空幻之屋37

时间：2024-12-31 10:12:27

（单词翻译:单击）

Twenty-seven
I
The coroner cleared his throat and looked expectantly at the foreman of the jury.
The latter looked down at the piece of paper he held in his hand. His Adam’s apple wagged up
and down excitedly. He read out in a careful voice:
“We find that the deceased came to his death by wilful1 murder by some person or persons
unknown.”
Poirot nodded his head quietly in his corner by the wall. There could be no other possible
verdict.
Outside the Angkatells stopped a moment to talk to Gerda and her sister. Gerda was wearing the
same black clothes. Her face had the same dazed, unhappy expression. This time there was no
Daimler. The train service, Elsie Patterson explained, was really very good. A fast train to
Waterloo and they could easily catch the 1:20 to Bexhill.
Lady Angkatell, clasping Gerda’s hand, murmured:
“You must keep in touch with us, my dear. A little lunch, perhaps, one day in London? I expect
you come up to do shopping occasionally.”
“I—I don’t know,” said Gerda.
Elsie Patterson said:
“We must hurry, dear, our train,” and Gerda turned away with an expression of relief.
Midge said:
“Poor Gerda. The only thing John’s death has done for her is to set her free from your terrifying
hospitality, Lucy.”
“How unkind you are, Midge. Nobody could say I didn’t try.”
“You are much worse when you try, Lucy.”
“Well, it’s very nice to think it’s all over, isn’t it?” said Lady Angkatell, beaming at them.
“Except, of course, for poor Inspector2 Grange. I do feel so sorry for him. Would it cheer him up,
do you think, if we asked him back to lunch? As a friend, I mean.”
“I should let well alone, Lucy,” said Sir Henry.
“Perhaps you are right,” said Lady Angkatell meditatively3. “And anyway it isn’t the right kind
of lunch today. Partridges au Choux—and that delicious Soufflé Surprise that Mrs. Medway makes
so well. Not at all Inspector Grange’s kind of lunch. A really good steak, a little underdone, and a
good old-fashioned apple tart5 with no nonsense about it—or perhaps apple dumplings—that’s
what I should order for Inspector Grange.”
“Your instincts about food are always very sound, Lucy. I think we had better get home to those
partridges. They sound delicious.”
“Well, I thought we ought to have some celebration. It’s wonderful, isn’t it, how everything
always seems to turn out for the best?”
“Ye-es.”
“I know what you’re thinking, Henry, but don’t worry. I shall attend to it this afternoon.”
“What are you up to now, Lucy?”
Lady Angkatell smiled at him.
“It’s quite all right, darling. Just tucking in a loose end.”
Sir Henry looked at her doubtfully.
When they reached The Hollow, Gudgeon came out to open the door of the car.
“Everything went off very satisfactorily, Gudgeon,” said Lady Angkatell. “Please tell Mrs.
Medway and the others. I know how unpleasant it has been for you all, and I should like to tell
you now how much Sir Henry and I have appreciated the loyalty6 you have all shown.”
“We have been deeply concerned for you, my lady,” said Gudgeon.
“Very sweet of Gudgeon,” said Lucy as she went into the drawing room, “but really quite
wasted. I have really almost enjoyed it all—so different, you know, from what one is accustomed
to. Don’t you feel, David, that an experience like this has broadened your mind? It must be so
different from Cambridge.”
“I am at Oxford,” said David coldly.
Lady Angkatell said vaguely7: “The dear Boat Race. So English, don’t you think?” and went
towards the telephone.
She picked up the receiver and, holding it in her hand, she went on:
“I do hope, David, that you will come and stay with us again. It’s so difficult, isn’t it, to get to
know people when there is a murder? And quite impossible to have any really intellectual
conversation.”
“Thank you,” said David. “But when I come down I am going to Athens— to the British
School.”
Lady Angkatell turned to her husband.
“Who’s got the Embassy now? Oh, of course. Hope-Remmington. No, I don’t think David
would like them. Those girls of theirs are so terribly hearty8. They play hockey and cricket and the
funny game where you catch the thing in a net.”
She broke off, looking down at the telephone receiver.
“Now, what am I doing with this thing?”
“Perhaps you were going to ring someone up,” said Edward.
“I don’t think so.” She replaced it. “Do you like telephones, David?”
It was the sort of question, David reflected irritably9, that she would ask; one to which there
could be no intelligent answer. He replied coldly that he supposed they were useful.
“You mean,” said Lady Angkatell, “like mincing10 machines? Or elastic11 bands? All the same, one
wouldn’t—”
She broke off as Gudgeon appeared in the doorway12 to announce lunch.
“But you like partridges,” said Lady Angkatell to David anxiously.
David admitted that he liked partridges.
“Sometimes I think Lucy really is a bit touched,” said Midge as she and Edward strolled away
from the house and up towards the woods.
The partridges and the Soufflé Surprise had been excellent, and with the inquest over a weight
had lifted from the atmosphere.
Edward said thoughtfully:
“I always think Lucy has a brilliant mind that expresses itself like a missing word competition.
To mix metaphors—the hammer jumps from nail to nail and never fails to hit each one squarely
