The Hollow (22 page)

I

T
he coroner cleared his throat and looked expectantly at the foreman of the jury.

The latter looked down at the piece of paper he held in his hand. His Adam's apple wagged up and down excitedly. He read out in a careful voice:

“We find that the deceased came to his death by wilful murder by some person or persons unknown.”

Poirot nodded his head quietly in his corner by the wall. There could be no other possible verdict.

Outside the Angkatells stopped a moment to talk to Gerda and her sister. Gerda was wearing the same black clothes. Her face had the same dazed, unhappy expression. This time there was no Daimler. The train service, Elsie Patterson explained, was really very good. A fast train to Waterloo and they could easily catch the 1:20 to Bexhill.

Lady Angkatell, clasping Gerda's hand, murmured:

“You must keep in touch with us, my dear. A little lunch, perhaps, one day in London? I expect you come up to do shopping occasionally.”

“I—I don't know,” said Gerda.

Elsie Patterson said:

“We must hurry, dear, our train,” and Gerda turned away with an expression of relief.

Midge said:

“Poor Gerda. The only thing John's death has done for her is to set her free from your terrifying hospitality, Lucy.”

“How unkind you are, Midge. Nobody could say I didn't try.”

“You are much worse when you try, Lucy.”

“Well, it's very nice to think it's all over, isn't it?” said Lady Angkatell, beaming at them. “Except, of course, for poor Inspector Grange. I do feel so sorry for him. Would it cheer him up, do you think, if we asked him back to lunch? As a
friend,
I mean.”

“I should let well alone, Lucy,” said Sir Henry.

“Perhaps you are right,” said Lady Angkatell meditatively. “And anyway it isn't the right kind of lunch today. Partridges au Choux—and that delicious Soufflé Surprise that Mrs. Medway makes so well. Not at all Inspector Grange's kind of lunch. A really good steak, a little underdone, and a good old-fashioned apple tart with no nonsense about it—or perhaps apple dumplings—that's what I should order for Inspector Grange.”

“Your instincts about food are always very sound, Lucy. I think we had better get home to those partridges. They sound delicious.”

“Well, I thought we ought to have
some
celebration. It's wonderful, isn't it, how everything always seems to turn out for the best?”

“Ye-es.”

“I know what you're thinking, Henry, but don't worry. I shall attend to it this afternoon.”

“What are you up to now, Lucy?”

Lady Angkatell smiled at him.

“It's quite all right, darling. Just tucking in a loose end.”

Sir Henry looked at her doubtfully.

When they reached The Hollow, Gudgeon came out to open the door of the car.

“Everything went off very satisfactorily, Gudgeon,” said Lady Angkatell. “Please tell Mrs. Medway and the others. I know how unpleasant it has been for you all, and I should like to tell you now how much Sir Henry and I have appreciated the loyalty you have all shown.”

“We have been deeply concerned for you, my lady,” said Gudgeon.

“Very sweet of Gudgeon,” said Lucy as she went into the drawing room, “but really quite wasted. I have really almost
enjoyed
it all—so different, you know, from what one is accustomed to. Don't you feel, David, that an experience like this has broadened your mind? It must be so different from Cambridge.”

“I am at Oxford,” said David coldly.

Lady Angkatell said vaguely: “The dear Boat Race. So English, don't you think?” and went towards the telephone.

She picked up the receiver and, holding it in her hand, she went on:

“I do hope, David, that you will come and stay with us again. It's so difficult, isn't it, to get to know people when there is a murder? And quite impossible to have any really intellectual conversation.”

“Thank you,” said David. “But when I come down I am going to Athens—to the British School.”

Lady Angkatell turned to her husband.

“Who's got the Embassy now? Oh, of course. Hope-Remmington. No, I don't think David would like them. Those girls of theirs are so terribly hearty. They play hockey and cricket and the funny game where you catch the thing in a net.”

She broke off, looking down at the telephone receiver.

“Now, what am I doing with this thing?”

“Perhaps you were going to ring someone up,” said Edward.

“I don't think so.” She replaced it. “Do you like telephones, David?”

It was the sort of question, David reflected irritably, that she would ask; one to which there could be no intelligent answer. He replied coldly that he supposed they were useful.

“You mean,” said Lady Angkatell, “like mincing machines? Or elastic bands? All the same, one wouldn't—”

She broke off as Gudgeon appeared in the doorway to announce lunch.

“But you like partridges,” said Lady Angkatell to David anxiously.

David admitted that he liked partridges.

“Sometimes I think Lucy really is a bit touched,” said Midge as she and Edward strolled away from the house and up towards the woods.

The partridges and the Soufflé Surprise had been excellent, and with the inquest over a weight had lifted from the atmosphere.

Edward said thoughtfully:

“I always think Lucy has a brilliant mind that expresses itself
like a missing word competition. To mix metaphors—the hammer jumps from nail to nail and never fails to hit each one squarely on the head.”

“All the same,” Midge said soberly, “Lucy frightens me sometimes.” She added, with a tiny shiver: “This place has frightened me lately.”

“The Hollow?”

Edward turned an astonished face to her.

“It always reminds me a little of Ainswick,” he said. “It's not, of course, the real thing—”

Midge interrupted:

“That's just it, Edward. I'm frightened of things that aren't the real thing. You don't know, you see, what's
behind
them. It's like—oh, it's like a
mask.
”

“You mustn't be fanciful, little Midge.”

It was the old tone, the indulgent tone he had used years ago. She had liked it then, but now it disturbed her. She struggled to make her meaning clear—to show him that behind what he called fancy, was some shape of dimly apprehended reality.

“I got away from it in London, but now that I'm back here it all comes over me again. I feel that everyone knows who killed John Christow. That the only person who doesn't know—is
me.
”

Edward said irritably:

“Must we think and talk about John Christow? He's dead. Dead and gone.”

