Short Stories

by Agatha Christie

  "Where is she then?" demanded Poirot.

  "In Switzerland. At Vagray les Alpes. It is there that they go, those who have the little dry cough and who grow thinner and thinner. She will die, yes, she will die! She has a fatalistic nature. She will surely die."

  Poirot coughed to break the tragic spell. He wanted information.

  "You do not, by chance, remember a maid she had? A maid called Nita Valetta?"

  "Valetta? Valetta? I remember seeing a maid once - at the station when I was seeing Katrina off to London. She was an Italian from Pisa, was she not? Yes, I am sure she was an Italian who came from Pisa."

  Hercule Poirot groaned.

  "In that case," he said, "I must now journey to Pisa."

  VII

  Hercule Poirot stood in the Campo Santo at Pisa and looked down on a grave.

  So it was here that his quest had come to an end - here by this humble mound of earth. Underneath it lay the joyous creature who had stirred the heart and imagination of a simple English mechanic.

  Was this perhaps the best end to that sudden strange romance? Now the girl would live always in the young man's memory as he had seen her for those few enchanted hours of a June afternoon. The clash of opposing nationalities, of different standards, the pain of disillusionment, all that was ruled out for ever.

  Hercule Poirot shook his head sadly. His mind went back to his conversation with the Valetta family. The mother, with her broad peasant face, the upright grief-stricken father, the dark hard-lipped sister.

  "It was sudden, Signore, it was very sudden. Though for many years she had had pains on and off... The doctor gave us no choice - he said there must be an operation immediately for the appendicitis. He took her off to the hospital then and there... Si, si, it was under the anaesthetic she died. She never recovered consciousness."

  The mother sniffed, murmuring: "Bianca was always such a clever girl.

  It is terrible that she should have died so young..."

  Hercule Poirot repeated to himself: "She died young..."

  That was the message he must take back to the young man who had asked his help so confidingly.

  "She is not for you, my friend. She died young."

  His quest had ended - here where the leaning Tower was silhouetted against the sky and the first spring flowers were showing pale and creamy with their promise of life and joy to come.

  Was it the stirring of spring that made him feel so rebelliously disinclined to accept this final verdict? Or was it something else?

  Something stirring at the back of his brain - words - a phrase - a name?

  Did not the whole thing finish too neatly - dovetail too obviously?

  Hercule Poirot sighed. He must take one more journey to put things beyond any possible doubt. He must go to Vagray les Alpes.

  VIII

  Here, he thought, really was the world's end. This shelf of snow - these scattered huts and shelters in each of which lay a motionless human being fighting an insidious death.

  So he came at last to Katrina Samoushenka. When he saw her, lying there with hollow cheeks in each of which was a vivid red stain, and long thin emaciated hands stretched out on the coverlet, a memory stirred in him. He had not remembered her name, but he had seen her dance - had been carried away and fascinated by the supreme art that can make you forget art.

  He remembered Michael Novgin, the Hunter, leaping and twirling in that outrageous and fantastic forest that the brain of Ambrose Vandel had conceived. And he remembered the lovely flying Hind, eternally pursued, eternally desirable - a golden beautiful creature with horns on her head and twinkling bronze feet. He remembered her final collapse, shot and wounded, and Michael Novgin standing bewildered, with the body of the slain Deer in his arms.

  Katrina Samoushenka was looking at him with faint curiosity.

  She said: "I have never seen you before, have I? What is it you want of me?"

  Hercule Poirot made her a little bow.

  "First, Madame, I wish to thank you - for your art which made for me once an evening of beauty."

  She smiled faintly.

  "But also I am here on a matter of business. I have been looking, Madame, for a long time for a certain maid of yours - her name was Nita."

  "Nita?"

  She stared at him. Her eyes were large and startled.

  She said: "What do you know about - Nita?

  "I will tell you."

  He told her of the evening when his car had broken down and of Ted Williamson standing there twisting his cap between his fingers and stammering out his love and his pain. She listened with close attention.