on the head.”
“All the same,” Midge said soberly, “Lucy frightens me sometimes.” She added, with a tiny
shiver: “This place has frightened me lately.”
“The Hollow?”
Edward turned an astonished face to her.
“It always reminds me a little of Ainswick,” he said. “It’s not, of course, the real thing—”
Midge interrupted:
“That’s just it, Edward. I’m frightened of things that aren’t the real thing. You don’t know, you
see, what’s behind them. It’s like—oh, it’s like a mask.”
“You mustn’t be fanciful, little Midge.”
It was the old tone, the indulgent tone he had used years ago. She had liked it then, but now it
disturbed her. She struggled to make her meaning clear—to show him that behind what he called
fancy, was some shape of dimly apprehended13 reality.
“I got away from it in London, but now that I’m back here it all comes over me again. I feel that
everyone knows who killed John Christow. That the only person who doesn’t know—is me.”
Edward said irritably:
“Must we think and talk about John Christow? He’s dead. Dead and gone.”
Midge murmured:
“He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone.
At his head a grass green turf,
At his heels a stone.”
She put her hand on Edward’s arm. “Who did kill him, Edward? We thought it was Gerda—but
it wasn’t Gerda. Then who was it? Tell me what you think? Was it someone we’ve never heard
of?”
He said irritably:
“All this speculation14 seems to me quite unprofitable. If the police can’t find out, or can’t get
sufficient evidence, then the whole thing will have to be allowed to drop—and we shall be rid of
it.”
“Yes—but it’s the not knowing.”
“Why should we want to know? What has John Christow to do with us?”
With us, she thought, with Edward and me? Nothing! Comforting thought—she and Edward,
linked, a dual15 entity16. And yet—and yet—John Christow, for all that he had been laid in his grave
and the words of the burial service read over him, was not buried deep enough. He is dead and
gone, lady—But John Christow was not dead and gone—for all that Edward wished him to be.
John Christow was still here at The Hollow.
Edward said: “Where are we going?”
Something in his tone surprised her. She said:
“Let’s walk up on to the top of the ridge4. Shall we?”
“If you like.”
For some reason he was unwilling17. She wondered why. It was usually his favourite walk. He
and Henrietta used nearly always—Her thought snapped and broke off. He and Henrietta! She
said: “Have you been this way yet this autumn?”
He said stiffly:
“Henrietta and I walked up here that first afternoon.” They went on in silence.
They came at last to the top and sat on the fallen tree.
Midge thought: “He and Henrietta sat here, perhaps.”
She turned the ring on her finger round and round. The diamond flashed coldly at her. (“Not
emeralds,” he had said.)
She said with a slight effort:
“It will be lovely to be at Ainswick again for Christmas.”
He did not seem to hear her. He had gone far away.
She thought: “He is thinking of Henrietta and of John Christow.”
Sitting here he had said something to Henrietta or she had said something to him. Henrietta
might know what she didn’t want, but he belonged to Henrietta still. He always would, Midge
thought, belong to Henrietta….
Pain swooped18 down upon her. The happy bubble world in which she had lived for the last week
quivered and broke.
She thought: “I can’t live like that—with Henrietta always there in his mind. I can’t face it. I
can’t bear it.”
The wind sighed through the trees—the leaves were falling fast now—there was hardly any
golden left, only brown.
She said: “Edward!”
The urgency of her voice aroused him. He turned his head.
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry, Edward.” Her lips were trembling but she forced her voice to be quiet and self-
controlled. “I’ve got to tell you. It’s no use. I can’t marry you. It wouldn’t work, Edward.”
He said: “But, Midge—surely Ainswick—”
She interrupted:
“I can’t marry you just for Ainswick, Edward. You—you must see that.”
He sighed then, a long gentle sigh. It was like an echo of the dead leaves slipping gently off the
branches of the trees.
“I see what you mean,” he said. “Yes, I suppose you are right.”
“It was dear of you to ask me, dear and sweet. But it wouldn’t do, Edward. It wouldn’t work.”
She had had a faint hope, perhaps, that he would argue with her, that he would try to persuade
her, but he seemed, quite simply, to feel just as she did about it. Here, with the ghost of Henrietta
close beside him, he too, apparently19, saw that it couldn’t work.
“No,” he said, echoing her words, “it wouldn’t work.”
She slipped the ring off her finger and held it out to him.
She would always love Edward and Edward would always love Henrietta and life was just plain
unadulterated hell.
She said with a little catch in her voice:
“It’s a lovely ring, Edward.”
“I wish you’d keep it, Midge. I’d like you to have it.”
She shook her head.
“I couldn’t do that.”
He said with a faint, humorous twist of the lips:
“I shan’t give it to anyone else, you know.”
It was all quite friendly. He didn’t know—he would never know—just what she was feeling.
Heaven on a plate—and the plate was broken and heaven had slipped between her fingers or had,
perhaps, never been there.

