The Hollow (21 page)

“No, I suppose you'll have to go back and resign or hand in your notice or whatever you call it. You're not to go on working there, though. I won't have it. But first I thought we'd better go to one of those shops in Bond Street where they sell rings.”

“Rings?”

“It's usual, isn't it?”

Midge laughed.

 

In the dimmed lighting of the jeweller's shop, Midge and Edward bent over trays of sparkling engagement rings, whilst a discreet salesman watched them benignantly.

Edward said, pushing away a velvet-covered tray:

“Not emeralds.”

Henrietta in green tweeds—Henrietta in an evening dress like Chinese jade….

No, not emeralds.

Midge pushed away the tiny stabbing pain at her heart.

“Choose for me,” she said to Edward.

He bent over the tray before them. He picked out a ring with a single diamond. Not a very large stone, but a stone of beautiful colour and fire.

“I'd like this.”

Midge nodded. She loved this display of Edward's unerring and fastidious taste. She slipped it on her finger as Edward and the shopman drew aside.

Edward wrote out a cheque for three hundred and forty-two pounds and came back to Midge smiling.

He said: “Let's go and be rude to Madame Alfrege.”

“B
ut, darling, I
am
so delighted!”

Lady Angkatell stretched out a fragile hand to Edward and touched Midge softly with the other.

“You did quite right, Edward, to make her leave that horrid shop and bring her right down here. She'll stay here, of course, and be married from here. St. George's, you know, three miles by the road, though only a mile through the woods, but then one doesn't go to a wedding through woods. And I suppose it will have to be the vicar—poor man, he has such dreadful colds in the head every autumn. The curate, now, has one of those high Anglican voices, and the whole thing would be far more impressive—and more religious, too, if you know what I mean. It is so hard to keep one's mind reverent when somebody is saying things through their noses.”

It was, Midge decided, a very Lucyish reception. It made her want to both laugh and cry.

“I'd love to be married from here, Lucy,” she said.

“Then that's settled, darling. Off-white satin, I think, and an ivory prayer book—
not
a bouquet. Bridesmaids?”

“No. I don't want a fuss. Just a very quiet wedding.”

“I know what you mean, darling, and I think perhaps you are right. With an autumn wedding it's nearly always chrysanthemums—such an uninspiring flower, I always think. And unless one takes a lot of time to choose them carefully bridesmaids never
match
properly, and there's nearly always one terribly plain one who ruins the whole effect—but one has to have her because she's usually the bridegroom's sister. But of course—” Lady Angkatell beamed, “Edward hasn't got any sisters.”

“That seems to be one point in my favour,” said Edward, smiling.

“But children are really the worst at weddings,” went on Lady Angkatell, happily pursuing her own train of thought. “Everyone says: ‘How sweet!' but, my dear, the
anxiety!
They step on the train, or else they howl for Nannie, and quite often they're sick. I always wonder how a girl can go up the aisle in a proper frame of mind, while she's so uncertain about what is happening behind her.”

“There needn't be anything behind me,” said Midge cheerfully. “Not even a train. I can be married in a coat and skirt.”

“Oh, no, Midge, that's so like a widow. No, off-white satin and
not
from Madame Alfrege's.”

“Certainly not from Madame Alfrege's,” said Edward.

“I shall take you to Mireille,” said Lady Angkatell.

“My dear Lucy, I can't possibly afford Mireille.”

“Nonsense, Midge. Henry and I are going to give you your
trousseau. And Henry, of course, will give you away. I do hope the band of his trousers won't be too tight. It's nearly two years since he last went to a wedding. And I shall wear—”

Lady Angkatell paused and closed her eyes.

“Yes, Lucy?”

“Hydrangea blue,” announced Lady Angkatell in a rapt voice. “I suppose, Edward, you will have one of your own friends for best man, otherwise, of course, there is David. I cannot help feeling it would be frightfully good for David. It would give him poise, you know, and he would feel we all
liked
him. That, I am sure, is very important with David. It must be disheartening, you know, to feel you are clever and intellectual and yet nobody likes you any the better for it! But of course it would be rather a risk. He would probably lose the ring, or drop it at the last minute. I expect it would worry Edward too much. But it would be nice in a way to keep it to the same people we've had here for the murder.”

