弄假成真13
时间：2025-03-03 03:30:39
（单词翻译:单击）
Thirteen
After Mrs. Masterton had left, Poirot went out and strolled through the woods. His nerves were not
quite what they should be. He felt an irresistible desire to look behind every bush and to consider
every thicket of rhododendron as a possible hiding place for a body. He came at last to the Folly
and, going inside it, he sat down on the stone bench there, to rest his feet which were, as was his
custom, enclosed in tight, pointed patent leather shoes.
Through the trees he could catch faint glimmers of the river and of the wooded banks on the
opposite side. He found himself agreeing with the young architect that this was no place to put an
architectural fantasy of this kind. Gaps could be cut in the trees, of course, but even then there
would be no proper view. Whereas, as Michael Weyman had said, on the grassy bank near the
house a Folly could have been erected with a delightful vista right down the river to Helmmouth.
Poirot’s thoughts flew off at a tangent. Helmmouth, the yacht Espérance, and Etienne de Sousa.
The whole thing must tie up in some kind of pattern, but what the pattern was he could not
visualize. Tempting strands of it showed here and there but that was all.
Something that glittered caught his eye and he bent to pick it up. It had come to rest in a small
crack of the concrete base to the temple. He held it in the palm of his hand and looked at it with a
faint stirring of recognition. It was a little gold aeroplane charm. As he frowned at it, a picture
came into his mind. A bracelet. A gold bracelet hung over with dangling charms. He was sitting
once more in the tent and the voice of Madame Zuleika, alias Sally Legge, was talking of dark
women and journeys across the sea and good fortune in a letter. Yes, she had had on a bracelet
from which depended a multiplicity of small gold objects. One of these modern fashions which
repeated the fashions of Poirot’s early days. Probably that was why it had made an impression on
him. Some time or other, presumably, Mrs. Legge had sat here in the Folly, and one of the charms
had fallen from her bracelet. Perhaps she had not even noticed it. It might have been yesterday
afternoon.
Poirot considered that latter point. Then he heard footsteps outside and looked up sharply. A
figure came round to the front of the Folly and stopped, startled, at the sight of Poirot. Poirot
looked with a considering eye on the slim, fair young man wearing a shirt on which a variety of
tortoise and turtle was depicted. The shirt was unmistakable. He had observed it closely yesterday
when its wearer was throwing coconuts.
He noticed that the young man was almost unusually perturbed. He said quickly in a foreign
accent:
“I beg your pardon—I did not know—”
Poirot smiled gently at him but with a reproving air.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that you are trespassing.”
“Yes, I am sorry.”
“You come from the hostel?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. I thought perhaps one could get through the woods this way and so to the
quay.”
“I am afraid,” said Poirot gently, “that you will have to go back the way you came. There is no
through road.”
The young man said again, showing all his teeth in a would-be agreeable smile:
“I am sorry. I am very sorry.”
He bowed and turned away.
Poirot came out of the Folly and back on to the path, watching the boy retreat. When he got to
the ending of the path, he looked over his shoulder. Then, seeing Poirot watching him, he
quickened his pace and disappeared round the bend.
“Eh bien,” said Poirot to himself, “is this a murderer I have seen, or is it not?”
The young man had certainly been at the fête yesterday and had scowled when he had collided
with Poirot, and just as certainly therefore he must know quite well that there was no through path
by way of the woods to the ferry. If, indeed, he had been looking for a path to the ferry he would
not have taken this path by the Folly, but would have kept on the lower level near the river.
Moreover, he had arrived at the Folly with the air of one who has reached his rendezvous, and
who is badly startled at finding the wrong person at the meeting place.
“So it is like this,” said Poirot to himself. “He came here to meet someone. Who did he come to
meet?” He added as an afterthought, “And why?”
He strolled down to the bend of the path and looked at it where it wound away into the trees.
There was no sign of the young man in the turtle shirt now. Presumably he had deemed it prudent
to retreat as rapidly as possible. Poirot retraced his steps, shaking his head.
Lost in thought, he came quietly round the side of the Folly, and stopped on the threshold,
startled in his turn. Sally Legge was there on her knees, her head bent down to the cracks in the
flooring. She jumped up, startled.
“Oh, M. Poirot, you gave me such a shock. I didn’t hear you coming.”
“You were looking for something, Madame?”
“I—no, not exactly.”
“You had lost something, perhaps,” said Poirot. “Dropped something. Or perhaps…” He
adopted a roguish, gallant air, “Or perhaps, Madame, it is a rendezvous. I am, most unfortunately,
not the person you came to meet?”
She had recovered her aplomb by now.
“Does one ever have rendezvous in the middle of the morning?” she demanded, questioningly.
“Sometimes,” said Poirot, “one has to have a rendezvous at the only time one can. Husbands,”
he added sententiously, “are sometimes jealous.”
“I doubt if mine is,” said Sally Legge.
She said the words lightly enough, but behind them Poirot heard an undertone of bitterness.
“He’s so completely engrossed in his own affairs.”
“All women complain of that in husbands,” said Poirot. “Especially in English husbands,” he
added.
“You foreigners are more gallant.”
“We know,” said Poirot, “that it is necessary to tell a woman at least once a week, and
preferably three or four times, that we love her; and that it is also wise to bring her a few flowers,
to pay her a few compliments, to tell her that she looks well in her new dress or new hat.”
