The Hollow hp-24

by Agatha Christie

  After a long pause, Poirot recited dreamily;

  "He went out with her that night to see her home and returned to The Hollow at 3:00 a.m."

  "How do you know?"

  "A housemaid had the toothache."

  Henrietta said irrelevantly, "Lucy has far too many servants."

  "But you yourself knew that, Mademoiselle."

  "Yes."

  "How did you know?"

  Again there was an infinitesimal pause.

  Then Henrietta replied slowly:

  "I was looking out of my window and saw him come back to the house."

  "The toothache, Mademoiselle?"

  She smiled at him.

  "Quite another kind of ache, M. Poirot."

  She got up and moved towards the door and Poirot said:

  "I will walk back with you, Mademoiselle."

  They crossed the lane and went through the gate into the chestnut plantation.

  Henrietta said:

  "We need not go past the pool. We can go up to the left and along the top path to the flower walk."

  A track led steeply up hill towards the woods. After a while they came to a broader path at right angles across the hillside above the chestnut trees. Presently they came to a bench and Henrietta sat down, Poirot beside her. The woods were above and behind them and below were the closely planted chestnut groves. Just in front of the seat a curving path led downwards, to where just a glimmer of blue water could be seen.

  Poirot watched Henrietta without speaking.

  Her face had relaxed, the tension had gone. It looked rounder and younger. He realized what she must have looked like as a young girl.

  He said very gently at last:

  "Of what are you thinking. Mademoiselle?"

  "Of Ainswick…"

  "What is Ainswick?"

  "Ainswick? It's a place." Almost dreamily, she described Ainswick to him. The white graceful house-the big magnolia-growing up it-the whole set in an amphitheatre of wooded hills.

  "It was your home?"

  "Not really. I lived in Ireland. It was where we came, all of us, for holidays. Edward and Midge and myself. It was Lucy's home actually. It belonged to her father. After his death it came to Edward."

  "Not to Sir Henry? But it is he who has the title."

  "Oh, that's a K.C.B.," she explained. "Henry was only a distant cousin."

  "And after Edward Angkatell, to whom does it go, this Ainswick?"

  "How odd. I've never really thought. If Edward doesn't marry-" She paused. A shadow passed over her face. Hercule Poirot wondered exactly what thought was passing through her mind.

  "I suppose," said Henrietta slowly, "it will go to David. So that's why-"

  "Why what?"

  "Why Lucy asked him here… David and Ainswick?" She shook her head. "They don't fit somehow."

  Poirot pointed to the path in front of them.

  "It is by that path, Mademoiselle, that you went down to the swimming pool yesterday?"

  She gave a quick shiver.

  "No, by the one nearer the house. It was Edward who came this way." She turned on him suddenly. "Must we talk about it any more? I hate the swimming pool… I even hate The Hollow."

  "I hate the dreadful Hollow behind the little wood.

  Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-red heath;

  The red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror of blood,

  And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers 'Death.'"

  Henrietta turned an astonished face on him.

  "Tennyson," said Hercule Poirot, nodding his head proudly. "The poetry of your Lord Tennyson."

  Henrietta was repeating.

  "And Echo there, whatever is asked her…" She went on, almost to herself. "But, of course-I see-that's what it is-Echo!"

  "How do you mean, Echo?"

  "This place-The Hollow itself! I almost saw it before-on Saturday when Edward and I walked up to the ridge. An echo of Ainswick… And that's what we are, we Angkatells. Echoes! We're not real-not real as John was real." She turned to Poirot. "I wish you had known him, M. Poirot. We're all shadows compared with John. John was really alive."

  "I knew that even when he was dying, Mademoiselle."

  "I know. One felt it… And John is dead, and we, the echoes, are alive… It's like, you know, a very bad joke…"

  The youth had gone from her face again.

  Her lips were twisted, bitter with sudden pain.

  When Poirot spoke, asking a question, she did not, for a moment, take in what he was saying.