Lady Angkatell uttered the last few words in the most conversational of tones.

“Lady Angkatell has been entertaining a few friends for a murder this autumn,” Midge could not help saying.

“Yes,” said Lucy meditatively. “I suppose it
did
sound like that. A party for the shooting. You know, when you come to think of it, that's just what it has been!”

Midge gave a faint shiver and said:

“Well, at any rate, it's over now.”

“It's not exactly over—the inquest was only adjourned. And that nice Inspector Grange has got men all over the place simply crashing through the chestnut woods and startling all the pheasants, and springing up like jacks in the box in the most unlikely places.”

“What are they looking for?” asked Edward. “The revolver that Christow was shot with?”

“I imagine that must be it. They even came to the house with a search warrant. The inspector was most apologetic about it, quite
shy,
but of course I told him we should be delighted. It was really most interesting. They looked absolutely
everywhere.
I followed them round, you know, and I suggested one or two places which even they hadn't thought of. But they didn't find anything. It was most disappointing. Poor Inspector Grange, he is growing quite thin and he pulls and pulls at that moustache of his. His wife ought to give him specially nourishing meals with all this worry he is having—but I have a vague idea that she must be one of those women who care more about having the linoleum really well polished than in cooking a tasty little meal. Which reminds me, I must go and see Mrs. Medway. Funny how servants cannot bear the police. Her cheese soufflé last night was quite uneatable. Soufflés and pastry always show if one is off balance. If it weren't for Gudgeon keeping them all together I really believe half the servants would leave. Why don't you two go and have a nice walk and help the police look for the revolver?”

Hercule Poirot sat on the bench overlooking the chestnut groves above the pool. He had no sense of trespassing since Lady Angkatell had very sweetly begged him to wander where he would at any time. It was Lady Angkatell's sweetness which Hercule Poirot was considering at this moment.

From time to time he heard the cracking of twigs in the woods above or caught sight of a figure moving through the chestnut groves below him.

Presently Henrietta came along the path from the direction of
the lane. She stopped for a moment when she saw Poirot, then she came and sat down by him.

“Good morning, M. Poirot. I have just been to call upon you. But you were out. You look very Olympian. Are you presiding over the hunt? The inspector seems very active. What are they looking for, the revolver?”

“Yes, Miss Savernake.”

“Will they find it, do you think?”

“I think so. Quite soon now, I should say.”

She looked at him inquiringly.

“Have you an idea, then, where it is?”

“No. But I
think
it will be found soon. It is
time
for it to be found.”

“You do say odd things, M. Poirot!”

“Odd things happen here. You have come back very soon from London, Mademoiselle.”

Her face hardened. She gave a short, bitter laugh.

“The murderer returns to the scene of the crime? That is the old superstition, isn't it? So you
do
think that I—did it! You don't believe me when I tell you that I wouldn't—that I
couldn't
kill anybody?”

Poirot did not answer at once. At last he said thoughtfully:

“It has seemed to me from the beginning that either this crime was very simple—so simple that it was difficult to believe its simplicity (and simplicity, Mademoiselle, can be strangely baffling) or else it was extremely complex. That is to say, we were contending against a mind capable of intricate and ingenious inventions, so that every time we seemed to be heading for the truth, we were actually being led on a trail that twisted away from the truth and led us to
a point which—ended in nothingness. This apparent futility, this continual barrenness, is not
real
—it is artificial, it is
planned.
A very subtle and ingenious mind is plotting against us the whole time—and succeeding.”

“Well?” said Henrietta. “What has that to do with me?”

“The mind that is plotting against us is a creative mind, Mademoiselle.”

“I see—that's where I come in?”

She was silent, her lips set together bitterly. From her jacket pocket she had taken a pencil and now she was idly drawing the outline of a fantastic tree on the white painted wood of the bench, frowning as she did so.

Poirot watched her. Something stirred in his mind—standing in Lady Angkatell's drawing room on the afternoon of the crime, looking down at a pile of bridge markers, standing by a painted iron table in the pavilion the next morning, and a question that he had put to Gudgeon.

He said:

“That is what you drew on your bridge marker—a tree.”

“Yes.” Henrietta seemed suddenly aware of what she was doing. “Ygdrasil, M. Poirot.” She laughed.

