The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories

A faint puzzled look showed for a moment in Poirot's eyes then, a little smile creasing his lips, he rose, put his head through the door and glanced down the deck. Miss Henderson was leaning against the rail talking to a tall, soldierly-looking man.

Poirot's smile deepened. He drew himself back

into the smoking-room with the same exaggerated care with which a tortoise withdraws itself into it,

PROBLEM AT SEA 197

shell. For the moment he had the smoking-room to himself, though he rightly conjectured that that would not last long. It did not. Mrs. Clapperton, her carefully waved platinum head protected with a net, her massaged and dieted form dressed in a smart sports suit, came through the door from the bar with the purposeful air of a woman who has always been able to pay top price for anything she needed. She said: "John--? Oh! Good-morning, M. Poirot--have you seen John?" "He's on the starboard deck, Madame. Shall

She arrested him with a gesture. "I'll sit here a minute." She sat down in a regal fashion in the chair opposite him. From the distance she had looked a possible twenty-eight. Now, in spite of her exquisitely made-up face, her delicately

plucked eyebrows, she looked not her actual forty-nine

years, but a possible fifty-five. Her eyes were

a hard pale blue with tiny pupils.

"I was sorry not to have seen you at dinner last

night," she said. "It was just a shade choppy, of

course--"

"Prcisment," said Poirot with feeling.

"Luckily, I am an excellent sailor," said Mrs.

Clapperton. "I say luckily, because, with my weak

heart, seasickness would probably be the death of

me."

"You have the weak heart, Madame?"

"Yes, I have to be most careful. I must not overtire myself! All the specialists say so!" Mrs.

Clapperton had embarked on the--to her--ever-fascinating

topic of her health. "John, poor dar

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Agatha Christie

ling, wears himself out trying to prevent me from doing too much. I live so intensely, if you know

what I mean, M. Poirot?"

"Yes, yes."

"He always says to me: 'Try to be more of a vegetable, Adeline.' But I can't. Life was meant to be lived, I feel. As a matter of fact I wore myself out as a girl in the war. My hospital--you've heard of my hospital? Of course I had nurses and matrons and all that--but I actually, ran it." She sighed.

"Your vitality is marvelous, dear lady," said Poirot, with the slightly mechanical air of one responding to his cue.

Mrs. Clapperton gave a girlish laugh. 'Everyone tells me how young,I am! It's ab-surd. I never try to pretend I'm a day less than forty-three," she continued with slightly menda-cious candor, "but a lot of people find it hard to believe. 'You're so alive, Adeline,' they say to me. But really, M. Poirot, what would one be if one wasn't alive?"

"Dead," said Poirot.

Mrs. Clapperton frowned. The reply was not to her liking. The man, she decided, was trying to be funny. She got up and said coldly: "I must find John."

As she stepped through the door she dropped her handbag. It opened and the contents flew far and wide. Poirot rushed gallantly to the rescue. It was some few minutes before the lipsticks, vanity boxes, cigarette case and lighter and other odds and ends were collected. Mrs. Clapperton thanked him politely, then she swept down the deck and said, "John--"

PROBLEM AT SEA 199

Colonel Clapperton was still deep in conversa-on with Miss Henderson. He swung round and

quickly to meet his wife. He bent over her

y. Her deck chair--was it in the right

Wouldn't it be better--? His manner was

rteous--full of gentle consideration. Clearly an adored wife spoilt by an adoring husband.

Miss Ellie Henderson looked out at the horizon as though something about it rather disgusted her.

Standing in the smoking-room door, Poirot looked on.

A hoarse quavering voice behind him said:

"I'd take a hatchet to that woman if I were her husband." The old gentleman known disrespect-fully among the Younger Set on board as the Grandfather of All the Tea Planters, had just shuffled in. "'Boy!" he called. "Get me a whisky peg."

Poirot stooped to retrieve a torn scrap of

an overlooked item from the contents of Mrs. Clapperton's bag. Part of a prescription, noted, containing digitalin. He put it in his pocket, meaning to restore it to Mrs. Clapperton later.

"Yes," went on the aged passenger. Poisonous woman. I remember a woman like that in Poona. In '87 that was."

"Did anyone take a hatchet to her?" inquired Poirot.

The old gentleman shook his head sadly. "Worried her husband into his grave within the year. Clapperton ought'to assert himself. Gives his wife her head too much."

"She holds the purse strings," said Poirot gravely.

200 Agatha Christie

"Ha ha!" chuckled the old gentleman. "You've

put the matter in a nutshell. Holds the purse