Смерть на Ниле / Death on the Nile

Chapter 10

‘Will you explain to me, Madame, the meaning of the word “fey”?’

Mrs Allerton looked slightly surprised. She and Poirot were toiling slowly up to the rock overlooking the Second Cataract. Most of the others had gone up on camels, but Poirot had felt that the motion of the camel was slightly reminiscent of that of a ship. Mrs Allerton had put it on the grounds of personal indignity.

They had arrived at Wadi Halfa the night before. This morning two launches had conveyed all the party to the Second Cataract, with the exception of Signor Richetti, who had insisted on making an excursion of his own to a remote spot called Semna, which he explained was of paramount interest as being the gateway of Nubia in the time of Amenemhet III. Everything had been done to discourage this example of individuality, but with no avail. Signor Richetti was determined and had waved aside each objection: (1) that the expedition was not worth making, (2) that the expedition could not be made, owing to the impossibility of getting a car there, (3) that no car could be obtained to do the trip, (4) that a car would be a prohibitive price. Having scoffed at (1), expressed incredulity at (2), offered to find a car himself to (3), and bargained fluently in Arabic for (4), Signor Richetti had at last departed – his departure being arranged in a secret and furtive manner in case some of the other tourists should take it into their heads to stray from the appointed paths of sightseeing.

‘Fey?’ Mrs Allerton put her head on one side as she considered her reply. ‘Well, it’s a Scottish word, really. It means the kind of exalted happiness that comes before disaster. You know – it’s too good to be true.’

She enlarged on the theme. Poirot listened attentively.

‘I thank you, Madame. I understand now. It is odd that you should have said that yesterday – when Madame Doyle was to escape death so shortly afterwards.’

Mrs Allerton gave a little shiver.

‘It must have been a very near escape. Do you think some of these little wretches rolled it over for fun? It’s the sort of thing boys might do all over the world – not perhaps really meaning any harm.’

Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

‘It may be, Madame.’

He changed the subject, talking of Majorca and asking various practical questions from the point of view of a possible visit.

Mrs Allerton had grown to like the little man very much – partly perhaps out of a contradictory spirit. Tim, she felt, was always trying to make her less friendly to Hercule Poirot, whom he had summarized firmly as ‘the worst kind of bounder’. But she herself did not call him a bounder; she supposed it was his somewhat foreign exotic clothing which roused her son’s prejudices. She herself found him an intelligent and stimulating companion. He was also extremely sympathetic. She found herself suddenly confiding in him her dislike of Joanna Southwood. It eased her to talk of the matter. And after all, why not? He did not know Joanna – would probably never meet her. Why should she not ease herself of that constantly borne burden of jealous thought?

At the same moment Tim and Rosalie Otterbourne were talking of her. Tim had just been half-jestingly abusing his luck. His rotten health, never bad enough to be really interesting, yet not good enough for him to have led the life he would have chosen. Very little money, no congenial occupation.

‘A thoroughly lukewarm, tame existence,’ he finished discontentedly.

Rosalie said abruptly: ‘You’ve got something heaps of people would envy you.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Your mother.’

Tim was surprised and pleased.

‘Mother? Yes, of course she is quite unique. It’s nice of you to see it.’

‘I think she’s marvellous. She looks so lovely – so composed and calm – as though nothing could ever touch her, and yet – and yet somehow she’s always ready to be funny about things too…’

Rosalie was stammering slightly in her earnestness.

Tim felt a rising warmth towards the girl. He wished he could return the compliment, but lamentably Mrs Otterbourne was his idea of the world’s greatest menace. The inability to respond in kind made him embarrassed.

Miss Van Schuyler had stayed in the launch. She could not risk the ascent either on a camel or on her legs. She had said snappily:

‘I’m sorry to have to ask you to stay with me, Miss Bowers. I intended you to go and Cornelia to stay, but girls are so selfish. She rushed off without a word to me. And I actually saw her talking to that very unpleasant and ill-bred young man, Ferguson. Cornelia has disappointed me sadly. She has absolutely no social sense.’

Miss Bowers replied in her usual matter-of-fact fashion:

‘That’s quite all right, Miss Van Schuyler. It would have been a hot walk up there, and I don’t fancy the look of those saddles on the camels. Fleas, as likely as not.’ She adjusted her glasses, screwed up her eyes to look at the party descending the hill and remarked: ‘Miss Robson isn’t with that young man any more. She’s with Dr Bessner.’

Miss Van Schuyler grunted.

Since she had discovered that Dr Bessner had a large clinic in Czechoslovakia and a European reputation as a fashionable physician, she was disposed to be gracious to him. Besides, she might need his professional services before the journey was over.

When the party returned to the Karnak, Linnet gave a cry of surprise.

‘A telegram for me.’ She snatched it off the board and tore it open. ‘Why – I don’t understand – potatoes, beetroots – what does it mean, Simon?’

Simon was just coming to look over her shoulder when a furious voice said:

‘Excuse me, that telegram is for me. And Signor Richetti snatched it rudely from her hand, fixing her with a furious glare as he did so.

Linnet stared in surprise for a moment, then turned over the envelope.

‘Oh, Simon, what a fool I am! It’s Richetti – not Ridgeway – and anyway of course my name isn’t Ridgeway now. I must apologize.’

She followed the little archaeologist up to the stern of the boat.

‘I am so sorry, Signor Richetti. You see my name was Ridgeway before I married, and I haven’t been married very long, and so…’

She paused, her face dimpled with smiles, inviting him to smile upon a young bride’s faux pas.

But Richetti was obviously ‘not amused’. Queen Victoria at her most disapproving could not have looked more grim.

