The Hollow - Agatha Christie [83]
Hercule Poirot sat on the bench overlooking the chestnut groves above the pool. He had no sense of trespassing since Lady Angkatell had very sweetly begged him to wander where he would at any time. It was Lady Angkatell’s sweetness which Hercule Poirot was considering at this moment.
From time to time he heard the cracking of twigs in the woods above or caught sight of a figure moving through the chestnut groves below him.
Presently Henrietta came along the path from the direction of the lane. She stopped for a moment when she saw Poirot, then she came and sat down by him.
‘Good morning, M. Poirot. I have just been to call upon you. But you were out. You look very Olympian. Are you presiding over the hunt? The inspector seems very active. What are they looking for, the revolver?’
‘Yes, Miss Savernake.’
‘Will they find it, do you think?’
‘I think so. Quite soon now, I should say.’
She looked at him inquiringly.
‘Have you an idea, then, where it is?’
‘No. But I think it will be found soon. It is time for it to be found.’
‘You do say odd things, M. Poirot!’
‘Odd things happen here. You have come back very soon from London, Mademoiselle.’
Her face hardened. She gave a short, bitter laugh.
‘The murderer returns to the scene of the crime? That is the old superstition, isn’t it? So you do think that I–did it! You don’t believe me when I tell you that I wouldn’t–that I couldn’t kill anybody?’
Poirot did not answer at once. At last he said thoughtfully:
‘It has seemed to me from the beginning that either this crime was very simple–so simple that it was difficult to believe its simplicity (and simplicity, Mademoiselle, can be strangely baffling) or else it was extremely complex. That is to say, we were contending against a mind capable of intricate and ingenious inventions, so that every time we seemed to be heading for the truth, we were actually being led on a trail that twisted away from the truth and led us to a point which–ended in nothingness. This apparent futility, this continual barrenness, is not real–it is artificial, it is planned. A very subtle and ingenious mind is plotting against us the whole time–and succeeding.’
‘Well?’ said Henrietta. ‘What has that to do with me?’
‘The mind that is plotting against us is a creative mind, Mademoiselle.’
‘I see–that’s where I come in?’
She was silent, her lips set together bitterly. From her jacket pocket she had taken a pencil and now she was idly drawing the outline of a fantastic tree on the white painted wood of the bench, frowning as she did so.
Poirot watched her. Something stirred in his mind–standing in Lady Angkatell’s drawing-room on the afternoon of the crime, looking down at a pile of bridge-markers, standing by a painted iron table in the pavilion the next morning, and a question that he had put to Gudgeon.
He said:
‘That is what you drew on your bridge-marker–a tree.’
‘Yes.’ Henrietta seemed suddenly aware of what she was doing. ‘Ygdrasil, M. Poirot.’ She laughed.
‘Why do you call it Ygdrasil?’
She explained the origin of Ygdrasil.
‘And so, when you “doodle” (that is the word, is it not?) it is always Ygdrasil you draw?’
‘Yes. Doodling is a funny thing, isn’t it?’
‘Here on the seat–on the bridge-marker on Saturday evening–in the pavilion on Sunday morning…’
The hand that held the pencil stiffened and stopped. She said in a tone of careless amusement:
‘In the pavilion?’
‘Yes, on the round iron table there.’
‘Oh, that must have been on–on Saturday afternoon.’
‘It was not on Saturday afternoon. When Gudgeon brought the glasses out to the pavilion about twelve o’clock on Sunday morning, there was nothing drawn on the table. I asked him and he is quite definite about that.’
‘Then it must have been’–she hesitated for just a moment–‘of course, on Sunday afternoon.’
But still smiling pleasantly, Hercule Poirot shook his head.
‘I think not. Grange’s men were at the pool all Sunday afternoon, photographing the body, getting the revolver