Rosalie nodded.
Then she burst out again: “I’ve tried so hard to—keep everyone from knowing…It isn’t really her fault. She got discouraged. Her books didn’t sell anymore. People are tired of all that cheap sex stuff…It hurt her—it hurt her dreadfully. And so she began to—to drink. For a long time I didn’t know why she was so queer. Then, when I found out, I tried to—to stop it. She’d be all right for a bit, and then, suddenly, she’d start, and there would be dreadful quarrels and rows with people. It was awful.” She shuddered. “I had always to be on the watch—to get her away….”
“And then—she began to dislike me for it. She—she’s turned right against me. I think she almost hates me sometimes.”
“Pauvre petite,” said Poirot.
She turned on him vehemently.
“Don’t be sorry for me. Don’t be kind. It’s easier if you’re not.” She sighed—a long heartrending sigh. “I’m so tired…I’m so deadly, deadly tired.”
“I know,” said Poirot.
“People think I’m awful. Stuck-up and cross and bad-tempered. I can’t help it. I’ve forgotten how to be—to be nice.”
“That is what I said to you; you have carried your burden by yourself too long.”
Rosalie said slowly. “It’s a relief—to talk about it. You—you’ve always been kind to me, Monsieur Poirot. I’m afraid I’ve been rude to you often.”
“La politesse, it is not necessary between friends.”
The suspicion came back to her face suddenly.
“Are you—are you going to tell everyone? I suppose you must, because of those damned bottles I threw overboard.”
“No, no, it is not necessary. Just tell me what I want to know. At what time was this? Ten minutes past one?”
“About that, I should think. I don’t remember exactly.”
“Now tell me, Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle Van Schuyler saw you, did you see her?”
Rosalie shook her head.
“No, I didn’t.”
“She says that she looked out of the door of her cabin.”
“I don’t think I should have seen her. I just looked along the deck and then out to the river.”
Poirot nodded.
“And did you see anyone—anyone at all, when you looked down the deck?”
There was a pause—quite a long pause. Rosalie was frowning. She seemed to be thinking earnestly.
At last she shook her head quite decisively.
“No,” she said. “I saw nobody.”
Hercule Poirot slowly nodded his head. But his eyes were grave.
Twenty
People crept into the dining saloon by ones and twos in a very subdued manner. There seemed a general feeling that to sit down eagerly to food displayed an unfortunate heartlessness. It was with an almost apologetic air that one passenger after another came and sat down at their tables.
Tim Allerton arrived some few minutes after his mother had taken her seat. He was looking in a thoroughly bad temper.
“I wish we’d never come on this blasted trip,” he growled.