“Why do you call it Ygdrasil?”

She explained the origin of Ygdrasil.

“And so, when you ‘doodle' (that is the word, is it not?) it is always Ygdrasil you draw?”

“Yes. Doodling is a funny thing, isn't it?”

“Here on the seat—on the bridge marker on Saturday evening—in the pavilion on Sunday morning….”

The hand that held the pencil stiffened and stopped. She said in a tone of careless amusement:

“In the pavilion?”

“Yes, on the round iron table there.”

“Oh, that must have been on—on Saturday afternoon.”

“It was not on Saturday afternoon. When Gudgeon brought the glasses out to the pavilion about twelve o'clock on Sunday morning, there was nothing drawn on the table. I asked him and he is quite definite about that.”

“Then it must have been”—she hesitated for just a moment—“of course, on Sunday afternoon.”

But still smiling pleasantly, Hercule Poirot shook his head.

“I think not. Grange's men were at the pool all Sunday afternoon, photographing the body, getting the revolver out of the water. They did not leave until dusk. They would have seen anyone go into the pavilion.”

Henrietta said slowly:

“I remember now. I went along there quite late in the evening—after dinner.”

Poirot's voice came sharply:

“People do not ‘doodle' in the dark, Miss Savernake. Are you telling me that you went into the pavilion at night and stood by a table and drew a tree without being able to see what you were drawing?”

Henrietta said calmly: “I am telling you the truth. Naturally you don't believe it. You have your own ideas. What is your idea, by the way?”

“I am suggesting that you were in the pavilion on
Sunday morn
ing after twelve o'clock
when Gudgeon brought the glasses out. That you stood by that table watching someone, or waiting for someone, and unconsciously took out a pencil and drew Ygdrasil without being fully aware of what you were doing.”

“I was not in the pavilion on Sunday morning. I sat out on the terrace for a while, then I got the gardening basket and went up to the dahlia border and cut off heads and tied up some of the Michaelmas daisies that were untidy. Then just on one o'clock I went along to the pool. I've been through it all with Inspector Grange. I never came near the pool until one o'clock, just after John had been shot.”

“That,” said Hercule Poirot, “is your story. But Ygdrasil, Mademoiselle, testifies against you.”

“I was in the pavilion and I shot John, that's what you mean?”

“You were there and you shot Dr. Christow, or you were there and you saw who shot Dr. Christow—or someone else was there who knew about Ygdrasil and deliberately drew it on the table to put suspicion on
you.
”

Henrietta got up. She turned on him with her chin lifted.

“You still think that I shot John Christow. You think that you can prove I shot him. Well, I will tell you this. You will never prove it.
Never!
”

“You think that you are cleverer than I am?”

“You will never prove it,” said Henrietta, and, turning, she walked away down the winding path that led to the swimming pool.

G
range came in to Resthaven to drink a cup of tea with Hercule Poirot. The tea was exactly what he had had apprehensions it might be—extremely weak and China tea at that.

“These foreigners,” thought Grange, “don't know how to make tea. You can't teach 'em.” But he did not mind much. He was in a condition of pessimism when one more thing that was unsatisfactory actually afforded him a kind of grim satisfaction.

He said: “The adjourned inquest's the day after tomorrow and where have we got? Nowhere at all. What the hell, that gun must be
somewhere!
It's this damned country—miles of woods. It would take an army to search them properly. Talk of a needle in a haystack. It may be anywhere. The fact is, we've got to face up to it—we may
never
find that gun.”

“You will find it,” said Poirot confidently.

“Well, it won't be for want of trying!”

“You will find it, sooner or later. And I should say sooner. Another cup of tea?”

“I don't mind if I do—no, no hot water.”

“Is it not too strong?”

“Oh, no, it's not too strong.” The inspector was conscious of understatement.

Gloomily he sipped at the pale, straw-coloured beverage.

“This case is making a monkey of me, M. Poirot—a monkey of me! I can't get the hang of these people. They
seem
helpful—but everything they tell you seems to lead you away on a wild-goose chase.”

“Away?” said Poirot. A startled look came into his eyes. “Yes, I see.
Away
….”

The inspector was now developing his grievance.

