The Hollow hp-24 Page 8

  If Gerda guessed-if Gerda had the least suspicion.

  But would she have? How much did he really know about Gerda? Normally, Gerda would believe white was black if he told her so. But over a thing like this…

  What had he looked like when he followed Veronica's tall, triumphant figure out of that window? What had he shown in his face?

  Had they seen a boy's dazed, love-sick face?

  Or had they only observed a man doing a polite duty? He didn't know! He hadn't the least idea.

  But he was afraid-afraid for the ease and order and safety of his life. He'd been mad -quite mad, he thought with exasperation -and then took comfort in that very thought. Nobody would believe, surely, he could have been as mad as that?

  Everybody was in bed and asleep, that was clear. The French window of the drawing room stood half open, left for his return. He looked up again at the innocent sleeping house. It looked, somehow, too innocent.

  Suddenly he started. He had heard, or he had imagined he heard, the faint closing of a door.

  He turned his head sharply. If someone had come down to the pool, following him there. If someone had waited and followed him back, that someone could have taken a higher path and so gained entrance to the house again by the side garden door and the soft closing of the garden door would have made just the sound that he had heard.

  He looked up sharply at the windows. Was that curtain moving, had it been pushed aside for someone to look out, and then allowed to fall? Henrietta's room…

  Henrietta! Not Henrietta, his heart cried in a sudden panic. I can't lose Henrietta!

  He wanted suddenly to fling up a handful of pebbles at her window, to cry out to her.

  "Come out, my dear love. Come out to me now and walk with me up through the woods to Shovel Down and there listen-listen to everything that I now know about myself and that you must know, too, if you do not know it already…";

  He wanted to say to Henrietta:

  "I am starting again. A new life begins from today. The things that crippled and hindered me from living have fallen away.

  You were right this afternoon when you asked me if I was running away from myself. That is what I have been doing for years, because I never knew whether it was strength or weakness that took me away from Veronica have been afraid of myself, afraid of life, afraid of you."

  If he were to wake Henrietta and make her come out with him now-up through the woods to where they could watch, together, the sun come up over the rim of the world…

  "You're mad," he said to himself. He shivered. It was cold now, late September after all. "What the devil is the matter with you?" he asked himself. "You've behaved quite insanely enough for one night. If you get away with it as it is, you're damned lucky!" What on earth would Gerda think if he stayed out all night and came home with the milk?

  What, for the matter of that, would the Angkatells think?

  But that did not worry him for a moment.

  The Angkatells took Greenwich time, as it were, from Lucy Angkatell. And to Lucy Angkatell, the unusual always appeared perfectly reasonable.

  But Gerda, unfortunately, was not an Angkatell.

  Gerda would have to be dealt with, and he'd better go in and deal with Gerda as soon as possible.

  Supposing it had been Gerda who had followed him tonight-No good saying people didn't do such things. As a doctor, he knew only too well what people, high-minded, sensitive, fastidious, honourable people constantly did.

  They listened at doors, and opened letters and spied and snooped-not because for one moment they approved of such conduct, but because, before the sheer necessity of human anguish, they were rendered desperate.

  Poor devils, he thought, poor suffering human devils… John Christow knew a good deal about human suffering. He had not very much pity for weakness, but he had for suffering, for it was, he knew, the strong who suffer…

  If Gerda knew-"Nonsense," he said to himself, "why should she? She's gone up to bed and she's fast asleep. She's no imagination, never has had."

  He went in through the French windows, switched on a lamp, closed and locked the windows. Then, switching off the light, he left the room, found the switch in the hall? went quickly and lightly up the stairs. A second switch turned off the hall light. He stood for a moment by the bedroom door, his hand on the doorknob, then he turned it, and went in.

  The room was dark and he could hear Gerda's even breathing. She stirred as he came in and closed the door. Her voice came to him, blurred and indistinct with sleep:

  "Is that you, John?"

