Appointment With Death (Hercule Poirot 19)

She clenched her hands. Then she said in an entirely different tone, a light everyday voice: ‘That little man’s coming up the hill.’

Dr Gerard looked over his shoulder.

‘Ah! he comes in search of us, I think.’

‘Is he as much of a fool as he looks?’ asked Sarah.

Dr Gerard said gravely: ‘He is not a fool at all.’

‘I was afraid of that,’ said Sarah King.

With sombre eyes she watched the uphill progress of Hercule Poirot.

He reached them at last, uttered a loud ‘ouf’ and wiped his forehead. Then he looked sadly down at his patent leather shoes.

‘Alas!’ he said. ‘This stony country! My poor shoes.’

‘You can borrow Lady Westholme’s shoe-cleaning apparatus,’ said Sarah unkindly. ‘And her duster. She travels with a kind of patent housemaid’s equipment.’

‘That will not remove the scratches, mademoiselle,’ Poirot shook his head sadly.

‘Perhaps not. Why on earth do you wear shoes like that in this sort of country?’

Poirot put his head a little on one side.

‘I like to have the appearance soigné,’ he said.

‘I should give up trying for that in the desert,’ said Sarah.

‘Women do not look their best in the desert,’ said Dr Gerard dreamily. ‘But Miss King here, yes—she always looks neat and well-turned out. But that Lady Westholme in her great thick coats and skirts and those terrible unbecoming riding breeches and boots—quelle horreur de femme! And the poor Miss Pierce—her clothes so limp, like faded cabbage leaves, and the chains and the beads that clink! Even young Mrs Boynton, who is a good-looking woman, is not what you call chic! Her clothes are uninteresting.’

Sarah said restively: ‘Well, I don’t suppose M. Poirot climbed up here to talk about clothes!’

‘True,’ said Poirot. ‘I came to consult Dr Gerard—his opinion should be of value to me—and yours, too, mademoiselle—you are young and up to date in your psychology. I want to know, you see, all that you can tell me of Mrs Boynton.’

‘Don’t you know all that by heart now?’ asked Sarah.

‘No. I have a feeling—more than a feeling—a certainty that the mental equipment of Mrs Boynton is very important in this case. Such types as hers are no doubt familiar to Dr Gerard.’

‘From my point of view she was certainly an interesting study,’ said the doctor.

‘Tell me.’

Dr Gerard was nothing loath. He described his own interest in the family group, his conversation with Jefferson Cope, and the latter’s complete misreading of the situation.

‘He is a sentimentalist, then,’ said Poirot.

‘Oh, essentially! He has ideals—based, really, on a deep instinct of laziness. To take human nature at its best, and the world as a pleasant place is undoubtedly the easiest course in life! Jefferson Cope has, consequently, not the least idea what people are really like.’

‘That might be dangerous sometimes,’ said Poirot.

Dr Gerard went on: ‘He persisted in regarding what I may describe as “the Boynton situation” as a case of mistaken devotion. Of the underlying hate, rebellion, slavery and misery he had only the faintest notion.’

‘It is stupid, that,’ Poirot commented.

‘All the same,’ went on Dr Gerard, ‘even the most willfully obtuse of sentimental optimists cannot be quite blind. I think, on the journey to Petra, Mr Jefferson Cope’s eyes were being opened.’

And he described the conversation he had had with the American on the morning of Mrs Boynton’s death.