Book Read Free

Problem at Pollensa Bay

Page 17

by Agatha Christie


  Richard took her to the door and put her into a taxi.

  ‘Theo!’

  Vincent Easton sprang up in incredulous delight. She stood in the doorway. Her wrap of white ermine was hanging from her shoulders. Never, Easton thought, had she looked so beautiful.

  ‘You’ve come after all.’

  She put out a hand to stop him as he came towards her.

  ‘No, Vincent, this isn’t what you think.’

  She spoke in a low, hurried voice.

  ‘I’m here from my husband. He thinks there are some papers which may—do him harm. I have come to ask you to give them to me.’

  Vincent stood very still, looking at her. Then he gave a short laugh.

  ‘So that’s it, is it? I thought Hobson, Jekyll and Lucas sounded familiar the other day, but I couldn’t place them at the minute. Didn’t know your husband was connected with the firm. Things have been going wrong there for some time. I was commissioned to look into the matter. I suspected some underling. Never thought of the man at the top.’

  Theo said nothing. Vincent looked at her curiously.

  ‘It makes no difference to you, this?’ he asked. ‘That—well, to put it plainly, that your husband’s a swindler?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘It beats me,’ said Vincent. Then he added quietly: ‘Will you wait a minute or two? I will get the papers.’

  Theo sat down in a chair. He went into the other room. Presently he returned and delivered a small package into her hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Theo. ‘Have you a match?’

  Taking the matchbox he proffered, she knelt down by the fireplace. When the papers were reduced to a pile of ashes, she stood up.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again.

  ‘Not at all,’ he answered formally. ‘Let me get you a taxi.’

  He put her into it, saw her drive away. A strange, formal little interview. After the first, they had not even dared look at each other. Well, that was that, the end. He would go away, abroad, try and forget.

  Theo leaned her head out of the window and spoke to the taxi driver. She could not go back at once to the house in Chelsea. She must have a breathing space. Seeing Vincent again had shaken her horribly. If only—if only. But she pulled herself up. Love for her husband she had none—but she owed him loyalty. He was down, she must stick by him. Whatever else he might have done, he loved her; his offence had been committed against society, not against her.

  The taxi meandered on through the wide streets of Hampstead. They came out on the heath, and a breath of cool, invigorating air fanned Theo’s cheeks. She had herself in hand again now. The taxi sped back towards Chelsea.

  Richard came out to meet her in the hall.

  ‘Well,’ he demanded, ‘you’ve been a long time.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Yes—a very long time. Is it—all right?’

  He followed her, a cunning look in his eyes. His hands were shaking.

  ‘It’s—it’s all right, eh?’ he said again.

  ‘I burnt them myself.’

  ‘Oh!’

  She went on into the study, sinking into a big armchair. Her face was dead white and her whole body drooped with fatigue. She thought to herself: ‘If only I could go to sleep now and never, never wake up again!’

  Richard was watching her. His glance, shy, furtive, kept coming and going. She noticed nothing. She was beyond noticing.

  ‘It went off quite all right, eh?’

  ‘I’ve told you so.’

  ‘You’re sure they were the right papers? Did you look?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But then—’

  ‘I’m sure, I tell you. Don’t bother me, Richard. I can’t bear any more tonight.’

  Richard shifted nervously.

  ‘No, no. I see.’

  He fidgeted about the room. Presently he came over to her, laid a hand on her shoulder. She shook it off.

  ‘Don’t touch me.’ She tried to laugh. ‘I’m sorry, Richard. My nerves are on edge. I feel I can’t bear to be touched.’

  ‘I know. I understand.’

  Again he wandered up and down.

  ‘Theo,’ he burst out suddenly. ‘I’m damned sorry.’

  ‘What?’ She looked up, vaguely startled.

  ‘I oughtn’t to have let you go there at this time of night. I never dreamed that you’d be subjected to any—unpleasantness.’

  ‘Unpleasantness?’ She laughed. The word seemed to amuse her. ‘You don’t know! Oh, Richard, you don’t know!’

  ‘I don’t know what?’

  She said very gravely, looking straight in front of her: ‘What this night has cost me.’

  ‘My God! Theo! I never meant—You—you did that, for me? The swine! Theo—Theo—I couldn’t have known. I couldn’t have guessed. My God!’

  He was kneeling by her now stammering, his arms round her, and she turned and looked at him with faint surprise, as though his words had at last really penetrated to her attention.

  ‘I—I never meant—’

  ‘You never meant what, Richard?’

  Her voice startled him.

  ‘Tell me. What was it that you never meant?’

  ‘Theo, don’t let us speak of it. I don’t want to know. I want never to think of it.’

  She was staring at him, wide awake now, with every faculty alert. Her words came clear and distinct:

  ‘You never meant—What do you think happened?’

  ‘It didn’t happen, Theo. Let’s say it didn’t happen.’

  And still she stared, till the truth began to come to her.

  ‘You think that—’

  ‘I don’t want—’

  She interrupted him: ‘You think that Vincent Easton asked a price for those letters? You think that I—paid him?’

  Richard said weakly and unconvincingly: ‘I—I never dreamed he was that kind of man.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ She looked at him searchingly. His eyes fell before hers. ‘Why did you ask me to put on this dress this evening? Why did you send me there alone at this time of night? You guessed he—cared for me. You wanted to save your skin—save it at any cost—even at the cost of my honour.’ She got up.

