Sad cypress - Agatha Christie [41]
This time Poirot shook his head and said commiseratingly:
‘Dear, dear.’
‘And then Making Up to Mr Roddy the way she did! He was too simple to see through Her. And Miss Elinor, a nice-minded young lady as she is, of course she wouldn’t realize what was Going On. But Men, they are all alike: easily caught by flattery and a pretty face!’
Poirot sighed.
‘She had, I suppose, admirers of her own class?’ he asked.
‘Of course she had. There was Rufus Bigland’s son Ted – as nice a boy as you could find. But oh, no, my fine lady was too good for him! I’d no patience with such airs and graces!’
Poirot said:
‘Was he not angry about her treatment of him?’
‘Yes, indeed. He accused her of carrying on with Mr Roddy. I know that for a fact. I don’t blame the boy for feeling sore!’
‘Nor I,’ said Poirot. ‘You interest me extremely, Mrs Bishop. Some people have the knack of presenting a character clearly and vigorously in a few words. It is a great gift. I have at last a clear picture of Mary Gerrard.’
‘Mind you,’ said Mrs Bishop, ‘I’m not saying a word against the girl! I wouldn’t do such a thing – and she in her grave. But there’s no doubt that she caused a lot of trouble!’
Poirot murmured:
‘Where would it have ended, I wonder?’
‘That’s what I say!’ said Mrs Bishop. ‘You can take it from me, Mr Poirot, that if my dear mistress hadn’t died when she did – awful as the shock was at the time, I see now that it was a Mercy in Disguise – I don’t know what might have been the end of it!’
Poirot said invitingly:
‘You mean?’
Mrs Bishop said solemnly:
‘I’ve come across it time and again. My own sister was in service where it happened. Once when old Colonel Randolph died and left every penny away from his poor wife to a hussy living at Eastbourne – and once old Mrs Dacres – left it to the organist of the church – one of those long-haired young men – and she with married sons and daughters.’
Poirot said:
‘You mean, I take it, that Mrs Welman might have left all her money to Mary Gerrard?’
‘It wouldn’t have surprised me!’ said Mrs Bishop. ‘That’s what the young woman was working up to, I’ve no doubt. And if I ventured to say a word, Mrs Welman was ready to bite my head off, though I’d been with her nearly twenty years. It’s an ungrateful world, Mr Poirot. You try to do your duty and it is not appreciated.’
‘Alas,’ sighed Poirot, ‘how true that is!’
‘But Wickedness doesn’t always flourish,’ said Mrs Bishop.
Poirot said:
‘True. Mary Gerrard is dead…’
Mrs Bishop said comfortably:
‘She’s gone to her reckoning, and we mustn’t judge her.’
Poirot mused:
‘The circumstances of her death seem quite inexplicable.’
‘These police and their new-fangled ideas,’ said Mrs Bishop. ‘Is it likely that a well-bred, nicely brought-up young lady like Miss Elinor would go about poisoning anyone? Trying to drag me into it, too, saying I said her manner was peculiar!’
‘But was it not peculiar?’
‘And why shouldn’t it be?’ Mrs Bishop’s bust heaved with a flash of jet. ‘Miss Elinor’s a young lady of feelings. She was going to turn out her aunt’s things – and that’s always a painful business.’
Poirot nodded sympathetically.
He said:
‘It would have made it much easier for her if you had accompanied her.’
‘I wanted to, Mr Poirot, but she took me up quite sharp. Oh, well, Miss Elinor was always a very proud and reserved young lady. I wish, though, that I had gone with her.’
Poirot murmured:
‘You did not think of following her up to the house?’
Mrs Bishop reared her head majestically.