The Hollow - Agatha Christie [90]
‘No, I shall not let it drop,’ said Hercule Poirot.
‘That is just what I thought. And that is why I came. It’s the truth you want, isn’t it?’
‘Certainly I want the truth.’
‘I see I haven’t explained myself very well. I’m trying to find out just why you won’t let things drop. It isn’t because of your prestige–or because you want to hang a murderer (such an unpleasant kind of death, I’ve always thought–so mediæval ). It’s just, I think, that you want to know. You do see what I mean, don’t you? If you were to know the truth–if you were to be told the truth, I think–I think perhaps that might satisfy you? Would it satisfy you, M. Poirot?’
‘You are offering to tell me the truth, Lady Angkatell?’
She nodded.
‘You yourself know the truth, then?’
Her eyes opened very wide.
‘Oh, yes, I’ve known for a long time. I’d like to tell you. And then we could agree that–well, that it was all over and done with.’
She smiled at him.
‘Is it a bargain, M. Poirot?’
It was quite an effort for Hercule Poirot to say:
‘No, Madame, it is not a bargain.’
He wanted–he wanted, very badly, to let the whole thing drop, simply because Lady Angkatell asked him to do so.
Lady Angkatell sat very still for a moment. Then she raised her eyebrows.
‘I wonder,’ she said. ‘I wonder if you really know what you are doing.’
Chapter 28
Midge, lying dry-eyed and awake in the darkness, turned restlessly on her pillows. She heard a door unlatch, a footstep in the corridor outside passing her door. It was Edward’s door and Edward’s step. She switched on the lamp by her bed and looked at the clock that stood by the lamp on the table. It was ten minutes to three.
Edward passing her door and going down the stairs at this hour in the morning. It was odd.
They had all gone to bed early, at half-past ten. She herself had not slept, had lain there with burning eyelids and with a dry, aching misery racking her feverishly.
She had heard the clock strike downstairs–had heard owls hoot outside her bedroom window. Had felt that depression that reaches its nadir at 2 am. Had thought to herself: ‘I can’t bear it–I can’t bear it. Tomorrow coming–another day. Day after day to be got through.’
Banished by her own act from Ainswick–from all the loveliness and dearness of Ainswick which might have been her very own possession.
But better banishment, better loneliness, better a drab and uninteresting life, than life with Edward and Henrietta’s ghost. Until that day in the wood she had not known her own capacity for bitter jealousy.
And after all, Edward had never told her that he loved her. Affection, kindliness, he had never pretended to more than that. She had accepted the limitation, and not until she had realized what it would mean to live at close quarters with an Edward whose mind and heart had Henrietta as a permanent guest, did she know that for her Edward’s affection was not enough.
Edward walking past her door, down the front stairs. It was odd–very odd. Where was he going?
Uneasiness grew upon her. It was all part and parcel of the uneasiness that The Hollow gave her nowadays. What was Edward doing downstairs in the small hours of the morning? Had he gone out?
Inactivity at last became too much for her. She got up, slipped on her dressing-gown, and, taking a torch, she opened her door and came out into the passage.
It was quite dark, no light had been switched on. Midge turned to the left and came to the head of the staircase. Below all was dark too. She ran down the stairs and after a moment’s hesitation switched on the light in the hall. Everything was silent. The front door was closed and locked. She tried the side door but that, too, was locked.
Edward, then, had not gone out. Where could he be?
And suddenly she raised her head and sniffed.
A whiff, a very faint whiff of gas.
The baize door to the kitchen quarters was just ajar. She went through it–a faint light was shining from the open kitchen door. The smell of gas was much stronger.
Midge ran along the passage and into the