Taken at the Flood - Agatha Christie [62]
‘You’re a foreigner.’
‘Yes,’ replied Hercule Poirot.
‘In my opinion,’ said the old lady, ‘you should all Go Back.’
‘Go back where?’ inquired Poirot.
‘To where you came from,’ said the old lady firmly.
She added as a kind of rider, sotto voce: ‘Foreigners!’ and snorted.
‘That,’ said Poirot mildly, ‘would be difficult.’
‘Nonsense,’ said the old lady. ‘That’s what we fought the war for, isn’t it? So that people could go back to their proper places and stay there.’
Poirot did not enter into a controversy. He had already learnt that every single individual had a different version of the theme, ‘What did we fight the war for?’
A somewhat hostile silence reigned.
‘I don’t know what things are coming to,’ said the old lady. ‘I really don’t. Every year I come and stay in this place. My husband died here sixteen years ago. He’s buried here. I come every year for a month.’
‘A pious pilgrimage,’ said Poirot politely.
‘And every year things get worse and worse. No service! Food uneatable! Vienna steaks indeed! A steak’s either rump or fillet steak — not chopped-up horse!’
Poirot shook his head sadly.
‘One good thing — they’ve shut down the aerodrome,’ said the old lady. ‘Disgraceful it was, all those young airmen coming in here with those dreadful girls. Girls, indeed! I don’t know what their mothers are thinking of nowadays. Letting them gad about as they do. I blame the Government. Sending the mothers to work in factories. Only let ’em off if they’ve got young children. Young children, stuff and nonsense! Any one can look after a baby! A baby doesn’t go running round after soldiers. Girls from fourteen to eighteen, they’re the ones that need looking after! Need their mothers. It takes a mother to know just what a girl is up to. Soldiers! Airmen! That’s all they think about. Americans! Niggers! Polish riff-raff!’
Indignation at this point made the old lady cough. When she had recovered, she went on, working herself into a pleasurable frenzy and using Poirot as a target for her spleen.
‘Why do they have barbed wire round their camps? To keep the soldiers from getting at the girls? No, to keep the girls from getting at the soldiers! Man-mad, that’s what they are! Look at the way they dress. Trousers! Some poor fools wear shorts — they wouldn’t if they knew what they looked like from behind!’
‘I agree with you, Madame, indeed I agree with you.’
‘What do they wear on their heads? Proper hats? No, a twisted-up bit of stuff, and faces covered with paint and powder. Filthy stuff, all over their mouths. Not only red nails — but red toe-nails!’
The old lady paused explosively and looked at Poirot expectantly. He sighed and shook his head.
‘Even in church,’ said the old lady. ‘No hats. Sometimes not even those silly scarves. Just that ugly crimped, permanently waved hair. Hair? Nobody knows what hair is nowadays. I could sit on my hair when I was young.’
Poirot stole a glance at the iron-grey bands. It seemed impossible that this fierce old woman could ever have been young!
‘Put her head in here the other night, one of them did,’ the old lady went on. ‘Tied up in an orange scarf and painted and powdered. I looked at her. I just LOOKED at her! She soon went away!
‘She wasn’t a Resident,’ went on the old lady. ‘No one of her type staying here, I’m glad to say! So what was she doing coming out of a man’s bedroom? Disgusting, I call it. I spoke about it to that Lippincott girl — but she’s just as bad as any of them — go a mile for anything that wears trousers.’
Some faint interest stirred in Poirot’s mind.
‘Coming out of a man’s bedroom?’ he queried.
The old lady fell upon the topic with zest.
‘That’s what I said. Saw her with my own eyes. No. 5.’
‘What day was that, Madame?’
‘The day before there was all that fuss about a man being murdered. Disgraceful that such a thing could happen here! This used to be a very decent old-fashioned type of place. But now — ’
‘And what hour of the day was this?’
‘Day? It wasn’t day at all. Evening. Late evening, too. Perfectly disgraceful. Past ten o’clock. I go up to bed at a quarter-past