'I was in San Miguel.. Try to understand, Veronica. You came to me out of the Past. Last night I, too, was in the past, but today-today's different. I'm a man fifteen years older. A man you don't even know-I and whom, I daresay, you wouldn't like much if you did know.'
'You prefer your wife and children to me?'
She was genuinely amazed.
'Odd as it may seem to you, I do.'
'Nonsense, John, you love me.'
'I'm sorry, Veronica.'
She said incredulously:
'You don't love me?'
'It's better to be quite clear about these things. You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman, Veronica, but I don't love you.'
She sat so still that she might have been a waxwork. That stillness of hers made him just a little uneasy.
When she spoke it was with such venom that he recoiled.
'Who is she?'
'She? Who do you mean?'
'That woman by the mantelpiece last night?'
Henrietta! he thought. How the devil did she get on to Henrietta? Aloud he said:
'Who are you talking about? Midge Hardcastle?'
'Midge? That's the square dark girl, isn't it? No, I don't mean her. And I don't mean your wife. I mean that insolent devil who was leaning against the mantlepiece! It's because of her that you're turning me down!
Oh, don't pretend to be so moral about your wife and children. It's that other woman.'
She got up and came towards him.
'Don't you understand, John, that ever since I came back to England, eighteen months ago, I've been thinking about you?
Why do you imagine I took this idiotic place here? Simply because I found out that you often came down for week-ends with the Angkatells!'
'So last night was all planned, Veronica?'
'You belong to me, John. You always have!'
'I don't belong to anyone, Veronica!
Hasn't life taught you even now that you can't own other human beings body and soul? I loved you when I was a young man.
I wanted you to share my life. You wouldn't do it!'
'My life and career were much more important than yours! Anyone can be a doctor!'
He lost his temper a little.
'Are you quite as wonderful as you think you are?'
'You mean that I haven't got to the top of the tree. I shall! I shall!'
John Christow looked at her with a sudden quite dispassionate interest.
'I don't believe, you know, that you will … There's a lack in you, Veronica. You're all grab and snatch-no real generosity-I think that's it…'
Veronica got up. She said in a quiet voice:
'You turned me down fifteen years ago … You've turned me down again today. I'll make you sorry for this.'
John got up and went to the door.
'I'm sorry, Veronica, if I've hurt you. You're very lovely, my dear, and I once loved you very much. Can't we leave it at that?'
'Good-bye, John. We're not leaving it at that. You'll find that out all right. I think -I think I hate you more than I believed I could hate anyone.'
He shrugged his shoulders.
'I'm sorry. Goodbye.'
John walked back slowly through the wood. When he got to the swimming pool he sat down on the bench there. He had no regrets for his treatment of Veronica. Veronica, he thought dispassionately, was a nasty bit of work. She always had been a nasty bit of work and the best thing he had ever done was to get clear of her in time God alone knew what would have happened to him by now if he hadn't!
As it was, he had that extraordinary sensation of starting a new life, unfettered and unhampered by the past. He must have been extremely difficult to live with for the last year or two. Poor Gerda, he thought, with her unselfishness and her continual anxiety to please him. He would be kinder in future.
And perhaps now he would be able to stop trying to bully Henrietta. Not that one could really bully Henrietta- she wasn't made that way. Storms broke over her and she stood there, meditative, her eyes looking at you from very far away…
He thought, I shall go to Henrietta and tell her-He looked up sharply, disturbed by some small unexpected sound. There had been shots in the woods higher up, and there had been the usual small noises of woodlands, birds, and the faint melancholy dropping of leaves. But this was another noise-a very faint businesslike click…
And suddenly, John was acutely conscious of danger. How long had he been sitting here? Half an hour? An hour? There was someone watching him. Someone-And that click was-of course it was-He turned sharply, a man very quick in his reactions. But he was not quick enough.
His eyes widened in surprise, but there was no time for him to make a sound.
The shot rang out and he fell, awkwardly, sprawled out by the edge of the swimming pool…
A dark stain welled up slowly on his left side and trickled slowly onto the concrete of the pool edge and from there dripped red into the blue water…
Chapter XI
Hercule Poirot flicked a last speck of dust from his shoes. He had dressed carefully for his luncheon party and he was satisfied with the result.
He knew well enough the kind of clothes that were worn in the country on a Sunday in England, but he did not choose to conform to English ideas. He preferred his own standards of urban smartness. He was not an English country gentleman and he would not dress like an English country gentleman. He was Hercule Poirot!
He did not, he confessed it to himself, really like the country. The week-end cottage-so many of his friends had extolled it-he had allowed himself to succumb, and had purchased Resthaven, though the only thing he had liked about it was its shape which was quite square like a box. The surrounding landscape he did not care for, though it was, he knew, supposed to be a beauty spot. It was, however, too wildly asymmetrical to appeal to him. He did not care much for trees at any time-they had that untidy habit of shedding their leaves!
He could endure poplars and he approved of a monkey puzzle-but this riot of beech and oak left him unmoved. Such a landscape was best enjoyed from a car on a fine afternoon.
You exclaimed, 'Quel beau paysage!' and drove back to a good hotel.
The best thing about Resthaven, he considered, was the small vegetable garden neatly laid out in rows by his Belgian gardener, Victor. Meanwhile, Francoise, Victor's wife, devoted herself with tenderness to the care of her employer's stomach.
Hercule Poirot passed through the gate, sighed, glanced down once more at his shining black shoes, adjusted his pale grey Hornburg hat, and looked up and down the road.
He shivered slightly at the aspect of Dovecotes. Dovecotes and Resthaven had been erected by rival builders, each of whom had acquired a small piece of land. Further enterprise on their part had been swiftly curtailed by a National Trust for preserving the beauties of the countryside. The two houses remained representative of two schools of thought. Resthaven was a box with a roof, severely modern and a little dull. Dovecotes was a riot of half-timbering and Olde Worlde packed into as small a space as possible.
Hercule Poirot debated within himself as to how he should approach The Hollow.
