Peril at End House - Agatha Christie [80]
Frederica came slowly forward till she stood by the chair.
Poirot intercepted her.
‘You are hurt, Madame?’
She shook her head.
‘The bullet grazed my shoulder—that is all.’
She put him aside with a gentle hand and bent down.
The man’s eyes opened and he saw her looking down at him.
‘I’ve done for you this time, I hope,’ he said in a low vicious snarl, and then, his voice changing suddenly till it sounded like a child’s, ‘Oh! Freddie, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it. You’ve always been so decent to me…’
‘It’s all right—’
She knelt down beside him.
‘I didn’t mean—’
His head dropped. The sentence was never finished.
Frederica looked up at Poirot.
‘Yes, Madame, he is dead,’ he said, gently.
She rose slowly from her knees and stood looking down at him. With one hand she touched his forehead—pitifully, it seemed. Then she sighed and turned to the rest of us.
‘He was my husband,’ she said, quietly.
‘J.,’ I murmured.
Poirot caught my remark, and nodded a quick assent.
‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘Always I felt that there was a J. I said so from the beginning, did I not?’
‘He was my husband,’ said Frederica again. Her voice was terribly tired. She sank into a chair that Lazarus brought for her. ‘I might as well tell you everything—now.’
‘He was—completely debased. He was a drug fiend. He taught me to take drugs. I have been fighting the habit ever since I left him. I think—at last—I am nearly cured. But it has been difficult. Oh! so horribly difficult. Nobody knows how difficult!
‘I could never escape from him. He used to turn up and demand money—with threats. A kind of blackmail. If I did not give him money he would shoot himself. That was always his threat. Then he took to threatening to shoot me. He was not responsible. He was mad—crazy…’
‘I suppose it was he who shot Maggie Buckley. He didn’t mean to shoot her, of course. He must have thought it was me.
‘I ought to have said, I suppose. But, after all, I wasn’t sure. And those queer accidents Nick had—that made me feel that perhaps it wasn’t him after all. It might have been someone quite different.
‘And then—one day—I saw a bit of his handwriting on a torn piece of paper on M. Poirot’s table. It was part of a letter he had sent me. I knew then that M. Poirot was on the track.
‘Since then I have felt that it was only a matter of time…’
‘But I don’t understand about the sweets. He wouldn’t have wanted to poison Nick. And anyway, I don’t see how he could have had anything to do with that. I’ve puzzled and puzzled.’
She put both hands to her face, then took them away and said with a queer pathetic finality:
‘That’s all…’
Chapter 21
The Person—K.
Lazarus came quickly to her side.
‘My dear,’ he said. ‘My dear.’
Poirot went to the sideboard, poured out a glass of wine and brought it to her, standing over her while she drank it.
She handed the glass back to him and smiled.
‘I’m all right now,’ she said. ‘What—what had we better do next?’
She looked at Japp, but the Inspector shook his head. ‘I’m on a holiday, Mrs Rice. Just obliging an old friend—that’s all I’m doing. The St Loo police are in charge of the case.’
She looked at Poirot.
‘And M. Poirot is in charge of the St Loo Police?’
‘Oh! quelle idée, Madame! I am a mere humble adviser.’
‘M. Poirot,’ said Nick. ‘Can’t we hush it up?’
‘You wish that, Mademoiselle?’
‘Yes. After all—I’m the person most concerned. And there will be no more attacks on me—now.’
‘No, that is true. There will be no more attacks on you now.’
‘You’re thinking of Maggie. But, M. Poirot, nothing will bring Maggie back to life again! If you make all this public, you’ll only bring a terrible lot of suffering and publicity on Frederica—and she hasn’t deserved it.’
‘You say she has not deserved it?’
‘Of course she hasn’t! I told you right at the beginning that she had a brute of a husband. You’ve seen to-night—what he was. Well, he’s dead. Let that be the end of things. Let the police go on looking for the man who shot Maggie. They just won’t find him, that’s all.’
‘So that is what