The Hollow - Agatha Christie [35]
This was his first visit to Sir Henry and Lady Angkatell. One should not, he considered, take shortcuts uninvited, especially when one was the guest of people of social importance. He was, it must be admitted, pleased by their invitation.
‘Je suis un peu snob,’ he murmured to himself.
He had retained an agreeable impression of the Angkatells from the time in Baghdad, particularly of Lady Angkatell. ‘Une originale!’ he thought to himself.
His estimation of the time required for walking to The Hollow by road was accurate. It was exactly one minute to one when he rang the front-door bell. He was glad to have arrived and felt slightly tired. He was not fond of walking.
The door was opened by the magnificent Gudgeon, of whom Poirot approved. His reception, however, was not quite as he had hoped. ‘Her ladyship is in the pavilion by the swimming pool, sir. Will you come this way?’
The passion of the English for sitting out of doors irritated Hercule Poirot. Though one had to put up with this whimsy in the height of summer, surely, Poirot thought, one should be safe from it by the end of September! The day was mild, certainly, but it had, as autumn days always had, a certain dampness. How infinitely pleasanter to have been ushered into a comfortable drawing-room with, perhaps, a small fire in the grate. But no, here he was being led out through french windows across a slope of lawn, past a rockery and then through a small gate and along a narrow track between closely planted young chestnuts.
It was the habit of the Angkatells to invite guests for one o’clock, and on fine days they had cocktails and sherry in the small pavilion by the swimming pool. Lunch itself was scheduled for one-thirty, by which time the most unpunctual of guests should have managed to arrive, which permitted Lady Angkatell’s excellent cook to embark on soufflés and such accurately timed delicacies without too much trepidation.
To Hercule Poirot, the plan did not commend itself.
‘In a little minute,’ he thought, ‘I shall be almost back where I started.’
With an increasing awareness of his feet in his shoes, he followed Gudgeon’s tall figure.
It was at that moment from just ahead of him that he heard a little cry. It increased, somehow, his dissatisfaction. It was incongruous, in some way unfitting. He did not classify it, nor indeed think about it. When he thought about it afterwards he was hard put to it to remember just what emotions it had seemed to convey. Dismay? Surprise? Horror? He could only say that it suggested, very definitely, the unexpected.
Gudgeon stepped out from the chestnuts. He was moving to one side, deferentially, to allow Poirot to pass and at the same time clearing his throat preparatory to murmuring, ‘M. Poirot, my lady’ in the proper subdued and respectful tones when his suppleness became suddenly rigid. He gasped. It was an unbutlerlike noise.
Hercule Poirot stepped out on to the open space surrounding the swimming pool, and immediately he, too, stiffened, but with annoyance.
It was too much–it was really too much! He had not suspected such cheapness of the Angkatells. The long walk by the road, the disappointment at the house–and now this! The misplaced sense of humour of the English!
He was annoyed and he was bored–oh, how he was bored. Death was not, to him, amusing. And here they had arranged for him, by way of a joke, a set-piece.
For what he was looking at was a highly artificial murder scene. By the side of the pool was the body, artistically arranged with an outflung arm and even some red paint dripping gently over the edge of the concrete into the pool. It was a spectacular body, that of a handsome fair-haired man. Standing over the body, revolver in hand, was a woman, a short, powerfully built, middle-aged woman with a curiously blank expression.
And there were three other actors. On the far side of the pool was a tall young