The mask was off. Indecision and deep unhappiness showed only too plainly.
I took my courage in my hands. I went to her. She did not hear me until I was beside her.
"Judith," I said. "For God's sake, Judith, don't mind so much."
She turned on me, startled.
"Father? I didn't hear you."
I went on, knowing that it would be fatal if she managed to turn me back to normal everyday conversation.
"Oh, my dearest child, don't think I don't know, that I can't see. He isn't worth it - oh, do believe me, he isn't worth it."
Her face, troubled, alarmed, was turned towards me. She said quietly:
"Do you think you really know what you are talking about?"
"I do know. You care about this man, But, my dear, it's no good."
She smiled sombrely. A heartbreaking smile.
"Perhaps I know that as well as you do."
"You don't. You can't. Oh, Judith, what can come of it all? He's a married man. There can be no future there for you - only sorrow and shame - and all ending in bitter self-loathing."
Her smile grew wider - even more sorrowful.
"How fluently you talk, don't you?"
"Give it up, Judith - give it all up."
"No!"
"He's not worth it, my dear."
She said very quietly and slowly:
"He's worth everything in the world to me."
"No, no. Judith, I beg of you -"
The smile vanished. She turned on me like an avenging fury.
"How dare you? How dare you interfere? I won't stand it. You are never to speak to me of this again. I hate you - I hate you. It's no business of yours. It's my life - my own secret inside life!"
She got up. With one firm hand she pushed me aside and went past me. Like an avenging fury. I stared after her - dismayed.
II
I was still there, dazed and helpless, unable to think out my next course of action, some quarter of an hour later.
I was there when Elizabeth Cole and Norton found me.
They were, I realized later, very kind to me. They saw, they must have seen, that I was in a state of great mental perturbation. But tactfully enough they made no slightest allusion to my state of mind. Instead they took me with them on a rambling walk. They were both nature lovers. Elizabeth Cole pointed out wild flowers to me, Norton showed me birds through his field glasses.
Their talk was gentle, soothing, concerned only with feathered beings and with woodland flora. Little by little I came back to normal although underneath I was still in a state of the utmost perturbation.
Moreover I was, as people are, convinced that any happening that occurred was connected with my own particular perplexity.
So, therefore, when Norton, his glasses to his eyes, exclaimed: "Hullo, if that isn't a speckled woodpecker. I never -" and then broke off suddenly, I immediately leapt to suspicion. I held out my hand for the glasses.
"Let me see."
My voice was peremptory.
Norton fumbled with the glasses. He said in a curious hesitating voice:
"I - I - made a mistake - it's flown away - at least, as a matter of fact, it was quite a common bird."
His face was white and troubled. He avoided looking at us. He seemed both bewildered and distressed.
Even now I cannot think I was altogether unreasonable in jumping to the conclusion that he had seen through those glasses of his something that he was determined to prevent my seeing.
Whatever it was that he had seen, he was so thoroughly taken aback by it that it was noticeable to both of us.
His glasses had been trained on a distant belt of woodland. What had he seen there?
I said peremptorily:
"Let me look."
I snatched at the glasses. I remember he tried to defend them from me, but he did it clumsily. I seized them roughly.
Norton said weakly:
"It wasn't really - I mean, the bird's gone... I wish -"
My hands shaking a little, I adjusted the glasses to my eyes. They were powerful glasses. I trained them as nearly as I could on the spot where I thought Norton had been looking.
But I saw nothing - nothing but a gleam of white (a girl's white dress?) disappearing into the trees.
I lowered the glasses. Without a word I handed them back to Norton. He did not meet my eyes. He was looking worried and perplexed.
We walked back to the house in silence and I remember that Norton was very silent all the way.
III
Mrs Franklin and Boyd Carrington came in shortly after we got back to the house. He had taken her in his car to Tadminster because she wanted to do some shopping.
She had done it, I gather, pretty thoroughly. Lots of parcels came out of the car and she was looking quite animated, talking and laughing and with quite a colour in her cheeks.