  "I am sorry. What did you say, M. Poirot?"

  "I was asking whether your aunt, Lady Angkatell, liked Dr. Christow."

  "Lucy? She is a cousin, by the way, not an aunt. Yes, she liked him very much."

  "And your-also a cousin?-Mr. Edward Angkatell-did he like Dr. Christow?"

  Her voice was, he thought, a little constrained, as she replied:

  "Not particularly-but then he hardly knew him."

  "And your-yet another cousin?-Mr. David Angkatell?"

  Henrietta smiled.

  "David, I think, hates all of us. He spends his time immured in the library reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica."

  "Ah, a serious temperament."

  "I am sorry for David. He has had a difficult home life-his mother was unbalanced-an invalid. Now his only way of protecting himself is to try to feel superior to everyone. It's all right as long as it works, but now and then it breaks down and the vulnerable David peeps through."

  "Did he feel himself superior to Dr. Christow?"

  "He tried to-but I don't think it came off. I suspect that John Christow was just the kind of man that David would like to be- He disliked John in consequence."

  Poirot nodded his head thoughtfully.

  "Yes-self-assurance, confidence, virility -all the intensive male qualities. It is interesting-very interesting.'?

  Henrietta did not answer.

  Through the chestnuts, down by the pool, Hercule Poirot saw a man stooping, searching for something, or so it seemed.

  He murmured, "I wonder-"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  Poirot said, "That is one of Inspector Grange's men. He seems to be looking for something."

  "Clues, I suppose. Don't policemen look for clues? Cigarette ash, footprints, burnt matches?"

  Her voice held a kind of bitter mockery.

  Poirot answered seriously:

  "Yes, they look for these things-and sometimes they find them. But the real clues. Miss Savernake, in a case like this, usually lie in the personal relationships of the people concerned."

  "I don't think I understand you."

  "Little things," said Poirot, his head thrown back, his eyes half closed. "Not cigarette ash, or a rubber heel mark-but a gesture, a look, an unexpected action…"

  Henrietta turned her head sharply to look at him. He felt her eyes but he did not turn his head. She said:

  "Are you thinking of-anything in particular?"

  "I was thinking of how you stepped forward and took the revolver out of Mrs. Christow's hand and then dropped it in the pool."

  He felt the slight start she gave. But her voice was quite normal and calm.

  "Gerda, M. Poirot, is rather a clumsy person.

  In the shock of the moment, and if the revolver had had another cartridge in it, she might have fired it and-and hurt someone."

  "But it was rather clumsy of you, was it not, to drop it in the pool?"

  "Well-I had had a shock, too." She paused. "What are you suggesting, M. Poirot?"

  Poirot sat up, turned his head, and spoke in a brisk matter-of-fact way:

  "If there were finger-prints on that revolver, that is to say, finger-prints made before Mrs. Christow handled it, it would be interesting to know whose they were-and that we shall never know now."

  Henrietta said quietly, but steadily:

  "Meaning that you think they were mine… You are suggesting that I shot John and then left the re
volver beside him so that Gerda could come along and pick it up and be left holding the baby-(that is what you are suggesting, isn't it?) But surely, if I did that, you will give me credit for enough intelligence to have wiped off my own fingerprints first!"

  "But surely you are intelligent enough to see. Mademoiselle, that if you had done so and if the revolver had had no fingerprints on it but Mrs. Christow's, that would have been very remarkable! For you were all shooting with that revolver the day before.

  Gerda Christow would hardly have wiped the revolver clean of finger-prints before using it-why should she?"

  Henrietta said slowly:

  "So you think I killed John?"

  "When Dr. Christow was dying, he said, 'Henrietta.'"

  "And you think that that was an accusation? It was not."

  "What was it then?"

  Henrietta stretched out her foot and traced a pattern with the toe. She said in a low voice:

  "Aren't you forgetting-what I told you not very long ago? I mean-the terms we were on?"

  "Ah, yes-he was your lover-and so, as he is dying, he says Henrietta. That is very touching."

