Third girl - Agatha Christie [84]
Frances sipped obediently. Miss Jacobs went rapidly out of the door along the passage and through the open door from which the light was pouring out. The living-room door was wide open and Miss Jacobs went straight through it.
She was not the kind of woman who screams. She stood just within the doorway, her lips pursed hard together.
What she was looking at had a nightmarish quality. On the floor lay a handsome young man, his arms flung wide, his chestnut hair falling on his shoulders. He wore a crimson velvet coat, and his white shirt was dappled with blood…
She was aware with a start that there was a second figure with her in the room. A girl was standing pressed back against the wall, the great Harlequin above seeming to be leaping across the painted sky.
The girl had a white woollen shift dress on, and her pale brown hair hung limp on either side of her face. In her hand she was holding a kitchen knife.
Miss Jacobs stared at her and she stared back at Miss Jacobs.
Then she said in a quiet reflective voice, as though she was answering what someone had said to her:
‘Yes, I’ve killed him…The blood got on my hands from the knife…I went into the bathroom to wash it off — but you can’t really wash things like that off, can you? And then I came back in here to see if it was really true…But it is…Poor David…But I suppose I had to do it.’
Shock forced unlikely words from Miss Jacobs. As she said them, she thought how ridiculous they sounded!
‘Indeed? Why did you have to do anything of the kind?’
‘I don’t know…At least — I suppose I do — really. He was in great trouble. He sent for me — and I came…But I wanted to be free of him. I wanted to get away from him. I didn’t really love him.’
She laid the knife carefully on the table and sat down on a chair.
‘It isn’t safe, is it?’ she said. ‘To hate anyone…It isn’t safe because you never know what you might do…Like Louise…’
Then she said quietly. ‘Hadn’t you better ring up the police?’
Obediently, Miss Jacobs dialled 999.
II
There were six people now in the room with the Harlequin on the wall. A long time had passed. The police had come and gone.
Andrew Restarick sat like a man stunned. Once or twice he said the same words. ‘I can’t believe it…’ Telephoned for, he had come from his office, and Claudia Reece-Holland had come with him. In her quiet way, she had been ceaselessly efficient. She had put through telephone calls to lawyers, had rung Crosshedges and two firms of estate agents to try and get in touch with Mary Restarick. She had given Frances Cary a sedative and sent her to lie down.
Hercule Poirot and Mrs Oliver sat side by side on a sofa. They had arrived together at the same time as the police.
Last of all to arrive, when nearly everyone else had gone, had been a quiet man with grey hair and a gentle manner, Chief Inspector Neele of Scotland Yard, who had greeted Poirot with a slight nod, and been introduced to Andrew Restarick. A tall red-haired young man was standing by the window staring down into the courtyard.
What were they all waiting for? Mrs Oliver wondered. The body had been removed, the photographers and other police officers had done their work, they themselves, after being herded into Claudia’s bedroom, had been re-admitted into the sitting-room, where they had been waiting, she supposed, for the Scotland Yard man to arrive.
‘If you want me to go,’ Mrs Oliver said to him uncertainly —
‘Mrs Ariadne Oliver, aren’t you? No, if you have no objection, I’d rather you remained. I know it hasn’t been pleasant —’
‘It didn’t seem real.’
Mrs Oliver shut her eyes — seeing the whole thing again. The Peacock Boy, so picturesquely dead that he had seemed like a stage figure. And the girl — the girl had been different — not the uncertain Norma from Crosshedges — the unattractive Ophelia, as Poirot had called her — but some quiet figure of tragic dignity — accepting her doom.
Poirot had asked if he might make two telephone calls. One had been to Scotland