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Twenty-two
The latch of the gate clicked and Poirot looked out of the window in time to see the visitor who
was coming up the path to the front door. He knew at once who she was. He wondered very much
what brought Veronica Cray to see him.
She brought a delicious faint scent into the room with her, a scent that Poirot recognized. She
wore tweeds and brogues as Henrietta had done—but she was, he decided, very different from
Henrietta.
“M. Poirot.” Her tone was delightful, a little thrilled. “I’ve only just discovered who my
neighbour is. And I’ve always wanted to know you so much.”
He took her outstretched hands, bowed over them.
“Enchanted, Madame.”
She accepted the homage smilingly, refused his offer of tea, coffee or cocktail.
“No, I’ve just come to talk to you. To talk seriously. I’m worried.”
“You are worried? I am sorry to hear that.”
Veronica sat down and sighed.
“It’s about John Christow’s death. The inquest’s tomorrow. You know that?”
“Yes, yes, I know.”
“And the whole thing has really been so extraordinary—”
She broke off.
“Most people really wouldn’t believe it. But you would, I think, because you know something
about human nature.”
“I know a little about human nature,” admitted Poirot.
“Inspector Grange came to see me. He’d got it into his head that I’d quarrelled with John—
which is true in a way though not in the way he meant. I told him that I hadn’t seen John for
fifteen years—and he simply didn’t believe me. But it’s true, M. Poirot.”
Poirot said: “Since it is true, it can easily be proved, so why worry?”
She returned his smile in the friendliest fashion.
“The real truth is that I simply haven’t dared to tell the inspector what actually happened on
Saturday evening. It’s so absolutely fantastic that he certainly wouldn’t believe it. But I felt I must
tell someone. That’s why I have come to you.”
Poirot said quietly: “I am flattered.”
That fact, he noted, she took for granted. She was a woman, he thought, who was very sure of
the effect she was producing. So sure that she might, occasionally, make a mistake.
“John and I were engaged to be married fifteen years ago. He was very much in love with me—
so much so that it rather alarmed me sometimes. He wanted me to give up acting—to give up
having any mind or life of my own. He was so possessive and masterful that I felt I couldn’t go
through with it, and I broke off the engagement. I’m afraid he took that very hard.”
Poirot clicked a discreet and sympathetic tongue.
“I didn’t see him again until last Saturday night. He walked home with me. I told the inspector
that we talked about old times—that’s true in a way. But there was far more than that.”
“Yes?”
“John went mad—quite mad. He wanted to leave his wife and children, he wanted me to get a
divorce from my husband and marry him. He said he’d never forgotten me—that the moment he
saw me time stood still.”
She closed her eyes, she swallowed. Under her makeup her face was very pale.
She opened her eyes again and smiled almost timidly at Poirot.
“Can you believe that a—a feeling like that is possible?” she asked.
“I think it is possible, yes,” said Poirot.
“Never to forget—to go on waiting—planning—hoping. To determine with all one’s heart and
mind to get what one wants in the end. There are men like that, M. Poirot.”
“Yes—and women.”
She gave him a hard stare.
“I’m talking about men—about John Christow. Well, that’s how it was. I protested at first,
laughed, refused to take him seriously. Then I told him he was mad. It was quite late when he went
back to the house. We’d argued and argued. He was still—just as determined.”
She swallowed again.
“That’s why I sent him a note the next morning. I couldn’t leave things like that. I had to make
him realize that what he wanted was—impossible.”
“It was impossible?”
“Of course it was impossible! He came over. He wouldn’t listen to what I had to say. He was
just as insistent. I told him that it was no good, that I didn’t love him, that I hated him…” She
paused, breathing hard. “I had to be brutal about it. So we parted in anger…And now—he’s dead.”
He saw her hands creep together, saw the twisted fingers and the knuckles stand out. They were
large, rather cruel hands.
The strong emotion that she was feeling communicated itself to him. It was not sorrow, not grief
—no, it was anger. The anger, he thought, of a baffled egoist.
“Well, M. Poirot?” Her voice was controlled and smooth again. “What am I to do? Tell the
story, or keep it to myself? It’s what happened—but it takes a bit of believing.”
Poirot looked at her, a long, considering gaze.
He did not think that Veronica Cray was telling the truth, and yet there was an undeniable
undercurrent of sincerity. It happened, he thought, but it did not happen like that.
And suddenly he got it. It was a true story, inverted. It was she who had been unable to forget
John Christow. It was she who had been baffled and repulsed. And now, unable to bear in silence
the furious anger of a tigress deprived of what she considered her legitimate prey, she had
invented a version of the truth that should satisfy her wounded pride and feed a little the aching
hunger for a man who had gone beyond the reach of her clutching hands. Impossible to admit that
she, Veronica Cray, could not have what she wanted! So she had changed it all round.
Poirot drew a deep breath and spoke.
“If all this had any bearing on John Christow’s death, you would have to speak out, but if it has
not—and I cannot see why it should have—then I think you are quite justified in keeping it to
yourself.”
He wondered if she was disappointed. He had a fancy that in her present mood she would like to
hurl her story into the printed page of a newspaper. She had come to him—why? To try out her
story? To test his reactions? Or to use him—to induce him to pass the story on?
If his mild response disappointed her, she did not show it. She got up and gave him one of those
long, well-manicured hands.
“Thank you, M. Poirot. What you say seems eminently sensible. I’m so glad I came to you. I—I
felt I wanted somebody to know.”
“I shall respect your confidence, Madame.”
When she had gone, he opened the windows a little. Scents affected him. He did not like
Veronica’s scent. It was expensive but cloying, overpowering like her personality.
He wondered, as he flapped the curtains, whether Veronica Cray had killed John Christow.
She would have been willing to kill him—he believed that. She would have enjoyed pressing
the trigger—would have enjoyed seeing him stagger and fall.
But behind that vindictive anger was something cold and shrewd, something that appraised
chances, a cool, calculating intelligence. However much Veronica Cray wished to kill John
Christow, he doubted whether she would have taken the risk.
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