"You are the third person to use that phrase!"
"Am I?" She looked startled. "What are you doing, M. Poirot?"
"Talking to people. That is what I do. Just talk to people."
"But you don't ask them things about the murder?"
Poirot shook his head.
"No, I just - what shall we say - pick up gossip."
"Does that help?"
"Sometimes it does. You would be surprised how much I know of the everyday life of Warmsley Vale in the last few weeks. I know who walked where, and who they met, and sometimes what they said. For instance, I know that the man Arden took the footpath to the village passing by Furrowbank and asking the way of Mr Rowley Cloade, and that he had a pack on his back and no luggage. I know that Rosaleen Cloade had spent over an hour at the farm with Rowley Cloade and that she had been happy there, unlike her usual self."
"Yes," said Lynn, "Rowley told me that. He said she was like someone having an afternoon out."
"Aha, he said that?" Poirot paused and went on, "Yes, I know a lot of the comings and goings. And I have heard a lot about people's difficulties - yours and your mother's, for example."
"There's no secret about any of us," said Lynn. "We've all tried to cadge money off Rosaleen. That's what you mean, isn't it?"
"I did not say so."
"Well, it's true! And I suppose you've heard things about me and Rowley and David."
"But you are going to marry Rowley Cloade?"
"Am I? I wish I knew... That's what I was trying to decide that day - when David burst out of the wood. It was like a great question mark in my brain. Shall I? Shall I? Even the train in the valley seemed to be asking the same thing. The smoke made a fine question mark in the sky."
Poirot's face took on a curious expression. Lynn misunderstood it. She cried out:
"Oh, don't you see, M. Poirot, it's all so difficult. It isn't a question of David at all. It's me! I've changed. I've been away for three - four years. Now I've come back I'm not the same person who went away. That's the tragedy everywhere. People coming home changed, having to readjust themselves. You can't go away and lead a different kind of life and not change!"
"You are wrong," said Poirot. "The tragedy of life is that people do not change."
She stared at him, shaking her head. He insisted:
"But yes. It is so. Why did you go away in the first place?"
"Why? I went into the Wrens. I went on service."
"Yes, yes, but why did you join the Wrens in the first place? You were engaged to be married. You were in love with Rowley Cloade. You could have worked, could you not, as a land girl, here in Warmsley Vale?"
"I could have, I suppose, but I wanted -"
"You wanted to get away. You wanted to go abroad, to see life. You wanted, perhaps, to get away from Rowley Cloade... And now you are restless, you still want - to get away! Oh, no, Mademoiselle, people do not change!"
"When I was out East, I longed for home," Lynn cried defensively.
"Yes, yes, where you are not, there you will want to be! That will always be so, perhaps, with you. You make a picture to yourself, you see, a picture of Lynn Marchmont coming home... But the picture does not come true, because the Lynn Marchmont whom you imagine is not the real Lynn Marchmont. She is the Lynn Marchmont you would like, to be."
Lynn asked bitterly:
"So, according to you, I shall never be satisfied anywhere?"
"I do not say that. But I do say that, when you went away, you were dissatisfied with your engagement, and that now you have come back, you are still dissatisfied with your engagement."
Lynn broke off a leaf and chewed it meditatively.
"You're rather a devil at knowing things, aren't you, M. Poirot?"
"It is my metier," said Poirot modestly. "There is a further truth, I think, that you have not yet recognised."
Lynn said sharply:
"You mean David, don't you? You think I am in love with David?"
"That is for you to say," murmured Poirot discreetly.
"And I - don't know! There's something in David that I'm afraid of - but there's something that draws me, too..."
She was silent a moment and then went on: "I was talking yesterday to his Brigadier. He came down here when he heard David was arrested to see what he could do. He's been telling me about David, how incredibly daring he was. He said David was one of the bravest people he'd ever had under him. And yet, you know, M. Poirot, in spite of all he said and his praise, I had the feeling that he wasn't sure, not absolutely sure that David hadn't done this!"
"And are you not sure, either?"
