帷幕6

Chapter 5

I had only met Mrs Franklin once before. She was a woman about thirty –of what I should describe as the madonna type. Big brown eyes, hair par-ted in the centre, and a long gentle face. She was very slender and her skinhad a transparent fragility.

She was lying on a day bed, propped up with pillows, and wearing avery dainty negligee of white and pale blue.

Franklin and Boyd Carrington were there drinking coffee. Mrs Franklinwelcomed me with an outstretched hand and a smile.

‘How glad I am you’ve come, Captain Hastings. It will be so nice for Ju-dith. The child has really been working far too hard.’

‘She looks very well on it,’ I said as I took the fragile little hand in mine.

Barbara Franklin sighed. ‘Yes, she’s lucky. How I envy her. I don’t be-lieve really that she knows what ill health is. What do you think, Nurse?

Oh! Let me introduce you. This is Nurse Craven who’s so terribly, terriblygood to me. I don’t know what I should do without her. She treats me justlike a baby.’

Nurse Craven was a tall, good-looking young woman with a fine colourand a handsome head of auburn hair. I noticed her hands which werelong and white – very different from the hands of so many hospitalnurses. She was in some respects a taciturn girl, and sometimes did notanswer. She did not now, merely inclined her head.

‘But really,’ went on Mrs Franklin, ‘John has been working thatwretched girl of yours too hard. He’s such a slave-driver. You are a slave-driver, aren’t you, John?’

Her husband was standing looking out of the window. He was whistlingto himself and jingling some loose change in his pocket. He started slightlyat his wife’s question.

‘What’s that, Barbara?’

‘I was saying that you overwork poor Judith Hastings shamefully. NowCaptain Hastings is here, he and I are going to put our heads together andwe’re not going to allow it.’

Persiflage was not Dr Franklin’s strong point. He looked vaguely wor-ried and turned to Judith enquiringly. He mumbled: ‘You must let meknow if I overdo it.’

Judith said: ‘They’re just trying to be funny. Talking of work, I wanted toask you about that stain for the second slide – you know, the one that –’

He turned to her eagerly and broke in. ‘Yes, yes. I say, if you don’t mind,let’s go down to the lab. I’d like to be quite sure –’

Still talking, they went out of the room together. Barbara Franklin layback on her pillows. She sighed. Nurse Craven said suddenly and ratherdisagreeably: ‘It’s Miss Hastings who’s the slave-driver, I think!’

Again Mrs Franklin sighed. She murmured: ‘I feel so inadequate. I ought,I know, to take more interest in John’s work, but I just can’t do it. I daresay it’s something wrong in me, but –’

She was interrupted by a snort from Boyd Carrington who was standingby the fireplace.

‘Nonsense, Babs,’ he said. ‘You’re all right. Don’t worry yourself.’

‘Oh but, Bill, dear, I do worry. I get so discouraged about myself. It’s all –I can’t help feeling it – it’s all so nasty. The guinea pigs and the rats andeverything. Ugh!’ She shuddered. ‘I know it’s stupid, but I’m such a fool. Itmakes me feel quite sick. I just want to think of all the lovely happy things– birds and flowers and children playing. You know, Bill.’

He came over and took the hand she held out to him so pleadingly. Hisface as he looked down at her was changed, as gentle as any woman’s. Itwas, somehow, impressive – for Boyd Carrington was so essentially amanly man.

‘You’ve not changed much since you were seventeen, Babs,’ he said. ‘Doyou remember that garden house of yours and the bird bath and thecoconuts?’

He turned his head to me. ‘Barbara and I are old playmates,’ he said.

‘Old playmates!’ she protested.

‘Oh, I’m not denying that you’re over fifteen years younger than I am.

But I played with you as a tiny tot when I was a young man. Gave youpick-a-backs, my dear. And then later I came home to find you a beautifulyoung lady – just on the point of making your début in the world – and Idid my share by taking you out on the golf links and teaching you to playgolf. Do you remember?’

‘Oh, Bill, do you think I’d forget?’

