There was, he knew, a little higher up the lane, a small gate and a path. This, the unofficial way, would save a half mile detour by the road. Nevertheless, Hercule Poirot, a stickler for etiquette, decided to take the longer way round and approach the house correctly by the front entrance.
This was his first visit to Sir Henry and Lady Angkatell. One should not, he considered, take short cuts uninvited, especially when one was the guest of people of social importance. He was, it must be admitted, pleased by their invitation.
'Je suis un peu snob,' he murmured to himself.
He had retained an agreeable impression of the Angkatells from the time in Baghdad, particularly of Lady Angkatell. 'Une originate!' he thought to himself.
His estimation of the time required for walking to The Hollow by road was accurate.
It was exactly one minute to one when he rang the front door bell. He was glad to have arrived and felt slightly tired. He was not fond of walking.
The door was opened by the magnificent Gudgeon of whom Poirot approved. His reception, however, was not quite as he had hoped.
'Her ladyship is in the pavilion by the swimming pool, sir. Will you come this way?'
The passion of the English for sitting out of doors irritated Hercule Poirot. Though one had to put up with this whimsy in the height of Summer, surely, Poirot thought, one should be safe from it by the end of September! The day was mild, certainly, but it had, as Autumn days always had, a certain dampness. How infinitely pleasanter to have been ushered into a comfortable drawingroom with, perhaps, a small fire in the grate.
But no, here he was being led out through French windows across a slope of lawn, past a rockery and then, through a small gate and along a narrow track between closely planted young chestnuts.
It was the habit of the Angkatells to invite guests for one o'clock, and on fine days they had cocktails and sherry in the small pavilion by the swimming pool. Lunch itself was scheduled for one-thirty, by which time, the most unpunctual of guests should have managed to arrive, which permitted Lady Angkatell's excellent cook to embark on souffles and such accurately timed delicacies without too much trepidation.
To Hercule Poirot, the plan did not commend itself.
'In a little minute,' he thought, 'I shall be almost back where I started.'
With an increasing awareness of his feet in his shoes he followed Gudgeon's tall figure.
It was at that moment from just ahead of him that he heard a little cry. It increased, somehow, his dissatisfaction. It was incongruous, in some way unfitting. He did not classify it, nor indeed think about it. When he thought about it afterwards he was hard put to it to remember just what emotions it had seemed to convey. Dismay? Surprise? Horror? He could only say that it suggested, very definitely, the unexpected.
Gudgeon stepped out from the chestnuts. He was moving to one side, deferentially, to allow Poirot to pass and at the same time clearing his throat preparatory to murmuring, 'M. Poirot, m'lady,' in the proper subdued and respectful tones when his suppleness became suddenly rigid. He gasped. It was an unbutlerlike noise.
Hercule Poirot stepped out onto the open space surrounding the swimming pool, and immediately he too stiffened, but with annoyance.
It was too much-it was really too much!
He had not suspected such cheapness of the Angkatells. The long walk by the road, the disappointment at the house-and now this! The misplaced sense of humour of the English!
He was annoyed and he was bored-oh! how he was bored! Death was not, to him, amusing. And here they had arranged for him, by way of a joke, a set piece.
For what he was looking at was a highly artificial murder scene. By the side of the pool was the body, artistically arranged with an outflung arm and even some red paint dripping gently over the edge of the concrete into the pool. It was a spectacular body, that of a handsome fair-haired man. Standing over the body, revolver in hand, was a woman, a short, powerfully built, middleaged woman with a curiously blank expression.
And there were three other actors. On the far side of the pool was a tall young woman whose hair matched the Autumn leaves in its rich brown; she had a basket in her hand full of dahlia heads. A little further off was a man, a tall inconspicuous man in a shooting coat carrying a gun. And immediately on his left, with a basket of eggs in her hand, was his hostess, Lady Angkatell.
It was clear to Hercule Poirot that several different paths converged here at the swimming pool and that these people had each arrived by a different path.
It was all very mathematical and artificial.
He sighed. Enfin, what did they expect him to do? Was he to pretend to believe in this 'crime'? Was he to register dismay-alarm? Or was he to bow, to congratulate his hostess-'Ah! but it is very charming, what you arrange for me here.'
Really, the whole thing was very stupid -not spirituel at all! Was it not Queen Victoria who had said, 'We are not amused'?
He felt very inclined to say the same. 'I, Hercule Poirot, am not amused.'
Lady Angkatell had walked towards the body. He followed, conscious of Gudgeon, still breathing hard, behind him. He is not in the secret, that one, Hercule Poirot thought to himself. From the other side of the pool, the other two people joined them.
They were all quite close now, looking down on that spectacular sprawling figure by the pool's edge.
And suddenly, with a terrific shock, with that feeling as of blurring on a cinematography screen before the picture comes into focus, Hercule Poirot realized that this artificially set scene had a point of reality.
For what he was looking down at was, if not a dead, at least a dying man…
It was not red paint dripping off the edge of the concrete, it was blood. This man had been shot, and shot a very short time ago.
He darted a quick glance at the woman who stood there, revolver in hand. Her face was quite blank, without feeling of any kind.
She looked dazed and rather stupid.
Curious, he thought.
Had she, he wondered, drained herself of all emotion, all feeling, in the firing of the shot? Was she now, all passion spent, nothing but an exhausted shell? It might be so, he thought.
Then he looked down on the shot man, and he started. For the dying man's eyes were open. They were intensely blue eyes and they held an expression that Poirot could not read but which he described to himself as a kind of intense awareness. J And suddenly, or so it felt to Poirot, there seemed to be in all this group of people only one person who was really alive-the man who was at the point of death.
Poirot had never received so strong an impression of vivid and intense vitality. The others were pale, shadowy figures, actors in a remote drama, but this man was real.
John Christow opened his mouth and spoke. His voice was strong, unsurprised and urgent. ^Henrietta-f' he said.
Then his eyelids dropped, his head jerked sideways…
Hercule Poirot knelt down, made sure, then rose to his feet, mechanically dusting the knees of his trousers.
'Yes,' he said. 'He is dead…'
The picture broke up, wavered, refocused itself. There were individual reactions now -trivial happenings. Poirot was conscious |pf himself as a kind of magnified eyes and pars-recording. Just that, recording. 1 He was aware of Lady AngkatelFs hand relaxing its grip on her basket and Gudgeon springing forward, quickly taking it from her.
'Allow me, m'lady…'
Mechanically, quite naturally. Lady Angkatell murmured:
'Thank you. Gudgeon.'
And then, hesitantly, she said:
'Gerda-'
The woman holding the revolver stirred for the first time. She looked round at them all. When she spoke, her voice held what seemed to be pure bewilderment.
'John's dead,' she said. 'John's dead…' With a kind of swift authority the tall young woman with the leaf brown hair, came swiftly to her.