  She turned blazing eyes upon him.

  "Must you sneer?"

  "I am not sneering. But I do not like being lied to-and that, I think, is what you are trying to do."

  Henrietta said quietly:

  "I have told you that I am not very truthful-but when John said Henrietta, he was not accusing me of having murdered him. Can't you understand that people of my kind, who make things, are quite incapable of taking life? I don't kill people, M. Poirot. I couldn't kill anyone. That's the plain stark truth. You suspect me simply because my name was murmured by a dying man who hardly knew what he was saying."

  "Dr. Christow knew perfectly what he was saying. His voice was as alive and conscious as that of a doctor doing a vital operation who says sharply and urgently, 'Nurse, the forceps, please.'"

  "But-" She seemed at a loss, taken aback. Hercule Poirot went on rapidly:

  "And it is not just on account of what Dr. Christow said when he was dying. I do not believe for one moment that you are capable of premeditated murder-that, no. But you might have fired that shot in a sudden moment of fierce resentment-and if so-if so, Mademoiselle, you have the creative imagination and ability to cover your tracks."

  Henrietta got up. She stood for a moment, pale and shaken, looking at him. She said with a sudden rueful smile:

  "And I thought you liked me."

  Hercule Poirot sighed. He said sadly:

  "That is what is so unfortunate for me. I do."

  Chapter XIX

  When Henrietta had left him, Poirot sat on until he saw below him Inspector Grange walk past the pool with a resolute easy stride and take the path on past the pavilion.

  The Inspector was walking in a purposeful way.

  He must be going, therefore, either to Resthaven or to Dovecotes. Poirot wondered which.

  He got up and retraced his steps along the way he had come. If Inspector Grange was coming to see him, he was interested to hear what the Inspector had to say.

  But when he got back to Resthaven there was no sign of a visitor. Poirot looked thoughtfully up the lane in the direction of Dovecotes. Veronica Cray had not, he knew, gone back to London.

  He found his curiosity rising about Veronica Cray. The pale, shining fox furs, the heaped boxes of matches, that sudden imperfectly explained invasion on the Saturday night, and, finally, Henrietta Savernake's revelations about John Christow and Veronica.

  It was, he thought, an interesting pattern. … Yes, that was how he saw it: a pattern.

  A design of intermingled emotions and the clash of personalities. A strange involved design, with dark threads of hate and desire running through it.

  Had Gerda Christow shot her husband?

  Or was it not quite so simple as that?

  He thought of his conversation with Henrietta and decided that it was not so simple.

  Henrietta had jumped to the conclusion that he suspected her of the murder, but actually he had not gone nearly as far as that in his mind. No further indeed than the belief that Henrietta knew something. Knew something or was concealing something-which?

  He shook his head, dissatisfied.

  The scene by the pool. A set scene. A stage scene.

  Staged by whom?

  Staged for whom?

  The answer to the second question was, he strongly suspected, Hercule Poirot. He had thought so at the time. But he had thought then that it was an impertinence-a joke.

  It was still an impertinence-but not a joke.

  And the answer to the first question?

  He shook his head. He did not know. He had not the least idea.

  But he half closed his eyes and conjured them up-all of them-seeing them clearly in his mind's eye. Sir Henry, upright, responsible, trusted administrator of Empire.

  Lady Angkatell, shadowy, elusive, unexpectedly and bewilderingly charming, with that deadly power of inconsequent suggestion.

  Henrietta Savernake who had loved John Christow better than she loved herself.

  The gentle and negative Edward Angkatell.

  The dark, positive girl called Midge Hardcastle.

  The dazed, bewildered face of Gerda Christow clasping a revolver in her hand.

  The offended, adolescent personality of David Angkatell.

  There they all were, caught and held in the meshes of the law. Bound together for a little while in the relentless aftermath of sudden and violent death. Each of them had his or her own tragedy and meaning, his or her own story.