“Take the gun now. Christow was shot—according to the medical evidence—only a minute or two before your arrival. Lady Angkatell had that egg basket, Miss Savernake had a gardening basket full of dead flower heads, and Edward Angkatell was wearing a loose shooting coat with large pockets stuffed with cartridges. Any one of them could have carried the revolver away with them. It wasn't hidden anywhere near the pool—my men have raked the place, so that's definitely out.”

Poirot nodded. Grange went on:

“Gerda Christow was framed—but who by? That's where every clue I follow seems to vanish into thin air.”

“Their stories of how they spent the morning are satisfactory?”

“The
stories
are all right. Miss Savernake was gardening. Lady Angkatell was collecting eggs. Edward Angkatell and Sir Henry were shooting and separated at the end of the morning—Sir Henry
coming back to the house and Edward Angkatell coming down here through the woods. The young fellow was up in his bedroom reading. (Funny place to read on a nice day, but he's the indoor, bookish kind.) Miss Hardcastle took a book down to the orchard. All sounds very natural and likely, and there's no means of checking up on it. Gudgeon took a tray of glasses out to the pavilion about twelve o'clock. He can't say where any of the house party were or what they were doing. In a way, you know, there's something against almost all of them.”

“Really?”

“Of course the most obvious person is Veronica Cray. She had quarrelled with Christow, she hated his guts, she's quite
likely
to have shot him—but I can't find the least iota of proof that she
did
shoot him. No evidence as to her having had any opportunity to pinch the revolvers from Sir Henry's collection. No one who saw her going to or from the pool that day. And the missing revolver definitely isn't in her possession now.”

“Ah, you have made sure of that?”

“What do you think? The evidence would have justified a search warrant but there was no need. She was quite gracious about it. It's not anywhere in that tin-pot bungalow. After the inquest was adjourned we made a show of letting up on Miss Cray and Miss Savernake, and we've had a tail on them to see where they went and what they'd do. We've had a man on at the film studios watching Veronica—no sign of her trying to ditch the gun there.”

“And Henrietta Savernake?”

“Nothing there either. She went straight back to Chelsea and we've kept an eye on her ever since. The revolver isn't in her studio or in her possession. She was quite pleasant about the search—
seemed amused. Some of her fancy stuff gave our man quite a turn. He said it beat him why people wanted to do that kind of thing—statues all lumps and swellings, bits of brass and aluminum twisted into fancy shapes, horses that you wouldn't know were horses.”

Poirot stirred a little.

“Horses, you say?”

“Well,
a
horse. If you'd call it a horse! If people want to model a horse, why don't they go and
look
at a horse!”

“A
horse,
” repeated Poirot.

Grange turned his head.

“What is there about that that interests you so, M. Poirot? I don't get it.”

“Association—a point of the psychology.”

“Word association? Horse and cart? Rocking horse? Clothes horse. No, I don't get it. Anyway, after a day or two, Miss Savernake packs up and comes down here again. You know that?”

“Yes, I have talked with her and I have seen her walking in the woods.”

“Restless, yes. Well, she was having an affair with the doctor all right, and his saying: ‘
Henrietta
' as he died is pretty near to an accusation. But it's not quite near enough, M. Poirot.”

“No,” said Poirot thoughtfully, “it is not near enough.”

Grange said heavily:

“There's something in the atmosphere here—it gets you all tangled up! It's as though they all
knew
something. Lady Angkatell now—she's never been able to put out a decent reason
why
she took out a gun with her that day. It's a crazy thing to do—sometimes I think she is crazy.”

Poirot shook his head very gently.

“No,” he said, “she is not crazy.”

“Then there's Edward Angkatell. I thought I was getting something on
him.
Lady Angkatell said—no, hinted—that he'd been in love with Miss Savernake for years. Well, that gives him a motive. And now I find it's the
other
girl—Miss Hardcastle—that he's engaged to. So bang goes the case against
him.
”

Poirot gave a sympathetic murmur.

