I had come to no conclusion by the time the gong sounded, and I went down to dinner with an open mind, but with an alert eye, for the detection of Poirot's mythical X.
For the moment I would accept everything that Poirot had said as gospel truth. There was a person under this roof who had already killed five times and who was preparing to kill again. Who was it?
In the drawing room before we went in to dinner I was introduced to Miss Cole and Major Allerton. The former was a tall, still handsome woman of thirty-three or -four. Major Allerton I instinctively disliked. He was a good-looking man in the early forties, broad-shouldered, bronzed of face, with an easy way of talking, most of what he said holding a double implication. He had the pouches under his eyes that come with a dissipated way of life. I suspected him of racketing around, of gambling, of drinking hard, and of being first and last a womanizer.
Old Colonel Luttrell, I saw, did not much like him either, and Boyd Carrington was also rather stiff in his manner towards him. Allerton's success was with the women of the party. Mrs Luttrell twittered to him delightedly, while he flattered her lazily and with a hardly concealed impertinence. I was also annoyed to see that Judith, too, seemed to enjoy his company and was exerting herself far more than usual to talk to him. Why the worst type of man can always be relied upon to please and interest the nicest of women has long been a problem beyond me. I knew instinctively that Allerton was a rotter - and nine men out of ten would have agreed with me. Whereas nine women or possibly the whole ten would have fallen for him immediately.
As we sat down at the dinner table and plates of white gluey liquid were set before us, I let my eyes rove round the table while I summed up the possibilities.
If Poirot were right and retained his clearness of brain unimpaired, one of these people was a dangerous murderer - and probably a lunatic as well.
Poirot had not actually said so, but I presumed that X was probably a man. Which of these men was it likely to be?
Surely not old Colonel Luttrell, with his indecision and his general air of feebleness. Norton, the man whom I had met rushing out of the house with field glasses? It seemed unlikely. He appeared to be a pleasant fellow, rather ineffective and lacking in vitality. Of course, I told myself, many murderers have been small insignificant men - driven to assert themselves by crime for that very reason. They resented being passed over and ignored. Norton might be a murderer of this type. But there was his fondness for birds. I have always believed that a love of nature was essentially a healthy sign in a man.
Boyd Carrington? Out of the question. A man with a name known all over the world. A fine sportsman, an administrator, a man universally liked and looked up to. Franklin I also dismissed. I knew how Judith respected and admired him.
Major Allerton now. I dwelt on him appraisingly. A nasty fellow if I ever saw one! The sort of fellow who would skin his grandmother. And all glossed over with this superficial charm of manner. He was talking now - telling a story of his own discomfiture and making everybody laugh with his rueful appreciation of a joke at his expense.
If Allerton was X, I decided, his crimes had been committed for profit in some way.
It was true that Poirot had not definitely said that X was a man. I considered Miss Cole as a possibility. Her movements were restless and jerky - obviously a woman of nerves. Handsome in a hag-ridden kind of way. Still, she looked normal enough. She, Mrs Luttrell and Judith were the only women at the dinner table. Mrs Franklin was having dinner upstairs in her room, and the nurse who attended to her had her meals after us.
After dinner I was standing by the drawing-room window looking out into the garden and thinking back to the time when I had seen Cynthia Murdoch, a young girl with auburn hair, run across that lawn. How charming she had looked in her white overall...
Lost in thoughts of the past, I started when Judith passed her arm through mine and impelled me with her out of the window onto the terrace.
She said abruptly, "What's the matter?"
I was startled. "The matter? What do you mean?"
"You've been so queer all through the evening. Why were you staring at everyone at dinner?"
I was annoyed. I had had no idea I had allowed my thoughts so much sway over me.
"Was I? I suppose I was thinking of the past. Seeing ghosts perhaps."
"Oh yes, of course you stayed here, didn't you, when you were a young man? An old lady was murdered here, or something?"
"Poisoned with strychnine."
"What was she like? Nice or nasty?"
I considered the question.
"She was a very kind woman," I said slowly. "Generous. Gave a lot to charity."
"Oh, that kind of generosity."
Judith's voice sounded faintly scornful. Then she asked a curious question:
"Were people - happy here?"
No, they had not been happy. That, at least I knew. I said slowly:
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because they felt like prisoners. Mrs Inglethorp, you see, had all the money - and - and doled it out. Her stepchildren could have no life of their own."
I heard Judith take a sharp breath. The hand on my arm tightened.
"That's wicked - wicked. An abuse of power. It shouldn't be allowed. Old people, sick people, they shouldn't have the power to hold up the lives of the young and strong. To keep them tied down, fretting, wasting their power and energy that could be used - that's needed. It's just selfishness."
"The old," I said drily, "have not got a monopoly of that quality."
"Oh, I know, Father, you think the young are selfish. So we are, perhaps, but it's a clean selfishness. At least we only want to do what we want ourselves, we don't want everybody else to do what we want, we don't want to make slaves of other people."
"No, you just trample them down if they happen to be in your way."
