Death in the Clouds (Hercule Poirot 12)

They liked dogs and disliked cats. They both hated oysters and loved smoked salmon. They liked Greta Garbo and disliked Katharine Hepburn. They didn’t like fat women and admired really jet-black hair. They disliked very red nails. They disliked loud voices, noisy restaurants and negroes. They preferred buses to tubes.

It seemed almost miraculous that two people should have so many points of agreement.

One day at Antoine’s, opening her bag, Jane let a letter from Norman fall out. As she picked it up with a slightly heightened colour, Gladys pounced upon her.

‘Who’s your boy friend, dear?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ retorted Jane, her colour rising.

‘Don’t tell me! I know that letter isn’t from your mother’s great-uncle. I wasn’t born yesterday. Who is he, Jane?’

‘It’s someone—a man—that I met at Le Pinet. He’s a dentist.’

‘A dentist,’ said Gladys with lively distaste. ‘I suppose he’s got very white teeth and a smile.’

Jane was forced to admit that this was indeed the case.

‘He’s got a very brown face and very blue eyes.’

‘Anyone can have a brown face,’ said Gladys. ‘It may be the seaside or it may come out of a bottle, 2s. 11d. at the chemist’s. Handsome Men are Slightly Bronzed. The eyes sound all right. But a dentist! Why, if he was going to kiss you you’d feel he was going to say, “Open a little wider, please”.’

‘Don’t be an idiot, Gladys.’

‘You needn’t be so touchy, my dear. I see you’ve got it badly. Yes, Mr Henry, I’m just coming…Drat Henry! Thinks he’s God Almighty, the way he orders us girls about!’

The letter had been to suggest dinner on Saturday evening. At lunch-time on Saturday when Jane received her augmented pay she felt full of high spirits.

‘And to think,’ said Jane to herself, ‘that I was worrying so, that day coming over in the aeroplane. Everything’s turned out beautifully…Life is really too marvellous.’

r /> So full of exuberance did she feel that she decided to be extravagant and lunch at the Corner House and enjoy the accompaniment of music to her food.

She seated herself at a table for four, where there were already a middle-aged woman and a young man sitting. The middle-aged woman was just finishing her lunch. Presently she called for her bill, picked up a large collection of parcels and departed.

Jane, as was her custom, read a book as she ate. Looking up as she turned a page, she noticed the young man opposite her staring at her very intently, and at the same moment realized that his face was vaguely familiar to her.

Just as she made these discoveries the young man caught her eye and bowed.

‘Excuse me, Mademoiselle, you do not recognize me?’

Jane looked at him more attentively. He had a fair boyish-looking face, attractive more by reason of its extreme mobility than because of any actual claim to good looks.

‘We have not been introduced, it is true,’ went on the young man, ‘unless you call murder an introduction and the fact that we both gave evidence in the coroner’s court.’

‘Of course,’ said Jane. ‘How stupid of me! I thought I knew your face. You are—?’

‘Jean Dupont,’ said the man and gave a funny, rather engaging little bow.

A remembrance flashed into Jane’s mind of a dictum of Gladys’s, expressed perhaps without undue delicacy.

‘If there’s one fellow after you, there’s sure to be another. Seems to be a law of Nature. Sometimes it’s three or four.’

Now Jane had always led an austere, hard-working life (rather like the description after the act of girls who were missing—‘She was a bright, cheerful girl with no men friends, etc.’). Jane had been ‘a bright, cheerful girl with no men friends’. Now it seemed that men friends were rolling up all round. There was no doubt about it, Jean Dupont’s face as he leaned across the table held more than mere interested politeness. He was pleased to be sitting opposite Jane. He was more than pleased—he was delighted.

Jane thought to herself with a touch of misgiving:

‘He’s French, though. You’ve got to look out with the French, they always say so.’

‘You’re still in England, then,’ said Jane, and silently cursed herself for the extreme inanity of her remark.