something of the kind.'
'When?'
'When she was here the night before last, sir.'
'You didn't mention her as having been a guest here.'
'She was not a guest, sir. Miss Cray lives at Dovecotes, the-er-cottage up the lane, and she came over after dinner, having run out of matches, to borrow some.'
'Did she take away six boxes?' asked Poirot.
Gudgeon turned to him.
'That is correct, sir. Her ladyship, after having inquired if we had plenty, insisted on Miss Cray's taking half a dozen boxes.'
'Which she left in the pavilion,' said
Poirot.
'Yes, sir, I observed them there yesterday morning.'
'There is not much that that man does not observe,' remarked Poirot as Gudgeon departed, closing the door softly and deferentially behind him.
Inspector Grange merely remarked that servants were the devil!
'However,' he said with a little renewed cheerfulness, 'there's always the kitchen maid. Kitchen maids talk-not like these stuck-up upper servants.'
'I've put a man on to make inquiries at Harley Street,' he went on, 'and I shall be there myself later in the day. We ought to get something there. Daresay, you know, that wife of Christow's had a good bit to put up with. Some of these fashionable doctors and their lady patients-well, you'd be surprised!
And I gather from Lady Angkatell that there was some trouble over a hospital nurse. Of course, she was very vague about it.'
'Yes,' Poirot agreed. 'She would be vague…'
A skilfully built up picture… John Christow and amorous intrigues with hospital nurses… the opportunities of a doctor's life… plenty of reasons for Gerda Christow's jealousy which had culminated at last in murder…
Yes, a skilfully suggested picture… drawing attention to a Harley Street background-away from The Hollow- away from the moment when Henrietta Savernake, stepping forward, had taken the revolver from Gerda Christow's unresisting hand… away from that other moment when John Christow, dying, had said Henrietta. …
Suddenly opening his eyes, which had been half closed, Hercule Poirot demanded with irresistible curiosity:
'Do your boys play with Meccano?'
'Eh, what?' Inspector Grange came back from a frowning reverie to stare at Poirot.
'Why, what on earth? As a matter of fact, they're a bit young-but I was thinking of giving Teddy a Meccano set for Christmas.
What made you ask?'
Poirot shook his head.
What made Lady Angkatell dangerous, he thought, was the fact that those intuitive wild guesses others might often be right…
With a careless (seemingly careless) word she built up a picture-and if part of the picture was right, wouldn't you, in spite of yourself, believe in the other half of the picture…
Inspector Grange was speaking.
'There's a point I want to put to you, M. Poirot. This Miss Cray, the actress-she traipses over here borrowing matches. If she wanted to borrow matches why didn't she come to your place only a step or two away? Why come about half a mile?'
Hercule Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
'There might be reasons. Snob reasons, shall we say? My little cottage, it is small, unimportant. I am only a week-ender but Sir Henry and Lady Angkatell are important-they live here-they are what is called gentry in the county. This Miss Veronica Cray, she may have wanted to get to know them-and after all, this was a way.' Inspector Grange got up.
'Yes,' he said, 'that's perfectly possible, of course, but one doesn't want to overlook anything. Still, I've no doubt that everything's going to be plain sailing. Sir Henry has identified the gun as one of his collection.
It seems they were actually practising with it the afternoon before. All Mrs. Christow had to do was to go into the study and get it from where she'd seen Sir Henry put it and the ammunition away. It's all quite simple.'
'Yes,' Poirot murmured. 'It seems all quite simple.'
Just so, he thought, would a woman like Gerda Christow commit a crime. Without subterfuge or complexity- driven suddenly to violence by the bitter anguish of a narrow but deeply loving nature…
And yet surely-surely, she would have had some sense of self-preservation. Or had she acted in that blindness-that darkness of the spirit-when reason is entirely laid aside?
He recalled her blank dazed face.
He did not know-he simply did not know.
But he felt that he ought to know.
Chapter XVI
Gerda Christow pulled the black dress up over her head and let it fall on a chair.
Her eyes were piteous with uncertainty.
She said, 'I don't know… I really don't know… Nothing seems to matter.'
'I know, dear, I know.' Mrs. Patterson was kind but firm. She knew exactly how to treat people who had had a bereavement.
'Elsie is wonderful in a crisis,' her family said of her.
At the present moment she was sitting in her sister Gerda's bedroom in Harley Street, being wonderful. Elsie Patterson was tall and spare with an energetic manner. She was looking now at Gerda with a mixture of irritation and compassion.
Poor dear Gerda-tragic for her to lose her husband in such an awful way-and really, even now, she didn't seem to take in the-well, the implications properly! Of course, Mrs. Patterson reflected, Gerda always was terribly slow. And there was shock, too, to take into account.
She said in a brisk voice, 'I think I should decide on that black marocain at twelve guineas.' One always did have to make up Gerda's mind for her.
Gerda stood motionless, her brow puckered.
She said hesitantly:
'I don't really know if John liked mourning. I think I once heard him say he didn't…'
John, she thought. If only John were here to tell me what to do.
But John would never be there again.
Never-never-never… Mutton getting cold-congealing on the table… the bang of the consulting room door, John running up two steps at a time, always in a hurry, so vital, so alive…
Alive…
Lying on his back by the swimming pool … the slow drip of blood over the edge… the feel of the revolver in her hand…
A nightmare, a bad dream, presently she would wake up and none of it would be true…
Her sister's crisp voice came cutting through her nebulous thoughts.
'You must have something black for the inquest. It would look most odd if you turned up in bright blue.'
Gerda said, 'That awful inquest!' and half shut her eyes.
'Terrible for you, darling,' said Elsie Patterson quickly. 'But after it is all over you will come straight down to us and we shall take great care of you.'
The nebulous blur of Gerda Christow's thoughts hardened. She said, and her voice was frightened, almost