Judith squeezed my arm. She said:
"Don't be so bitter! I don't really do much trampling - and you've never tried to dictate our lives to any of us. We are grateful for that."
"I'm afraid," I said honestly, "that I'd have liked to, though. It was your mother who insisted you should be allowed to make your own mistakes."
Judith gave my arm another quick squeeze. She said:
"I know. You'd have liked to fuss over us like a hen! I do hate fuss. I won't stand it. But you do agree with me, don't you, about useful lives being sacrificed to useless ones?"
"It does sometimes happen," I admitted. "But there's no need for drastic measures... It's up to anybody just to walk out, you know."
"Yes, but is it? Is it?"
Her tone was so vehement that I looked at her in some astonishment. It was too dark to see her face clearly, She went on, her voice low and troubled.
"There's so much - it's so difficult - financial considerations, a sense of responsibility, reluctance to hurt someone you've been fond of - all those things, and some people are so unscrupulous - they know just how to play on all those feelings, Some people - some people are like leeches!"
"My dear Judith," I exclaimed, taken aback by the positive fury of her tone.
She seemed to realize that she had been overvehement, for she laughed and withdrew her arm from mine.
"Was I sounding very intense? It's a matter I feel rather hotly about. You see, I've known a case... An old brute. And when someone was brave enough to - to cut the knot and set the people she loved free, they called her mad. Mad? It was the sanest thing anyone could do - and the bravest!"
A horrible qualm passed over me. Where, not long ago, had I heard something like that?
"Judith," I said sharply. "Of what case are you talking?"
"Oh, nobody you know. Some friends of the Franklins. Old man called Litchfield. He was quite rich and practically starved his wretched daughters - never let them see anyone, or go out. He was mad, really, but not sufficiently so in the medical sense."
"And the eldest daughter murdered him," I said.
"Oh, I expect you read about it? I suppose you would call it murder - but it wasn't done from personal motives. Margaret Litchfield went straight to the police and gave herself up. I think she was very brave. I wouldn't have had the courage."
"The courage to give yourself up or the courage to commit murder?"
"Both."
"I'm very glad to hear it," I said severely, "and I don't like to hear you talking of murder as justified in certain cases." I paused and added: "What did Dr Franklin think?"
"Thought it served him right," said Judith. "You know, Father, some people really ask to be murdered."
"I won't have you talking like this, Judith. Who's been putting these ideas into your head?"
"Nobody."
"Well, let me tell you that it's all pernicious nonsense."
"I see. We'll leave it at that." She paused. "I came really to give you a message from Mrs Franklin. She'd like to see you if you don't mind coming up to her bedroom."
"I shall be delighted. I'm so sorry she was feeling too ill to come down to dinner."
"She's all right," said Judith unfeelingly, "She just likes making a fuss."
The young are very unsympathetic.
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 parted in the centre, and a long gentle face. She was very slender and her skin had a transparent fragility.
She was lying on a day bed, propped up with pillows, and wearing a very dainty negligee of white and pale blue.
Franklin and Boyd Carrington were there drinking coffee. Mrs Franklin welcomed me with an outstretched hand and a smile.
"How glad I am you've come, Captain Hastings. It will be so nice for Judith. 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 believe 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, terribly good to me. I don't know what I should do without her. She treats me just like a baby."
Nurse Craven was a tall good-looking young woman with a fine colour and a handsome head of auburn hair. I noticed her hands, which were long and white - very different from the hands of so many hospital nurses. She was in some respects a taciturn girl, and sometimes did not answer, She did not now, merely inclined her head.
"But really," went on Mrs Franklin, "John has been working that wretched 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 whistling to himself and jingling some loose change in his pocket. He started slightly at his wife's question.
"What's that, Barbara?"
"I was saying that you overwork poor Judith Hastings shamefully. Now Captain Hastings is here, he and I are going to put our heads together and we're not going to allow it."
Persiflage was not Dr Franklin's strong point. He looked vaguely worried and turned to Judith inquiringly. He mumbled:
"You must let me know if I overdo it."
Judith said:
"They're just trying to be funny. Talking of work, I wanted to ask 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 lay back on her pillows. She sighed. Nurse Craven said suddenly and rather disagreeably:
"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 standing by 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 and everything. Ugh!" She shuddered. "I know it's stupid, but I'm such a fool. It makes 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. His face as he looked down at her was changed, as gentle as any woman's. It was, somehow, impressive - for Boyd Carrington was so essentially a manly man.
"You've not changed much since you were seventeen, Babs," he said. "Do you remember that garden house of yours and the bird bath, and the cocoanuts?"
He turned his head to me.
"Barbara and I are old playmates," he said.
"Oh! 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 you pickabacks, my dear. And then later, I came home to find you a beautiful young lady - just on the point of making your debut in the world - and I did my share by taking you out on the golf links and teaching you to play golf. 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. "Sometimes I despair of getting the place livable."
"Oh, Bill, it could be made marvellous - quite marvellous!"
"Yes, Babs, but the trouble is I've got no ideas. Baths and some really comfortable chairs - that's all I can think of. It needs a woman."
