Appointment With Death (Hercule Poirot 19)

‘I don’t understand what you mean!’

‘I think you understand very well.’

Her eyes dropped. She said uncertainly:

‘It was—a great shock.’

‘Was it?’

The blood rushed to her face. She stared at him helplessly. Now he saw fear in her eyes.

‘Was it such a great shock, mademoiselle? Remembering a certain conversation you had with your brother Raymond one night in Jerusalem?’

His shot proved right. He saw it in the way the colour drained out of her cheeks again.

‘You know about that?’ she whispered.

‘Yes, I know.’

‘But how—how?’

‘Part of your conversation was overheard.’

‘Oh!’ Carol Boynton buried her face in her hands. Her sobs shook the table.

Hercule Poirot waited a minute, then he said quietly:

‘You were planning together to bring about your stepmother’s death.’

Carol sobbed out brokenly: ‘We were mad—mad—that evening!’

‘Perhaps.’

‘It’s impossible for you to understand the state we were in!’ She sat up, pushing back the hair from her face. ‘It would sound fantastic. It wasn’t so bad in America—but travelling brought it home to us so.’

‘Brought what home to you?’ His voice was kind now, sympathetic.

‘Our being different from—other people! We—we got desperate about it. And there was Jinny.’

‘Jinny?’

‘My sister. You haven’t seen her. She was going—well, queer. And Mother was making her worse. She didn’t seem to realize. We were afraid, Ray and I, that Jinny was going quite, quite mad! And we saw Nadine thought so, too, and that made us more afraid because Nadine knows about nursing and things like that.’

‘Yes, yes?’

‘That evening in Jerusalem things kind of boiled up! Ray was beside himself. He and I got all strung up and it seemed—oh, indeed, it did seem right to plan as we did! Mother—Mother wasn’t sane. I don’t know what you think, but it can seem quite right—almost noble—to kill someone!’

Poirot nodded his head slowly. ‘Yes, it has seemed so, I know, to many. That is proved by history.’

‘That’s how Ray and I felt—that night…’ She beat her hand on the table. ‘But we didn’t really do it. Of course we didn’t do it! When daylight came the whole thing seemed absurd, melodramatic—oh, yes, and wicked too! Indeed, indeed, M. Poirot, Mother died perfectly naturally of heart failure. Ray and I had nothing to do with it.’

Poirot said quietly: ‘Will you swear to me, mademoiselle, as you hope for salvation after death, that Mrs Boynton did not die as the result of any action of yours?’

She lifted her head. Her voice came steady and deep:

‘I swear,’ said Carol, ‘as I hope for salvation, that I never harmed her…’

Poirot leaned back in his chair.