The Labors of Hercules - Agatha Christie [53]
“I know. Mother is a great fighter. She’ll never sit down under defeat.” Elsie shivered. “But it is all horrible, isn’t it?”
“Now, don’t dwell on it. It’s all over and done with.”
Elsie said in a low voice:
“I can’t forget that—that it was I who killed him.”
Harold said urgently:
“Don’t think of it that way. It was an accident. You know that really.”
Her face grew a little happier. Harold added:
“And anyway it’s past. The past is the past. Try never to think of it again.”
Mrs. Rice came back. By the expression on her face they saw that all was well.
“It gave me quite a fright,” she said almost gaily. “But it was only a formality about some papers. Everything’s all right, my children. We’re out of the shadow. I think we might order ourselves a liqueur on the strength of it.”
The liqueur was ordered and came. They raised their glasses.
Mrs. Rice said: “To the Future!”
Harold smiled at Elsie and said:
“To your happiness!”
She smiled back at him and said as she lifted her glass:
“And to you—to your success! I’m sure you’re going to be a very great man.”
With the reaction from fear they felt gay, almost light-headed. The shadow had lifted! All was well. . . .
From the far end of the terrace the two birdlike women rose. They rolled up their work carefully. They came across the stone flags.
With little bows they sat down by Mrs. Rice. One of them began to speak. The other one let her eyes rest on Elsie and Harold. There was a little smile on her lips. It was not, Harold thought, a nice smile. . . .
He looked over at Mrs. Rice. She was listening to the Polish woman and though he couldn’t understand a word, the expression on Mrs. Rice’s face was clear enough. All the old anguish and despair came back. She listened and occasionally spoke a brief word.
Presently the two sisters rose, and with stiff little bows went into the hotel.
Harold leaned forward. He said hoarsely:
“What is it?”
Mrs. Rice answered him in the quiet hopeless tones of despair.
“Those women are going to blackmail us. They heard everything last night. And now we’ve tried to hush it up, it makes the whole thing a thousand times worse . . .”
VIII
Harold Waring was down by the lake. He had been walking feverishly for over an hour, trying by sheer physical energy to still the clamour of despair that had attacked him.
He came at last to the spot where he had first noticed the two grim women who held his life and Elsie’s in their evil talons. He said aloud:
“Curse them! Damn them for a pair of devilish bloodsucking harpies!”
A slight cough made him spin round. He found himself facing the luxuriantly moustached stranger who had just come out from the shade of the trees.
Harold found it difficult to know what to say. This little man must have almost certainly overheard what he had just said.
Harold, at a loss, said somewhat ridiculously:
“Oh—er—good afternoon.”
In perfect English the other replied:
“But for you, I fear, it is not a good afternoon?”
“Well—er—I—” Harold was in difficulties again.
The little man said:
“You are, I think, in trouble, Monsieur? Can I be of any assistance to you?”
“Oh no thanks, no thanks! Just blowing off steam, you know.”
The other said gently:
“But I think, you know, that I could help you. I am correct, am I not, in connecting your troubles with two ladies who were sitting on the terrace just now?”
Harold stared at him.
“Do you know anything about them?” He added: “Who are you, anyway?”
As though confessing to royal birth the little man said modestly:
“I am Hercule Poirot. Shall we walk a little way into the wood and you shall tell me your story? As I say, I think I can aid you.”
To this day, Harold is not quite certain what made him suddenly pour out the whole story to a man to whom he had only spoken a few minutes before. Perhaps it was overstrain. Anyway, it happened. He told Hercule Poirot the whole story.
The latter listened in silence. Once or twice he nodded his head gravely. When Harold came to a stop the other spoke dreamily.
“The Stymphalean Birds, with iron beaks, who feed on human