The Hollow

"I thought you wouldn't." She laughed, moved everything quickly and deftly back to their original positions. "Well, if one wants to say a thing one has to say it! You are, somehow, the sort of person one can talk to. Here goes. Is it necessary, do you think, that the police should know that I was John Christow's mistress?"

Her voice was quite dry and unemotional.

She was looking, not at him, but at the wall over his head. With one forefinger she was following the curve of the jar that held the purple flowers. He had an idea that in the touch of that finger was her emotional outlet.

Hercule Poirot said precisely and also without emotion:

"I see. You were lovers?"

"If you prefer to put it like that."

He looked at her curiously.

"It was not how you put it. Mademoiselle."

"No."

"Why not?"

Henrietta shrugged her shoulders. She came and sat down by him on the sofa. She said slowly:

"One likes to describe things as-as accurately as possible."

His interest in Henrietta Savernake grew stronger. He said:

"You had been Dr. Christow's mistress-for how long?"

"About six months."

"The police will have, I gather, no difficulty in discovering the fact?"

Henrietta considered.

"I imagine not. That is, if they are looking for something of that kind?"

"Oh, they will be looking, I can assure you of that."

"Yes, I rather thought they would." She paused, stretched out her fingers on her knee and looked at them, then gave him a swift friendly glance. "Well, M. Poirot, what does one do? Go to Inspector Grange and say-what does one say to a moustache like that?

It's such a domestic family moustache."

Poirot5 s hand crawled upwards to his own proudly borne adornment.

"Whereas mine. Mademoiselle?"

"Your moustache, M. Poirot, is an artistic triumph. It has no associations with anything but itself. It is, I am sure, unique."

"Absolutely."

"And it is probably the reason why I am talking to you as I am. Granted that the police have to know the truth about John and myself, will it necessarily have to be made public?"

"That depends," said Poirot. "If the police think it has no bearing on the case, they will be quite discreet. You-are very anxious on this point?"

Henrietta nodded. She stared down at her fingers for a moment or two, then suddenly lifted her head and spoke. Her voice was no longer dry and light.

"Why should things be made worse than they are for poor Gerda? She adored John and he's dead. She's lost him. Why should she have to bear an added burden?"

"It is for her that you mind?"

"Do you think that is hypocritical? I suppose you're thinking that if I cared at all about Gerda's peace of mind, I would never have become John's mistress. But you don't understand-it was not like that. I did not break up his married life. I was only one-of a procession."

"Ah, it was like that?"

She turned on him sharply:

H "No, no, no! Not what you are thinking.

That's what I mind most of all! The false idea that everybody will have of what John was like. That's why I'm here talking to you-because I've got a vague foggy hope that I can make you understand. Understand, I mean, the sort of person John was!

I can see so well what will happen-the headlines in the papers-A Doctor's Love Life-Gerda, myself, Veronica Cray. John wasn't like that-he wasn't, actually, a man who thought much about women. It wasn't women who mattered to him most, it was his work! It was in his work that his interest and his excitement-yes, and his sense of adventure really lay! If John had been taken unawares at any moment and asked to name the woman who was most in his mind, do you know who he would have said-Mrs.

Crabtree."

"Mrs. Crabtree?" Poirot was surprised.

"Who, then, is this Mrs. Crabtree?"

There was something between tears and laughter in Henrietta's voice as she went on.

"She's an old woman-ugly, dirty, wrinkled, quite indomitable. John thought the world of her. She's a patient in St. Christopher's Hospital. She's got Ridgeway's Disease.

That's a disease that's very rare but if you get it, you're bound to die-there just isn't any cure. But John was finding a cure -I can't explain technically-it was all very complicated-some question of hormone secretion.

He'd been making experiments and

Mrs. Crabtree was his prize patient-you see, she's got guts, she wants to live-and she was fond of John. She and he were fighting on the same side. Ridgeway's Disease and Mrs. Crabtree is what has been uppermost in John's mind for months-night and day-nothing else really counted. That's what being the kind of doctor John was really means-not all the Harley Street stuff and the rich fat women, that was only a sideline-it's the intense scientific curiosity and achievement. I-oh, I wish I could make you understand."

Her hands flew out in a curiously despairing gesture and Hercule Poirot thought how very lovely and sensitive those hands were.

He said:

"You seem to understand very well."