Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
“It may be, Madame.”
He changed the subject, talking of Majorca and asking various practical questions from the point of view of a possible visit.
Mrs. Allerton had grown to like the little man very much—partly perhaps out of a contradictory spirit. Tim, she felt, was always trying to make her less friendly to Hercule Poirot, whom he summarized firmly as “the worst kind of bounder.” But she herself did not call him a bounder; she supposed it was his somewhat foreign exotic clothing which roused her son’s prejudices. She herself found him an intelligent and stimulating companion. He was also extremely sympathetic. She found herself suddenly confiding in him her dislike of Joanna Southwood. It eased her to talk of the matter. And after all, why not? He did not know Joanna—would probably never meet her. Why should she not ease herself of that constantly borne burden of jealous thought?
At the same moment Tim and Rosalie Otterbourne were talking of her. Tim had just been half jestingly abusing his luck. His rotten health, never bad enough to be really interesting, yet not good enough for him to have led the life he would have chosen. Very little money, no congenial occupation.
“A thoroughly lukewarm, tame existence,” he finished discontentedly.
Rosalie said abruptly, “You’ve got something heaps of people would envy you.”
“What’s that?”
“Your mother.”
Tim was surprised and pleased.
“Mother? Yes, of course she is quite unique. It’s nice of you to see it.”
“I think she’s marvellous. She looks so lovely—so composed and calm—as though nothing could ever touch her, and yet—and yet somehow she’s always ready to be funny about things too….”
Rosalie was stammering slightly in her earnestness.
Tim felt a rising warmth to the girl. He wished he could return the compliment, but lamentably, Mrs. Otterbourne was his idea of the world’s greatest menace. The inability to respond in kind made him embarrassed.
Miss Van Schuyler had stayed in the launch. She could not risk the ascent either on a camel or on her legs. She had said snappily:
“I’m sorry to have to ask you to stay with me, Miss Bowers. I intended you to go and Cornelia to stay, but girls are so selfish. She rushed off without a word to me. And I actually saw her talking to that very unpleasant and ill-bred young man, Ferguson. Cornelia has disappointed me sadly. She has absolutely no social sense.”
Miss Bowers replied in her usual matter-of-fact fashion:
“That’s quite all right, Miss Van Schuyler. It would have been a hot walk up there, and I don’t fancy the look of those saddles on the camels. Fleas, as likely as not.”
She adjusted her glasses, screwed up her eyes to look at the party descending the hill and remarked: “Miss Robson isn’t with that young man anymore. She’s with Dr. Bessner.”
Miss Van Schuyler grunted.
Since she had discovered that Dr. Bessner had a large clinic in Czechoslovakia and a European reputation as a fashionable physician, she was disposed to be gracious to him. Besides she might need his professional services before the journey was over.
When the party returned to the Karnak Linnet gave a cry of surprise.
“A telegram for me.”
She snatched it off the board and tore it open.
“Why—I don’t understand—potatoes, beetroots—what does it mean, Simon?”
Simon was just coming to look over her shoulder when a furious voice said: “Excuse me, that telegram is for me,” and Signor Richetti snatched it rudely from her hand, fixing her with a furious glare as he did so.
Linnet stared in surprise for a moment, then turned over the envelope.
“Oh, Simon, what a fool I am! It’s Richetti—not Ridgeway—and anyway of course my name isn’t Ridgeway now. I must apologize.”
She followed the little archaeologist up to the stern of the boat.
“I am so sorry, Signor Richetti. You see my name was Ridgeway before I married, and I haven’t been married very long, and so….”