The Hound of Death - Agatha Christie [25]
‘I can hardly believe–’ began Canon Parfitt, and stopped.
The doctor said nothing. He was gazing steadily at Raoul Letardeau.
‘The clothes from your back, the soul from your body,’ quoted the Frenchman lightly. He stood up. ‘I say to you, Messieurs, that the history of Felicie Bault is the history of Annette Ravel. You did not know her, gentlemen. I did. She was very fond of life…’
His hand on the door, ready to spring out, he turned suddenly and bending down tapped Canon Parfitt on the chest.
‘M. le docteur over there, he said just now, that all this’–his hand smote the Canon’s stomach, and the Canon winced–‘was only a residence. Tell me, if you find a burglar in your house what do you do? Shoot him, do you not?’
‘No,’ cried the Canon. ‘No, indeed–I mean–not in this country.’
But he spoke the last words to empty air. The carriage door banged.
The clergyman, the lawyer and the doctor were alone. The fourth corner was vacant.
The Gipsy
I
Macfarlane had often noticed that his friend, Dickie Carpenter, had a strange aversion to gipsies. He had never known the reason for it. But when Dickie’s engagement to Esther Lawes was broken off, there was a momentary tearing down of reserves between the two men.
Macfarlane had been engaged to the younger sister, Rachel, for about a year. He had known both the Lawes girls since they were children. Slow and cautious in all things, he had been unwilling to admit to himself the growing attraction that Rachel’s childlike face and honest brown eyes had for him. Not a beauty like Esther, no! But unutterably truer and sweeter. With Dickie’s engagement to the elder sister, the bond between the two men seemed to be drawn closer.
And now, after a few brief weeks, that engagement was off again, and Dickie, simple Dickie, hard hit. So far in his young life all had gone so smoothly. His career in the Navy had been well chosen. His craving for the sea was inborn. There was something of the Viking about him, primitive and direct, a nature on which subtleties of thought were wasted. He belonged to that inarticulate order of young Englishmen who dislike any form of emotion, and who find it peculiarly hard to explain their mental processes in words.
Macfarlane, that dour Scot, with a Celtic imagination hidden away somewhere, listened and smoked while his friend floundered along in a sea of words. He had known an unburdening was coming. But he had expected the subject matter to be different. To begin with, anyway, there was no mention of Esther Lawes. Only, it seemed, the story of a childish terror.
‘It all started with a dream I had when I was a kid. Not a nightmare exactly. She–the gipsy, you know–would just come into any old dream–even a good dream (or a kid’s idea of what’s good–a party and crackers and things). I’d be enjoying myself no end, and then I’d feel, I’d know, that if I looked up, she’d be there, standing as she always stood, watching me…With sad eyes, you know, as though she understood something that I didn’t…Can’t explain why it rattled me so–but it did! Every time! I used to wake up howling with terror, and my old nurse used to say: “There! Master Dickie’s had one of his gipsy dreams again!”’
‘Ever been frightened by real gipsies?’
‘Never saw one till later. That was queer, too. I was chasing a pup of mine. He’d run away. I got through the garden door, and along one of the forest paths. We lived in the New Forest then, you know. I came to a sort of clearing at the end, with a wooden bridge over a stream. And just beside it a gipsy was standing–with a red handkerchief over her head–just the same as in my dream. And at once I was frightened! She looked at me, you know…Just the same look–as though she knew something I didn’t, and was sorry about it…And then she said quite quietly, nodding her head at me: “I shouldn’t go that way, if I were you.” I can’t tell you why, but it frightened me to death. I dashed past her on to the bridge. I suppose it was rotten. Anyway, it gave way, and I was chucked into the stream.