She sent Boyd Carrington up with a particularly fragile purchase and I gallantly received a further consignment.
Her talk was quicker and more nervous than usual.
"Frightfully hot, isn't it? I think there's going to be a storm. This weather must break soon. They say, you know, there's quite a water shortage. The worst drought there's been for years."
She went on, turning to Elizabeth Cole:
"What have you all been doing with yourselves? Where's John? He said he'd got a headache and was going to walk it off. Very unlike him to have a headache. I think, you know, he's worried about his experiments. They aren't going right or something. I wish he'd talk more about things."
She paused and then addressed Norton:
"You're very silent, Mr Norton. Is anything the matter? You look - you look scared. You haven't seen the ghost of old Mrs Whoever-it-was?"
Norton started.
"No, no. I haven't seen any ghosts. I - I was just thinking of something."
It was at that moment that Curtiss came through the doorway wheeling Poirot in his invalid chair.
He stopped with it in the hall, preparatory to taking his master out and carrying him up the stairs.
Poirot, his eyes suddenly alert, looked from one to the other of us.
He said sharply:
"What is it? Is anything the matter?"
None of us answered for a minute, then Barbara Franklin said with a little artificial laugh:
"No, of course not. What should be the matter? It's just - perhaps thunder coming? I - oh, dear - I'm terribly tired. Bring those things up, will you, Captain Hastings. Thank you so much."
I followed her up the stairs and along the east wing. Her room was the end one on that side.
Mrs Franklin opened the door. I was behind her, my arms full of parcels.
She stopped abruptly in the doorway. By the window Boyd Carrington was having his palm examined by Nurse Craven.
He looked up and laughed a little sheepishly.
"Hullo, I'm having my fortune told. Nurse is no end of a hand reader."
"Really? I had no idea of that." Barbara Franklin's voice was sharp. I had an idea that she was annoyed with Nurse Craven. "Please take these things, Nurse, will you? And you might mix me an egg flip. I feel very tired. A hot water bottle, too, please. I'll get to bed as soon as possible."
"Certainly, Mrs Franklin."
Nurse Craven moved forward. She showed no signs of anything but professional concern.
Mrs Franklin said:
"Please go, Bill, I'm terribly tired."
Boyd Carrington looked very concerned.
"Oh, I say, Babs, has it been too much for you? I am sorry. What a thoughtless fool I am. I shouldn't have let you overtire yourself."
Mrs Franklin gave him her angelic martyr's smile.
"I didn't want to say anything. I do hate being tiresome."
We two men went out of the room somewhat abashed and left the two women together.
Boyd Carrington said contritely:
"What a damned fool I am. Barbara seemed so bright and gay I forgot all about tiring her. Hope she's not knocked herself out."
I said mechanically:
"Oh, I expect she'll be all right after a night's rest."
He went down the stairs. I hesitated and then went along the other wing towards my own room, and Poirot's. The little man would be expecting me. For the first time I was reluctant to go to him. I had so much to occupy my thoughts, and I still had that dull sick feeling at the pit of my stomach.
I went slowly along the corridor.
From inside Allerton's room I heard voices. I don't think I meant consciously to listen, though I stopped for a minute automatically outside his door. Then, suddenly, the door opened and my daughter Judith came out.
She stopped dead when she saw me. I caught her by the arm and hustled her along into my room. I was suddenly intensely angry.
"What do you mean by going to that fellow's room?"
She looked at me steadily. She showed no anger now, only complete coldness. For some few seconds she did not reply.
I shook her by the arm.
"I won't have it, I tell you. You don't know what you are doing."
She said then in a low, biting voice:
"I think you have a perfectly filthy mind."
I said:
"I daresay I have. It's a reproach your generation is fond of levelling at mine. We have, at least, certain standards. Understand this, Judith, I forbid you absolutely to have anything more to do with that man."
She looked at me steadily. Then she said quietly:
"I see. So that's it."
"Do you deny that you're in love with him?"
"No."
"But you don't know what he is. You can't know."
