man's memory as he had seen her for those few enchanted hours of a June afternoon. The clash of opposing nationalities, of different standards, the pain of disillusionment, all that was ruled out for ever.
Hercule Poirot shook his head sadly. His mind went back to his conversation with the Valetta family. The mother, with her broad peasant face, the upright grief-stricken father, the dark hard-lipped sister.
'It was sudden, Signore, it was very sudden. Though for many years she had had pains on and off… The doctor gave us no choice – he said there must be an operation immediately for the appendicitis. He took her off to the hospital then and there… Si, si, it was under the anaesthetic she died. She never recovered consciousness.'
The mother sniffed, murmuring: 'Bianca was always such a clever girl. It is terrible that she should have died so young…'
Hercule Poirot repeated to himself: 'She died young…'
That was the message he must take back to the young man who had asked his help so confidingly.
'She is not for you, my friend. She died young.'
His quest had ended – here where the leaning Tower was silhouetted against the sky and the first spring flowers were showing pale and creamy with their promise of life and joy to come.
Was it the stirring of spring that made him feel so rebelliously disinclined to accept this final verdict? Or was it something else? Something stirring at the back of his brain – words – a phrase – a name? Did not the whole thing finish too neatly – dovetail too obviously?
Hercule Poirot sighed. He must take one more journey to put things beyond any possible doubt. He must go to Vagray les Alpes.
VIII
Here, he thought, really was the world's end. This shelf of snow – these scattered huts and shelters in each of which lay a motionless human being fighting an insidious death.
So he came at last to Katrina Samoushenka. When he saw her, lying there with hollow cheeks in each of which was a vivid red stain, and long thin emaciated hands stretched out on the coverlet, a memory stirred in him. He had not remembered her name, but he had seen her dance – had been carried away and fascinated by the supreme art that can make you forget art.
He remembered Michael Novgin, the Hunter, leaping and twirling in that outrageous and fantastic forest that the brain of Ambrose Vandel had conceived. And he remembered the lovely flying Hind, eternally pursued, eternally desirable – a golden beautiful creature with horns on her head and twinkling bronze feet. He remembered her final collapse, shot and wounded, and Michael Novgin standing bewildered, with the body of the slain Deer in his arms.
Katrina Samoushenka was looking at him with faint curiosity.
She said: 'I have never seen you before, have I? What is it you want of me?'
Hercule Poirot made her a little bow.
'First, Madame, I wish to thank you – for your art which made for me once an evening of beauty.'
She smiled faintly.
'But also I am here on a matter of business. I have been looking, Madame, for a long time for a certain maid of yours – her name was Nita.'
'Nita?'
She stared at him. Her eyes were large and startled.
She said: 'What do you know about – Nita?
'I will tell you.'
He told her of the evening when his car had broken down and of Ted Williamson standing there twisting his cap between his fingers and stammering out his love and his pain. She listened with close attention.
She said when he had finished: 'It is touching, that – yes, it is touching…'
Hercule Poirot nodded.
'Yes,' he said. 'It is a tale of Arcady, is it not? What can you tell me, Madame, of this girl?'
Katrina Samoushenka sighed.
'I had a maid – Juanita. She was lovely, yes – gay, light of heart. It happened to her what happens so often to those the gods favour. She died young.'
They had been Poirot's own words – final words – irrevocable words – Now he heard them again – and yet he persisted.
He asked: 'She is dead?'
'Yes, she is dead.'
Hercule Poirot was silent a minute, then he said: 'Yet there is one thing I do not quite understand. I asked Sir George Sanderfield about this maid of yours and he seemed afraid. Why was that?'
There was a faint expression of disgust on the dancer's face.
'You just said a maid of mine. He thought you meant Marie – the girl who came to me after Juanita left. She tried to blackmail him, I believe, over something that she found out about him. She was an odious girl – inquisitive, always prying into letters and locked drawers.'
Poirot murmured: 'Then that explains that.'
He paused a minute, then he went on, still persistent: 'Juanita's other name was Valetta and she died of an operation for appendicitis in Pisa. Is that correct?'
He noted the hesitation, hardly perceptible but nevertheless there, before the dancer bowed her head.
'Yes, that is right.'
Poirot said meditatively: 'And yet – there is still a little point – her people spoke of her, not as Juanita but as Bianca.'
Katrina shrugged her thin shoulders.
She said: 'Bianca – Juanita, does it matter? I suppose her real name was Bianca but she thought the name of Juanita was more romantic and so chose to call herself by it.'
'Ah, you think that?' He paused and then, his voice changing, he said: 'For me, there is another explanation.'
'What is it?'
Poirot leaned forward.
He said: 'The girl that Ted Williamson saw had hair that he described as being like wings of gold.'
He leaned still a little further forward. His finger just touched the two springing waves of Katrina's hair.
'Wings of gold, horns of gold? It is as you look at it, it is whether one sees you as devil or as angel! You might be either. Or are they perhaps only the golden horns of the stricken deer?'
Katrina murmured: 'The stricken deer…' and her voice was the voice of one without hope.
Poirot said: 'All along Ted Williamson's description has worried me – it brought something to my mind – that something was you, dancing on your twinkling bronze feet through the forest. Shall I tell you what I think, Mademoiselle? I think there was a week when you had no maid, when you went down alone to Grasslawn, for Bianca Valetta had returned to Italy and you had not yet engaged a new maid. Already you were feeling the illness which has since overtaken you, and you stayed in the house one day when the others went on an all day excursion on the river. There was a ring at the door and you went to it and you saw – shall I tell you what you saw? You saw a young man who was as simple as a child and as handsome as a god! And you invented for him a girl – not Juanita – but Incognita – and for a few hours you walked with him in Arcady…'
There was a long pause. Then Katrina said in a low hoarse voice: 'In one thing at least I have told you the truth. I have given you the right end to the story. Nita will die young.'
'Ah non!' Hercule Poirot was transformed. He struck his hand on the table. He was suddenly prosaic, mundane, practical.
He said: 'It is quite unnecessary! You need not die. You can fight for your life, can you not, as well as another?'
She shook her head – sadly, hopelessly.
