'Yes, but it is not everyone who has a daughter whom Allerton is pursuing with dishonourable intentions – to use an old-fashioned melodramatic phrase. And you have had a quarrel with your daughter on the subject the day before. Two people, Boyd Carrington and Norton, can swear to your violent feeling against the man. No, Hastings, it would not have looked too good. Attention would immediately have been focussed upon you, and by that time you would probably have been in such a state of fear – or even remorse, that some good solid inspector of police would have made up his mind quite definitely that you were the guilty party. It is quite possible, even, that someone may have seen you tampering with the tablets.'
'They couldn't. There was no one about.'
'There is a balcony outside the window. Somebody might have been there, peeping in. Or, who knows, someone might have been looking through the keyhole.'
'You've got keyholes on the brain, Poirot. People don't really spend their time looking through keyholes as much as you seem to think.'
Poirot half closed his eyes and remarked that I had always had too trusting a nature.
'And let me tell you, very funny things happen with keys in this house. Me, I like to feel that my door is locked on the inside, even if the good Curtiss is in the adjoining room. Soon after I am here, my key disappears – but entirely! I have to have another one made.'
'Well, anyway,' I said with a deep breath of relief, my mind still laden up with my own troubles, 'it didn't come off. It's awful to think one can get worked up like that.' I lowered my voice. 'Poirot, you don't think that because – because of that murder long ago there's a sort of infection in the air?'
'A virus of murder, you mean? Well, it is an interesting suggestion.'
'Houses do have an atmosphere,' I said thoughtfully. 'This house has a bad history.'
Poirot nodded.
'Yes. There have been people here – several of them – who desired deeply that someone else should die. That is true enough,'
'I believe it gets hold of one in some way. But now, Poirot, tell me, what am I to do about all this – Judith and Allerton, I mean? It's got to be stopped somehow. What do you think I'd better do?'
'Do nothing,' said Poirot with emphasis.
'Oh, but -'
'Believe me, you will do least harm by not interfering.'
'If I were to tackle Allerton -'
'What can you say or do? Judith is twenty-one and her own mistress.'
'But I feel I ought to be able -'
Poirot interrupted me.
'No, Hastings. Do not imagine that you are clever enough, forceful enough, or even cunning enough to impose your personality on either of those two people. Allerton is accustomed to dealing with angry and impotent fathers, and probably enjoys it as a good joke. Judith is not the sort of creature who can be browbeaten. I would advise you – if I advised you at all – to do something very different. I would trust her, if I were you.'
I stared at him.
'Judith,' said Hercule Poirot, 'is made of very fine stuff. I admire her very much.'
I said, my voice unsteady:
'I admire her, too. But I'm afraid for her.'
Poirot nodded his head with sudden energy.
'I too am afraid for her,' he said. 'But not in the way you are. I am terribly afraid. And I am powerless – or nearly so. And the days go by. There is danger, Hastings, and it is very close.'
II
I knew as well as Poirot that the danger was very close. I had more reason to know it than he had, because of what I had actually overheard the previous night.
Nevertheless I pondered on that phrase of Poirot's as I went down to breakfast. 'I would trust her if I were you.'
It had come unexpectedly – but it had given me an odd sense of comfort. And almost immediately, the truth of it was justified. For Judith had obviously changed her mind about going up to London that day.
Instead she went off with Franklin to the lab as usual directly after breakfast, and it was clear that they were to have an arduous and busy day there.
A feeling of intense thanksgiving rushed over me. How mad, how despairing I had been last night. I had assumed – assumed quite certainly that Judith had yielded to Allerton's specious proposals. But it was true, I reflected now, that I had never heard her actually assent. No, she was too fine, too essentially good and true, to give in. She had refused the rendezvous.
Allerton had breakfast early, I found, and gone off to Ipswich. He, then, had kept to the plan and must assume that Judith was going up to London as arranged.
Well, I thought grimly, he would get a disappointment.
Boyd Carrington came along and remarked rather grumpily that I looked very cheerful this morning.
'Yes,' I said. 'I've had some good news.'
He said that it was more than he had. He'd had a tiresome telephone call from the architect, some building difficulty – a local surveyor cutting up rough. Also worrying letters. And he was afraid he'd let Mrs Franklin overdo herself the day before.
Mrs Franklin was certainly making up for her recent bout of good health and spirits. She was, so I gathered from Nurse Craven, making herself quite impossible.
Nurse Craven had had to give up her day off which had been promised her to go and meet some friends, and she was decidedly sour about it. Since early morning Mrs Franklin had been calling for sal volatile, hot water bottles, various patent foods and drinks, and was unwilling to let Nurse leave the room. She had neuralgia, a pain round the heart, cramps in her feet and legs, cold shivers and I don't know what else.
I may say here and now that neither I nor anyone else was inclined to be really alarmed. We all put it down as part of Mrs Franklin's hypochondriacal tendencies.
This was true of Nurse Craven and Dr Franklin as well.
The latter was fetched from the laboratory, he listened to his wife's complaints, asked her if she would like the local doctor called in (violently negatived by Mrs Franklin), he then mixed her a sedative, soothed her as best he could and went off back to work again.
Nurse Craven said to me:
'He knows, of course, she's just playing up.'
'You don't really think there's anything much the matter?'
'Her temperature is normal, and her pulse is perfectly good. Just fuss, if you ask me.'
She was annoyed and spoke out more imprudently than usual.
'She likes to interfere with anyone else enjoying themselves. She'd like her husband all worked up, and me running round after her, and even Sir William has got to be made to feel a brute because he 'overtired her yesterday.' She's one of that kind.'
Nurse Craven was clearly finding her patient almost impossible today. I gathered that Mrs Franklin had been really extremely rude to her. She was the kind of woman whom nurses and servants instinctively disliked – not only because of the trouble she gave, but because of her manner of doing so.
So, as I say, none of us took her indisposition seriously.
The only exception was Boyd Carrington, who wandered round looking rather pathetically like a small boy who has been scolded.
How many times since then have I gone over and over the events of that day, trying to remember something so far unheeded – some tiny forgotten incident, striving to remember exactly the manner of everybody. How far they were normal, or showed excitement.
Let me, once more, put down exactly what I remember of everybody.