Lynn gave a crooked, rather pathetic smile.
"No - you see, I've never trusted David. Can you love someone you don't trust?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
"I've always been unfair to David - because I didn't trust him. I've believed quite a lot of the beastly local gossip - hints that David wasn't David Hunter at all - but just a boy friend of Rosaleen's. I was ashamed when I met the Brigadier and he talked to me about having known David as a boy in Ireland."
"C'est épatant," murmured Poirot, "how people can get hold of the wrong end of a stick!"
"What do you mean?"
"Just what I say. Tell me, did Mrs Cloade - the doctor's wife, I mean - did she ring up on the night of the murder?"
"Aunt Kathie? Yes, she did."
"What about?"
"Some incredible muddle she had got into over some accounts."
"Did she speak from her own house?"
"Why no, actually her telephone was out of order. She had to go out to a callbox."
"At ten minutes past ten?"
"Thereabouts. Our clocks never keep particularly good time."
"Thereabouts," said Poirot thoughtfully.
He went on delicately:
"That was not the only telephone call you had that evening?"
"No." Lynn spoke shortly.
"David Hunter rang you up from London?"
"Yes." She flared out suddenly, "I suppose you want to know what he said?"
"Oh, indeed I should not presume -"
"You're welcome to know! He said he was going away - clearing out of my life. He said he was no good to me and that he never would run straight - not even for my sake."
"And since that was probably true you did not like it," said Poirot.
"I hope he will go away - that is, if he gets acquitted all right... I hope they'll both go away to America or somewhere. Then, perhaps, we shall be able to stop thinking about them - we'll learn to stand on our own feet. We'll stop feeling ill will."
"Ill will?"
"Yes. I felt it first one night at Aunt Kathie's. She gave a sort of party. Perhaps it was because I was just back from abroad and rather on edge - but I seemed to feel it in the air eddying all round us. Ill will to her - to Rosaleen. Don't you see, we were wishing her dead - all of us! Wishing her dead... And that's awful, to wish that someone who's never done you any harm - may die -"
"Her death, of course, is the only thing that can do you any practical good."
Poirot spoke in a brisk and practical tone.
"You mean do us good financially? Her mere being here has done us harm in all the ways that matter! Envying a person, resenting them, cadging off them - it isn't good for one. Now, there she is, at Furrowbank, all alone. She looks like a ghost - she looks scared to death - she looks - oh! she looks as though she's going off her head. And she won't let us help! Not one of us. We've all tried. Mums asked her to come and stay with us. Aunt Frances asked her there. Even Aunt Kathie went along and offered to be with her at Furrowbank. But she won't have anything to do with us now and I don't blame her. She wouldn't even see Brigadier Conroy. I think she's ill, ill with worry and fright and misery. And we're doing nothing about it because she won't let us."
"Have you tried? You, yourself?"
"Yes," said Lynn. "I went up there yesterday. I said, was there anything I could do? She looked at me -"
Suddenly she broke off and shivered. "I think she hates me. She said, 'You, least of all.' David told her, I think, to stop on at Furrowbank, and she always does what David tells her. Rowley took her up eggs and butter from Long Willows. I think he's the only one of us she likes. She thanked him and said he'd always been kind. Rowley, of course, is kind."
"There are people," said Poirot, "for whom one has great sympathy - great pity, people who have too heavy a burden to bear. For Rosaleen Cloade I have great pity. If I could, I would help her. Even now, if she would listen -"
With sudden resolution he got to his feet.
"Come, Mademoiselle," he said, "let us go up to Furrowbank."
"You want me to come with you?"
"If you are prepared to be generous and understanding -"
Lynn cried:
"I am - indeed I am -"
Chapter 13
It took them only about five minutes to reach Furrowbank. The drive wound up an incline through carefully massed banks of rhododendrons. No trouble or expense had been spared by Gordon Cloade to make Furrowbank a showplace.
The parlourmaid who answered the front door looked surprised to see them and a little doubtful as to whether they could see Mrs Cloade. Madam, she said, wasn't up yet. However, she ushered them into the drawing-room and went upstairs with Poirot's message.