  She said when he had finished: "It is touching, that - yes, it is touching..."

  Hercule Poirot nodded.

  "Yes," he said. "It is a tale of Arcady, is it not? What can you tell me, Madame, of this girl?"

  Katrina Samoushenka sighed.

  "I had a maid - Juanita. She was lovely, yes - gay, light of heart. It happened to her what happens so often to those the gods favour. She died young."

  They had been Poirot's own words - final words - irrevocable words -

  Now he heard them again - and yet he persisted.

  He asked: "She is dead?"

  "Yes, she is dead."

  Hercule Poirot was silent a minute, then he said:

  "Yet there is one thing I do not quite understand. I asked Sir George Sanderfield about this maid of yours and he seemed afraid. Why was that?"

  There was a faint expression of disgust on the dancer's face.

  "You just said a maid of mine. He thought you meant Marie - the girl who came to me after Juanita left. She tried to blackmail him, I believe, over something that she found out about him. She was an odious girl inquisitive, always prying into letters and locked drawers."

  Poirot murmured: "Then that explains that."

  He paused a minute, then he went on, still persistent:

  "Juanita's other name was Valetta and she died of an operation for appendicitis in Pisa. Is that correct?"

  He noted the hesitation, hardly perceptible but nevertheless there, before the dancer bowed her head.

  "Yes, that is right."

  Poirot said meditatively: "And yet - there is still a little point - her people spoke of her, not as Juanita but as Bianca."

  Katrina shrugged her thin shoulders.

  She said: "Bianca - Juanita, does it matter? I suppose her real name was Bianca but she thought the name of Juanita was more romantic and so chose to call herself by it."

  "Ah, you think that?" He paused and then, his voice changing, he said:

  "For me, there is another explanation."

  "What is it?"

  Poirot leaned forward.

  He said: "The girl that Ted Williamson saw had hair that he described as being like wings of gold."

  He leaned still a little further forward. His finger just touched the two springing waves of Katrina's hair.

  "Wings of gold, horns of gold? It is as you look at it, it is whether one sees you as devil or as angel! You might be either. Or are they perhaps only the golden horns of the stricken deer?"

  Katrina murmured: "The stricken deer..." and her voice was the voice of one without hope.

  Poirot said: "All along Ted Williamson's description has worried me - it brought something to my mind - that something was you, dancing on your twinkling bronze feet through the forest. Shall I tell you what I think, Mademoiselle? I think there was a week when you had no maid, when you went down alone to Grasslawn, for Bianca Valetta had returned to Italy and you had not yet engaged a new maid. Already you were feeling the illness which has since overtaken you, and you stayed in the house one day when the others went on an all day excursion on the river. There was a ring at the door and you went to it and you saw shall I tell you what you saw? You saw a young man who was as simple as a child and as handsome as a god! And you invented for him a girl not Juanita - but Incognita - and for a few hours you walked with him in Arcady..."

  T
here was a long pause. Then Katrina said in a low hoarse voice:

  "In one thing at least I have told you the truth. I have given you the right end to the story. Nita will die young."

  "Ah non!" Hercule Poirot was transformed. He struck his hand on the table. He was suddenly prosaic, mundane, practical.

  He said: "It is quite unnecessary! You need not die. You can fight for your life, can you not, as well as another?"

  She shook her head - sadly, hopelessly.

  "What life is there for me?"

  "Not the life of the stage, bien entendu! But think, there is another life.

  Come now, Mademoiselle, be honest, was your father really a Prince or a Grand Duke, or even a General?"

  She laughed suddenly.

  She said: "He drove a lorry in Leningrad!"

  "Very good! And why should you not be the wife of a garage hand in a country village? And have children as beautiful as gods, and with feet, perhaps, that will dance as you once danced."

  Katrina caught her breath.

  "But the whole idea is fantastic!"

  "Nevertheless," said Hercule Poirot with great self-satisfaction, "I believe it is going to come true!"

