Agatha Christie - Poirot's Early Cases

Miss Henderson laughed in an unashamed manner. 'That touch about the Guards? I knew that would bring the old boy up spluttering and gasping.' She leaned forward confidentially. 'I admit I life scandal - the more ill-natured, the betterl'

Poirot looked thoughtfully at her - her slim well-preserved figure, her keen dark eyes, her grey hair; a woman of forty-five who was content to look her age.

Ellie said abruptly: 'I have it! Aren't you the great detective?' Poirot bowed. 'You are too amiable, mademoiselle.' But he made no disclaimer.

'How thrilling,' said Miss Henderson. 'Are you "hot on the trail" as they say in books? Have we a criminal secretly in our midst? Or am I being indiscreet?' 'Not at all. Not at all. It pains me to disappoint your expectations, but I am simply here, like everyone else, to amuse myself.' He said it in such a gloomy voice that Miss Henderson laughed.

'Oh! Well, you will be able to get ashore tomorrow at Alexandria.

You have been to Egypt before?' 'Never, mademoiselle.' Miss Henderson rose somewhat abruptly.

'I think I shall join the General on his constitutional,' she announced.

Poirot sprang politely to his feet.

She gave him a little nod and passed out on to the deck.

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 its 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 cdrefully 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 -? Ohl Good morning, M. Poirot - have you seen John?' 'He's on the starboard deck, madame. Shall I -?'

She arrested him with a gesture. 'I'll sit here a minute.' She at 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 -' 'Prdcisgrnent,' 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 AR the specialists say so!' Mrs Clapperton had embarked on the - to her - ever-fascinating topic of her health. 'John, poor darting, 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 marvellous, 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 ami It's absurd. I never try to pretend I'm a day less than forty-three,' she continued with lightly mendacious candour, 'but a lot of people find it hard to believe. "You're so alive, Adeline," they ay 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, vanit boxes, cigarette case and lighter and other odds and ends were collected. Mrs Clapperton thanked him politely, then she swep! down the deck and said, 'John ' Colonel Clapperton was still deep in conversation with Mis Henderson. He swung round and came quickly to meet his wife.

He bent over her protectively. Her deck chair - was it in the right place? Wouldn't it be better -? His manner was courteous - full of gentle consideration. Clearly an adored wife spoilt by ar 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 disrespectfully among the younger set on board as the Grandfather of All the Tea Planters, had just shuffled in. 'Boyl' he called. 'Get me a whisky peg.' Poirot stooped to retrieve a torn scrap of notepaper, an over. looked item from the contents of Mrs Clapperton's bag. Part of. prescription, he noted, containing digitalin. He put it in hi.' pocket, meaning to restore it to Mrs Clapperton later.

'Yes,' went on the aged passenger. 'Poisonous woman, l 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.

'Ha, ha!' chuckled the old gentleman. 'You've put the matter in a nutshell. Holds the purse strings. Ha, hal' Two girls burst into the smoking-room. One had a round face with freckles and dark hair streaming out in a windswept con. fusion, the other had freckles and curly chestnut hair.

'A rescue - a rescue? cried Kitty Mooney. 'Pam and I are going to rescue Colonel Clapperton.'

'From his wife,' gasped Pamela Cregan.

'We think he's a pet…' 'And she's just awful - she won't let him do anything,' the two girls exclaimed.

'And if he isn't with her, he's usually grabbed by the Henderson woman…' 'Who's quite nice. But terribly old…' They ran out, gasping in between giggles: 'A rescue - a rescue

That the rescue of Colonel Clapperton was no isolated sally, but a fixed project was made clear that same evening when the eighteen-year-old Pam Cregan came up to Hercule Poirot, and murmured: 'Watch us, M. Poirot. He's going to be cut out from under her nose and taken to walk in the moonlight on the boat deck.' It was just at that moment that Colonel Clapperton was saying: 'I grant you the price of a Rolls-Royce. But it's practically good for a lifetime. Now my car - ' 'My car, I think, John.' Mrs Clapperton's voice was shrill and penetrating.

He showed no annoyance at her ungraciousness. Either he was used to it by this time, or else 'Or else?' thought Poirot and let himself speculate.

'Certainly, my dear, your car,' Clapperton bowed to his wife and finished what he had been saying, perfectly unruffled.

'Voild ce qu'on appelle le pukka sahib,' thought Poirot. 'But the General Forbes says that Clapperton is no gentleman at all. I wonder now.' There was a suggestion of bridge. Mrs Clapperton, General Forbes and a hawk-eyed couple sat down to it. Miss Henderson had excused herself and gone out on deck.

'What about your husband?' asked General Forbes, hesitating.

'John won't play,' said Mrs Clapperton. 'Most tiresome of him.' The four bridge players began shuffling the cards.