back in his chair watching her. He said at last:
'Why did you take the pistol, Lucy?'
Lady Angkatell came back and sank down gracefully into a chair.
'I'm not really quite sure, Henry. I suppose I had some vague ideas of an accident.'
'Accident?'
'Yes. All those roots of trees, you know,' said Lady Angkatell vaguely, 'sticking out -so easy, just to trip over one… One might have had a few shots at the target and left one shot in the magazine-careless, of course-but then people are careless. I've always thought, you know, that accident would be the simplest way to do a thing of that kind. One would be dreadfully sorry, of course, and blame oneself…'
Her voice died away. Her husband sat very still without taking his eyes off her face.
He spoke again in the same quiet careful voice:
'Who was to have had-the accident?'
Lucy turned her head a little, looking at him in surprise.
'John Christow, of course.'
'Good God, Lucy-' He broke off.
She said earnestly:
'Oh, Henry, I've been so dreadfully worried. About Ainswick.'
'I see. It's Ainswick. You've always cared too much about Ainswick, Lucy. Sometimes I think it's the only thing you do care for…'
'Edward and David are the last-the last of the Angkatells. And David won't do, Henry. He'll never marry- because of his mother and all that. He'll get the place when Edward dies, and he won't marry, and you and I will be dead long before he's even middle-aged.
He'll be the last of the Angkatells and the whole thing will die out.'
'Does it matter so much, Lucy?'
'Of course it matters! Ainswick (? missing part ?)
'You should have been a boy, Lucy.'
But he smiled a little-for he could not imagine Lucy being anything but feminine.
'It all depends on Edward's marrying- and Edward's so obstinate-that long head of his, like my father's. I hoped he'd get over Henrietta and marry some nice girl-but I see now that that's hopeless. Then I thought that Henrietta's affair with John would run the usual course. John's affairs were never, I imagined, very permanent. But I saw him looking at her the other evening. He really cared about her. If only John were out of the way I felt that Henrietta would marry Edward.
She's not the kind of person to cherish a memory and live in the past. So, you see, it all came to that-get rid of John Christow.'
'Lucy. You didn't- What did you do, Lucy?'
Lady Angkatell got up again. She took two dead flowers out of a vase.
'Darling,' she said, 'you don't imagine for a moment, do you, that I shot John Christow? I did have that silly idea about an accident. But then, you know, I remembered that we'd asked John Christow here-it's not as though he proposed himself. One can't ask someone to be a guest and then arrange accidents. Even Arabs are most particular about hospitality. So don't worry, will you, Henry?'
She stood looking at him with a brilliant, affectionate smile. He said heavily:
'I always worry about you, Lucy…'
'There's no need, darling. And you see, everything has actually turned out all right. John has been got rid of without our doing anything about it. It reminds me,' said Lady Angkatell reminiscently, 'of that man in Bombay who was so frightfully rude to me. He was run over by a tram three days later.'
She unbolted the French window and went out into the garden.
Sir Henry sat still, watching her tall slender figure wander down the path. He looked old and tired and his face was the face of a man who lives at close quarters with fear.
In the kitchen a tearful Doris Emmott was wilting under the stern reproof of Mr. Gudgeon.
Mrs. Medway and Miss Simmons acted as a kind of Greek Chorus.
'Putting yourself forward and jumping to conclusions in a way only an inexperienced girl would do.'
'That's right,' said Mrs. Medway.
'If you see me with a pistol in my hand, the proper thing to do is to come to me and say, 'Mr. Gudgeon, will you be so kind as to give me an explanation?''
'Or you could have come to me,' put in Mrs. Medway. 'I'm always willing to tell a young girl what doesn't know the world what she ought to think.'
'What you should not have done,' said Gudgeon severely, 'is to go babbling off to a policeman-and only a Sergeant at that!
Never get mixed up with the police more than you can help. It's painful enough having them in the house at all.'
'Inexpressibly painful,' murmured Miss Simmons. 'Such a thing never happened to me before.'
'We all know,' went on Gudgeon, 'what her ladyship is like. Nothing her ladyship does would ever surprise me-but the police don't know her ladyship the way we do, and it's not to be thought of that her ladyship should be worried with silly questions and suspicions just because she wanders about with firearms. It's the sort of thing she would do, but the police have the kind of minds that just see murder and nasty things like that. Her ladyship is the kind of absentminded lady who wouldn't hurt a fly but there's no denying that she put things in funny places. I shall never forget,' added Gudgeon with feeling, 'when she brought back a live lobster and put it in the card tray in the hall. Thought I was seeing things!'
'That must have been before my time,' said Simmons with curiosity.
Mrs. Medway checked these revelations with a glance at the erring Doris.
'Some other time,' she said. 'Now then, Doris, we've only been speaking to you for your own good. It's common to be mixed up with the police, and don't you forget it. You can get on with the vegetables now and be more careful with the runner beans than you were last night.'
Doris sniffed.
'Yes, Mrs. Medway,' she said and shuffled over to the sink.
Mrs. Medway said forebodingly:
'I don't feel as I'm going to have a light hand with my pastry. That nasty inquest tomorrow. Gives me a turn every time I think of it. A thing like that-happening to us.'
Chapter XXII
The latch of the gate clicked and Poirot looked out of the window in time to see the visitor who was coming up the path to the front door. He knew at once who she was.
He wondered very much what brought Veronica Cray to see him.
She brought a delicious faint scent into the room with her - a scent that Poirot recognized.
She wore tweeds and brogues as Henrietta had done-but she was, he decided, very different from Henrietta.
'M. Poirot.' Her tone was delighted, a little thrilled. 'I've only just discovered who my neighbour is. And I've always wanted so much to know you.'
He took her outstretched hands, bowed over them.
'Enchanted, Madame.'
She accepted the homage smilingly, refused his offer of tea, coffee or cocktail.
'No, I've just come to talk to you. To talk seriously. I'm worried.'
'You are worried? I am sorry to hear that.'
Veronica sat down and sighed.
'It's about John Christow's death. The inquest's tomorrow. You know that?'
'Yes, yes, I know.'
