I made a small concession: “It is true, though, that I would not have hit upon the ‘Now that it’s there’ method if I had not initially entertained lazy thoughts like, ‘That looks terrible but it can damn well stay there, or else this will take me until next Christmas’—so you are not entirely wrong.”
Douglas laughed. “I am never entirely wrong. My wrongness rarely reaches the halfway mark. Isn’t that right, my love?”
Maddie’s face had taken on a more serious expression. “Edward, I feel terribly guilty,” she said. “Dinner last night must have been unutterably awful for you and Monsieur Poirot. The fuss about the courtyard... You must have been desperate to understand what it was all about.”
“My wife always wants to know what everything is all about,” said Douglas. “She assumes others do too. Please speak up if you do not, otherwise I fear you are about to hear a tale or two.”
“You will have noticed that my sister and I are not exactly fond of each other,” Maddie said sadly. “We wereonce. We were the best of friends until she fell in love with Jonathan. They met at our wedding. And then some months after we returned from our honeymoon, Janet approached me with a grave expression on her face. She told me Jonathan had been courting her, but things had not progressed very far. She asked me... I shall never forget it! She said, ‘Maddie, please tell me if you would rather I discouraged him. It might be peculiar for me to be romantically involved with your husband’s brother. Everything might get rather complicated. If you hate the idea of it, you must say so. I am not sureIwould like it, if our situations were reversed,’ she said. And I knew precisely why she would dislike it, too,” Maddie said with feeling. “She described my own unease to me very vividly: ‘As an adult, one creates an independent life, away from one’s original family,’ she said. ‘Surely the last thing one would want is for one’s sister to barge into the new life one has created. And I am not yet in love with Jonathan, so I can extricate myself without too much trouble. Besides, there are plenty of other men in the world, quite a few of whom are just as sweet on me as he is, so if you would rather I put an end to it, I will. All you need do is ask.’”
“And did you?” I said.
“I told her my preference would indeed be for her to choose a beau who was not my husband’s brother, but that she should almost certainly disregard my preference and think only about her own. I believe people should be entirely free to make their own choices, don’t you, Edward?”
“Well—”
“Now, if Janet had set her sights on Douglas, that would have been a different matter. I had, and have, a legitimate claim to him, but there was no possible justification for my asking Janet to give up Jonathan for my sake. If she had met and married him first, and I had met Douglas attheirwedding, why, I would not have cared a jot if anyone had disapproved. If somebody is unmarried and available, and somebody else falls in love with them, then that is that. No one else’s opinion ought to count for anything.”
“A very reasonable way to look at it,” I said.
“Indeed,” said Douglas. “You might think, mightn’t you, Edward, that Janet would have been happy with that answer, but it was not good enough for her.”
“She turned instantly cold,” said Maddie. “‘So you would prefer it if I gave Jonathan up,’ she said. ‘We do not, then, have your blessing?’ I thought she must have misunderstood. I said, ‘You have my blessing to do as you please and that is what you must do. I would disapprove if you did anything else.’ But it was too late. I had committed what was, in Janet’s eyes, a terrible offence. I had not realized there was only one answer she would not deem unforgivable: ‘Oh, how spiffingly splendid, Janet! I am thrilled! Nothing could give me more joy!’ By admitting to a preference for her falling in love with a man who was not my brother-in-law, I had betrayed her in the most appalling way and could never be forgiven.”
Maddie sounded deflated, suddenly, as if she had only just realized the story she was telling was actually rather a sad one. “I tried to explain that I had only wanted to beas honest as possible, but it was too late. Janet pretended she had never said she would have hated it if Douglas and I had got together after she and Jonathan were already married. She lied calmly and brazenly, as if we did not both know perfectly well that those very words had been said by her and heard by me.”
Maddie sighed. “That was what I thought at first, anyway: that she was purposefully lying. I was wrong. I have come to realize that Janet simply does not remember anything that no longer suits her view of the world.”
“I call that lying.” Douglas scowled.
“But that is not how it feels to Janet,” said Maddie. “If she wants something to be true, she convinces herself that it is. Your father’s will is the perfect example.”
“Don’t mention Pa’s will in front of the inspector, my love. He might start to think Ma’s ridiculous notion is worth investigating after all.”
“What notion?” I asked.
“Ma is convinced that someone at St. Walstan’s wants to kill Pa,” said Douglas, as casually as if he were describing the weather.
Chapter 15
At Duluth Cottage
Nurse Beatrice Haskins and Nurse Zillah Hunt lived together in the coastal village of Trimingham, in a long, stone house that took up nearly a quarter of the side of the road on which it stood. Its name, painted on a sign at the front, was Duluth Cottage.
This sturdy little domicile, less than a quarter of the size of Frellingsloe House, struck Poirot as a friendly and welcoming prospect. Its thick, stone walls were the color of butter—“the exact creamy shade of butter melting in the sun, Catchpool”—and its window frames and door were painted pale green.
There was no front garden to speak of. Duluth Cottage sat sociably at the edge of the road, looking as eager to meet passers-by as a house could, in an arrangement that raised the question of whether an inexpertly-steered motorcar—one driven by Inspector Mackle, perhaps—might one day make an accidental appearance in its sitting room.
Until he arrived at the door of Duluth Cottage and foundhimself instantly cheered by its outward appearance, Poirot had not realized how low his spirits had sunk after thirty minutes confined to a small car with only Inspector Gerald Mackle for company. “Attempting to converse with that man is as futile as trying to make raindrops fall backward into the sky,” he told me later. “He refused to listen to reason. Stanley Niven’s brother must have killed him because he had no motive for doing so! Thirty-two unconnected strangers must be lying because Inspector Mackle wants it to be so! We must spend as little time with him as we can, Catchpool. Proximity to a dull mind removes the luster from even the brightest intellect. The little grey cells of Hercule Poirot must be protected.”
Nurse Beatrice Haskins had opened the door of Duluth Cottage in response to Inspector Mackle’s knocking. Fifty years old or thereabouts, Poirot guessed, she had a round, pink face, fair hair and a broad, generous smile. Her intelligent green eyes sparkled. Like her house, she was wide but not tall.
Poirot liked her straight away. She told him he must call her “Bee.” Then she introduced Nurse Zillah Hunt, a blonde of about thirty who was wispy and ethereal, with a too-large mouth that made Poirot think of a duck and not at all of kissing, as Inspector Mackle had suggested. He found it hard to imagine Zillah Hunt doing the heavy lifting work that nursing required, and noticed that Gerald Mackle could hardly take his eyes off the young woman, who was manifestly aware of his interest; it seemed to make her uncomfortable.
Eventually, the four of them—Mackle, Poirot, Bee Haskins and Zillah Hunt—were settled in the house’s cozy and tastefully decorated sitting room. Nurse Bee had prepared afternoon tea: a selection of sandwiches and cakes that made Poirot want to sing with joy. He could see at once that everything was of the finest quality: the bread was thick and soft and there were pieces of real fruit in the jam. “You have a delightful home,” Poirot told the two women. “There is more of interest on the walls here than in most art galleries.”
He found himself especially drawn to a print of two boys holding spades and crouching beside a small pond, both wearing Wellington boots. From the water, three smiling frogs looked up at them, and there was a fourth in mid-air, as if it had jumped out to greet the human visitors.
“This house and all the pictures belong to Verity, my cousin and Zillah’s mother,” said Bee. “Zillah is my second cousin, though she has always called me Aunt Bee. Verity is out this morning, which is a shame. She would have loved to meet you, Monsieur Poirot. She could tell you the history of every picture and every piece of furniture in this room. I’m afraid I cannot take credit for anything apart from the food.”