‘My people used to live in this part of the world,’ she explained to me.

‘And Bill used to come and stay with his old uncle, Sir Everard, at Knatton.’

‘And what a mausoleum it was – and is,’ said Boyd Carrington. ‘Some-times I despair of getting the place liveable.’

‘Oh, Bill, it could be made marvellous – quite marvellous!’

‘Yes, Babs, but the trouble is I’ve got no ideas. Baths and some reallycomfortable chairs – that’s all I can think of. It needs a woman.’

‘I’ve told you I’ll come and help. I mean it. Really.’

Sir William looked doubtfully towards Nurse Craven. ‘If you’re strongenough, I could drive you over. What do you think, Nurse?’

‘Oh yes, Sir William. I really think it would do Mrs Franklin good – ifshe’s careful not to overtire herself, of course.’

‘That’s a date, then,’ said Boyd Carrington. ‘And now you have a goodnight’s sleep. Get into good fettle for tomorrow.’

We both wished Mrs Franklin good night and went out together. As wewent down the stairs, Boyd Carrington said gruffly: ‘You’ve no idea what alovely creature she was at seventeen. I was home from Burma – my wifedied out there, you know. Don’t mind telling you I completely lost myheart to her. She married Franklin three or four years afterwards. Don’tthink it’s been a happy marriage. It’s my idea that that’s what lies at thebottom of her ill health. Fellow doesn’t understand her or appreciate her.

And she’s the sensitive kind. I’ve an idea that this delicacy of hers is partlynervous. Take her out of herself, amuse her, interest her, and she looks adifferent creature! But that damned sawbones only takes an interest intest tubes and West African natives and cultures.’ He snorted angrily.

I thought that there was, perhaps, something in what he said. Yet it sur-prised me that Boyd Carrington should be attracted by Mrs Franklin who,when all was said and done, was a sickly creature, though pretty in a frail,chocolate-box way. But Boyd Carrington himself was so full of vitality andlife that I should have thought he would merely have been impatient withthe neurotic type of invalid. However, Barbara Franklin must have beenquite lovely as a girl, and with many men, especially those of the idealistictype such as I judged Boyd Carrington to be, early impressions die hard.

Downstairs, Mrs Luttrell pounced upon us and suggested bridge. I ex-cused myself on the plea of wanting to join Poirot.

I found my friend in bed. Curtiss was moving around the room tidyingup, but he presently went out, shutting the door behind him.

‘Confound you, Poirot,’ I said. ‘You and your infernal habit of keepingthings up your sleeve. I’ve spent the whole evening trying to spot X.’

‘That must have made you somewhat distrait,’ observed my friend. ‘Didnobody comment on your abstraction and ask you what was the matter?’

I reddened slightly, remembering Judith’s questions. Poirot, I think, ob-served my discomfiture. I noticed a small malicious smile on his lips. Hemerely said, however: ‘And what conclusion have you come to on thatpoint?’

‘Would you tell me if I was right?’

‘Certainly not.’

I watched his face closely.

‘I had considered Norton –’

Poirot’s face did not change.

‘Not,’ I said, ‘that I’ve anything to go upon. He just struck me as perhapsless unlikely than anyone else. And then he’s – well – inconspicuous. Ishould imagine the kind of murderer we’re after would have to be incon-spicuous.’

‘That is true. But there are more ways than you think of being incon-spicuous.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Supposing, to take a hypothetical case, that if a sinister stranger arrivesthere some weeks before the murder, for no apparent reason, he will benoticeable. It would be better, would it not, if the stranger were to be anegligible personality, engaged in some harmless sport like fishing.’

‘Or watching birds,’ I agreed. ‘Yes, but that’s just what I was saying.’

‘On the other hand,’ said Poirot, ‘it might be better still if the murdererwere already a prominent personality – that is to say, he might be thebutcher. That would have the further advantage that no one notices blood-stains on a butcher!’

‘You’re just being ridiculous. Everybody would know if the butcher hadquarrelled with the baker.’