“Is that what you do?”
“I, Madame, am not a husband,” said Hercule Poirot. “Alas!” he added.
“I’m sure there’s no alas about it. I’m sure you’re quite delighted to be a carefree bachelor.”
“No, no, Madame, it is terrible all that I have missed in life.”
“I think one’s a fool to marry,” said Sally Legge.
“You regret the days when you painted in your studio in Chelsea?”
“You seem to know all about me, M. Poirot?”
“I am a gossip,” said Hercule Poirot. “I like to hear all about people.” He went on, “Do you
really regret, Madame?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She sat down impatiently on the seat. Poirot sat beside her.
He witnessed once more the phenomenon to which he was becoming accustomed. This
attractive, redhaired girl was about to say things to him that she would have thought twice about
saying to an Englishman.
“I hoped,” she said, “that when we came down here for a holiday away from everything, that
things would be the same again…But it hasn’t worked out like that.”
“No?”
“No. Alec’s just as moody and—oh, I don’t know—wrapped up in himself. I don’t know what’s
the matter with him. He’s so nervy and on edge. People ring him up and leave queer messages for
him and he won’t tell me anything. That’s what makes me mad. He won’t tell me anything! I
thought at first it was some other woman, but I don’t think it is. Not really….”
But her voice held a certain doubt which Poirot was quick to notice.
“Did you enjoy your tea yesterday afternoon, Madame?” he asked.
“Enjoy my tea?” She frowned at him, her thoughts seeming to come back from a long way
away. Then she said hastily, “Oh, yes. You’ve no idea how exhausting it was, sitting in that tent
muffled up in all those veils. It was stifling.”
“The tea tent also must have been somewhat stifling?”
“Oh, yes, it was. However, there’s nothing like a cuppa, is there?”
“You were searching for something just now, were you not, Madame? Would it, by any
possibility, be this?” He held out in his hand the little gold charm.
“I—oh, yes. Oh, thank you, M. Poirot. Where did you find it?”
“It was here, on the floor, in that crack over there.”
“I must have dropped it some time.”
“Yesterday?”
“Oh, no, not yesterday. It was before that.”
“But surely, Madame, I remember seeing that particular charm on your wrist when you were
telling me my fortune.”
Nobody could tell a deliberate lie better than Hercule Poirot. He spoke with complete assurance
and before that assurance Sally Legge’s eyelids dropped.
“I don’t really remember,” she said. “I only noticed this morning that it was missing.”
“Then I am happy,” said Poirot gallantly, “to be able to restore it to you.”
She was turning the little charm over nervously in her fingers. Now she rose.
“Well, thank you, M. Poirot, thank you very much,” she said. Her breath was coming rather
unevenly and her eyes were nervous.
She hurried out of the Folly. Poirot leaned back in the seat and nodded his head slowly.
No, he said to himself, no, you did not go to the tea tent yesterday afternoon. It was not because
you wanted your tea that you were so anxious to know if it was four o’clock. It was here you came
yesterday afternoon. Here, to the Folly. Halfway to the boathouse. You came here to meet
someone.
Once again he heard footsteps approaching. Rapid impatient footsteps. “And here perhaps,” said
Poirot, smiling in anticipation, “comes whoever it was that Mrs. Legge came up here to meet.”
But then, as Alec Legge came round the corner of the Folly, Poirot ejaculated:
“Wrong again.”
“Eh? What’s that?” Alec Legge looked startled.
“I said,” explained Poirot, “that I was wrong again. I am not often wrong,” he explained, “and it
exasperates me. It was not you I expected to see.”
“Whom did you expect to see?” asked Alec Legge.
Poirot replied promptly.
“A young man—a boy almost—in one of these gaily-patterned shirts with turtles on it.”
He was pleased at the effect of his words. Alec Legge took a step forward. He said rather
incoherently:
“How do you know? How did—what d’you mean?”
“I am psychic,” said Hercule Poirot, and closed his eyes.
Alec Legge took another couple of steps forward. Poirot was conscious that a very angry man
was standing in front of him.
“What the devil did you mean?” he demanded.
“Your friend has, I think,” said Poirot, “gone back to the Youth Hostel. If you want to see him
you will have to go there to find him.”
“So that’s it,” muttered Alec Legge.
He dropped down at the other end of the stone bench.
“So that’s why you’re down here? It wasn’t a question of ‘giving away the prizes.’ I might have
known better.” He turned towards Poirot. His face was haggard and unhappy. “I know what it
must seem like,” he said. “I know what the whole thing looks like. But it isn’t as you think it is.
I’m being victimized. I tell you that once you get into these people’s clutches, it isn’t so easy to
get out of them. And I want to get out of them. That’s the point. I want to get out of them. You get
desperate, you know. You feel like taking desperate measures. You feel you’re caught like a rat in
a trap and there’s nothing you can do. Oh, well, what’s the good of talking! You know what you
want to know now, I suppose. You’ve got your evidence.”
He got up, stumbled a little as though he could hardly see his way, then rushed off energetically
without a backward look.
Hercule Poirot remained behind with his eyes very wide open and his eyebrows rising.
“All this is very curious,” he murmured. “Curious and interesting. I have the evidence I need,
have I? Evidence of what? Murder?”
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