  "Yes."

  "Aren't you very late? What time is it?"

  He said easily,

  "I've no idea. Sorry I woke you up. I had to go in with the woman and have a drink."

  He made his voice sound bored and sleepy.

  Gerda murmured, "Oh? Good night, John."

  There was a rustle as she turned over in bed.

  It was all right! As usual, he'd been lucky … As usual-just for a moment it sobered him, the thought of how often his luck had held! Time and again there had been a moment when he'd held his breath and said, if this goes wrong…" And it hadn't gone wrong! But some day, surely, his luck would change…

  He undressed quickly and got into bed.

  Funny, that kid's fortune telling. And this one is over your head and has power over you … Veronica! And she had had power over him all right.

  But not any more, my girl, he thought with a kind of savage satisfaction. All that's over. I'm quit of you now!

  Chapter X

  It was ten o'clock the next morning when John came down. Breakfast was on the sideboard.

  Gerda had had her breakfast sent up to her in bed and had been rather perturbed since perhaps she might be "giving trouble."

  Nonsense, John had said. People like the Angkatells, who still managed to have butlers and servants, might just as well give them something to do.

  He felt very kindly towards Gerda this morning. All that nervous irritation that had so fretted him of late seemed to have died down and disappeared.

  Sir Henry and Edward had gone out shooting. Lady Angkatell told him. She herself was busy with a gardening basket and gardening gloves. He stayed talking to her for a while until Gudgeon approached him with a letter on a salver.

  "This has just come by hand, sir."

  He took it with slightly raised eyebrows.

  Veronica!

  He strolled into the library, tearing it open.

  Please come over this morning. I must see you.

  Veronica.

  Imperious as ever, he thought! He'd a good mind not to go. Then he thought he might as well and get it over. He'd go at once.

  He took the path opposite the library window, passed by the swimming pool which was a kind of nucleus with paths radiating from it in every direction, one up the hill to the woods proper, one from the flower walk above the house, one from the farm and the one that led on to the lane which he took now.

  A few yards up the lane was the cottage called Dovecotes.

  Veronica was waiting for him. She spoke from the window of the pretentious half-timbered building.

  "Come inside, John. It's cold this morning."

  There was a fire lit in the sitting room which was furnished in off-white with pale cyclamen cushions.

  Looking at her this morning with an appraising eye, he saw the differences there were from the girl he remembered, as he had not been able to see them last night.

  Strictly speaking, he thought, she was more beautiful now than then. She understood her beauty better, and she cared for it and enhanced it in every way. Her hair which had been deep golden was now a silvery platinum colour. Her eyebrows were different, giving much more poignancy to her expression.

  Hers had never been a mindless beauty.

  Veronica, he remembered, had qualified as one of our "intellectual actresses." She had a university degree and had had views on Strindberg and on Shakespeare.

 
He was struck now with what had been only dimly apparent to him in the past-that she was a woman whose egoism was quite abnormal. Veronica was accustomed to getting her own way and beneath the smooth, beautiful contours of flesh he seemed to sense an ugly iron determination.

  "I sent for you," said Veronica as she handed him a box of cigarettes, "because we've got to talk. We've got to make arrangements.

  For our future, I mean."

  He took a cigarette and lighted it. Then he said quite pleasantly:

  "But have we a future?"

  She gave him a sharp glance.

  "What do you mean, John? Of course we have got a future. We've wasted fifteen years. There's no need to waste any more time."

  He sat down.

  "I'm sorry, Veronica. But I'm afraid you've got all this taped out wrong. I've-enjoyed meeting you again very much. But your life and mine don't touch anywhere.

  They are quite divergent."

  "Nonsense, John. I love you and you love me. We've always loved each other. You were incredibly obstinate in the past! But never mind that now. Our lives needn't clash. I don't mean to go back to the States.

