The Labors of Hercules - Agatha Christie [29]
He remembered Michael Novgin, the Hunter, leaping and twirling in that outrageous and fantastic forest that the brain of Ambrose Vandel had conceived. And he remembered the lovely flying Hind, eternally pursued, eternally desirable—a golden beautiful creature with horns on her head and twinkling bronze feet. He remembered her final collapse, shot and wounded, and Michael Novgin standing bewildered, with the body of the slain deer in his arms.
Katrina Samoushenka was looking at him with faint curiosity. She said:
“I have never seen you before, have I? What is it you want of me?”
Hercule Poirot made her a little bow.
“First, Madame, I wish to thank you—for your art which made for me once an evening of beauty.”
She smiled faintly.
“But also I am here on a matter of business. I have been looking, Madame, for a long time for a certain maid of yours—her name was Nita.”
“Nita?”
She stared at him. Her eyes were large and startled. She said:
“What do you know about—Nita?”
“I will tell you.”
He told her of the evening when his car had broken down and of Ted Williamson standing there twisting his cap between his fingers and stammering out his love and his pain. She listened with close attention.
She said when he had finished:
“It is touching, that—yes, it is touching. . . .”
Hercule Poirot nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “It is a tale of Arcady, is it not? What can you tell me, Madame, of this girl?”
Katrina Samoushenka sighed.
“I had a maid—Juanita. She was lovely, yes—gay, light of heart. It happened to her what happens so often to those the gods favour. She died young.”
They had been Poirot’s own words—final words—irrevocable words—Now he heard them again—and yet he persisted. He asked:
“She is dead?”
“Yes, she is dead.”
Hercule Poirot was silent for a minute, then he said:
“There is one thing I do not quite understand. I asked Sir George Sanderfield about this maid of yours and he seemed afraid. Why was that?”
There was a faint expression of disgust on the dancer’s face.
“You just said a maid of mine. He thought you meant Marie—the girl who came to me after Juanita left. She tried to blackmail him, I believe, over something that she found out about him. She was an odious girl—inquisitive, always prying into letters and locked drawers.”
Poirot murmured:
“Then that explains that.”
He paused a minute, then he went on, still persistent:
“Juanita’s other name was Valetta and she died of an operation for appendicitis in Pisa. Is that correct?”
He noted the hesitation, hardly perceptible but nevertheless there, before the dancer bowed her head.
“Yes, that is right. . . .”
Poirot said meditatively:
“And yet—there is still a little point—her people spoke of her, not as Juanita but as Bianca.”
Katrina shrugged her thin shoulders. She said: “Bianca—Juanita, does it matter? I suppose her real name was Bianca but she thought the name of Juanita was more romantic and so chose to call herself by it.”
“Ah, you think that?” He paused and then, his voice changing, he said: “For me, there is another explanation.”
“What is it?”
Poirot leaned forward. He said:
“The girl that Ted Williamson saw had hair that he described as being like wings of gold.”
He leaned still a little further forward. His finger just touched the two springing waves of Katrina’s hair.
“Wings of gold, horns of gold? It is as you look at it, it is whether one sees you as devil or as angel! You might be either. Or are they perhaps only the golden horns of the stricken deer?”
Katrina murmured:
“The stricken deer . . .” and her voice was the voice of one without hope.
Poirot said:
“All along Ted Williamson’s description has worried me—it brought something to my mind—that something was you, dancing on your twinkling bronze feet through the forest. Shall I tell you what I think, Mademoiselle? I think there