Five

They had brought her out by a side door.

She had been aware of faces welcoming her… Roddy… the detective with the bigmoustaches….

But it was to Peter Lord that she turned.

“I want to get away….”

She was with him now in the smooth Daimler, driving rapidly out of London.

He had said nothing to her. She had sat in the blessed silence.

Every minute taking her farther and farther away.

A new life….

That was what she wanted….

A new life.

She said suddenly:

“I—I want to go somewhere quiet…where there won’t be any faces….”

Peter Lord said quietly:

“That’s all arranged. You’re going to a sanatorium. Quiet place. Lovely gardens. No one willbother you—or get at you.”

She said with a sigh:

“Yes—that’s what I want….”

It was being a doctor, she supposed, that made him understand. He knew—and didn’t botherher. So blessedly peaceful to be here with him, going away from it all, out of London…to a placethat was safe….

She wanted to forget—forget everything… None of it was real any longer. It was all gone,vanished, finished with—the old life and the old emotions. She was a new, strange, defencelesscreature, very crude and raw, beginning all over again. Very strange and very afraid….

But it was comforting to be with Peter Lord….

They were out of London now, passing through suburbs.

She said at last:

“It was all you—all you….”

Peter Lord said:

“It was Hercule Poirot. The fellow’s a kind of magician¹!”

But Elinor shook her head. She said obstinately²:

“It was you. You got hold of him and made him do it!”

Peter grinned.

“I made him do it all right….”

Elinor said:

“Did you know I hadn’t done it, or weren’t you sure?”

Peter said simply:

“I was never quite sure.”

Elinor said:

“That’s why I nearly said: ‘guilty’ right at the beginning…because, you see, I had thought ofit… I thought of it that day when I laughed outside the cottage.”

Peter said:

“Yes, I knew.”

She said wonderingly:

“It seems so queer³ now…like a kind of possession. That day I bought the paste and cut thesandwiches I was pretending to myself, I was thinking: ‘I’ve mixed poison with this, and when sheeats she will die—and then Roddy will come back to me.’”

Peter Lord said:

“It helps some people to pretend that sort of thing to themselves. It isn’t a bad thing, really. Youtake it out of yourself in a fantasy. Like sweating a thing out of your system.”

Elinor said:

“Yes, that’s true. Because it went — suddenly! The blackness, I mean! When that womanmentioned the rose tree outside the Lodge—it all swung back into—into being normal again….”

Then with a shiver she said:

“Afterwards when we went into the morning room and she was dead—dying, at least—I feltthen: Is there much difference between thinking and doing murder?”

Peter Lord said:

“All the difference in the world!”

“Yes, but is there?”

“Of course there is! Thinking murder doesn’t really do any harm. People have silly ideas aboutthat; they think it’s the same as planning murder! It isn’t. If you think murder long enough, yousuddenly come through the blackness and feel that it’s all rather silly!”

Elinor cried:

“Oh! you are a comforting person….”

Peter Lord said rather incoherently:

“Not at all. Just common sense.”

Elinor said, and there were suddenly tears in her eyes:

“Every now and then—in court—I looked at you. It gave me courage. You looked so—soordinary.”

Then she laughed. “That’s rude!”

He said:

“I understand. When you’re in the middle of a nightmare⁴ something ordinary is the only hope.

Anyway, ordinary things are the best, I’ve always thought so.”

For the first time since she had entered the car she turned her head and looked at him.

The sight of his face didn’t hurt her as Roddy’s face always hurt her; it gave her no sharp pangof pain and pleasure mixed; instead, it made her feel warm and comforted.

She thought:

“How nice his face is…nice and funny—and, yes, comforting….”

They drove on.

They came at last to a gateway⁵ and a drive that wound upwards⁶ till it reached a quiet whitehouse on the side of a hill.

He said:

“You’ll be quite safe here. No one will bother you.”

Impulsively⁷ she laid her hand on his arm.

She said:

“You—you’ll come and see me?”

“Of course.”

“Often?”

Peter Lord said:

“As often as you want me.”

She said:

“Please come—very often….”

 

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