The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories

someone sur le tapis. Her father's death has

opened the way to happiness."

"Take it all round, she had a pretty good motive for bumping off the unpleasant parent."

"Motive and opportunity are not enough," said Poirot. "There must also be the criminal tempera-ment!''

"I wonder if you'll ever commit a crime, Poirot?" said Stillingfleet. "I bet you could get away with it all right. As a matter of fact, it would be too easy for you--I mean the thing would be off as definitely too unsporting."

"That," said Poirot, "is a typically English idea."

Glass Darkly

I've no explanation of this story. I've no theories about the why and wherefore of it. It's just a thing--that happened.

All the same, I sometimes wonder how things

would have gone if I'd noticed at the time just that one essential detail that I never appreciated until so many years afterwards. If I had noticed it--well, I suppose the course of three lives would have been entirely altered. Somehow--that's a very frightening thought. For the beginning of it all, I've got to go back to the summer of 1914--just before the war--when I went down to Badgeworthy with Neil Carslake. Neil was, I suppose, about my best friend. I'd known his brother Alan too, but not so well. Sylvia, their sister, I'd never met. She was two years younger than Alan and three years younger than Neil. Twice, while we were at school to181

184 Agatha Christie

the other door from the passage and asked me what the hell I was trying to do. He must have thought me slightly barmy as I turned on him and demanded whether there was a door behind the wardrobe. He said, yes, there was

a door, it led into the next room. I asked him we

was occupying the room and he said some people called Oldham--a Major Oldham and his wife. I asked him then if Mrs. Oldham had very fair hair and when he replied dryly that she was dark I began to realize that I was probably making a fool of myself. I pulled myself together, made some lame explanation and we went downstairs together. I told myself that I must have had some kind of hallucination--and felt generally rather ashamed and a bit of an ass. And then--and then--Nell said, "My sister Sylvia," and I was looking into the lovely face of the girl I had just seen being suffocated to death ·.. and I was introduced to her fiance, a tall, dark man with a scar down the left side of his face. Wellwthat's that. I'd like you to think and say what you'd have done in my place. Here was the girl--the identical girl--and here was the man I'd seen throttling her--and they were to be married in about a month's time .... Had I--or had I not--had a prophetic vision of the future? Would Sylvia and her husband come down here to stay sometime in the future, and be given that room (the best spare room) and would

that scene I'd witnessed take place in grim reality?

What was I to do about it? Could I do anything? Would anyone--Neil--or the girl herself--would they believe me?

IN A GLASS DARKLY 18 I turned the whole business over and over in m}

mind the week I was down there. To speak or not

to speak? And almost at once another complica

tion set in. You see, I fell in love with Sylvia Carslake the first moment I saw her I wanted her more than anything on earth And in a way

that tied my hands. And yet, if I didn't say anything, Sylvia would marry Charles Crawley and Crawley would kill her .... And so,

the day before I left, I blurted it all out to her.

I said I expected she'd think me touched in the intellect or something but I swore solemnly that I'd seen the thing just as I told it to her and that I felt if she was determined to marry Crawley, I ought to tell her my strange experience. She listened very quietly. There was something in her eyes I didn't understand. She wasn't angry at all. When I'd finished, she just thanked me gravely. I kept repeating like an idiot, "I did see it. I really did see it," and she said, "I'm sure you did if you say so. I believe you." Well, the upshot was that I went off not knowing whether I'd done right or been a fool, and a week later Sylvia broke off her engagement to Charles Crawley. After that the war happened, and there wash'! much leisure for thinking of anything else. Once or twice when I was on leave, I came acr. oss Sylvia, but as far as possible I avoided her. I loved her and wanted her just as badly as ever, but I felt, somehow, that it wouldn't be playing the game.

It was owing to me that she'd broken off her

engagement to Crawley, and 1 kept sayin8

186 Agatha Christie

to myself that I could only justify the action I had taken by making my attitude a purely disinterested

one.

Then, in 1916, Nell was killed and it fell to me to tell Sylvia about his last moments. We couldn't remain on a formal footing after that. Sylvia had adored Nell and he had been my best friend. She was sweet--adorably sweet in her grief. I just managed to hold my tongue and went out again praying that a bullet might end the whole miser-able business. Life without Sylvia wasn't worth living.