The Hollow

"Ainswick? It's a place." Almost dreamily, she described Ainswick to him. The white graceful house-the big magnolia-growing up it-the whole set in an amphitheatre of wooded hills.

"It was your home?"

"Not really. I lived in Ireland. It was where we came, all of us, for holidays. Edward and Midge and myself. It was Lucy's home actually. It belonged to her father. After his death it came to Edward."

"Not to Sir Henry? But it is he who has the title."

"Oh, that's a K.C.B.," she explained.

"Henry was only a distant cousin."

"And after Edward Angkatell, to whom does it go, this Ainswick?"

"How odd. I've never really thought. If

Edward doesn't marry-" She paused. A shadow passed over her face. Hercule Poirot wondered exactly what thought was passing through her mind.

"I suppose," said Henrietta slowly, "it will go to David. So that's why-"

"Why what?"

"Why Lucy asked him here… David and Ainswick?" She shook her head. "They don't fit somehow."

Poirot pointed to the path in front of them.

"It is by that path. Mademoiselle, that you went down to the swimming pool yesterday?"

She gave a quick shiver.

"No, by the one nearer the house. It was Edward who came this way." She turned on him suddenly. "Must we talk about it any more? I hate the swimming pool… I even hate The Hollow."

"I hate the dreadful Hollow behind the little wood.

Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-red heath;

The red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror of blood, And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers 'Death.'"

Henrietta turned an astonished face on him.

"Tennyson," said Hercule Poirot, nodding his head proudly. "The poetry of your Lord Tennyson."

Henrietta was repeating.

"And Echo there, whatever is asked her…" She went on, almost to herself. "But, of course-1 see-that's what it is-Echo!"

"How do you mean. Echo?"

"This place-The Hollow itself! I almost saw it before-on Saturday when Edward and I walked up to the ridge. An echo of Ainswick… And that's what we are, we Angkatells. Echoes! We're not real-not real as John was real." She turned to Poirot. "I wish you had known him, M. Poirot. We're all shadows compared with John. John was really alive."

"I knew that even when he was dying, Mademoiselle."

"I know. One felt it… And John is dead, and we, the echoes, are alive… It's like, you know, a very bad joke…"

The youth had gone from her face again.

Her lips were twisted, bitter with sudden pain.

When Poirot spoke, asking a question, she did not, for a moment, take in what he was saying.

"I am sorry. What did you say, M.

Poirot?"

"I was asking whether your aunt. Lady

Angkatell, liked Dr. Christow."

"Lucy? She is a cousin, by the way, not an aunt. Yes, she liked him very much."

"And your-also a cousin?-Mr. Edward

Angkatell-did he like Dr. Christow?"

Her voice was, he thought, a little constrained, as she replied:

"Not particularly-but then he hardly knew him."

"And your-yet another cousin?-Mr.

David Angkatell?"

Henrietta smiled.

"David, I think, hates all of us. He spends his time immured in the library reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica."

"Ah, a serious temperament."

"I am sorry for David. He has had a difficult home life-his mother was unbalanced-an invalid. Now his only way of protecting himself is to try to feel superior to everyone. It's all right as long as it works, but now and then it breaks down and the vulnerable David peeps through."

"Did he feel himself superior to Dr. Christow?"

"He tried to-but I don't think it came off. I suspect that John Christow was just the kind of man that David would like to be- He disliked John in consequence."

Poirot nodded his head thoughtfully.

"Yes-self-assurance, confidence, virility -all the intensive male qualities. It is interesting-very interesting.'?

Henrietta did not answer.

Through the chestnuts, down by the pool, Hercule Poirot saw a man stooping, searching for something, or so it seemed.

He murmured, "I wonder-"

"I beg your pardon?"

Poirot said, "That is one of Inspector Grange's men. He seems to be looking for something."

"Clues, I suppose. Don't policemen look for clues? Cigarette ash, footprints, burnt matches?"

Her voice held a kind of bitter mockery.

Poirot answered seriously:

"Yes, they look for these things-and sometimes they find them. But the real clues. Miss Savernake, in a case like this, usually lie in the personal relationships of the people concerned."

"I don't think I understand you."

"Little things," said Poirot, his head thrown back, his eyes half closed. "Not cigarette ash, or a rubber heel mark-but a gesture, a look, an unexpected action…"

Henrietta turned her head sharply to look at him. He felt her eyes but he did not turn his head. She said:

"Are you thinking of-anything in particular?"

"I was thinking of how you stepped forward and took the revolver out of Mrs.

Christow's hand and then dropped it in the pool."

He felt the slight start she gave. But her voice was quite normal and calm.

"Gerda, M. Poirot, is rather a clumsy person.