The Hollow

Poirot. This Miss Cray, the actress-she traipses over here borrowing matches. If she wanted to borrow matches why didn't she come to your place only a step or two away? Why come about half a mile?"

Hercule Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

"There might be reasons. Snob reasons, shall we say? My little cottage, it is small, unimportant. I am only a week-ender but Sir Henry and Lady Angkatell are important-they live here-they are what is called gentry in the county. This Miss Veronica Cray, she may have wanted to get to know them-and after all, this was a way." Inspector Grange got up.

"Yes," he said, "that's perfectly possible, of course, but one doesn't want to overlook anything. Still, I've no doubt that everything's going to be plain sailing. Sir Henry has identified the gun as one of his collection.

It seems they were actually practising with it the afternoon before. All Mrs. Christow had to do was to go into the study and get it from where she'd seen Sir Henry put it and the ammunition away. It's all quite simple."

"Yes," Poirot murmured. "It seems all quite simple."

Just so, he thought, would a woman like

Gerda Christow commit a crime. Without subterfuge or complexity-driven suddenly to violence by the bitter anguish of a narrow but deeply loving nature…

And yet surely-surely, she would have had some sense of self-preservation. Or had she acted in that blindness-that darkness of the spirit-when reason is entirely laid aside?

He recalled her blank dazed face.

He did not know-he simply did not know.

But he felt that he ought to know.

Chapter XVI

Gerda Christow pulled the black dress up over her head and let it fall on a chair.

Her eyes were piteous with uncertainty.

She said, "I don't know… I really don't know… Nothing seems to matter." «I know, dear, I know." Mrs. Patterson was kind but firm. She knew exactly how to treat people who had had a bereavement.

"Elsie is wonderful in a crisis," her family said of her.

At the present moment she was sitting in her sister Gerda's bedroom in Harley Street, being wonderful. Elsie Patterson was tall and spare with an energetic manner. She was looking now at Gerda with a mixture of irritation and compassion.

Poor dear Gerda-tragic for her to lose her husband in such an awful way-and really, even now, she didn't seem to take in the-well, the implications properly! Of course, Mrs. Patterson reflected, Gerda always was terribly slow. And there was shock, too, to take into account.

She said in a brisk voice, "I think I should decide on that black marocain at twelve guineas."^ One always did have to make up Gerda's mind for her.

Gerda stood motionless, her brow puckered.

She said hesitantly:

"I don't really know if John liked mourning.

I think I once heard him say he didn't…"

John, she thought. If only John were here to tell me what to do.

But John would never be there again.

Never-never-never… Mutton getting cold-congealing on the table… the bang of the consulting room door, John running up two steps at a time, always in a hurry, so vital, so alive…

Alive…

Lying on his back by the swimming pool … the slow drip of blood over the edge… the feel of the revolver in her hand…

A nightmare, a bad dream, presently she would wake up and none of it would be true…

Her sister's crisp voice came cutting through her nebulous thoughts.

"You must have something black for the inquest. It would look most odd if you turned up in bright blue."

Gerda said, "That awful inquest!" and half shut her eyes.

"Terrible for you, darling," said Elsie Patterson quickly. "But after it is all over you will come straight down to us and we shall take great care of you."

The nebulous blur of Gerda Christow's thoughts hardened. She said, and her voice was frightened, almost panic-stricken:

"What am I going to do without John?"

Elsie Patterson knew the answer to that one. "You've got your children. You've got to live for them."

Zena, sobbing and crying… "My Daddy's dead!" Throwing herself on her bed.

Terry, pale, inquiring, shedding no tears…

An accident with a revolver, she had told them-poor Daddy has had an accident.

Beryl Collins (so thoughtful of her) had confiscated the morning papers so that the children should not see them. She had warned the servants, too. Really, Beryl had been most kind and thoughtful…

Terence coming to his mother in the dim drawing-room. His lips pursed close together, his face almost greenish in its odd pallor.

"Why was Father shot?"

"An accident, dear. I-I can't talk about it."

"It wasn't an accident. Why do you say what isn't true? Father was killed. It was murder. The paper says so."

"Terry, how did you get hold of a paper?

I told Miss Collins-"

He had nodded-queer repeated nods like a very old man.

"I went out and bought one, of course. I knew there must be something in them that you weren't telling us, or else why did Miss Collins hide them?"

It was never any good hiding truth from Terence. That queer, detached, scientific curiosity of his had always to be satisfied.

"Why was he killed. Mother?"