  ‘I see now. You meant that from the beginning—or at least you saw it as a possibility, and it didn’t deter you.’

  ‘Theo—’

  ‘You can’t deny it. Richard, I thought I knew all there was to know about you years ago. I’ve known almost from the first that you weren’t straight as regards the world. But I thought you were straight with me.’

  ‘Theo—’

  ‘Can you deny what I’ve just been saying?’

  He was silent, in spite of himself.

  ‘Listen, Richard. There is something I must tell you. Three days ago when this blow fell on you, the servants told you I was away—gone to the country. That was only partly true. I had gone away with Vincent Easton—’

  Richard made an inarticulate sound. She held out a hand to stop him.

  ‘Wait. We were at Dover. I saw a paper—I realized what had happened. Then, as you know, I came back.’

  She paused.

  Richard caught her by the wrist. His eyes burnt into hers.

  ‘You came back—in time?’

  Theo gave a short, bitter laugh.

  ‘Yes, I came back, as you say, “in time”, Richard.’

  Her husband relinquished his hold on her arm. He stood by the mantelpiece, his head thrown back. He looked handsome and rather noble.

  ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I can forgive.’

  ‘I cannot.’

  The two words came crisply. They had the semblance and the effect of a bomb in the quiet room. Richard started forward, staring, his jaw dropped with an almost ludicrous effect.

  ‘You—er—what did you say, Theo?’

  ‘I said I cannot forgive! In leaving you for another man. I sinned—not technically, perhaps, but in intention, which is the same thing. But if I sinned, I sinne
d through love. You, too, have not been faithful to me since our marriage. Oh, yes, I know. That I forgave, because I really believed in your love for me. But the thing you have done tonight is different. It is an ugly thing, Richard—a thing no woman should forgive. You sold me, your own wife, to purchase safety!’

  She picked up her wrap and turned towards the door.

  ‘Theo,’ he stammered out, ‘where are you going?’

  She looked back over her shoulder at him.

  ‘We all have to pay in this life, Richard. For my sin I must pay in loneliness. For yours—well, you gambled with the thing you love, and you have lost it!’

  ‘You are going?’

  She drew a long breath.

  ‘To freedom. There is nothing to bind me here.’

  He heard the door shut. Ages passed, or was it a few minutes? Something fluttered down outside the window—the last of the magnolia petals, soft, fragrant.

  ALSO BY AGATHA CHRISTIE

  Mysteries

  The Man in the Brown Suit

  The Secret of Chimneys

  The Seven Dials Mystery

  The Mysterious Mr Quin

  The Sittaford Mystery

  The Hound of Death

  The Listerdale Mystery

  Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

  Parker Pyne Investigates

  Murder Is Easy

  And Then There Were None

  Towards Zero

  Death Comes as the End

  Sparkling Cyanide

  Crooked House

  They Came to Baghdad

  Destination Unknown

  Spider’s Web *

  The Unexpected Guest *

  Ordeal by Innocence

  The Pale Horse

  Endless Night

  Passenger To Frankfurt

  Problem at Pollensa Bay

  While the Light Lasts

  Poirot

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles

  The Murder on the Links

  Poirot Investigates

  The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

  The Big Four

  The Mystery of the Blue Train

  Black Coffee *

  Peril at End House

  Lord Edgware Dies

  Murder on the Orient Express

  Three-Act Tragedy

  Death in the Clouds

  The ABC Murders

  Murder in Mesopotamia

  Cards on the Table

  Murder in the Mews

  Dumb Witness

  Death on the Nile

  Appointment with Death

  Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

  Sad Cypress

  One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

  Evil Under the Sun

  Five Little Pigs

  The Hollow

  The Labours of Hercules

  Taken at the Flood

  Mrs McGinty’s Dead

  After the Funeral

  Hickory Dickory Dock

  Dead Man’s Folly

  Cat Among the Pigeons

  The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

  The Clocks

  Third Girl

  Hallowe’en Party

  Elephants Can Remember

  Poirot’s Early Cases

  Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

  Marple

  The Murder at the Vicarage

  The Thirteen Problems

  The Body in the Library

  The Moving Finger

  A Murder Is Announced

  They Do It with Mirrors

  A Pocket Full of Rye

  4.50 from Paddington

  The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

  A Caribbean Mystery

  At Bertram’s Hotel

  Nemesis

  Sleeping Murder

  Miss Marple’s Final Cases

  Tommy & Tuppence

  The Secret Adversary

  Partners in Crime

  N or M?

  By the Pricking of My Thumbs

  Postern of Fate

  Published as Mary Westmacott

  Giant’s Bread

  Unfinished Portrait

  Absent in the Spring

  The Rose and the Yew Tree

  A Daughter’s a Daughter

  The Burden

  Memoirs

  An Autobiography

  Come, Tell Me How You Live

  The Grand Tour

  Play and Stories

  Akhnaton

  The Mousetrap and Other Plays

  The Floating Admiral †

  Star Over Bethlehem

  Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly

  * novelized by Charles Osborne

  † contributor

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  http://www.harpercollins.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

  http://www.harpercollins.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1

  Auckland, New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  195 Broadway

  New York, NY 10007

  http://www.harpercollins.com

 

 

 


‹ Prev