Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot 17)

Mrs. Otterbourne was even more disappointed. She searched her mind hopefully.

“Of course!” she said. “How foolish of me! Miss Bowers!”

“Miss Bowers?”

“Yes. Naturally. It’s so clear psychologically. Repression! The repressed virgin! Maddened by the sight of these two—a young husband and wife passionately in love with each other. Of course it was her! She’s just the type—sexually unattractive, innately respectable. In my book, The Barren Vine—”

Colonel Race interrupted tactfully: “Your suggestions have been most helpful, Mrs. Otterbourne. We must get on with our job now. Thank you so much.”

He escorted her gallantly to the door and came back wiping his brow.

“What a poisonous woman! Whew! Why didn’t somebody murder her!”

“It may yet happen,” Poirot consoled him.

“There might be some sense in that. Whom have we got left? Pennington—we’ll keep him for the end, I think. Richetti—Ferguson.”

Signor Richetti was very voluble, very agitated.

“But what a horror, what an infamy—a woman so young and so beautiful—indeed an inhuman crime!”

Signor Richetti’s hands flew expressively up in the air.

His answers were prompt. He had gone to bed early—very early. In fact immediately after dinner. He had read for a while—a very interesting pamphlet lately published—Prähistorische Forschung in Kleinasien—throwing an entirely new light on the painted pottery of the Anatolian foothills.

He had put out his light some time before eleven. No, he had not heard any shot. Not any sound like the pop of a cork. The only thing he had heard—but that was later, in the middle of the night—was a splash, a big splash, just near his porthole.

“Your cabin is on the lower deck, on the starboard side, is it not?”

“Yes, yes, that is so. And I heard the big splash.” His arms flew up once more to describe the bigness of the splash.

“Can you tell me at all what time that was?”

Signor Richetti reflected.

“It was one, two, three hours after I go to sleep. Perhaps two hours.”

“About ten minutes past one, for instance?”

“It might very well be, yes. Ah! But what a terrible crime—how inhuman…So charming a woman….”

Exit Signor Richetti, still gesticulating freely.

Race looked at Poirot. Poirot raised his eyebrows expressively, then shrugged his shoulders. They passed on to Mr. Ferguson.

Ferguson was difficult. He sprawled insolently in a chair.

“Grand to-do about this business!” he sneered. “What’s it really matter? Lots of superfluous women in the world!”

Race said coldly: “Can we have an account of your movements last night, Mr. Ferguson?”

“Don’t see why you should, but I don’t mind. I mooched around a good bit. Went ashore with Miss Robson. When she went back to the boat I mooched around by myself for a while. Came back and turned in round about midnight.”

“Your cabin is on the lower deck, starboard side?”

“Yes. I’m up among the nobs.”

“Did you hear a shot? It might only have sounded like the popping of a cork.”