Problem at Pollensa Bay - Agatha Christie [63]
Her answer was in the clinging of her body, the abandon of her lips.
Then he moved back to his own corner. He picked up a magazine and so did she. Every now and then, over the top of the magazines, their eyes met. Then they smiled.
They arrived at Dover just after five. They were to spend the night there, and cross to the Continent on the following day. Theo entered their sitting room in the hotel with Vincent close behind her. He had a couple of evening papers in his hand which he threw down on the table. Two of the hotel servants brought in the luggage and withdrew.
Theo turned from the window where she had been standing looking out. In another minute they were in each other’s arms.
There was a discreet tap on the door and they drew apart again.
‘Damn it all,’ said Vincent, ‘it doesn’t seem as though we were ever going to be alone.’
Theo smiled. ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ she said softly. Sitting down on the sofa, she picked up one of the papers.
The knock proved to be a waiter bearing tea. He laid it on the table, drawing the latter up to the sofa on which Theo was sitting, cast a deft glance round, inquired if there were anything further, and withdrew.
Vincent, who had gone into the adjoining room, came back into the sitting room.
‘Now for tea,’ he said cheerily, but stopped suddenly in the middle of the room. ‘Anything wrong?’ he asked.
Theo was sitting bolt upright on the sofa. She was staring in front of her with dazed eyes, and her face had gone deathly white.
Vincent took a quick step towards her.
‘What is it, sweetheart?’
For answer she held out the paper to him, her finger pointing to the headline.
Vincent took the paper from her. ‘FAILURE OF HOBSON, JEKYLL AND LUCAS,’ he read. The name of the big city firm conveyed nothing to him at the moment, though he had an irritating conviction in the back of his mind that it ought to do so. He looked inquiringly at Theo.
‘Richard is Hobson, Jekyll and Lucas,’ she explained.
‘Your husband?’
‘Yes.’
Vincent returned to the paper and read the bald information it conveyed carefully. Phrases such as ‘sudden crash’, ‘serious revelations to follow’, ‘other houses affected’ struck him disagreeably.
Roused by a movement, he looked up. Theo was adjusting her little black hat in front of the mirror. She turned at the movement he made. Her eyes looked steadily into his.
‘Vincent–I must go to Richard.’
He sprang up.
‘Theo–don’t be absurd.’
She repeated mechanically:
‘I must go to Richard.’
‘But, my dear–’
She made a gesture towards the paper on the floor.
‘That means ruin–bankruptcy. I can’t choose this day of all others to leave him.’
‘You had left him before you heard of this. Be reasonable!’
She shook her head mournfully.
‘You don’t understand. I must go to Richard.’
And from that he could not move her. Strange that a creature so soft, so pliant, could be so unyielding. After the first, she did not argue. She let him say what he had to say unhindered. He held her in his arms, seeking to break her will by enslaving her senses, but though her soft mouth returned his kisses, he felt in her something aloof and invincible that withstood all his pleadings.
He let her go at last, sick and weary of the vain endeavour. From pleading he had turned to bitterness, reproaching her with never having loved him. That, too, she took in silence, without protest, her face, dumb and pitiful, giving the lie to his words. Rage mastered him in the end; he hurled at her every cruel word he could think of, seeking only to bruise and batter her to her knees.
At last the words gave out; there was nothing more to say. He sat, his head in his hands, staring down at the red pile carpet. By the door, Theodora stood, a black shadow with a white face.
It was all over.
She said quietly: ‘Goodbye, Vincent.’
He did not answer.
The door opened–and shut again.
III
The Darrells lived in a house in Chelsea–an intriguing, old-world house, standing in a little garden of its own. Up the front of the house grew a magnolia tree, smutty, dirty, begrimed, but still a magnolia.
Theo