  Chapter 4

  THE ERYMANTHIAN BOAR

  II

  To be received by a hotel manager correctly garbed in frock coat and patent leather shoes seemed somehow ludicrous in this out of the world, or rather above-the-world, spot.

  The manager was a big handsome man, with an important manner. He was very apologetic.

  So early in the season... The hot-water system was out of order... things were hardly in running order... Naturally, he would do everything he could... Not a full staff yet... He was quite confused by the unexpected number of visitors.

  It all came rolling out with professional urbanity and yet it seemed to Poirot that behind the urbane façade he caught a glimpse of some poignant anxiety. This man, for all his easy manner, was not at ease.

  He was worried about something.

  Lunch was served in a long room overlooking the valley far below. The solitary waiter, addressed as Gustave, was skillful and adroit. He darted here and there, advising on the menu, whipping out his wine list. The three horsy men sat at a table together. They laughed and talked in French, their voices rising.

  "Good old Joseph! - What about the little Denise, mon vieux? - Do you remember that sacré pig of a horse that let us all down at Auteuil?"

  It was all very hearty, very much in character - and incongruously out of place!

  The woman with the beautiful face sat alone at a table in the corner.

  She looked at no one.

  Afterwards, as Poirot was sitting in the lounge, the manager came to him and was confidential.

  Monsieur must not judge the hotel too hardly. It was out of the season.

  No one came here till the end of July. That lady, Monsieur had noticed her, perhaps? She came at this time every year. Her husband had been killed climbing three years ago. It was very sad. They had been very devoted. She came here always before the season commenced so as to be quiet. It was a sacred pilgrimage. The elderly gentleman was a famous doctor. Dr Karl Lutz, from Vienna. He had come here, so he said, for quiet and repose.

  "It is peaceful, yes," agreed Hercule Poirot. "And ces Messieurs there?" He indicated the three horsy men. "Do they also seek repose do you think?"

  The manager shrugged his shoulders. Again there appeared in his eyes that worried look. He said vaguely:

  "Ah, the tourists, they wish always a new experience... The altitude that alone is a new sensation."

  It was not, Poirot thought, a very pleasant sensation. He was conscious of his own rapidly beating heart. The lines of a nursery rhyme ran idiotically through his mind. "Up above the world so high.

  Like a tea tray in the sky."

  Schwartz came into the lounge. His eyes brightened when he saw Poirot. He came over to him at once.

  "I've been talking to that Doctor. He speaks English after a fashion.

  He's a Jew - been turned out of Austria by the Nazis. Say, I guess those people are just crazy! This Doctor Lutz was quite a big man, I gather nerve specialist - psychoanalysis - that kind of stuff."

  His eyes went to where the tall woman was looking out of a window at remorseless mountains. He lowered his voice.

  "I got her name from the waiter. She's a Madame Grandier. Her husband was killed climbing. That's why she comes here. I sort of feel, don't you, that we ought to do something about it - try to take her out of herself?"

  Hercule Poirot said: "If I were you I should not attempt it."

  But the friendliness of Mr Schwartz was indefatigable.

  Poirot saw him make his overtures, saw the remorseless way in which they were rebuffed. The two stood together for a minute silhouetted against the light. The woman was taller than Schwartz. Her head was thrown back and her expression was cold and forbidding. He did not hear what she said, but Schwartz came back looking crestfallen.

  "Nothing doing," he said. He added wistfully: "Seems to me that as we're all human beings together there's no reason we shouldn't be friendly to one another. Don't you agree, Mr - You know, I don't know your name?"

  "My name," said Poirot, "is Poirier." He added: "I am a silk merchant from Lyons."

  "I'd like to give you my card, M. Poirier, and if ever you come to Fountain Springs you'll be sure of a welcome."

  Poirot accepted the card, clapped his hand to his own pocket, murmured:

  "Alas, I have not a card on me at the moment..."