  When I've finished this picture I'm working on now, I'm going to play a straight part on the London stage. I've got a wonderful play-Elderton's written it for me. It will be a terrific success."

  "I'm sure it will," he said politely.

  "And you can go on being a doctor." Her voice was kind axnd condescending. "You're quite well knowm, they tell me."

  "My dear girl, I'm married. I've got children."

  "I'm married rmyself at the moment," said Veronica. "But these things are easily arranged. A good lawyer can fix up everything."

  She smxied at him dazzlingly. "I always did mean to marry you, darling. I can't think why I have this terrible passion for you, but theire it is!"

  "I'm sorry, Veronica, but no good lawyer is going to fix up anything. Your life and mine have nothing to do with each other."

  "Not after last night?"

  "You're not a child, Veronica. You've had a couple of husbands, and by all accounts, several lovers. What does last night mean actually? Nothing at all, and you know it."

  "Oh, my dear John-" she was still amused, indulgent. "If you'd seen your face-there in lhat stuffy drawing-room! You might have been in San Miguel again!"

  John sighed. He said:

  "I was in San Miguel.. Try to understand, Veronica. You came to me out of the Past. Last night I, too, was in the past, but today-today's different. I'm a man fifteen years older. A man you don't even know-I and whom, I daresay, you wouldn't like much if you did know."

  "You prefer your wife and children to me?"

  She was genuinely amazed.

  "Odd as it may seem to you, I do."

  "Nonsense, John, you love me."

  "I'm sorry, Veronica."

  She said incredulously:

  "You don't love me?"

  "It's better to be quite clear about these things. You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman, Veronica, but I don't love you."

  She sat so still that she might have been a waxwork. That stillness of hers made him just a little uneasy.

  When she spoke it was with such venom that he recoiled.

  "Who is she?"

  "She? Who do you mean?"

  "That woman by the mantelpiece last night?"

  Henrietta! he thought. How the devil did she get on to Henrietta? Aloud he said:

  "Who are you talking about? Midge Hardcastle?"

  "Midge? That's the square dark girl, isn't it? No, I don't mean her. And I don't mean your wife. I mean that insolent devil who was leaning against the mantlepiece! It's because of her that you're turning me down!

  Oh, don't pretend to be so moral about your wife and children. It's that other woman."

  She got up and came towards him.

  "Don't you understand, John, that ever since I came back to England, eighteen months ago, I've been thinking about you?

  Why do you imagine I took this idiotic place here? Simply because I found out that you often came down for week-ends with the Angkatells!"

  "So last night was all planned, Veronica?"

  "You belong to me, John. You always have!"

  "I don't belong to anyone, Veronica!

  Hasn't life taught you even now that you can't own other human beings body and soul? I loved you when I was a young man.

  I wanted you to share my life. You wouldn't do it!"

  "My life and career were much more important than yours! Anyone can be a doctor!"

  He lost his temper a little.

  "Are you quite as wonderful as you think you are?"

  "You mean that I haven't got to the top of the tree. I shall! I shall!"

  John Christow looked at her with a sudden quite dispassionate interest.

  "I don't believe, you know, that you will … There's a lack in you, Veronica. You're all grab and snatch-no real generosity-I think that's it…"

  Veronica got up. She said in a quiet voice:

  "You turned me down fifteen years ago … You've turned me down again today. I'll make you sorry for this."

  John got up and went to the door.

  "I'm sorry, Veronica, if I've hurt you. You're very lovely, my dear, and I once loved you very much. Can't we leave it at that?"

  "Good-bye, John. We're not leaving it at that. You'll find that out all right. I think -I think I hate you more than I believed I could hate anyone."

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  "I'm sorry. Goodbye."

  John walked back slowly through the wood. When he got to the swimming pool he sat down on the bench there. He had no regrets for his treatment of Veronica. Veronica, he thought dispassionately, was a nasty bit of work. She always had been a nasty bit of work and the best thing he had ever done was to get clear of her in time God alone knew what would have happened to him by now if he hadn't!

