into a big leather armchair and his face came into view, I uttered a cry.
‘The face—the face at the window…’
It was the man I had seen looking in on us the previous evening. I recognized him at once. I realized that when I had said he was hardly human I had exaggerated as Poirot had accused me of doing.
Yet there was something about his face that justified my impression. It was a lost face—the face of one removed from ordinary humanity.
White, weak, depraved—it seemed a mere mask—as though the spirit within had fled long ago.
Down the side of it there