Midge murmured:

She put her hand on Edward's arm. “Who
did
kill him, Edward? We thought it was Gerda—but it wasn't Gerda. Then who was it? Tell me what
you
think? Was it someone we've never heard of?”

He said irritably:

“All this speculation seems to me quite unprofitable. If the police can't find out, or can't get sufficient evidence, then the whole thing will have to be allowed to drop—and we shall be rid of it.”

“Yes—but it's the not knowing.”

“Why should we want to know? What has John Christow to do with us?”

With
us,
she thought, with Edward and me? Nothing! Comforting thought—she and Edward, linked, a dual entity. And yet—and yet—John Christow, for all that he had been laid in his grave and the words of the burial service read over him, was not buried deep enough.
He is dead and gone, lady
—But John Christow was not dead and gone—for all that Edward wished him to be. John Christow was still here at The Hollow.

Edward said: “Where are we going?”

Something in his tone surprised her. She said:

“Let's walk up on to the top of the ridge. Shall we?”

“If you like.”

For some reason he was unwilling. She wondered why. It was usually his favourite walk. He and Henrietta used nearly always—Her thought snapped and broke off.
He and Henrietta!
She said: “Have you been this way yet this autumn?”

He said stiffly:

“Henrietta and I walked up here that first afternoon.” They went on in silence.

They came at last to the top and sat on the fallen tree.

Midge thought: “
He and Henrietta sat here, perhaps.
”

She turned the ring on her finger round and round. The diamond flashed coldly at her. (“
Not emeralds,
” he had said.)

She said with a slight effort:

“It will be lovely to be at Ainswick again for Christmas.”

He did not seem to hear her. He had gone far away.

She thought: “He is thinking of Henrietta and of John Christow.”

Sitting here he had said something to Henrietta or she had said something to him. Henrietta might know what she didn't want, but he belonged to Henrietta still. He always would, Midge thought, belong to Henrietta….

Pain swooped down upon her. The happy bubble world in which she had lived for the last week quivered and broke.

She thought: “I can't live like that—with Henrietta always there in his mind. I can't face it. I can't bear it.”

The wind sighed through the trees—the leaves were falling fast now—there was hardly any golden left, only brown.

She said: “Edward!”

The urgency of her voice aroused him. He turned his head.

“Yes?”

“I'm sorry, Edward.” Her lips were trembling but she forced her voice to be quiet and self-controlled. “I've got to tell you. It's no use. I can't marry you. It wouldn't work, Edward.”

He said: “But, Midge—surely Ainswick—”

She interrupted:

“I can't marry you just for Ainswick, Edward. You—you must see that.”

He sighed then, a long gentle sigh. It was like an echo of the dead leaves slipping gently off the branches of the trees.

“I see what you mean,” he said. “Yes, I suppose you are right.”

“It was dear of you to ask me, dear and sweet. But it wouldn't do, Edward. It wouldn't
work.
”

She had had a faint hope, perhaps, that he would argue with her, that he would try to persuade her, but he seemed, quite simply, to feel just as she did about it. Here, with the ghost of Henrietta close beside him, he too, apparently, saw that it couldn't work.

“No,” he said, echoing her words, “it wouldn't work.”

She slipped the ring off her finger and held it out to him.

She would always love Edward and Edward would always love Henrietta and life was just plain unadulterated hell.

She said with a little catch in her voice:

“It's a lovely ring, Edward.”

“I wish you'd keep it, Midge. I'd like you to have it.”

She shook her head.

“I couldn't do that.”

He said with a faint, humorous twist of the lips:

“I shan't give it to anyone else, you know.”

It was all quite friendly. He didn't know—he would never know—just what she was feeling. Heaven on a plate—and the plate was broken and heaven had slipped between her fingers or had, perhaps, never been there.

II

That afternoon, Poirot received his third visitor.

He had been visited by Henrietta Savernake and Veronica Cray. This time it was Lady Angkatell. She came floating up the path with her usual appearance of insubstantiality.

He opened the door and she stood smiling at him.

“I have come to see you,” she announced.

So might a fairy confer a favour on a mere mortal.

“I am enchanted, Madame.”

He led the way into the sitting room. She sat down on the sofa and once more she smiled.

Hercule Poirot thought: “She is old—her hair is grey—there are lines in her face. Yet she has magic—she will always have magic….”

Lady Angkatell said softly:

“I want you to do something for me.”

“Yes, Lady Angkatell?”

“To begin with, I must talk to you—about John Christow.”

“About Dr. Christow?”

“Yes. It seems to me that the only thing to do is to put a full stop to the whole thing. You understand what I mean, don't you?”

“I am not sure that I do know what you mean, Lady Angkatell.”

She gave him her lovely dazzling smile again and she put one long white hand on his sleeve.

“Dear M. Poirot, you know perfectly. The police will have to hunt about for the owner of those fingerprints and they won't find him, and they'll have, in the end, to let the whole thing drop. But I'm afraid, you know, that
you
won't let it drop.”

“No, I shall not let it drop,” said Hercule Poirot.

“That is just what I thought. And that is why I came. It's the truth you want, isn't it?”

“Certainly I want the truth.”

“I see I haven't explained myself very well. I'm trying to find out just
why
you won't let things drop. It isn't because of your prestige—or because you want to hang a murderer (such an unpleasant kind of death, I've always thought—so
mediæval
). It's just, I think, that you want to
know.
You do see what I mean, don't you? If you were to know the truth—if you were to be
told
the truth, I think—I think perhaps that might satisfy you? Would it satisfy you, M. Poirot?”

“You are offering to tell me the truth, Lady Angkatell?”