Deliberately, without mincing my language, I repeated to her the story I had heard about Allerton.
"You see," I said when I had finished. "That's the kind of foul brute he is."
She seemed quite unmoved. Her lip curled upwards scornfully.
"I never thought he was a saint, I can assure you."
"Doesn't this make any difference to you? Judith, you can't be utterly depraved."
"Call it that if you like."
"Judith, you haven't - you aren't -"
I could not put my meaning into words. She shook her arm free from my detaining hand.
"Now, listen, Father. I do what I choose. You can't bully me. And it's no good ranting. I shall do exactly as I please with my life, and you can't stop me."
In another instant she was out of the room.
I found my knees trembling.
I sank down onto a chair. It was worse - much worse than I thought. The child was utterly infatuated. There was no one to whom I could appeal. Her mother, the only person she might have listened to, was dead. It all depended on me.
I do not think that either before or since, I have ever suffered as I suffered then...
IV
Presently I roused myself. I washed and shaved and changed. I went down to dinner. I behaved, I fancy, in quite a normal manner. Nobody seemed to notice anything amiss.
Once or twice I saw Judith flash a curious glance at me. She must have been puzzled, I think, by the way I was able to appear quite like my usual self.
And all the time, underneath, I was growing more and more determined.
All that I needed was courage - courage and brains.
After dinner we went outside, looked up at the sky, commented on the closeness of the atmosphere, prophesied rain - thunder - a storm.
Out of the tail of my eye I saw Judith disappear round the corner of the house. Presently Allerton strolled in the same direction.
I finished what I was saying to Boyd Carrington and wandered that way myself.
Norton, I think, tried to stop me. He took my arm. He tried, I think, to suggest walking up to the rose garden. I took no notice.
He was still with me as I turned the corner of the house.
They were there. I saw Judith's upturned face, saw Allerton's bent down over it - saw how he took her in his arms and the kiss that followed.
Then they broke away quickly. I took a step forward. Almost by main force, Norton hauled me back and round the corner. He said:
"Look here, you can't -"
I interrupted him. I said forcefully:
"I can. And I will."
"It's no good, my dear fellow. It's all very distressing, but all it comes to is that there's nothing you can do."
I was silent. He might think that that was so, but I knew better.
Norton went on:
"I know how ineffectual and maddened one feels, but the only thing to do is to admit defeat. Accept it, man!"
I didn't contradict him. I waited, allowing him to talk. Then I went firmly round the corner of the house again.
The two of them had disappeared now, but I had a shrewd idea of where they might be. There was a summerhouse concealed in a grove of lilac trees not far away.
I went towards it. I think Norton was still with me, but I'm not sure.
As I got nearer, I heard voices and stopped. It was Allerton's voice I heard.
"Well, then, my dear girl, that's settled. Don't make any more objections. You go up to town tomorrow. I'll say I'm running over to Ipswich to stay with a pal for a night or two. You wire from London that you can't get back. And who's to know of that charming little dinner at my flat? You won't regret it, I can promise you."
I felt Norton tugging at me, and suddenly, meekly, I turned. I almost laughed at the sight of his worried, anxious face. I let him drag me back to the house. I pretended to give in because I knew, at that moment, exactly what I was going to do...
I said to him clearly and distinctly:
"Don't worry, old chap. It's all no good - I see that now. You can't control your children's lives. I'm through."
He was ridiculously relieved.
Shortly afterwards, I told him I was going to bed early. I'd got a bit of a headache, I said.
He had no suspicions at all of what I was going to do.
V
I paused for a moment in the corridor. It was quite quiet. There was no one about. The beds had been all turned down ready for the night. Norton, who had a room on this side, I had left downstairs. Elizabeth Cole was playing bridge. Curtiss, I knew, would be downstairs having his supper. I had the place to myself.
I flatter myself that I have not worked with Poirot for so many years in vain. I knew just what precautions to take.
Allerton was not going to meet Judith in London tomorrow.
Allerton was not going anywhere tomorrow...