Poirot looked round him. He was contrasting this room with Frances Cloade's drawing-room - the latter such an intimate room, so characteristic of its mistress.
The drawing-room at Furrowbank was strictly impersonal - speaking only of wealth tempered by good taste. Gordon Cloade had seen to the latter - everything in the room was of good quality and of artistic merit, but there was no sign of any selectiveness, no clue to the personal tastes of the room's mistress. Rosaleen, it seemed, had not stamped upon the place any individuality of her own. She had lived in Furrowbank as a foreign visitor might live at the Ritz or at the Savoy.
"I wonder," thought Poirot, "if the other -"
Lynn broke the chain of his thought by asking him of what he was thinking, and why he looked so grim.
"The wages of sin, Mademoiselle, are said to be death. But sometimes the wages of sin seem to be luxury. Is that any more endurable, I wonder? To be cut off from one's own home life. To catch, perhaps, a single glimpse of it when the way back to it is barred -"
He broke off. The parlourmaid, her superior manner laid aside, a mere frightened middle-aged woman, came running into the room, stammering and choking with words she could hardly get out.
"Oh, Miss Marchmont! Oh, sir, the mistress - upstairs - she's very bad - she doesn't speak and I can't rouse her and her hand's so cold."
Sharply, Poirot turned and ran out of the room. Lynn and the maid came behind him. He raced up to the first floor. The parlourmaid indicated the open door facing the head of the stairs.
It was a large beautiful bedroom, the sun pouring in through the open windows on to pale beautiful rugs.
In the big carved bedstead Rosaleen was lying - apparently asleep. Her long dark lashes lay on her cheeks, her head turned naturally into the pillow. There was a crumpled-up handkerchief in one hand. She looked like a sad child who had cried itself to sleep.
Poirot picked up her hand and felt for the pulse. The hand was ice-cold and told him what he already guessed.
He said quietly to Lynn:
"She has been dead some time. She died in her sleep."
"Oh, sir - oh - what shall we do?" The parlourmaid burst out crying.
"Who was her doctor?"
"Uncle Lionel," said Lynn.
Poirot said to the parlourmaid: "Go and telephone to Dr Cloade." She went out of the room, still sobbing. Poirot moved here and there about the room.
A small white cardboard box beside the bed bore a label, "One powder to be taken at bedtime." Using his handkerchief, he pushed the box open. There were three powders left. He moved across to the mantelpiece, then to the writing-table.
The chair in front of it was pushed aside, the blotter was open. A sheet of paper was there, with words scrawled in an unformed childish hand.
"I don't know what to do... I can't go on... I've been so wicked. I must tell someone and get peace... I didn't mean to he so wicked to begin with. I didn't know all that was going to come of it. I must write down -"
The words sprawled off in a dash. The pen lay where it had been flung down.
Poirot stood looking down at those written words. Lynn still stood by the bed looking down at the dead girl.
Then the door was pushed violently open and David Hunter strode breathlessly into the room.
"David," Lynn started forward. "Have they released you? I'm so glad -"
He brushed her words aside, as he brushed her aside, thrusting her almost roughly out of the way as he bent over the still white figure.
"Rosa! Rosaleen..." He touched her hand, then he swung round on Lynn, his face blazing with anger. His words came high and deliberate!
"So you've killed her, have you? You've got rid of her at last! You got rid of me, sent me to gaol on a trumped-up charge, and then, amongst you all, you put her out of the way! All of you? Or just one of you? I don't care which it is! You killed her! You wanted the damned money - now you've got it! Her death gives it to you! You'll all be out of Queer Street now. You'll all be rich - a lot of dirty murdering thieves, that's what you are! You weren't able to touch her so long as I was by. I knew how to protect my sister - she was never one to be able to protect herself. But when she was alone here, you saw your chance and you took it." He paused, swayed slightly, and said in a low quivering voice "Murderers."
Lynn cried out:
"No, David. No, you're wrong. None of us would kill her. We wouldn't do such a thing."