‘Not if the butcher had become a butcher simply in order to have a chanceof murdering the baker. One must always look one step behind, my friend.’

I looked at him closely, trying to decide if a hint lay concealed in thosewords. If they meant anything definite, they would seem to point to Col-onel Luttrell. Had he deliberately opened a guest house in order to havean opportunity of murdering one of the guests?

Poirot very gently shook his head. He said: ‘It is not from my face thatyou will get the answer.’

‘You really are a maddening fellow, Poirot,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Anyway,Norton isn’t my only suspect. What about this fellow Allerton?’

Poirot, his face still impassive, enquired: ‘You do not like him?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Ah. What you call the nasty bit of goods. That is right, is it not?’

‘Definitely. Don’t you think so?’

‘Certainly. He is a man,’ said Poirot slowly, ‘very attractive to women.’

I made an exclamation of contempt. ‘How women can be so foolish.

What do they see in a fellow like that?’

‘Who can say? But it is always so. The mauvais sujet – always women areattracted to him.’

‘But why?’

Poirot shrugged his shoulders. ‘They see something, perhaps, that we donot.’

‘But what?’

‘Danger, possibly … Everyone, my friend, demands a spice of danger intheir lives. Some get it vicariously – as in bullfights. Some read about it.

Some find it at the cinema. But I am sure of this – too much safety is ab-horrent to the nature of a human being. Men find danger in many ways –women are reduced to finding their danger mostly in affairs of sex. That iswhy, perhaps, they welcome the hint of the tiger – the sheathed claws, thetreacherous spring. The excellent fellow who will make a good and kindhusband – they pass him by.’

I considered this gloomily in silence for some minutes. Then I revertedto the previous theme.

‘You know, Poirot,’ I said. ‘It will be easy enough really for me to find outwho X is. I’ve only got to poke about and find who was acquainted with allthe people. I mean the people of your five cases.’

I brought this out triumphantly, but Poirot merely gave me a look ofscorn.

‘I have not demanded your presence here, Hastings, in order to watchyou clumsily and laboriously following the way I have already trodden.

And let me tell you it is not quite so simple as you think. Four of thosecases took place in this county. The people assembled under this roof arenot a collection of strangers who have arrived here independently. This isnot a hotel in the usual sense of the word. The Luttrells come from thispart of the world; they were badly off and bought this place and started itas a venture. The people who come here are their friends, or friends re-commended by their friends. Sir William persuaded the Franklins tocome. They in turn suggested it to Norton, and, I believe, to Miss Cole –and so on. Which is to say that there is a very fair chance of a certain per-son who is known to one of these people being known to all of thesepeople. It is also open to X to lie wherever the facts are best known. Takethe case of the labourer Riggs. The village where that tragedy occurred isnot far from the house of Boyd Carrington’s uncle. Mrs Franklin’s people,also, lived near. The inn in the village is much frequented by tourists.

Some of Mrs Franklin’s family friends used to put up there. Franklin him-self has stayed there. Norton and Miss Cole may have stayed there andprobably have.

‘No, no, my friend. I beg that you will not make these clumsy attempts tounravel a secret that I refuse to reveal to you.’

‘It’s so damned silly. As though I should be likely to give it away. I tellyou, Poirot, I’m tired of these jokes about my speaking countenance. It’snot funny.’

Poirot said quietly: ‘Are you so sure that is the only reason? Do you notrealize, my friend, that such knowledge may be dangerous? Do you not seethat I concern myself with your safety?’

I stared at him open-mouthed. Up till that minute I had not appreciatedthat aspect of the matter. But it was, of course, true enough. If a clever andresourceful murderer who had already got away with five crimes – unsus-pected as he thought – once awoke to the fact that someone was on histrail, then indeed there was danger for those on his track.

I said sharply: ‘But then you – you yourself are in danger, Poirot?’

Poirot, as far as he was able to in his crippled state, made a gesture ofsupreme disdain.

‘I am accustomed to that; I can protect myself. And see, have I not heremy faithful dog to protect me also? My excellent and loyal Hastings!’

 

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