Читать книгу Appointment with Death - Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Mary Westmacott - Страница 7

Miss Sarah King, M.B., stood by the table in the writing-room of the Solomon Hotel in Jerusalem, idly turning over the papers and magazines. A frown contracted her brows and she looked preoccupied.

The tall middle-aged Frenchman who entered the room from the hall watched her for a moment or two before strolling up to the opposite side of the table. When their eyes met, Sarah made a little gesture of smiling recognition. She remembered that this man had come to help her when travelling from Cairo and had carried one of her suitcases at a moment when no porter appeared to be available.

‘You like Jerusalem, yes?’ asked Dr Gerard after they had exchanged greetings.

‘It’s rather terrible in some ways,’ said Sarah, and added: ‘Religion is very odd!’

The Frenchman looked amused.

‘I know what you mean.’ His English was very nearly perfect. ‘Every imaginable sect squabbling and fighting!’

‘And the awful things they’ve built, too!’ said Sarah.

‘Yes, indeed.’

Sarah sighed.

‘They turned me out of one place today because I had on a sleeveless dress,’ she said ruefully. ‘Apparently the Almighty doesn’t like my arms in spite of having made them.’

Dr Gerard laughed. Then he said: ‘I was about to order some coffee. You will join me, Miss—?’

‘King, my name is. Sarah King.’

‘And mine—permit me.’ He whipped out a card. Taking it, Sarah’s eyes widened in delighted awe.

‘Dr Theodore Gerard? Oh! I am excited to meet you. I’ve read all your works, of course. Your views on schizophrenia are frightfully interesting.’

‘Of course?’ Gerard’s eyebrows rose inquisitively.

Sarah explained rather diffidently.

‘You see—I’m by way of being a doctor myself. Just got my M.B.’

‘Ah! I see.’

Dr Gerard ordered coffee and they sat down in a corner of the lounge. The Frenchman was less interested in Sarah’s medical achievements than in the black hair that rippled back from her forehead and the beautifully shaped red mouth. He was amused at the obvious awe with which she regarded him.

‘You are staying here long?’ he asked conversationally.

‘A few days. That is all. Then I want to go to Petra.’

‘Aha! I, too, was thinking of going there if it does not take too long. You see, I have to be back in Paris on the fourteenth.’

‘It takes about a week, I believe. Two days to go, two days there and two days back again.’

‘I must go to the travel bureau in the morning and see what can be arranged.’

A party of people entered the lounge and sat down. Sarah watched them with some interest. She lowered her voice.

‘Those people who have just come in, did you notice them on the train the other night? They left Cairo the same time as we did.’

Dr Gerard screwed in an eyeglass and directed his glance across the room. ‘Americans?’

Sarah nodded.

‘Yes. An American family. But—rather an unusual one, I think.’

‘Unusual? How unusual?’

‘Well, look at them. Especially at the old woman.’

Dr Gerard complied. His keen professional glance flitted swiftly from face to face.

He noticed first a tall rather loose-boned man—age about thirty. The face was pleasant but weak and his manner seemed oddly apathetic. Then there were two good-looking youngsters—the boy had almost a Greek head. ‘Something the matter with him, too,’ thought Dr Gerard. ‘Yes—a definite state of nervous tension.’ The girl was clearly his sister, a strong resemblance, and she also was in an excitable condition. There was another girl younger still—with golden-red hair that stood out like a halo; her hands were very restless, they were tearing and pulling at the handkerchief in her lap. Yet another woman, young, calm, dark-haired with a creamy pallor, a placid face not unlike a Luini Madonna. Nothing jumpy about her! And the centre of the group—‘Heavens!’ thought Dr Gerard, with a Frenchman’s candid repulsion. ‘What a horror of a woman!’ Old, swollen, bloated, sitting there immovable in the midst of them—a distorted old Buddha—a gross spider in the centre of a web!

To Sarah he said: ‘La Maman, she is not beautiful, eh?’ And he shrugged his shoulders.

‘There’s something rather—sinister about her, don’t you think?’ asked Sarah.

