Taken at the Flood - Agatha Christie [73]
‘There’s no secret about any of us,’ said Lynn. ‘We’ve all tried to cadge money off Rosaleen. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
‘I did not say so.’
‘Well, it’s true! And I suppose you’ve heard things about me and Rowley and David.’
‘But you are going to marry Rowley Cloade?’
‘Am I? I wish I knew…That’s what I was trying to decide that day — when David burst out of the wood. It was like a great question mark in my brain. Shall I? Shall I? Even the train in the valley seemed to be asking the same thing. The smoke made a fine question mark in the sky.’
Poirot’s face took on a curious expression. Lynn misunderstood it. She cried out:
‘Oh, don’t you see, M. Poirot, it’s all so difficult. It isn’t a question of David at all. It’s me! I’ve changed. I’ve been away for three — four years. Now I’ve come back I’m not the same person who went away. That’s the tragedy everywhere. People coming home changed, having to readjust themselves. You can’t go away and lead a different kind of life and not change!’
‘You are wrong,’ said Poirot. ‘The tragedy of life is that people do not change.’
She stared at him, shaking her head. He insisted:
‘But yes. It is so. Why did you go away in the first place?’
‘Why? I went into the Wrens. I went on service.’
‘Yes, yes, but why did you join the Wrens in the first place? You were engaged to be married. You were in love with Rowley Cloade. You could have worked, could you not, as a land girl, here in Warmsley Vale?’
‘I could have, I suppose, but I wanted — ’
‘You wanted to get away. You wanted to go abroad, to see life. You wanted, perhaps, to get away from Rowley Cloade…And now you are restless, you still want — to get away! Oh, no, Mademoiselle, people do not change!’
‘When I was out East, I longed for home,’ Lynn cried defensively.
‘Yes, yes, where you are not, there you will want to be! That will always be so, perhaps, with you. You make a picture to yourself, you see, a picture of Lynn Marchmont coming home…But the picture does not come true, because the Lynn Marchmont whom you imagine is not the real Lynn Marchmont. She is the Lynn Marchmont you would like to be.’
Lynn asked bitterly:
‘So, according to you, I shall never be satisfied anywhere?’
‘I do not say that. But I do say that, when you went away, you were dissatisfied with your engagement, and that now you have come back, you are still dissatisfied with your engagement.’
Lynn broke off a leaf and chewed it meditatively.
‘You’re rather a devil at knowing things, aren’t you, M. Poirot?’
‘It is my métier,’ said Poirot modestly. ‘There is a further truth, I think, that you have not yet recognized.’
Lynn said sharply:
‘You mean David, don’t you? You think I am in love with David?’
‘That is for you to say,’ murmured Poirot discreetly.
‘And I — don’t know! There’s something in David that I’m afraid of — but there’s something that draws me, too…’ She was silent a moment and then went on: ‘I was talking yesterday to his Brigadier. He came down here when he heard David was arrested to see what he could do. He’s been telling me about David, how incredibly daring he was. He said David was one of the bravest people he’d ever had under him. And yet, you know, M. Poirot, in spite of all he said and his praise, I had the feeling that he wasn’t sure, not absolutely sure that David hadn’t done this!’
‘And are you not sure, either?’
Lynn gave a crooked, rather pathetic smile.
‘No — you see, I’ve never trusted David. Can you love someone you don’t trust?’
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
‘I’ve always been unfair to David — because I didn’t trust him. I’ve believed quite a lot of the beastly local gossip — hints that David wasn’t David Hunter at all — but just a boy friend of Rosaleen’s. I was ashamed when I met the Brigadier and he talked to me about having known David as a boy in Ireland.’
‘C’est épatant,’ murmured Poirot, ‘how people can get hold of the wrong end of a stick!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I say. Tell me, did Mrs Cloade — the doctor’s wife, I mean — did she ring up on the night of the murder?’