Agatha Christie - Curtain - Poirot’s Last Case

‘Oh, nobody you know. Some friends of the Franklins. Old man called Litchfield. He was quite rich and practically starved his wretched daughters – never let them see anyone, or go out. He was mad really, but not sufficiently so in the medical sense.’

‘And the eldest daughter murdered him,’ I said.

‘Oh, I expect you read about it? I suppose you would call it murder – but it wasn’t done from personal motives. Margaret Litchfield went straight to the police and gave herself up. I think she was very brave. I wouldn’t have had the courage.’

‘The courage to give yourself up or the courage to commit murder?’

‘Both.’

‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ I said severely, ‘and I don’t like to hear you talking of murder as justified in certain cases.’ I paused, and added: ‘What did Dr Franklin think?’

‘Thought it served him right,’ said Judith. ‘You know, Father, some people really ask to be murdered.’

‘I won’t have you talking like this, Judith. Who’s been putting these ideas into your head?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Well, let me tell you that it’s all pernicious nonsense.’

‘I see. We’ll leave it at that.’ She paused. ‘I came really to give you a message from Mrs Franklin. She’d like to see you if you don’t mind coming up to her bedroom.’

‘I shall be delighted. I’m so sorry she was feeling too ill to come down to dinner.’

‘She’s all right,’ said Judith unfeelingly. ‘She just likes making a fuss.’

The young are very unsympathetic.

I had only met Mrs Franklin once before. She was a woman about thirty – of what I should describe as the madonna type. Big brown eyes, hair parted in the centre, and a long gentle face. She was very slender and her skin had a transparent fragility.

She was lying on a day bed, propped up with pillows, and wearing a very dainty negligee of white and pale blue.

Franklin and Boyd Carrington were there drinking coffee. Mrs Franklin welcomed me with an outstretched hand and a smile.

‘How glad I am you’ve come, Captain Hastings. It will be so nice for Judith. The child has really been working far too hard.’

‘She looks very well on it,’ I said as I took the fragile little hand in mine.

Barbara Franklin sighed. ‘Yes, she’s lucky. How I envy her. I don’t believe really that she knows what ill health is. What do you think, Nurse? Oh! Let me introduce you. This is Nurse Craven who’s so terribly, terribly good to me. I don’t know what I should do without her. She treats me just like a baby.’

Nurse Craven was a tall, good-looking young woman with a fine colour and a handsome head of auburn hair. I noticed her hands which were long and white – very different from the hands of so many hospital nurses. She was in some respects a taciturn girl, and sometimes did not answer. She did not now, merely inclined her head.

‘But really,’ went on Mrs Franklin, ‘John has been working that wretched girl of yours too hard. He’s such a slave-driver. You are a slave-driver, aren’t you, John?’

Her husband was standing looking out of the window. He was whistling to himself and jingling some loose change in his pocket. He started slightly at his wife’s question.

‘What’s that, Barbara?’

‘I was saying that you overwork poor Judith Hastings shamefully. Now Captain Hastings is here, he and I are going to put our heads together and we’re not going to allow it.’

Persiflage was not Dr Franklin’s strong point. He looked vaguely worried and turned to Judith enquiringly. He mumbled: ‘You must let me know if I overdo it.’

Judith said: ‘They’re just trying to be funny. Talking of work, I wanted to ask you about that stain for the second slide – you know, the one that –’

He turned to her eagerly and broke in. ‘Yes, yes. I say, if you don’t mind, let’s go down to the lab. I’d like to be quite sure –’

Still talking, they went out of the room together. Barbara Franklin lay back on her pillows. She sighed. Nurse Craven said suddenly and rather disagreeably: ‘It’s Miss Hastings who’s the slave-driver, I think!’

Again Mrs Franklin sighed. She murmured: ‘I feel so inadequate . I ought, I know, to take more interest in John’s work, but I just can’t do it. I dare say it’s something wrong in me, but –’

She was interrupted by a snort from Boyd Carrington who was standing by the fireplace.

‘Nonsense, Babs,’ he said. ‘ You’re all right. Don’t worry yourself.’

‘Oh but, Bill, dear, I do worry. I get so discouraged about myself. It’s all – I can’t help feeling it – it’s all so nasty . The guinea pigs and the rats and everything. Ugh!’ She shuddered. ‘I know it’s stupid, but I’m such a fool. It makes me feel quite sick. I just want to think of all the lovely happy things – birds and flowers and children playing. You know, Bill.’

He came over and took the hand she held out to him so pleadingly. His face as he looked down at her was changed, as gentle as any woman’s. It was, somehow, impressive – for Boyd Carrington was so essentially a manly man.

‘You’ve not changed much since you were seventeen, Babs,’ he said. ‘Do you remember that garden house of yours and the bird bath and the coconuts?’

He turned his head to me. ‘Barbara and I are old playmates,’ he said.

‘Old playmates!’ she protested.

‘Oh, I’m not denying that you’re over fifteen years younger than I am. But I played with you as a tiny tot when I was a young man. Gave you pick-a-backs, my dear. And then later I came home to find you a beautiful young lady – just on the point of making your début in the world – and I did my share by taking you out on the golf links and teaching you to play golf. Do you remember?’

‘Oh, Bill, do you think I’d forget?’

‘My people used to live in this part of the world,’ she explained to me. ‘And Bill used to come and stay with his old uncle, Sir Everard, at Knatton.’

‘And what a mausoleum it was – and is,’ said Boyd Carrington. ‘Sometimes I despair of getting the place liveable.’

‘Oh, Bill, it could be made marvellous – quite marvellous!’

‘Yes, Babs, but the trouble is I’ve got no ideas. Baths and some really comfortable chairs – that’s all I can think of. It needs a woman.’

‘I’ve told you I’ll come and help. I mean it. Really.’

Sir William looked doubtfully towards Nurse Craven. ‘If you’re strong enough, I could drive you over. What do you think, Nurse?’

‘Oh yes, Sir William. I really think it would do Mrs Franklin good – if she’s careful not to overtire herself, of course.’

‘That’s a date, then,’ said Boyd Carrington. ‘And now you have a good night’s sleep. Get into good fettle for tomorrow.’

We both wished Mrs Franklin good night and went out together. As we went down the stairs, Boyd Carrington said gruffly: ‘You’ve no idea what a lovely creature she was at seventeen. I was home from Burma – my wife died out there, you know. Don’t mind telling you I completely lost my heart to her. She married Franklin three or four years afterwards. Don’t think it’s been a happy marriage. It’s my idea that that’s what lies at the bottom of her ill health. Fellow doesn’t understand her or appreciate her. And she’s the sensitive kind. I’ve an idea that this delicacy of hers is partly nervous. Take her out of herself, amuse her, interest her, and she looks a different creature! But that damned sawbones only takes an interest in test tubes and West African natives and cultures.’ He snorted angrily.

I thought that there was, perhaps, something in what he said. Yet it surprised me that Boyd Carrington should be attracted by Mrs Franklin who, when all was said and done, was a sickly creature, though pretty in a frail, chocolate-box way. But Boyd Carrington himself was so full of vitality and life that I should have thought he would merely have been impatient with the neurotic type of invalid. However, Barbara Franklin must have been quite lovely as a girl, and with many men, especially those of the idealistic type such as I judged Boyd Carrington to be, early impressions die hard.