Dead Man’s Folly. Агата Кристи
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He delivered a final kick to the lopsided Folly. ‘If the foundations are rotten – everything’s rotten.’
‘It is profound what you say there,’ said Poirot. ‘Yes, it is profound.’
The path they were following came out from the trees and the house showed white and beautiful before them in its setting of dark trees rising up behind it.
‘It is of a veritable beauty, yes,’ murmured Poirot.
‘He wants to build a billiard room on,’ said Mr Weyman venomously.
On the bank below them a small elderly lady was busy with sécateurs on a clump of shrubs. She climbed up to greet them, panting slightly.
‘Everything neglected for years,’ she said. ‘And so difficult nowadays to get a man who understands shrubs. This hillside should be a blaze of colour in March and April, but very disappointing this year – all this dead wood ought to have been cut away last autumn –’
‘M. Hercule Poirot, Mrs Folliat,’ said Mrs Oliver.
The elderly lady beamed.
‘So this is the great M. Poirot! It is kind of you to come and help us tomorrow. This clever lady here has thought out a most puzzling problem – it will be such a novelty.’
Poirot was faintly puzzled by the graciousness of the little lady’s manner. She might, he thought, have been his hostess.
He said politely:
‘Mrs Oliver is an old friend of mine. I was delighted to be able to respond to her request. This is indeed a beautiful spot, and what a superb and noble mansion.’
Mrs Folliat nodded in a matter-of-fact manner.
‘Yes. It was built by my husband’s great-grandfather in 1790. There was an Elizabethan house previously. It fell into disrepair and burned down in about 1700. Our family has lived here since 1598.’
Her voice was calm and matter of fact. Poirot looked at her with closer attention. He saw a very small and compact little person, dressed in shabby tweeds. The most noticeable feature about her was her clear china-blue eyes. Her grey hair was closely confined by a hairnet. Though obviously careless of her appearance, she had that indefinable air of being someone which is so hard to explain.
As they walked together towards the house, Poirot said diffidently, ‘It must be hard for you to have strangers living here.’
There was a moment’s pause before Mrs Folliat answered. Her voice was clear and precise and curiously devoid of emotion.
‘So many things are hard, M. Poirot,’ she said.
It was Mrs Folliat who led the way into the house and Poirot followed her. It was a gracious house, beautifully proportioned. Mrs Folliat went through a door on the left into a small daintily furnished sitting-room and on into the big drawing-room beyond, which was full of people who all seemed, at the moment, to be talking at once.
‘George,’ said Mrs Folliat, ‘this is M. Poirot who is so kind as to come and help us. Sir George Stubbs.’
Sir George, who had been talking in a loud voice, swung round. He was a big man with a rather florid red face and a slightly unexpected beard. It gave a rather disconcerting effect of an actor who had not quite made up his mind whether he was playing the part of a country squire, or of a ‘rough diamond’ from the Dominions. It certainly did not suggest the navy, in spite of Michael Weyman’s remarks. His manner and voice were jovial, but his eyes were small and shrewd, of a particularly penetrating pale blue.
He greeted Poirot heartily.
‘We’re so glad that your friend Mrs Oliver managed to persuade you to come,’ he said. ‘Quite a brain-wave on her part. You’ll be an enormous attraction.’
He looked round a little vaguely.
‘Hattie?’ He repeated the name in a slightly sharper tone. ‘Hattie!’
Lady Stubbs was reclining in a big arm-chair a little distance from the others. She seemed to be paying no attention to what was going on round her. Instead she was smiling down at her hand which was stretched out on the arm of the chair. She was turning it from left to right, so that a big solitaire emerald on her third finger caught the light in its green depths.
She looked up now in a slightly startled childlike way and said, ‘How do you do.’
Poirot bowed over her hand.
Sir George continued his introductions.
‘Mrs Masterton.’
Mrs Masterton was a somewhat monumental woman who reminded Poirot faintly of a bloodhound. She had a full underhung jaw and large, mournful, slightly blood-shot eyes.
She bowed and resumed her discourse in a deep voice which again made Poirot think of a bloodhound’s baying note.
‘This silly dispute about the tea tent has got to be settled, Jim,’ she said forcefully. ‘They’ve got to see sense about it. We can’t have the whole show a fiasco because of these idiotic women’s local feuds.’
‘Oh, quite,’ said the man addressed.
‘Captain Warburton,’ said Sir George.
Captain Warburton, who wore a check sports coat and had a vaguely horsy appearance, showed a lot of white teeth in a somewhat wolfish smile, then continued his conversation.
‘Don’t you worry, I’ll settle it,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and talk to them like a Dutch uncle. What about the fortune-telling tent? In the space by the magnolia? Or at the far end of the lawn by the rhododendrons?’
Sir George continued his introductions.
‘Mr and Mrs Legge.’
A tall young man with his face peeling badly from sunburn grinned agreeably. His wife, an attractive freckled redhead, nodded in a friendly fashion, then plunged into controversy with Mrs Masterton, her agreeable high treble making a kind of duet with Mrs Masterton’s deep bay.
‘– not by the magnolia – a bottle-neck –’
‘– one wants to disperse things – but if there’s a queue –’
‘– much cooler. I mean, with the sun full on the house –’
‘– and the coconut shy can’t be too near the house – the boys are so wild when they throw –’
‘And this,’ said Sir George, ‘is Miss Brewis – who runs us all.’
Miss Brewis was seated behind the large silver tea tray.
She was a spare efficient-looking woman of forty-odd, with a brisk pleasant manner.
‘How do you do, M. Poirot,’ she said. ‘I do hope you didn’t have too crowded a journey? The trains are sometimes too terrible this time of year. Let me give you some tea. Milk? Sugar?’
‘Very little milk, mademoiselle, and four lumps of sugar.’ He added, as Miss Brewis dealt with his request, ‘I see that you are all in a great state of activity.’
‘Yes, indeed. There are always so many last-minute things to see to. And people let one down in the most extraordinary way nowadays. Over marquees, and tents and chairs and catering equipment. One has to keep on at them. I was on the telephone half the morning.’
‘What about these pegs, Amanda?’ said Sir George. ‘And the extra putters for the clock golf ?’
‘That’s 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,’