Dr Gerard scrutinized her again. This time his eye was professional, not aesthetic.

‘Dropsy—cardiac—’ he added a glib medical phrase.

‘Oh, yes, that!’ Sarah dismissed the medical side.

‘But there is something odd in their attitude to her, don’t you think?’

‘Who are they, do you know?’

‘Their name is Boynton. Mother, married son, his wife, one younger son and two younger daughters.’

Dr Gerard murmured: ‘La famille Boynton sees the world.’

‘Yes, but there’s something odd about the way they’re seeing it. They never speak to anyone else. And none of them can do anything unless the old woman says so!’

‘She is of the matriarchal type,’ said Gerard thoughtfully.

‘She’s a complete tyrant, I think,’ said Sarah.

Dr Gerard shrugged his shoulders and remarked that the American woman ruled the earth—that was well known.

‘Yes, but it’s more than just that.’ Sarah was persistent. ‘She’s—oh, she’s got them all so cowed—so positively under her thumb—that it’s—it’s indecent!’

‘To have too much power is bad for women,’ Gerard agreed with sudden gravity. He shook his head.

‘It is difficult for a woman not to abuse power.’

He shot a quick sideways glance at Sarah. She was watching the Boynton family—or rather she was watching one particular member of it. Dr Gerard smiled a quick comprehending Gallic smile. Ah! So it was like that, was it?

He murmured tentatively: ‘You have spoken with them—yes?’

‘Yes—at least with one of them.’

‘The young man—the younger son?’

‘Yes. On the train coming here from Kantara. He was standing in the corridor. I spoke to him.’

There was no self-consciousness in her attitude to life. She was interested in humanity and was of a friendly though impatient disposition.

‘What made you speak to him?’ asked Gerard.

Sarah shrugged her shoulders.

‘Why not? I often speak to people travelling. I’m interested in people—in what they do and think and feel.’

‘You put them under the microscope, that is to say.’

‘I suppose you might call it that,’ the girl admitted.

‘And what were your impressions in this case?’

‘Well,’ she hesitated, ‘it was rather odd…To begin with, the boy flushed right up to the roots of his hair.’

‘Is that so remarkable?’ asked Gerard drily.

Sarah laughed.

‘You mean that he thought I was a shameless hussy making advances to him? Oh, no, I don’t think he thought that. Men can always tell, can’t they?’

She gave him a frank questioning glance. Dr Gerard nodded his head.

‘I got the impression,’ said Sarah, speaking slowly and frowning a little, ‘that he was—how shall I put it?—both excited and appalled. Excited out of all proportion—and quite absurdly apprehensive at the same time. Now that’s odd, isn’t it? Because I’ve always found Americans unusually self-possessed. An American boy of twenty, say, has infinitely more knowledge of the world and far more savoir-faire than an English boy of the same age. And this boy must be over twenty.’

‘About twenty-three or four, I should say.’

‘As much as that?’

‘I should think so.’

‘Yes…perhaps you’re right…Only, somehow, he seems very young…’

‘Maladjustment mentally. The “child” factor persists.’

‘Then I am right? I mean, there is something not quite normal about him?’

Dr Gerard shrugged his shoulders, smiling a little at her earnestness.

‘My dear young lady, are any of us quite normal? But I grant you that there is probably a neurosis of some kind.’

‘Connected with that horrible old woman, I’m sure.’

‘You seem to dislike her very much,’ said Gerard, looking at her curiously.

‘I do. She’s got a—oh, a malevolent eye!’

Gerard murmured: ‘So have many mothers when their sons are attracted to fascinating young ladies!’

Sarah shrugged an impatient shoulder. Frenchmen were all alike, she thought, obsessed by sex! Though, of course, as a conscientious psychologist she herself was bound to admit that there was always an underlying basis of sex to most phenomena. Sarah’s thoughts ran along a familiar psychological track.

She came out of her meditations with a start. Raymond Boynton was crossing the room to the centre table. He selected a magazine. As he passed her chair on his return journey she looked at him and spoke.

‘Have you been busy sightseeing today?’