“Then there's the young fellow,” pursued the inspector. “Lady Angkatell let slip something about him. His mother, it seems, died in an asylum—persecution mania—thought everybody was conspiring to kill her. Well, you can see what that might mean. If the boy had inherited that particular strain of insanity, he might have got ideas into his head about Dr. Christow—might have fancied the doctor was planning to certify him. Not that Christow was that kind of doctor. Nervous affections of the alimentary canal and diseases of the super—super something. That was Christow's line. But if the boy was a bit touched, he
might
imagine Christow was here to keep him under observation. He's got an extraordinary manner, that young fellow, nervous as a cat.”

Grange sat unhappily for a moment or two.

“You see what I mean? All vague suspicions, leading
nowhere.
”

Poirot stirred again. He murmured softly:

“
Away
—not
towards. From,
not to.
Nowhere
instead of
somewhere…
Yes, of course, that
must
be it.”

Grange stared at him. He said:

“They're queer, all these Angkatells. I'd swear, sometimes, that they know all about it.”

Poirot said quietly:

“They do.”

“You mean, they know, all of them, who did it?” the inspector asked incredulously.

Poirot nodded.

“Yes, they know. I have thought so for some time. I am quite sure now.”

“I see.” The inspector's face was grim. “And they're hiding it up between them? Well, I'll beat them yet.
I'm going to find that gun.
”

It was, Poirot reflected, quite the inspector's theme song.

Grange went on with rancour:

“I'd give anything to get even with them.”

“With—”

“All of them! Muddling me up! Suggesting things! Hinting! Helping my men—
helping
them! All gossamer and spiders' webs, nothing tangible. What I want is a good solid
fact!
”

Hercule Poirot had been staring out of the window for some moments. His eye had been attracted by an irregularity in the symmetry of his domain.

He said now:

“You want a solid fact?
Eh bien,
unless I am much mistaken, there is a solid fact in the hedge by my gate.”

They went down the garden path. Grange went down on his knees, coaxed the twigs apart till he disclosed more fully the thing that had been thrust between them. He drew a deep sigh as something black and steel was revealed.

He said: “It's a revolver all right.”

Just for a moment his eye rested doubtfully on Poirot.

“No, no, my friend,” said Poirot. “
I
did not shoot Dr. Christow and I did not put the revolver in my own hedge.”

“Of course you didn't, M. Poirot! Sorry! Well, we've got it.
Looks like the one missing from Sir Henry's study. We can verify that as soon as we get the number. Then we'll see if it was the gun that shot Christow. Easy does it now.”

With infinite care and the use of a silk handkerchief he eased the gun out of the hedge.

“To give us a break, we want fingerprints. I've a feeling, you know, that our luck's changed at last.”

“Let me know.”

“Of course I will, M. Poirot. I'll ring you up.”

Poirot received two telephone calls. The first came through that same evening. The inspector was jubilant.

“That you, M. Poirot? Well, here's the dope. It's the gun all right. The gun missing from Sir Henry's collection
and
the gun that shot John Christow! That's definite. And there are a good set of prints on it. Thumb, first finger, part of middle finger. Didn't I tell you our luck had changed?”

“You have identified the fingerprints?”

“Not yet. They're certainly not Mrs. Christow's. We took hers. They look more like a man's than a woman's for size. Tomorrow I'm going along to The Hollow to speak my little piece and get a sample from everyone. And then, M. Poirot,
we shall know where we are!
”

“I hope so, I am sure,” said Poirot politely.

The second telephone call came through on the following day and the voice that spoke was no longer jubilant. In tones of unmitigated gloom, Grange said:

“Want to hear the latest? Those fingerprints aren't the prints of anybody connected with the case! No, sir! They're not Edward Angkatell's, nor David's, nor Sir Henry's! They're not Gerda
Christow's, nor the Savernake's, nor our Veronica's, nor her ladyship's, nor the little dark girl's! They're not even the kitchen maid's—let alone any of the other servants'!”

Poirot made consoling noises. The sad voice of Inspector Grange went on:

“So it looks as though, after all, it
was
an outside job. Someone, that is to say, who had a down on Dr. Christow and who we don't know anything about. Someone invisible and inaudible who pinched the guns from the study, and who went away after the shooting by the path to the lane. Someone who put the gun in your hedge and then vanished into thin air!”

“Would you like
my
fingerprints, my friend?”

“I don't mind if I do! It strikes me, M. Poirot, that you were on the spot, and that taking it all round you're far and away the most suspicious character in the case!”