Murder in the Mews (Hercule Poirot 18)

“I don’t agree with you at all!” said Miss Pamela Lyall.

She was silent for quite a minute and a half before returning to the attack.

“As soon as I see people I begin wondering about them—what they’re like—what relations they are to each other—what they’re thinking and feeling. It’s—oh, it’s quite thrilling.”

“Hardly that,” said Hercule Poirot. “Nature repeats herself more than one would imagine. The sea,” he added thoughtfully, “has infinitely more variety.”

Sarah turned her head sideways and asked:

“You think that human beings tend to reproduce certain patterns? Stereotyped patterns?”

“Précisément,” said Poirot, and traced a design in the sand with his finger.

“What’s that you’re drawing?” asked Pamela curiously.

“A triangle,” said Poirot.

But Pamela’s attention had been diverted elsewhere.

“Here are the Chantrys,” she said.

A woman was coming down the beach—a tall woman, very conscious of herself and her body. She gave a half nod and smile and sat down a little distance away on the beach. The scarlet and gold silk wrap slipped down from her shoulders. She was wearing a white bathing dress.

Pamela sighed.

“Hasn’t she got a lovely figure?”

But Poirot was looking at her face—the face of a woman of thirty-nine who had been famous since sixteen for her beauty.

He knew, as everyone knew, all about Valentine Chantry. She had been famous for many things—for her caprices, for her wealth, for her enormous sapphire-blue eyes, for her matrimonial ventures and adventures. She had had five husbands and innumerable lovers. She had in turn been the wife of an Italian count, of an American steel magnate, of a tennis professional, of a racing motorist. Of these four the American had died, but the others had been shed negligently in the divorce court. Six months ago she had married a fifth time—a commander in the navy.

He it was who came striding down the beach behind her. Silent, dark—with a pugnacious jaw and a sullen manner. A touch of the primeval ape about him.

She said:

“Tony darling—my cigarette case . . .”

He had it ready for her—lighted her cigarette—helped her to slip the straps of the white bathing dress from her shoulders. She lay, arms outstretched in the sun. He sat by her like some wild beast that guards its prey.

Pamela said, her voice just lowered sufficiently:

“You know they interest me frightfully . . . He’s such a brute! So silent and—sort of glowering. I suppose a woman of her kind likes that. It must be like controlling a tiger! I wonder how long it will last. She gets tired of them very soon, I believe—especially nowadays. All the same, if she tried to get rid of him, I think he might be dangerous.”

Another couple came down the beach—rather shyly. They were the newcomers of the night before. Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Gold as Miss Lyall knew from her inspection of the hotel visitors’ book. She knew, too, for such were the Italian regulations—their Christian names and their ages as set down from their passports.

Mr. Douglas Cameron Gold was thirty-one and Mrs. Marjorie Emma Gold was thirty-five.

Miss Lyall’s hobby in life, as has been said, was the study of human beings. Unlike most English people, she was capable of speaking to strangers on sight instead of allowing four days to a week to elapse before making the first cautious advance as is the customary British habit. She, therefore, noting the slight hesitancy and shyness of Mrs. Gold’s advance, called out:

“Good morning, isn’t it a lovely day?”

Mrs. Gold was a small woman—rather like a mouse. She was not bad-looking, indeed her features were regular and her complexion good, but she had a certain air of diffidence and dowdiness that made her liable to be overlooked. Her husband, on the other hand, was extremely good-looking, in an almost theatrical manner. Very fair, crisply curling hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, narrow hips. He looked more like a young man on the stage than a young man in real life, but the moment he opened his mouth that impression faded. He was quite natural and unaffected, even, perhaps, a little stupid.

Mrs. Gold looked gratefully at Pamela and sat down near her.

“What a lovely shade of brown you are. I feel terribly underdone!”

“One has to take a frightful lot of trouble to brown evenly,” sighed Miss Lyall.