Death in the Clouds (Hercule Poirot 12)

‘Yes. My father has been to Edinburgh to give a lecture there, and we have stayed with friends also. But now—tomorrow—we return to France.’

‘I see.’

‘The police, they have not made an arrest yet?’ said Jean Dupont.

‘No, there’s not even been anything about it in the papers lately. Perhaps they’ve given it up.’

Jean Dupont shook his head. ‘No, no, they will not have given it up. They work silently’—he made an expressive gesture—‘in the dark.’

‘Don’t,’ said Jane uneasily. ‘You give me the creeps.’

‘Yes, it is not a very nice feeling, to have been so close when a murder was committed…’ He added, ‘And I was closer than you were. I was very close indeed. Sometimes I do not like to think of that…’

‘Who do you think did it?’ asked Jane. ‘I’ve wondered and wondered.’

Jean Dupont shrugged his shoulders.

‘It was not I. She was far too ugly!’

‘Well,’ said Jane, ‘I suppose you would rather kill an ugly woman than a good-looking one?’

‘Not at all. If a woman is good-looking you are fond of her—she treats you badly—she makes you jealous, mad with jealousy. “Good,” you say, “I will kill her. It will be a satisfaction”.’

‘And is it a satisfaction?’

‘That, Mademoiselle, I do not know, because I have not yet tried.’ He laughed, then shook his head. ‘But an ugly old woman like Giselle—who would want to bother to kill her?’

‘Well, that’s one way of looking at it,’ said Jane. She frowned. ‘It seems rather terrible, somehow, to think that perhaps she was young and pretty once.’

‘I know, I know.’ He became suddenly grave. ‘It is the great tragedy of life, that women grow old.’

‘You seem to think a lot about women and their looks,’ said Jane.

‘Naturally. It is the most interesting subject possible. That seems strange to you because you are English. An Englishman thinks first of his work—his job, he calls it—and then of his sport, and last—a good way last—of his wife. Yes, yes, it is really so. Why, imagine, in a little hotel in Syria was an Englishman whose wife had been taken ill. He himself had to be somewhere in Iraq by a certain date. Eh bien, would you believe it, he left his wife and went on so as to be “on duty” in time. And both he and his wife thought that quite natural; they thought him noble, unselfish. But the doctor, who was not English, thought him a barbarian. A wife, a human being—that should come first; to do one’s job—that is something much less important.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jane. ‘One’s work has to come first, I suppose.’

‘But why? You see, you too have the same point of view. By doing one’s work one obtains money—by indulging and looking after a woman one spends it—so the last is much more noble an ideal than the first.’

Jane laughed.

‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘I think I’d rather be regarded as a mere luxury and self-indulgence, than regarded sternly as a First Duty. I’d rather a man felt that he was enjoying himself looking after me than that he should feel I was a duty to be attended to.’

‘No one, Mademoiselle, would be likely to feel that with you.’

Jane blushed slightly at the earnestness of the young man’s tone. He went on talking quickly:

‘I have only been in England once before. It was very interesting to me the other day at the—inquest, you call it?—to study three young and charming women, all so different from one another.’

‘What did you think of us all?’ asked Jane, amused.

‘That Lady Horbury—bah, I know her type well. It is very exotic—very, very expensive. You see it sitting round the baccarat table—the soft face—the hard expression—and you know—you know so well what it will be like in, say fifteen years. She lives for sensation, that one. For high play, perhaps for drugs…Au fond, she is uninteresting!’

‘And Miss Kerr?’

‘Ah, she is very, very English. She is the kind that any shopkeeper on the Riviera will give credit to; they are very discerning, our shopkeepers. Her clothes are very well cut, but rather like a man’s. She walks about as though she owns the earth. She is not conceited about it—she is just an Englishwoman. She knows which department of England different people come from. It is true. I have heard ones like her in Egypt. “What? The Etceteras are here? The Yorkshire Etceteras? Oh, the Shropshire Etceteras”.’

His mimicry was good. Jane laughed at the drawling, well-bred tones.