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Nineteen
I
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 their own tragedy and
meaning, their 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.
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