The Mystery of the Blue Train - Agatha Christie [55]
“Do you think that real life is like that?” asked Katherine, smiling.
“Why not? Fiction is founded on fact.”
“But is rather superior to it,” suggested Katherine.
“Perhaps. Anyway, if I was a criminal I should not like to have Hercule Poirot on my track.”
“No more should I,” said Katherine, and laughed.
They were met on arrival by Poirot. As the day was warm he was attired in a white duck suit, with a white camellia in his buttonhole.
“Bonjour, Mademoiselle,” said Poirot. “I look very English, do I not?”
“You look wonderful,” said Katherine tactfully.
“You mock yourself at me,” said Poirot genially. “But no matter. Papa Poirot, he always laughs the last.”
“Where is Mr. Van Aldin?” asked Knighton.
“He will meet us at our seats. To tell you the truth, my friend, he is not too well-pleased with me. Oh, those Americans—the repose, the calm, they know it not! Mr. Van Aldin, he would that I fly myself in the pursuit of criminals through all the byways of Nice.”
“I should have thought myself that it would not have been a bad plan,” observed Knighton.
“You are wrong,” said Poirot; “in these matters one needs not energy but finesse. At the tennis one meets everyone. That is so important. Ah, there is Mr. Kettering.”
Derek came abruptly up to them. He looked reckless and angry, as though something had arisen to upset him. He and Knighton greeted each other with some frigidity. Poirot alone seemed unconscious of any sense of strain, and chatted pleasantly in a laudable attempt to put everyone at their ease. He paid little compliments.
“It is amazing, M. Kettering, how well you speak the French,” he observed—“so well that you could be taken for a Frenchman if you chose. That is a very rare accomplishment among Englishmen.”
“I wish I did,” said Katherine. “I am only too well aware that my French is of a painfully British order.”
They reached their seats and sat down, and almost immediately Knighton perceived his employer signalling to him from the other end of the court, and went off to speak to him.
“Me, I approve of that young man,” said Poirot, sending a beaming smile after the departing secretary; “and you, Mademoiselle?”
“I like him very much.”
“And you, M. Kettering?”
Some quick rejoinder was springing to Derek’s lips, but he checked it as though something in the little Belgian’s twinkling eyes had made him suddenly alert. He spoke carefully, choosing his words.
“Knighton is a very good fellow,” he said.
Just for a moment Katherine fancied that Poirot looked disappointed.
“He is a great admirer of yours, M. Poirot,” she said, and she related some of the things that Knighton had said. It amused her to see the little man plume himself like a bird, thrusting out his chest, and assuming an air of mock modesty that would have deceived no one.
“That reminds me, Mademoiselle,” he said suddenly, “I have a little matter of business I have to speak to you about. When you were sitting talking to that poor lady in the train, I think you must have dropped a cigarette case.”
Katherine looked rather astonished. “I don’t think so,” she said. Poirot drew from his pocket a cigarette case of soft blue leather, with the initial “K” on it in gold.
“No, that is not mine,” Katherine said.
“Ah, a thousand apologies. It was doubtless Madame’s own. ‘K,’ of course, stands for Kettering. We were doubtful, because she had another cigarette case in her bag, and it seemed odd that she should have two.” He turned to Derek suddenly. “You do not know, I suppose, whether this was your wife’s case or not?”
Derek seemed momentarily taken aback. He stammered a little in his reply: “I—I don’t know. I suppose so.”
“It is not yours by any chance?”
“Certainly not. If it were mine it would hardly have been in my wife’s possession.”
Poirot looked more ingenuous and childlike than ever.
“I thought perhaps you might have dropped it when you were in your wife’s compartment,” he explained guilelessly.
“I never was