Appointment With Death (Hercule Poirot 19)

‘Pardon?’

‘Well—to put it plainly—do you come to places expecting a holiday from crime—and find instead bodies cropping up?’

&n

bsp; ‘It has happened, yes; more than once.’

‘H’m,’ said Colonel Carbury and looked particularly abstracted.

Then he roused himself with a jerk. ‘Got a body now I’m not very happy about,’ he said.

‘Indeed?’

‘Yes. Here in Amman. Old American woman. Went to Petra with her family. Trying journey, unusual heat for time of year, old woman suffered from heart trouble, difficulties of the journey a bit harder for her than she imagined, extra strain on heart—she popped off!’

‘Here—in Amman?’

‘No, down at Petra. They brought the body here today.’

‘Ah!’

‘All quite natural. Perfectly possible. Likeliest thing in the world to happen. Only—’

‘Yes? Only—?’

Colonel Carbury scratched his bald head.

‘I’ve got the idea,’ he said, ‘that her family did her in!’

‘Aha! And what makes you think that?’

Colonel Carbury did not reply to that question directly.

‘Unpleasant old woman, it seems. No loss. General feeling all round that her popping off was a good thing. Anyway, very difficult to prove anything so long as the family stick together and if necessary lie like hell. One doesn’t want complications—or international unpleasantness. Easiest thing to do—let it go! Nothing really to go upon. Knew a doctor chap once. He told me—often had suspicions in cases of his patients—hurried into the next world a little ahead of time! He said—best thing to do to keep quiet unless you really had something damned good to go upon! Otherwise beastly stink, case not proved, black mark against an earnest hard-working G.P. Something in that. All the same—’ He scratched his head again. ‘I’m a tidy man,’ he said unexpectedly.

Colonel Carbury’s tie was under his left ear, his socks were wrinkled, his coat stained and torn. Yet Hercule Poirot did not smile. He saw, clearly enough, the inner neatness of Colonel Carbury’s mind, his neatly docketed facts, his carefully sorted impressions.

‘Yes. I’m a tidy man,’ said Carbury. He waved a vague hand. ‘Don’t like a mess. When I come across a mess I want to clear it up. See?’

Hercule Poirot nodded gravely. He saw.

‘There was no doctor down there?’ he asked.

‘Yes, two. One of ’em was down with malaria, though. The other’s a girl—just out of the medical student stage. Still, she knows her job, I suppose. There wasn’t anything odd about the death. Old woman had got a dicky heart. She’d been taking heart medicine for some time. Nothing really surprising about her conking out suddenly like she did.’

‘Then what, my friend, is worrying you?’ asked Poirot gently.

Colonel Carbury turned a harassed blue eye on him.

‘Heard of a Frenchman called Gerard? Theodore Gerard?’

‘Certainly. A very distinguished man in his own line.’

‘Loony bins,’ confirmed Colonel Carbury. ‘Passion for a charwoman at the age of four makes you insist you’re the Archbishop of Canterbury when you’re thirty-eight. Can’t see why and never have, but these chaps explain it very convincingly.’

‘Dr Gerard is certainly an authority on certain forms of deep-seated neurosis,’ agreed Poirot, with a smile. ‘Is—er—are—er—his views on the happening at Petra based on that line of argument?’

Colonel Carbury shook his head vigorously.