The Hollow

In the shock of the moment, and if the revolver had had another cartridge in it, she might have fired it and-and hurt someone."

"But it was rather clumsy of you, was it not, to drop it in the pool?"

"Well-I had had a shock, too." She paused. "What are you suggesting, M.

Poirot?"

Poirot sat up, turned his head, and spoke in a brisk matter-of-fact way:

"If there were finger-prints on that revolver, that is to say, finger-prints made before Mrs. Christow handled it, it would be interesting to know whose they were-and that we shall never know now."

Henrietta said quietly, but steadily:

"Meaning that you think they were mine … You are suggesting that I shot John and then left the revolver beside him so that Gerda could come along and pick it up and be left holding the baby-(that is what you are suggesting, isn't it?) But surely,if I did that, you will give me credit for enough intelligence to have wiped off my own fingerprints first!"

"But surely you are intelligent enough to see. Mademoiselle, that if you had done so and if the revolver had had no fingerprints on it but Mrs. Christow's, that would have been very remarkable! For you were all shooting with that revolver the day before.

Gerda Christow would hardly have wiped the revolver clean of finger-prints before using it-why should she?"

Henrietta said slowly:

"So you think I killed John?"

"When Dr. Christow was dying, he said, 'Henrietta.'"

"And you think that that was an accusation?

It was not."

"What was it then?"

Henrietta stretched out her foot and traced a pattern with the toe. She said in a low voice:

"Aren't you forgetting-what I told you not very long ago? I mean-the terms we were on?"

"Ah, yes-he was your lover-and so, as he is dying, he says Henrietta. That is very touching."

She turned blazing eyes upon him.

"Must you sneer?"

"I am not sneering. But I do not like being lied to-and that, I think, is what you are trying to do."

Henrietta said quietly:

"I have told you that I am not very truthful-but when John said Henrietta,' he was not accusing me of having murdered him. Can't you understand that people of my kind, who make things, are quite incapable of taking life? I don't kill people, M.

Poirot. I couldn't kill anyone. That's the plain stark truth. You suspect me simply because my name was murmured by a dying man who hardly knew what he was saying."

"Dr. Christow knew perfectly what he was saying. His voice was as alive and conscious as that of a doctor doing a vital operation who says sharply and urgently, 'Nurse, the forceps, please.'"

"But-" She seemed at a loss, taken aback. Hercule Poirot went on rapidly:

"And it is not just on account of what Dr.

Christow said when he was dying. I do not believe for one moment that you are capable of premeditated murder-that, no. But you might have fired that shot in a sudden moment of fierce resentment-and if so-if so, Mademoiselle, you have the creative imagination and ability to cover your tracks."

Henrietta got up. She stood for a moment, pale and shaken, looking at him. She said with a sudden rueful smile:

"And I thought you liked me."

Hercule Poirot sighed. He said sadly:

"That is what is so unfortunate for me. I do."

Chapter XIX

When Henrietta had left him, Poirot sat on until he saw below him Inspector Grange walk past the pool with a resolute easy stride and take the path on past the pavilion.

The Inspector was walking in a purposeful way.

He must be going, therefore, either to Resthaven or to Dovecotes. Poirot wondered which.

He got up and retraced his steps along the way he had come. If Inspector Grange was coming to see him, he was interested to hear what the Inspector had to say.

But when he got back to Resthaven there was no sign of a visitor. Poirot looked thoughtfully up the lane in the direction of Dovecotes. Veronica Cray had not, he knew, gone back to London.

He found his curiosity rising about Veronica Cray. The pale, shining fox furs, the heaped boxes of matches, that sudden imperfectly explained invasion on the Saturday night, and, finally, Henrietta Savernake's revelations about John Christow and Veronica.

It was, he thought, an interesting pattern. … Yes, that was how he saw it: a pattern.

A design of intermingled emotions and the clash of personalities. A strange involved design, with dark threads of hate and desire running through it.

Had Gerda Christow shot her husband?

Or was it not quite so simple as that?

He thought of his conversation with Henrietta and decided that it was not so simple.

Henrietta had jumped to the conclusion that he suspected her of the murder, but actually he had not gone nearly as far as that in his mind. No further indeed than the belief that Henrietta knew something. Knew something or was concealing something-which?

He shook his head, dissatisfied.

The scene by the pool. A set scene. A stage scene.

Staged by whom?

Staged for whom?