Appointment with Death. Agatha Christie
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One of them, at least, no longer even wants to be free! And they would all be afraid of freedom.’
Sarah asked practically: ‘What will happen when she dies?’
Gerard shrugged his shoulders.
‘It depends. On how soon that happens. If it happened now—well, I think it might not be too late. The boy and girl—they are still young—impressionable. They would become, I believe, normal human beings. With Lennox, possibly, it has gone too far. He looks to me like a man who has parted company with hope—he lives and endures like a brute beast.’
Sarah said impatiently: ‘His wife ought to have done something! She ought to have yanked him out of it.’
‘I wonder. She may have tried—and failed.’
‘Do you think she’s under the spell, too?’
Gerard shook his head.
‘No. I don’t think the old lady has any power over her, and for that reason she hates her with a bitter hatred. Watch her eyes.’
Sarah frowned. ‘I can’t make her out—the young one, I mean. Does she know what is going on?’
‘I think she must have a pretty shrewd idea.’
‘H’m,’ said Sarah. ‘That old woman ought to be murdered! Arsenic in her early morning tea would be my prescription.’
Then she said abruptly:
‘What about the youngest girl—the red-haired one with the rather fascinating vacant smile?’
Gerard frowned. ‘I don’t know. There is something queer there. Ginevra Boynton is the old woman’s own daughter, of course.’
‘Yes. I suppose that would be different—or wouldn’t it?’
Gerard said slowly: ‘I do not believe that when once the mania for power (and the lust for cruelty) has taken possession of a human being it can spare anybody—not even its nearest and dearest.’
He was silent for a moment, then he said: ‘Are you a Christian, mademoiselle?’
Sarah said slowly: ‘I don’t know. I used to think that I wasn’t anything. But now—I’m not sure. I feel—oh, I feel that if I could sweep all this away’—she made a violent gesture—‘all the buildings and the sects and the fierce squabbling churches—that—that I might see Christ’s quiet figure riding into Jerusalem on a donkey—and believe in Him.’
Dr Gerard said gravely: ‘I believe at least in one of the chief tenets of the Christian faith—contentment with a lowly place. I am a doctor and I know that ambition—the desire to succeed—to have power—leads to most ills of the human soul. If the desire is realized it leads to arrogance, violence and final satiety—and if it is denied—ah! if it is denied—let all the asylums for the insane rise up and give their testimony! They are filled with human beings who were unable to face being mediocre, insignificant, ineffective and who therefore created for themselves ways of escape from reality so as to be shut off from life itself for ever.’
Sarah said abruptly: ‘It’s a pity the old Boynton woman isn’t in an asylum.’
Gerard shook his head.
‘No—her place is not there among the failures. It is worse than that. She has succeeded, you see! She has accomplished her dream.’
Sarah shuddered.
She cried passionately: ‘Such things ought not to be!’
Sarah wondered very much whether Carol Boynton would keep her appointment that night.
On the whole she rather doubted it. She was afraid that Carol would have a sharp reaction after her semi-confidences of the morning.
Nevertheless she made her preparations, slipping on a blue satin dressing-gown and getting out her little spirit lamp and boiling up water.
She was just on the point of giving Carol up (it was after one o’clock) and going to bed, when there was a tap on her door. She opened it and drew quickly back to let Carol come in.
The latter said breathlessly: ‘I was afraid you might have gone to bed…’
Sarah’s manner was carefully matter-of-fact.
‘Oh, no, I was waiting for you. Have some tea, will you? It’s real Lapsang Souchong.’
She brought over a cup. Carol had been nervous and uncertain of herself. Now she accepted the cup and a biscuit and her manner became calmer.
‘This is rather fun,’ said Sarah, smiling.
Carol looked a little startled.
‘Yes,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
‘Rather like the midnight feasts we used to have at school,’ went on Sarah. ‘I suppose you didn’t go to school?’
Carol shook her head.
‘No, we never left home. We had a governess—different governesses. They never stayed long.’
‘Did you never go away at all?’
‘No. We’ve lived always in the same house. This coming abroad is the first time I’ve ever been away.’
Sarah said casually: ‘It must have been a great adventure.’
‘Oh, it was. It—it’s all been like a dream.’
‘What made your—your stepmother decide to come abroad?’
At the mention of Mrs Boynton’s name, Carol had flinched. Sarah said quickly:
‘You know, I’m by way of being a doctor. I’ve just taken my M.B. Your mother—or stepmother rather—is very interesting to me—as a case, you know. I should say she was quite definitely a pathological case.’
Carol stared. It was clearly a very unexpected point of view to her. Sarah had spoken as she had with deliberate intent. She realized that to her family Mrs Boynton loomed as a kind of powerful obscene idol. It was Sarah’s object to rob her of her more terrifying aspect.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There’s a kind of disease of—of grandeur—that gets hold of people. They get very autocratic and insist on everything being done exactly as they say and are altogether very difficult to deal with.’
Carol put down her cup.
‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘I’m so glad to be talking to you. Really, you know, I believe Ray and I have been getting quite—well, quite queer. We’d get terribly worked up about things.’
‘Talking with an outsider is always a good thing,’ said Sarah. ‘Inside a family one is apt to get too intense.’ Then she asked casually: ‘If you are unhappy, haven’t you ever thought of leaving home?’
Carol looked startled. ‘Oh, no! How could we? I—I mean Mother would never allow it.’
‘But she couldn’t stop you,’ said Sarah gently. ‘You’re over age.’
‘I’m twenty-three.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But still, I don’t see how—I mean, I wouldn’t know where to go and what to do.’
Her tone seemed bewildered.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘we haven’t got any money.’
‘Haven’t you any friends you could go to?’
‘Friends?’ Carol shook her head. ‘Oh, no, we don’t know anyone!’
‘Did none of you ever think of leaving home?’
‘No—I