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1 wilful xItyq     
adj.任性的，故意的
参考例句：
  • A wilful fault has no excuse and deserves no pardon.不能宽恕故意犯下的错误。
  • He later accused reporters of wilful distortion and bias.他后来指责记者有意歪曲事实并带有偏见。
2 inspector q6kxH     
n.检查员，监察员，视察员
参考例句：
  • The inspector was interested in everything pertaining to the school.视察员对有关学校的一切都感兴趣。
  • The inspector was shining a flashlight onto the tickets.查票员打着手电筒查看车票。
3 meditatively 1840c96c2541871bf074763dc24f786a     
adv.冥想地
参考例句：
  • The old man looked meditatively at the darts board. 老头儿沉思不语，看着那投镖板。 来自英汉文学
  • "Well,'said the foreman, scratching his ear meditatively, "we do need a stitcher. “这--"工头沉思地搔了搔耳朵。 "我们确实需要一个缝纫工。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
4 ridge KDvyh     
n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭
参考例句：
  • We clambered up the hillside to the ridge above.我们沿着山坡费力地爬上了山脊。
  • The infantry were advancing to attack the ridge.步兵部队正在向前挺进攻打山脊。
5 tart 0qIwH     
adj.酸的；尖酸的，刻薄的；n.果馅饼；淫妇
参考例句：
  • She was learning how to make a fruit tart in class.她正在课上学习如何制作水果馅饼。
  • She replied in her usual tart and offhand way.她开口回答了，用她平常那种尖酸刻薄的声调随口说道。
6 loyalty gA9xu     
n.忠诚，忠心
参考例句：
  • She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
  • His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。
7 vaguely BfuzOy     
adv.含糊地，暖昧地
参考例句：
  • He had talked vaguely of going to work abroad.他含糊其词地说了到国外工作的事。
  • He looked vaguely before him with unseeing eyes.他迷迷糊糊的望着前面，对一切都视而不见。
8 hearty Od1zn     
adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的
参考例句：
  • After work they made a hearty meal in the worker's canteen.工作完了，他们在工人食堂饱餐了一顿。
  • We accorded him a hearty welcome.我们给他热忱的欢迎。
9 irritably e3uxw     
ad.易生气地
参考例句：
  • He lost his temper and snapped irritably at the children. 他发火了，暴躁地斥责孩子们。
  • On this account the silence was irritably broken by a reproof. 为了这件事，他妻子大声斥责，令人恼火地打破了宁静。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
10 mincing joAzXz     
adj.矫饰的；v.切碎；切碎
参考例句：
  • She came to the park with mincing,and light footsteps.她轻移莲步来到了花园之中。
  • There is no use in mincing matters.掩饰事实是没有用的。
11 elastic Tjbzq     
n.橡皮圈，松紧带；adj.有弹性的；灵活的
参考例句：
  • Rubber is an elastic material.橡胶是一种弹性材料。
  • These regulations are elastic.这些规定是有弹性的。
12 doorway 2s0xK     
n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径
参考例句：
  • They huddled in the shop doorway to shelter from the rain.他们挤在商店门口躲雨。
  • Mary suddenly appeared in the doorway.玛丽突然出现在门口。
13 apprehended a58714d8af72af24c9ef953885c38a66     
逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解
参考例句：
  • She apprehended the complicated law very quickly. 她很快理解了复杂的法律。
  • The police apprehended the criminal. 警察逮捕了罪犯。
14 speculation 9vGwe     
n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机
参考例句：
  • Her mind is occupied with speculation.她的头脑忙于思考。
  • There is widespread speculation that he is going to resign.人们普遍推测他要辞职。
15 dual QrAxe     
adj.双的；二重的，二元的
参考例句：
  • The people's Republic of China does not recognize dual nationality for any Chinese national.中华人民共和国不承认中国公民具有双重国籍。
  • He has dual role as composer and conductor.他兼作曲家及指挥的双重身分。
16 entity vo8xl     
n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物
参考例句：
  • The country is no longer one political entity.这个国家不再是一个统一的政治实体了。
  • As a separate legal entity,the corporation must pay taxes.作为一个独立的法律实体，公司必须纳税。
17 unwilling CjpwB     
adj.不情愿的
参考例句：
  • The natives were unwilling to be bent by colonial power.土著居民不愿受殖民势力的摆布。
  • His tightfisted employer was unwilling to give him a raise.他那吝啬的雇主不肯给他加薪。
18 swooped 33b84cab2ba3813062b6e35dccf6ee5b     
俯冲，猛冲( swoop的过去式和过去分词 )
参考例句：
  • The aircraft swooped down over the buildings. 飞机俯冲到那些建筑物上方。
  • The hawk swooped down on the rabbit and killed it. 鹰猛地朝兔子扑下来，并把它杀死。
19 apparently tMmyQ     
adv.显然地；表面上，似乎
参考例句：
  • An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
  • He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

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