  As it was, he had that extraordinary sensation of starting a new life, unfettered and unhampered by the past. He must have been extremely difficult to live with for the last year or two. Poor Gerda, he thought, with her unselfishness and her continual anxiety to please him. He would be kinder in future.

  And perhaps now he would be able to stop trying to bully Henrietta. Not that one could really bully Henrietta-she wasn't made that way. Storms broke over her and she stood there, meditative, her eyes looking at you from very far away…

  He thought, I shall go to Henrietta and tell her-He looked up sharply, disturbed by some small unexpected sound. There had been shots in the woods higher up, and there had been the usual small noises of woodlands, birds, and the faint melancholy dropping of leaves. But this was another noise-a very faint businesslike click…

  And suddenly, John was acutely conscious of danger. How long had he been sitting here? Half an hour? An hour? There was someone watching him. Someone-And that click was-of course it was-He turned sharply, a man very quick in his reactions. But he was not quick enough.

  His eyes widened in surprise, but there was no time for him to make a sound.

  The shot rang out and he fell, awkwardly, sprawled out by the edge of the swimming pool…

  A dark stain welled up slowly on his left side and trickled slowly onto the concrete of the pool edge and from there dripped red into the blue water…

  Chapter XI

  Hercule Poirot flicked a last speck of dust from his shoes. He had dressed carefully for his luncheon party and he was satisfied with the result.

  He knew well enough the kind of clothes that were worn in the country on a Sunday in England, but he did not choose to conform to English ideas. He preferred his own standards of urban smartness. He was not an English country gentleman and he would not dress like an English country gentleman. He was Hercule Poirot!

  He did not, he confessed it to himself, really like the country. The week-end cottage-so many of his friends had extolled it-he had allowed himself to succumb, and had purchased Resthaven, though the only thing he ha
d liked about it was its shape which was quite square like a box. The surrounding landscape he did not care for, though it was, he knew, supposed to be a beauty spot. It was, however, too wildly asymmetrical to appeal to him. He did not care much for trees at any time-they had that untidy habit of shedding their leaves!

  He could endure poplars and he approved of a monkey puzzle-but this riot of beech and oak left him unmoved. Such a landscape was best enjoyed from a car on a fine afternoon.

  You exclaimed, "Quel beau paysage!" and drove back to a good hotel.

  The best thing about Resthaven, he considered, was the small vegetable garden neatly laid out in rows by his Belgian gardener, Victor. Meanwhile, Francoise, Victor's wife, devoted herself with tenderness to the care of her employer's stomach.

  Hercule Poirot passed through the gate, sighed, glanced down once more at his shining black shoes, adjusted his pale grey Hornburg hat, and looked up and down the road.

  He shivered slightly at the aspect of Dovecotes. Dovecotes and Resthaven had been erected by rival builders, each of whom had acquired a small piece of land. Further enterprise on their part had been swiftly curtailed by a National Trust for preserving the beauties of the countryside. The two houses remained representative of two schools of thought. Resthaven was a box with a roof, severely modern and a little dull. Dovecotes was a riot of half-timbering and Olde Worlde packed into as small a space as possible.

  Hercule Poirot debated within himself as to how he should approach The Hollow.

  There was, he knew, a little higher up the lane, a small gate and a path. This, the unofficial way, would save a half mile detour by the road. Nevertheless, Hercule Poirot, a stickler for etiquette, decided to take the longer way round and approach the house correctly by the front entrance.

  This was his first visit to Sir Henry and Lady Angkatell. One should not, he considered, take short cuts uninvited, especially when one was the guest of people of social importance. He was, it must be admitted, pleased by their invitation.

  "Je suis un peu snob," he murmured to himself.

  He had retained an agreeable impression of the Angkatells from the time in Baghdad, particularly of Lady Angkatell. "Une originate!" he thought to himself.