帷幕42

II

Yes, I must put it down.

It must be said.

The funeral was over. I was sitting with Judith, trying to make a fewsketchy plans for the future.

She said then: ‘But you see, dear, I shan’t be here.’

‘Not here?’

‘I shan’t be in England.’

I stared at her.

‘I haven’t liked to tell you before, Father. I didn’t want to make thingsworse for you. But you’ve got to know now. I hope you won’t mind toomuch. I’m going to Africa, you see, with Dr Franklin.’

I burst out at that. It was impossible. She couldn’t do a thing like that.

Everyone would be bound to talk. To be an assistant to him in Englandand especially when his wife was alive was one thing, but to go abroadwith him to Africa was another. It was impossible and I was going to for-bid it absolutely. Judith must not do such a thing!

She didn’t interrupt. She let me finish. She smiled very faintly.

‘But, dearest,’ she said, ‘I’m not going as his assistant. I’m going as hiswife.’

It hit me between the eyes.

I said – or rather stammered: ‘Al – Allerton?’

She looked faintly amused. ‘There was never anything in that. I wouldhave told you so if you hadn’t made me so angry. Besides, I wanted you tothink, well – what you did think. I didn’t want you to know it was – John.’

‘But I saw him kiss you one night – on the terrace.’ She said impatiently:

‘Oh, I dare say. I was miserable that night. These things happen. Surelyyou know that?’

I said: ‘You can’t marry Franklin yet – so soon.’

‘Yes, I can. I want to go out with him, and you’ve just said yourself it’seasier. We’ve nothing to wait for – now.’

Judith and Franklin. Franklin and Judith.

Do you understand the thoughts that came into my mind – the thoughtsthat had lain under the surface for some time?

Judith with a bottle in her hand, Judith with her young passionate voicedeclaring that useless lives should go to make way for useful ones – Judithwhom I loved and whom Poirot also had loved. Those two people thatNorton had seen – had they been Judith and Franklin? But if so – if so – no,that couldn’t be true. Not Judith. Franklin, perhaps – a strange man, aruthless man, a man who if he made up his mind to murder, mightmurder again and again.

Poirot had been willing to consult Franklin.

Why? What had he said to him that morning?

But not Judith. Not my lovely grave young Judith. And yet how strangePoirot had looked. How those words had rung out: ‘You may prefer to say“Ring down the curtain” …’

And suddenly a fresh idea struck me. Monstrous! Impossible! Was thewhole story of X a fabrication? Had Poirot come to Styles because hefeared a tragedy in the Franklin ménage? Had he come to watch over Ju-dith? Was that why he had resolutely told me nothing? Because the wholestory of X was a fabrication, a smoke-screen?

Was the whole heart of the tragedy Judith, my daughter?

Othello!It was Othello I had taken from the bookcase that night whenMrs Franklin had died. Was that the clue?

Judith that night looking, so someone had said, like her namesake beforeshe cut off the head of Holofernes. Judith – with death in her heart?

 

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