Elinor said, 'When we were children. It's a pity, Mary, isn't it, that one can never go back?'
Mary said, 'Would you like to go back?'
Elinor said with force, 'Yes – yes.'
Silence fell between them for a little while.
Then Mary said, her face flushing, 'Miss Elinor, you mustn't think -'
She stopped, warned by the sudden stiffening of Elinor's slender figure, the uplifted line of her chin.
Elinor said in a cold, steel-like voice, 'What mustn't I think?'
Mary murmured, 'I – I've forgotten what I was going to say.' Elinor's body relaxed – as at a danger past.
Nurse Hopkins came in with a tray. On it was a brown teapot, and milk and three cups. She said, quite unconscious of anticlimax, 'Here's the tea!'
She put the tray in front of Elinor. Elinor shook her head. 'I won't have any.' She pushed the tray along toward Mary. Mary poured out two cups.
Nurse Hopkins sighed with satisfaction. 'It's nice and strong.'
Elinor got up and moved over to the window. Nurse Hopkins said persuasively, 'Are you sure you won't have a cup, Miss Carlisle? Do you good.'
Elinor murmured, 'No, thank you.'
Nurse Hopkins drained her cup, replaced it in the saucer, and murmured, 'I'll just turn off the kettle. I put it on in case we needed to fill up the pot again.'
She bustled out.
Elinor wheeled round from the window. She said, and her voice was suddenly charged with a desperate appeal, 'Mary -'
Mary Gerrard answered quickly, 'Yes?'
Slowly the light died out of Elinor's face. The lips closed. The desperate pleading faded and left a mere mask – frozen and still.
She said, 'Nothing.'
The silence came down heavily on the room.
Mary thought, How queer everything is today. As though – as though we were waiting for something.
Elinor moved at last.
She came from the window and picked up the tea-tray, placing on it the empty sandwich plate.
Mary jumped up. 'Oh, Miss Elinor, let me.'
Elinor said sharply, 'No, you stay here. I'll do this.'
She carried the tray out of the room. She looked back once over her shoulder at Mary Gerrard by the window, young and alive and beautiful…
III
Nurse Hopkins was in the pantry. She was wiping her face with a handkerchief. She looked up sharply as Elinor entered.
She said, 'My word, it's hot in here!'
Elinor answered mechanically, 'Yes, the pantry faces south.'
Nurse Hopkins relieved her of the tray.
'You let me wash up, Miss Carlisle. You're not looking quite the thing.'
Elinor said, 'Oh, I'm all right.'
She picked up a dish-cloth. 'I'll dry.'
Nurse Hopkins slipped off her cuffs. She poured hot water from the kettle into the basin.
Elinor said idly, looking at her wrist, 'You've pricked yourself.'
Nurse Hopkins laughed. 'On the rose trellis at the lodge – a thorn. I'll get it out presently.'
The rose trellis at the lodge. Memory poured in waves over Elinor. She and Roddy quarrelling – the Wars of the Roses. She and Roddy quarrelling – and making it up. Lovely, laughing, happy days. A sick wave of revulsion passed over her. What had she come to now? What black abyss of hate – of evil? She swayed a little as she stood. She thought, I've been mad – quite mad.
Nurse Hopkins was staring at her curiously.
'Downright odd, she seemed,' so ran Nurse Hopkins's narrative later. 'Talking as if she didn't know what she was saying, and her eyes so bright and queer.'
The cups and saucers rattled in the basin. Elinor picked up an empty fish-paste pot from the table and put it into the basin. As she did so she said, and marvelled at the steadiness of her voice, 'I've sorted out some clothes upstairs, Aunt Laura's things. I thought, perhaps, Nurse, you could advise me where they would be useful in the village.'
Nurse Hopkins said briskly, 'I will indeed. There's Mrs. Parkinson, and old Nellie, and that poor creature who's not quite all there at Ivy Cottage. Be a godsend to them.'
She and Elinor cleared up the pantry. Then they went upstairs together.
In Mrs. Welman's room clothes were folded in neat bundles: underclothing, dresses, and certain articles of handsome clothing, velvet tea-gowns, a musquash coat. The latter, Elinor explained, she thought of giving to Mrs. Bishop.
Nurse Hopkins nodded assent. She noticed that Mrs. Welman's sables were laid on the chest of drawers. Going to have them remodelled for herself, she thought.
She cast a look at the big tallboys. She wondered if Elinor had found that photograph signed Lewis, and what she had made of it, if so. Funny, she thought to herself, the way O'Brien's letter crossed mine. I never dreamed a thing like that could happen. Her hitting on that photo just the day I wrote to her about Mrs. Slattery.
She helped Elinor sort through the clothing and volunteered to tie them up in separate bundles for the different families and see to their distribution herself.
She said, 'I can be getting on with that while Mary goes down to the lodge and finishes up there. She's only got a box of papers to go through. Where is the girl, by the way? Did she go down to the lodge?'
Elinor said, 'I left her in the morning-room.'
Nurse Hopkins said, 'She'd not be there all this time.' She glanced at her watch. 'Why, it's nearly an hour we've been up here!'
She bustled down the stairs. Elinor followed her. They went into the morning-room.
Nurse Hopkins exclaimed, 'Well, I never, she's fallen asleep.'
Mary Gerrard was sitting in a big armchair by the window. She had dropped down a little in it. There was a queer sound in the room: stertorous, laboured breathing.
Nurse Hopkins went across and shook the girl. 'Wake up, my dear -'
She broke off. She bent lower, pulled down an eyelid. Then she started shaking the girl in grim earnest. She turned on Elinor. There was something menacing in her voice as she said, 'What's all this?'
Elinor said, 'I don't know what you mean. Is she ill?'
Nurse Hopkins said, 'Where's the phone? Get hold of Dr. Lord as soon as you can.'
Elinor said, 'What's the matter?'
'The matter? The girl's ill. She's dying.' Elinor recoiled a step. She said, 'Dying?'
Nurse Hopkins said, 'She's been poisoned.' Her eyes, hard with suspicion, glared at Elinor.
Chapter 8
Hercule Poirot, his egg-shaped head gently tilted to one side, his eyebrows raised inquiringly, his finger tips joined together, watched the young man who was striding so savagely up and down the room, his pleasant freckled
