Dead Man’s Folly. Agatha Christie

all arranged, Sir George. Mr Benson at the golf club was most kind.’

      She handed Poirot his cup.

      ‘A sandwich, M. Poirot? Those are tomato and these are paté. But perhaps,’ said Miss Brewis, thinking of the four lumps of sugar, ‘you would rather have a cream cake?’

      Poirot would rather have a cream cake, and helped himself to a particularly sweet and squelchy one.

      Then, balancing it carefully on his saucer, he went and sat down by his hostess. She was still letting the light play over the jewel on her hand, and she looked up at him with a pleased child’s smile.

      ‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty, isn’t it?’

      He had been studying her carefully. She was wearing a big coolie-style hat of vivid magenta straw. Beneath it her face showed its pinky reflection on the dead-white surface of her skin. She was heavily made up in an exotic un-English style. Dead-white matt skin; vivid cyclamen lips, mascara applied lavishly to the eyes. Her hair showed beneath the hat, black and smooth, fitting like a velvet cap. There was a languorous un-English beauty about the face. She was a creature of the tropical sun, caught, as it were, by chance in an English drawing-room. But it was the eyes that startled Poirot. They had a childlike, almost vacant, stare.

      She had asked her question in a confidential childish way, and it was as though to a child that Poirot answered.

      ‘It is a very lovely ring,’ he said.

      She looked pleased.

      ‘George gave it to me yesterday,’ she said, dropping her voice as though she were sharing a secret with him. ‘He gives me lots of things. He’s very kind.’

      Poirot looked down at the ring again and the hand outstretched on the side of the chair. The nails were very long and varnished a deep puce.

      Into his mind a quotation came: ‘They toil not, neither do they spin…’

      He certainly couldn’t imagine Lady Stubbs toiling or spinning. And yet he would hardly have described her as a lily of the field. She was a far more artificial product.

      ‘This is a beautiful room you have here, Madame,’ he said, looking round appreciatively.

      ‘I suppose it is,’ said Lady Stubbs vaguely.

      Her attention was still on her ring; her head on one side, she watched the green fire in its depths as her hand moved.

      She said in a confidential whisper, ‘D’you see? It’s winking at me.’

      She burst out laughing and Poirot had a sense of sudden shock. It was a loud uncontrolled laugh.

      From across the room Sir George said: ‘Hattie.’

      His voice was quite kind but held a faint admonition. Lady Stubbs stopped laughing.

      Poirot said in a conventional manner:

      ‘Devonshire is a very lovely county. Do you not think so?’

      ‘It’s nice in the daytime,’ said Lady Stubbs. ‘When it doesn’t rain,’ she added mournfully. ‘But there aren’t any nightclubs.’

      ‘Ah, I see. You like nightclubs?’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ said Lady Stubbs fervently.

      ‘And why do you like nightclubs so much?’

      ‘There is music and you dance. And I wear my nicest clothes and bracelets and rings. And all the other women have nice clothes and jewels, but not as nice as mine.’

      She smiled with enormous satisfaction. Poirot felt a slight pang of pity.

      ‘And all that amuses you very much?’

      ‘Yes. I like the casino, too. Why are there not any casinos in England?’

      ‘I have often wondered,’ said Poirot, with a sigh. ‘I do not think it would accord with the English character.’

      She looked at him uncomprehendingly. Then she bent slightly towards him.

      ‘I won sixty thousand francs at Monte Carlo once. I put it on number twenty-seven and it came up.’

      ‘That must have been very exciting, Madame.’

      ‘Oh, it was. George gives me money to play with – but usually I lose it.’

      She looked disconsolate.

      ‘That is sad.’

      ‘Oh, it does not really matter. George is very rich. It is nice to be rich, don’t you think so?’

      ‘Very nice,’ said Poirot gently.

      ‘Perhaps, if I was not rich, I should look like Amanda.’ Her gaze went to Miss Brewis at the tea table and studied her dispassionately. ‘She is very ugly, don’t you think?’

      Miss Brewis looked up at that moment and across to where they were sitting. Lady Stubbs had not spoken loudly, but Poirot wondered whether Amanda Brewis had heard.

      As he withdrew his gaze, his eyes met those of Captain Warburton. The Captain’s glance was ironic and amused.

      Poirot endeavoured to change the subject.

      ‘Have you been very busy preparing for the fête?’ he asked.

      Hattie Stubbs shook her head.

      ‘Oh, no, I think it is all very boring – very stupid. There are servants and gardeners. Why should not they make the preparations?’

      ‘Oh, my dear.’ It was Mrs Folliat who spoke. She had come to sit on the sofa nearby. ‘Those are the ideas you were brought up with on your island estates. But life isn’t like that in England these days. I wish it were.’ She sighed. ‘Nowadays one has to do nearly everything oneself.’

      Lady Stubbs shrugged her shoulders.

      ‘I think it is stupid. What is the good of being rich if one has to do everything oneself ?’

      ‘Some people find it fun,’ said Mrs Folliat, smiling at her. ‘I do really. Not all things, but some. I like gardening myself and I like preparing for a festivity like this one tomorrow.’

      ‘It will be like a party?’ asked Lady Stubbs hopefully.

      ‘Just like a party – with lots and lots of people.’

      ‘Will it be like Ascot? With big hats and everyone very chic?’

      ‘Well, not quite like Ascot,’ said Mrs Folliat. She added gently, ‘But you must try and enjoy country things, Hattie. You should have helped us this morning, instead of staying in bed and not getting up until teatime.’

      ‘I had a headache,’ said Hattie sulkily. Then her mood changed and she smiled affectionately at Mrs Folliat.

      ‘But I will be good tomorrow. I will do everything you tell me.’

      ‘That’s very sweet of you, dear.’

      ‘I’ve got a new dress to wear. It came this morning. Come upstairs with me and look at it.’

      Mrs Folliat hesitated. Lady Stubbs rose to her feet and said insistently:

      ‘You must come. Please. It is a lovely dress. Come now!’

      ‘Oh, very well.’ Mrs Folliat gave a half-laugh and rose.

      As she went out of the room, her small figure following Hattie’s tall one, Poirot saw her face and was quite startled at the weariness on it which had replaced her smiling composure. It was as though, relaxed and off her guard for a moment, she no longer bothered to keep up the social mask. And yet – it seemed more than that. Perhaps she was suffering from some disease about which, like many women, she never spoke. She was not a person, he thought, who would care to invite pity or sympathy.

      Captain Warburton dropped down in the chair