Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot 16)

“There are a few things that are actually necessary that I should know. Do you drug?”

“No, never.”

“Drink?”

“Quite heavily—but not for the love of it. My crowd drinks and I drink with them, but I could give it up tomorrow.”

“That is very satisfactory.”

She laughed.

“I shan’t give the show away in my cups, Hercule.”

Poirot proceeded:

“Love affairs?”

“Plenty in the past.”

“And the present?”

“Only Rex.”

“That is Dr. Donaldson?”

“Yes.”

“He seems, somehow, very alien from the life you mention.”

“Oh, he is.”

“And yet you care for him. Why, I wonder?”

“Oh, what are reasons? Why did Juliet fall for Romeo?”

“Well for one thing, with all due deference to Shakespeare, he happened to be the first man she had seen.”

Theresa said slowly:

“

Rex wasn’t the first man I saw—not by a long way.” She added in a lower voice, “But I think—I feel—he’ll be the last man I’ll ever see.”

“And he is a poor man, mademoiselle.”

She nodded.

“And he, too, needs money?”

“Desperately. Oh, not for the reasons I did. He doesn’t want luxury—or beauty—or excitement—or any of these things. He’d wear the same suit until it went into holes—and eat a congealed chop every day for lunch quite happily, and wash in a cracked tin bath. If he had money it would all go on test tubes and a laboratory and all the rest of it. He’s ambitious. His profession means everything to him. It means more to him than—I do.”

“He knew that you would come into money when Miss Arundell died?”

“I told him so. Oh! after we were engaged. He isn’t really marrying me for my money if that is what you are getting at.”

“You are still engaged?”

“Of course we are.”