She selected her words at random, her real interest was to see how they would be received.

Raymond half stopped, flushed, shied like a nervous horse and his eyes went apprehensively to the centre of his family group. He muttered: ‘Oh—oh, yes—why, yes, certainly. I—’

Then, as suddenly as though he had received the prick of a spur, he hurried back to his family, holding out the magazine.

The grotesque Buddha-like figure held out a fat hand for it, but as she took it her eyes, Dr Gerard noticed, were on the boy’s face. She gave a grunt, certainly no audible thanks. The position of her head shifted very slightly. The doctor saw that she was now looking hard at Sarah. Her face was quite impassive, it had no expression in it. Impossible to tell what was passing in the woman’s mind.

Sarah looked at her watch and uttered an exclamation.

‘It’s much later than I thought.’ She got up. ‘Thank you so much, Dr Gerard, for standing me coffee. I must write some letters now.’

He rose and took her hand.

‘We shall meet again, I hope,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes! Perhaps you will come to Petra?’

‘I shall certainly try to do so.’

Sarah smiled at him and turned away. Her way out of the room led her past the Boynton family.

Dr Gerard, watching, saw Mrs Boynton’s gaze shift to her son’s face. He saw the boy’s eyes meet hers. As Sarah passed, Raymond Boynton half turned his head—not towards her, but away from her…It was a slow, unwilling motion and conveyed the idea that old Mrs Boynton had pulled an invisible string.

Sarah King noticed the avoidance, and was young enough and human enough to be annoyed by it. They had had such a friendly talk together in the swaying corridor of the wagons-lits. They had compared notes on Egypt, had laughed at the ridiculous language of the donkey boys and street touts. Sarah had described how a camel man when he had started hopefully and impudently, ‘You English lady or American?’ had received the answer: ‘No, Chinese.’ And her pleasure in seeing the man’s complete bewilderment as he stared at her. The boy had been, she thought, like a nice eager schoolboy—there had been, perhaps, something almost pathetic about his eagerness. And now, for no reason at all, he was shy, boorish—positively rude.

‘I shan’t take any more trouble with him,’ said Sarah indignantly.

For Sarah, without being unduly conceited, had a fairly good opinion of herself. She knew herself to be definitely attractive to the opposite sex, and she was not one to take a snubbing lying down!

She had been, perhaps, a shade over-friendly to this boy because, for some obscure reason, she had felt sorry for him.

But now, it was apparent, he was merely a rude, stuck-up, boorish young American!

Instead of writing the letters she had mentioned, Sarah King sat down in front of her dressing-table, combed the hair back from her forehead, looked into a pair of troubled hazel eyes in the glass, and took stock of her situation in life.

She had just passed through a difficult emotional crisis. A month ago she had broken off her engagement to a young doctor some four years her senior. They had been very much attracted to each other, but had been too much alike in temperament. Disagreements and quarrels had been of common occurrence. Sarah was of too imperious a temperament herself to brook a calm assertion of autocracy. Like many high-spirited women, Sarah believed herself to admire strength. She had always told herself that she wanted to be mastered. When she met a man capable of mastering her she found that she did not like it at all! To break off her engagement had cost her a good deal of heart-burning, but she was clear-sighted enough to realize that mere mutual attraction was not a sufficient basis on which to build a lifetime of happiness. She had treated herself deliberately to an interesting holiday abroad in order to help on forgetfulness before she went back to start working in earnest.

Sarah’s thoughts came back from the past to the present.

‘I wonder,’ she thought, ‘if Dr Gerard will let me talk to him about his work. He’s done such marvellous work. If only he’ll take me seriously…Perhaps—if he comes to Petra—’

Then she thought again of the strange boorish young American.

She had no doubt that it was the presence of his family which had caused him to react in such a peculiar manner, but she felt slightly scornful of him, nevertheless. To be under the thumb of one’s family like that—it was really rather ridiculous—especially for a man!

And yet…

A queer feeling passed over her. Surely there was something a little odd about it all?

She said suddenly out loud: ‘That boy wants rescuing! I’m going to see to it!’