  And somewhere in that interplay of characters and emotions lay the truth…

  To Hercule Poirot there was only one thing more fascinating than the study of human beings, and that was the pursuit of truth…

  He meant to know the truth of John Christow's death.

  "But, of course, Inspector," said Veronica. "I'm only too anxious to help you."

  "Thank you. Miss Cray."

  Veronica Cray was not, somehow, at all what the Inspector had imagined.

  He had been prepared for glamour, for artiflciality, even possibly, for heroics. He would not have been at all surprised if she had put on an act of some kind.

  In fact, she was, he shrewdly suspected, putting on an act. But it was not the kind of act he had expected.

  There was no overdone feminine charm -glamour was not stressed.

  Instead, he felt that he was sitting opposite to an exceedingly good-looking and expensively dressed woman who was also a good business woman. Veronica Cray, he thought, was no fool.

  "We just want a clear statement, Miss Cray. You came over to The Hollow on Saturday evening?"

  "Yes, I'd run out of matches. One forgets how important these things are in the country."

  "You went all the way to The Hollow? Why not to your next door neighbour, M. Poirot?"

  She smiled-a superb confident camera smile.

  "I didn't know who my next door neighbour was-otherwise I should have. I just thought he was some little foreigner and I thought, you know, he might become a bore-living so near."

  Yes, thought Grange, quite plausible.

  She'd worked that one out ready for the occasion.

  "You got your matches," he said. "And you recognized an old friend in Dr. Christow, I understand?"

  She nodded.

  "Poor John. Yes, I hadn't seen him for fifteen years."

  "Really?" There was polite disbelief in the Inspector's tone.

  "Really." Her tone was firmly assertive.

  "You were pleased to see him?"

  "Very pleased. It's always delightful, don't you think, Inspector, to come across an old friend?"

  "It can be on some occasions."

  Veronica Cray went on without waiting for further questioning:

  "John saw me home. You'll want to know if he said anything that could have a bearing on the tragedy, and I've been thinking over our conversation very carefully-bu
t really there wasn't a pointer of any kind."

  "What did you talk about. Miss Cray?"

  "Old days. 'Do you remember this, that and the other?'" She smiled pensively. "We had known each other in the South of France. John had really changed very little -older, of course, and more assured. I gather he was quite well known in his profession.

  He didn't talk about his personal life at all. I just got the impression that his married life wasn't perhaps frightfully happy-but it was only the vaguest impression. I suppose his wife, poor thing, was one of those dim, jealous women-probably always making a fuss about his better-looking lady patients."

  "No," said Grange. "She doesn't really seem to have been that way."

  Veronica said quickly:

  "You mean-it was all underneath? Yes-yes, I can see that that would be far more dangerous."

  "I see you think Mrs. Christow shot him, Miss Cray?"

  "I oughtn't to have said that! One mustn't comment-is that it-before a trial? I'm extremely sorry, Inspector. It was just that my maid told me she'd been found actually standing over the body with the revolver still in her hand. You know how in these quiet country places everything gets so exaggerated and servants do pass things on."

  "Servants can be very useful sometimes, Miss Cray."

  "Yes, I suppose you get a lot of your information that way."

  Grange went on stolidly:

  "It's a question, of course, of who had a motive-"

  He paused. Veronica said with a faint rueful smile:

  "And a wife is always the first suspect? How cynical! But there's usually what's called 'the other woman.' I suppose she might be considered to have a motive, too?"

  "You think there was another woman in Dr. Christow's life?"

  "Well-yes, I did rather imagine there might be. One just gets an impression, you know."

  "Impressions can be very helpful sometimes," said Grange.

  "I rather imagined-from what he said-that that sculptress woman was, well, a very close friend. But I expect you know all about that already?"

  "We have to look into all these things, of course."

  Inspector Grange's voice was strictly noncommittal, but he saw, without appearing to see, a quick, spiteful flash of satisfaction in those large blue eyes.

  He said, making the question very official:

  "Dr. Christow saw you home, you say. What time was it when you said good night to him?"