• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 546 0

I know him. What I call a very unpleasant young man. But apparently rolling in money. He comes down here to hunt—and he gives parties—very lavish parties—and rather peculiar parties, too, if one is to believe all one is told—not that I ever do, because I do think people are so ill-natured. They always believe the worst. You know, it’s become quite a fashion to say a person drinks or takes drugs. Somebody said to me the other day that young girls were natural inebriates, and I really don’t think that was a nice thing to say at all. And if anyone’s at all peculiar or vague in their manner, everyone says ‘drugs’ and that’s unfair, too. They say it about Mrs. Larkin and though I don’t care for the woman, I do really think it’s nothing more than absentmindedness. She’s a great friend of your Anthony Hawker, and that’s why, if you ask me, she’s so down on the Grant girls—says they’re man-eaters! I dare say they do run after men a bit, but why not? It’s natural, after all. And they’re good-looking pieces, every one of them.”

Poirot interjected a question.

“Mrs. Larkin? My dear man, it’s no good asking me who she is? Who’s anybody nowadays? They say she rides well and she’s obviously well off. Husband was something in the city. He’s dead, not divorced. She’s not been here very long, came here just after the Grants did. I’ve always thought she—”

Old Lady Carmichael stopped. Her mouth opened, her eyes bulged. Leaning forward she struck Poirot a sharp blow across the knuckles with a paper cutter she was holding. Disregarding his wince of pain she exclaimed excitedly:

“Why of course! So that’s why you’re down here! You nasty, deceitful creature, I insist on your telling me all about it.”

“But what is it I am to tell you all about?”

Lady Carmichael aimed another playful blow which Poirot avoided deftly.

“Don’t be an oyster, Hercule Poirot! I can see your moustaches quivering. Of course, it’s crime brings you down here—and you’re just pumping me shamelessly! Now let me see, can it be murder? Who’s died lately? Only old Louisa Gilmore and she was eighty-five and had dropsy too. Can’t be her. Poor Leo Staverton broke his neck in the hunting field and he’s all done up in plaster—that can’t be it. Perhaps it isn’t murder. What a pity! I can’t remember any special jewel robberies lately . . . Perhaps it’s just a criminal you’re tracking down . . . Is it Beryl Larkin? Did she poison her husband? Perhaps it’s remorse that makes her so vague.”

“Madame, Madame,” cried Hercule Poirot. “You go too fast.”

“Nonsense. You’re up to something, Hercule Poirot.”

“Are you acquainted with the classics, Madame?”

“What have the classics got to do with it?”

“They have this to do with it. I emulate my great predecessor Hercules. One of the Labors of Hercules was the taming of the wild horses of Diomedes.”

“Don’t tell me you came down here to train horses—at your age—and always wearing patent-leather shoes! You don’t look to me as though you’d ever been on a horse in your life!”

“The horses, Madame, are symbolic. They were the wild horses who ate human flesh.”

“How very unpleasant of them. I always do think these ancient Greeks and Romans are very unpleasant. I can’t think why clergymen are so fond of quoting from the classics—for one thing one never understands what they mean and it always seems to me that the whole subject matter of the classics is very unsuitable for clergymen. So much incest, and all those statues with nothing on—not that I mind that myself but you know what clergymen are—quite upset if girls come to church with no stockings on—let me see, where was I?”

“I am not quite sure.”

“I suppose, you wretch, you just won’t tell me if Mrs. Larkin murdered her husband? Or perhaps Anthony Hawker is the Brighton trunk murderer?”

She looked at him hopefully, but Hercule Poirot’s face remained impassive.

“It might be forgery,” speculated Lady Carmichael. “I did see Mrs. Larkin in the bank the other morning and she’d just cashed a fifty pound cheque to self—it seemed to me at the time a lot of money to want in cash. Oh no, that’s the wrong