“Rub it in!”
Poirot went on:
“You converse with the gardener and lead him to say that he saw your car in the road; and then you give a start and pretend that it was not your car. And you look hard at me to make sure that I realize that someone, a stranger, must have been there that morning.”
“I was a damned fool,” said Peter Lord.
“What were you doing at Hunterbury that morning?”
Peter Lord blushed.
“It was just sheer idiocy… I—I’d heard she was down. I went up to the house on the chance of seeing her. I didn’t mean to speak to her. I—I just wanted to—well—see her. From the path in the shrubbery I saw her in the pantry cutting bread and butter—”
“Charlotte and the poet Werther. Continue, my friend.”
“Oh, there’s nothing to tell. I just slipped into the bushes and stayed there watching her till she went away.”
Poirot said gently:
“Did you fall in love with Elinor Carlisle the first time you saw her?”
There was a long silence.
“I suppose so.”
Then Peter Lord said:
“Oh, well, I suppose she and Roderick Welman will live happy ever afterwards.”
Hercule Poirot said:
“My dear friend, you suppose nothing of the sort!”
“Why not? She’ll forgive him the Mary Gerrard business. It was only a wild infatuation on his part, anyway.”
Hercule Poirot said:
“It goes deeper than that… There is, sometimes, a deep chasm between the past and the future. When one has walked in the valley of the shadow of death, and come out of it into the sunshine—then, mon cher, it is a new life that begins… The past will not serve….”
He waited a minute and then went on:
“A new life… That is what Elinor Carlisle is beginning now—and it is you who have given her that life.”
“No.”
“Yes. It was your determination, your arrogant insistence that compelled me to do as you asked. Admit now, it is to you she turns in gratitude, is it not?”
Peter Lord said slowly:
“Yes, she’s very grateful—now… She asked me to go and see her—often.”
“Yes, she needs you.”
Peter Lord said violently:
“Not as she needs—him!”
Hercule Poirot shook his head.