  That night, when he went to bed, Poirot read through Lementeuil's letter carefully before replacing it, neatly folded, in his wallet. As he got into bed he said to himself:

  "It is curious - I wonder if..."

  III

  Gustave the waiter brought Hercule Poirot his breakfast of coffee and rolls. He was apologetic over the coffee.

  "Monsieur comprehends, does he not, that at this altitude it is impossible to have the coffee really hot? Lamentably, it boils too soon."

  Poirot murmured: "One must accept these vagaries of Nature's with fortitude."

  Gustave murmured: "Monsieur is a philosopher."

  He went to the door, but instead of leaving the room, he took one quick look outside, then shut the door again and returned to the bedside.

  He said: "M. Hercule Poirot? I am Drouet, Inspector of Police."

  "Ah," said Poirot, "I had already suspected as much."

  Drouet lowered his voice.

  "M. Poirot, something very grave has occurred. There has been an accident to the funicular!"

  "An accident?" Poirot sat up. "What kind of an accident?"

  "Nobody has been injured. It happened in the night. It was occasioned, perhaps, by natural causes - a small avalanche that swept down boulders and rocks. But it is possible that there was human agency at work. One does not know. In any case the result is that it will take many days to repair and that in the meantime we are cut off up here.

  So early in the season, when the snow is still heavy, it is impossible to communicate with the valley below."

  Hercule Poirot sat up in bed.

  He said softly: "That is very interesting."

  The inspector nodded.

  "Yes," he said. "It shows that our commissaire's information was correct. Marrascaud has a rendezvous here, and he has made sure that that rendezvous shall not be interrupted."

  Hercule Poirot cried impatiently: "But it is fantastic!"

  "I agree." Inspector Drouet threw up his hands. "It does not make the common sense - but there it is. This Marrascaud, you know, is a fantastic creature! Myself," he nodded, "I think he is mad."

  Poirot said: "A madman and a murderer!"

  Drouet said dryly: "It is not amusing, I agree."

  Poirot said slowly: "But if he has a rendezvous here, on this ledge of snow high above the world, then it also follows that Marrascaud himself is here already, since communications are now cut."

  D
rouet said quietly: "I know."

  Both men were silent for a minute or two. Then Poirot asked:

  "Dr Lutz? Can he be Marrascaud?"

  Drouet shook his head.

  "I do not think so. There is a real Dr Lutz - I have seen his pictures in the papers - a distinguished and well-known man. This man resembles these photographs closely."

  Poirot murmured: "If Marrascaud is an artist in disguise, he might play the part successfully."

  "Yes, but is he? I never heard of him as an expert in disguise. He has not the guile and cunning of the serpent. He is a wild boar, ferocious, terrible, who charges in blind fury."

  Poirot said: "All the same..."

  Drouet agreed quickly.

  "Ah yes, he is a fugitive from justice. Therefore he is forced to dissemble. So he may - in fact he must be - more or less disguised."

  "You have his description?"

  The other shrugged his shoulders.

  "Roughly only. The official Bertillon photograph and measurements were to have been sent up to me today. I know only that he is a man of thirty odd, of a little over medium height and of dark complexion. No distinguishing marks."

  Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

  "That could apply to anybody. What about the American, Schwartz?"

  "I was going to ask you that. You have spoken with him, and you have lived, I think, much with the English and the Americans. To a casual glance he appears to be the normal travelling American. His passport is in order. It is perhaps strange that he should elect to come here - but Americans when travelling are quite incalculable. What do you think yourself?"

  Hercule Poirot shook his head in perplexity.

  He said: "On the surface, at any rate, he appears to be a harmless slightly over-friendly, man. He might be a bore, but it seems difficult to regard him as a danger." He went on: "But there are three more visitors here."

  The Inspector nodded, his face suddenly eager.

  "Yes, and they are the type we are looking for. I'll take my oath, M.

  Poirot, that those three men are at any rate members of Marrascaud's gang. They're race-course toughs if I ever saw them! and one of the three may be Marrascaud himself."