‘Names should be read carefully. It is inexcusable to be careless in these matters.’

Linnet bit her lip and her colour rose. She was not accustomed to have her apologies received in this fashion. She turned away and, rejoining Simon, said angrily,

‘These Italians are really insupportable.’

‘Never mind, darling; let’s go and look at that big ivory crocodile you liked.’

They went ashore together.

Poirot, watching them walk up the landing stage, heard a sharp indrawn breath. He turned to see Jacqueline de Bellefort at his side. Her hands were clenched on the rail. The expression on her face as she turned it towards him quite startled him. It was no longer gay or malicious. She looked devoured by some inner consuming fire.

‘They don’t care any more.’ The words came low and fast. ‘They’ve got beyond me. I can’t reach them… They don’t mind if I’m here or not… I can’t – I can’t hurt them any more…’

er hands on the rail trembled.

‘Mademoiselle-’

She broke in: ‘Oh, it’s too late now – too late for warnings… You were right. I ought not to have come. Not on this journey. What did you call it? A journey of the soul? I can’t go back – I’ve got to go on. And I’m going on. They shan’t be happy together – they shan’t. I’d kill him sooner…’

She turned abruptly away. Poirot, staring after her, felt a hand on his shoulder.

‘Your girl friend seems a trifle upset, Monsieur Poirot.’

Poirot turned. He stared in surprise, seeing an old acquaintance.

‘Colonel Race.’

The tall bronzed man smiled.

‘Bit of a surprise, eh?’

Hercule Poirot had come across Colonel Race a year previously in London. They had been fellow guests at a very strange dinner party – a dinner party that had ended in death for that strange man, their host.

Poirot knew that Race was a man of unadvertised goings and comings. He was usually to be found in one of the outposts of Empire where trouble was brewing.

‘So you are here at Wadi Halfa,’ Poirot marked thoughtfully.

‘I am here on this boat.’

‘You mean?’

‘That I am making the return journey with you to Shellal.’

Hercule Poirot’s eyebrows rose.

‘That is very interesting. Shall we, perhaps, have a little drink?’

They went into the observation saloon, now quite empty. Poirot ordered a whisky for the Colonel and a double orangeade full of sugar for himself.

‘So you make the return journey with us,’ said Poirot as he sipped. ‘You would go faster, would you not, on the Government steamer, which travels by night as well as day?’

Colonel Race’s face creased appreciatively.

‘You’re right on the spot as usual, Monsieur Poirot,’ he said pleasantly.

‘It is, then, the passengers?’

‘One of the passengers.’

‘Now which one, I wonder?’ Hercule Poirot asked of the ornate ceiling.

‘Unfortunately I don’t know myself,’ said Race ruefully.

Poirot looked interested. Race said:

‘There’s no need to be mysterious to you. We’ve had a good deal of trouble out here – one way and another. It isn’t the people who ostensibly lead the rioters that we’re after. It’s the men who very cleverly put the match to the gunpowder. There were three of them. One’s dead. One’s in prison. I want the third man – a man with five or six cold-blooded murders to his credit. He’s one of the cleverest paid agitators that ever existed… He’s on this boat. I know that from a passage in a letter that passed through our hands. Decoded it said: “X will be on the Karnak trip February seventh to thirteenth.” It didn’t say under what name X would be passing.’

‘Have you any description of him?’

‘No. American, Irish, and French descent. That doesn’t help us much. Have you got any ideas?’

‘An idea – it is all very well,’ said Poirot meditatively.

Such was the understanding between them that Race pressed him no further. He knew Hercule Poirot did not ever speak unless he was sure.

Poirot rubbed his nose and said unhappily:

‘There passes itself something on this boat that causes me much inquietude.’

Race looked at him inquiringly.

‘Figure to yourself,’ said Poirot, ‘a person A who has grievously wronged a person B. The person B desires the revenge. The person B makes the threats.’

‘A and B being both on this boat?’

Poirot nodded.

‘Precisely.’

‘And B, I gather, being a woman?’

‘Exactly.’

Race lit a cigarette.

‘I shouldn’t worry. People who go about talking of what they are going to do don’t usually do it.’

‘And particularly is that the case with les femmes, you would say!

‘Yes, that is true.’

But he still did not look happy.

‘Anything else?’ asked Race.

‘Yes, there is something. Yesterday the person A had a very near escape from death. The kind of death that might very conveniently be called an accident.’

‘Engineered by B?’

‘No, that is just the point. B could have had nothing to do with it.’

‘Then it was an accident.’

‘I suppose so – but I do not like such accidents.’

‘You’re quite sure B could have had no hand in it?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Oh, well, coincidences do happen. Who is A, by the way? A particularly disagreeable person?’

‘On the contrary. A is a charming, rich, and beautiful young lady.’

Race grinned.

‘Sounds quite like a novelette.’

‘Peut-être. But I tell you, I am not happy, my friend. If I am right, and after all I am constantly in the habit of being right’-Race smiled into his moustache at this typical utterance-‘then there is matter for grave inquietude. And now, you come to add yet another complication. You tell me that there is a man on the Karnak who kills.’

‘He doesn’t usually kill charming young ladies.’

Poirot shook his head in a dissatisfied manner.

‘I am afraid, my friend,’ he said. ‘I am afraid… Today, I advised this lady, Madame Doyle, to go with her husband to Khartoum, not to return on this boat. But they would not agree. I pray to Heaven that we may arrive at Shellal without catastrophe.’

‘Aren’t you taking rather a gloomy view?’

Poirot shook his head.

‘I am afraid,’ he said simply. ‘Yes, I, Hercule Poirot, am afraid…’