The Labors of Hercules - Agatha Christie [72]
She shook her head.
“Abdul described you. I—guessed.”
Pam exclaimed: “You went to see Father?”
Poirot said:
“Ah—yes. We have—some mutual friends.”
Pam said sharply:
“I don’t believe it.”
“What do you not believe? That your father and I could have a mutual friend?”
The girl flushed.
“Don’t be stupid. I meant—that wasn’t really your reason—”
She turned on her sister.
“Why don’t you say something, Sheila?”
Sheila started. She said:
“It wasn’t—it wasn’t anything to do with Tony Hawker?”
“Why should it be?” asked Poirot.
Sheila flushed and went back across the room to the others.
Pam said with sudden vehemence but in a lowered voice:
“I don’t like Tony Hawker. There—there’s something sinister about him—and about her—Mrs. Larkin, I mean. Look at them now.”
Poirot followed her glance.
Hawker’s head was close to that of his hostess. He appeared to be soothing her. Her voice rose for a minute.
“—but I can’t wait. I want it now!”
Poirot said with a little smile:
“Les femmes—whatever it is—they always want it now, do they not?”
But Pam Grant did not respond. Her face was cast down. She was nervously pleating and repleating her tweed skirt.
Poirot murmured conversationally:
“You are quite a different type from your sister, Mademoiselle.”
She flung her head up, impatient of banalities. She said:
“M. Poirot. What’s the stuff Tony’s been giving Sheila? What is it that’s been making her—different?”
He looked straight at her. He asked:
“Have you ever taken cocaine, Miss Grant?”
She shook her head.
“Oh no! So that’s it? Cocaine? But isn’t that very dangerous?”
Sheila Grant had come over to them, a fresh drink in her hand. She said:
“What’s dangerous?”
Poirot said:
“We are talking of the effects of drug taking. Of the slow death of the mind and spirit—the destroying of all that is true and good in a human being.”
Sheila Grant caught her breath. The drink in her hand swayed and spilled on the floor. Poirot went on:
“Dr. Stoddart has, I think, made clear to you just what that death in life entails. It is so easily done—so hard to undo. The person who deliberately profits from the degradation and misery of other people is a vampire preying on flesh and blood.”
He turned away. Behind him he heard Pam Grant’s voice say: “Sheila!” and caught a whisper—a faint whisper—from Sheila Grant. It was so low he hardly heard it.
“The flask . . .”
Hercule Poirot said goodbye to Mrs. Larkin and went out into the hall. On the hall table was a hunting flask lying with a crop and a hat. Poirot picked it up. There were initials on it: A.H.
Poirot murmured to himself:
“Tony’s flask is empty?”
He shook it gently. There was no sound of liquor. He unscrewed the top.
Tony Hawker’s flask was not empty. It was full—of white powder. . . .
VI
Hercule Poirot stood on the terrace of Lady Carmichael’s house and pleaded with a girl.
He said:
“You are very young, Mademoiselle. It is my belief that you have not known, not really known, what it is you and your sisters have been doing. You have been feeding, like the mares of Diomedes, on human flesh.”
Sheila shuddered and gave a sob. She said:
“It sounds horrible, put like that. And yet it’s true! I never realized it until that evening in London when Dr. Stoddart talked to me. He was so grave—so sincere. I saw then what an awful thing it was I had been doing . . . Before that I thought it was—Oh! rather like drink after hours—something people would pay to get, but not something that really mattered very much!”
Poirot said:
“And now?”
Sheila Grant said:
“I’ll do anything you say. I—I’ll talk to the others,” she added . . . “I don’t suppose Dr. Stoddart will ever speak to me again. . . .”
“On the contrary,” said Poirot. “Both Dr. Stoddart and I are prepared to help you in every way in our power to start afresh. You can trust us. But one thing must be done. There is one person who must be destroyed—destroyed utterly, and only you and your sisters can destroy him. It is your evidence and your evidence alone that will convict him.”
“You mean—my father?