St. Christopher's Hospital. She's got Ridgeway's Disease.
That's a disease that's very rare but if you get it, you're bound to die-there just isn't any cure. But John was finding a cure -I can't explain technically-it was all very complicated-some question of hormone secretion.
He'd been making experiments and Mrs. Crabtree was his prize patient-you see, she's got guts, she wants to live-and she was fond of John. She and he were fighting on the same side. Ridgeway's Disease and Mrs. Crabtree is what has been uppermost in John's mind for months-night and day-nothing else really counted. That's what being the kind of doctor John was really means-not all the Harley Street stuff and the rich fat women, that was only a sideline-it's the intense scientific curiosity and achievement. I-oh, I wish I could make you understand.'
Her hands flew out in a curiously despairing gesture and Hercule Poirot thought how very lovely and sensitive those hands were.
He said:
'You seem to understand very well.'
'Oh, yes, I understood. John used to come and talk, do you see? Not quite to me-partly I think to himself. He got things clear that way. Sometimes he was almost despairing-he couldn't see how to overcome the heightened toxicity-and then he'd get an idea for varying the treatment.
I can't explain to you what it was like-it was like, yes, a battle. You can't imagine the-the fury of it and the concentration-and yes, sometimes the agony. And sometimes the sheer tiredness…'
She was silent for a minute or two, her eyes dark with remembrance.
Poirot said curiously:
'You must have a certain technical knowledge yourself?'
She shook her head.
'Not really. Only enough to understand what John was talking about. I got books and read about it.'
She was silent again, her face softened, her lips half parted. She was, he thought, remembering.
With a sigh, her mind came back to the present. She looked at him wistfully.
'If I could only make you see-'
'But you have, Mademoiselle.'
'Really?'
'Yes. One recognizes authenticity when one hears it.'
'Thank you. But it won't be so easy to explain to Inspector Grange.'
'Probably not. He will concentrate on the personal angle.'
Henrietta said vehemently:
'And that was so unimportant-so completely unimportant.'
Poirot's eyebrows rose slowly. She answered his unspoken protest.
'But it was! You see-after a while-I got between John and what he was thinking of. I affected him, as a woman… He couldn't concentrate as he wanted to concentrate-because of me. He began to be afraid that he was beginning to love me-he didn't want to love anyone. He-he made love to me because he didn't want to think about me too much. He wanted it to be light, easy, just an affair like other affairs that he had had.'
'And you-' Poirot was watching her closely. 'You were content to have it-like that?'
Henrietta got up. She said and once more it was her dry voice:
'No, I wasn't-content. After all, one is human…'
Poirot waited a minute, then he said:
'Then why, Mademoiselle-'
'Why?' she whirled round on him. 'I wanted John to be satisfied, I wanted John to have what he wanted. I wanted him to be able to go on with the thing he cared about-his work. If he didn't want to be hurt-to be vulnerable again-why-why, then, that was all right by me!'
Poirot rubbed his nose.
'Just now, Miss Savernake, you mentioned Veronica Cray. Was she also a friend of John Christow's?'
'Until last Saturday night, he hadn't seen her for fifteen years.'
'He knew her fifteen years ago?'
'They were engaged to be married.' Henrietta came back and sat down. 'I see I've got to make it all clearer. John loved Veronica desperately. Veronica was, and is, a bitch of the first water. She's the supreme egoist.
Her terms were that John was to chuck everything he cared about and become Miss Veronica Cray's little tame husband. John broke up the whole thing-quite rightly.
But he suffered like hell. His one idea was to marry someone as unlike Veronica as possible.
He married Gerda whom you might describe inelegantly as a first class chump.
That was all very nice and safe, but, as anyone could have told him, the day came when being married to a chump irritated him. He had various affairs-none of them important.
Gerda, of course, never knew about them. But I think, myself, that for fifteen years there has been something wrong with John-something connected with Veronica.
He never really got over her. And then last Saturday he met her again.'
After a long pause, Poirot recited dreamily;
'He went out with her that night to see her home and returned to The Hollow at 3:00 a.m.'
'How do you know?'
'A housemaid had the toothache.'
Henrietta said irrelevantly, 'Lucy has far too many servants.'
'But you yourself knew that, Mademoiselle.'
'Yes.'
'How did you know?'
Again there was an infinitesimal pause.
Then Henrietta replied slowly:
'I was looking out of my window and saw him come back to the house.'
'The toothache, Mademoiselle?'
She smiled at him.
'Quite another kind of ache, M. Poirot.'
She got up and moved towards the door and Poirot said:
'I will walk back with you, Mademoiselle.'
They crossed the lane and went through the gate into the chestnut plantation.
Henrietta said:
'We need not go past the pool. We can go up to the left and along the top path to the flower walk.'
A track led steeply up hill towards the woods. After a while they came to a broader path at right angles across the hillside above the chestnut trees. Presently they came to a bench and Henrietta sat down, Poirot beside her. The woods were above and behind them and below were the closely planted chestnut groves. Just in front of the seat a curving path led downwards, to where just a glimmer of blue water could be seen.
Poirot watched Henrietta without speaking.
Her face had relaxed, the tension had gone. It looked rounder and younger. He realized what she must have looked like as a young girl.
He said very gently at last:
'Of what are you thinking. Mademoiselle?'
'Of Ainswick…'
'What is Ainswick?'
'Ainswick? It's a place.' Almost dreamily, she described Ainswick to him. The white graceful house-the big magnolia-growing up it-the whole set in an amphitheatre of wooded hills.
'It was your home?'
'Not really. I lived in Ireland. It was where we came, all of us, for holidays. Edward and Midge and myself. It was Lucy's home actually. It belonged to her father. After his death it came to Edward.'
'Not to Sir Henry? But it is he who has the title.'
'Oh, that's a K.C.B.,' she explained. 'Henry was only a distant cousin.'
'And after Edward Angkatell, to whom does it go, this Ainswick?'
'How odd. I've never really thought. If Edward doesn't marry-' She paused. A shadow passed over her face.
