The Hollow

  “Sometimes I think Lucy really is a bit touched,” said Midge as she and Edward strolled away from the house and up towards the woods.

  The partridges and the Soufflé Surprise had been excellent, and with the inquest over a weight had lifted from the atmosphere.

  Edward said thoughtfully:

  “I always think Lucy has a brilliant mind that expresses itself like a missing word competition. To mix metaphors—the hammer jumps from nail to nail and never fails to hit each one squarely on the head.”

  “All the same,” Midge said soberly, “Lucy frightens me sometimes.” She added, with a tiny shiver: “This place has frightened me lately.”

  “The Hollow?”

  Edward turned an astonished face to her.

  “It always reminds me a little of Ainswick,” he said. “It’s not, of course, the real thing—”

  Midge interrupted:

  “That’s just it, Edward. I’m frightened of things that aren’t the real thing. You don’t know, you see, what’s behind them. It’s like—oh, it’s like a mask.”

  “You mustn’t be fanciful, little Midge.”

  It was the old tone, the indulgent tone he had used years ago. She had liked it then, but now it disturbed her. She struggled to make her meaning clear—to show him that behind what he called fancy, was some shape of dimly apprehended reality.

  “I got away from it in London, but now that I’m back here it all comes over me again. I feel that everyone knows who killed John Christow. That the only person who doesn’t know—is me.”

  Edward said irritably:

  “Must we think and talk about John Christow? He’s dead. Dead and gone.”

  Midge murmured:

  “He is dead and gone, lady,

  He is dead and gone.

  At his head a grass green turf,

  At his heels a stone.”

  She put her hand on Edward’s arm. “Who did kill him, Edward? We thought it was Gerda—but it wasn’t Gerda. Then who was it? Tell me what you think? Was it someone we’ve never heard of?”

  He said irritably:

  “All this speculation seems to me quite unprofitable. If the police can’t find out, or can’t get sufficient evidence, then the whole thing will have to be allowed to drop—and we shall be rid of it.”

  “Yes—but it’s the not knowing.”

  “Why should we want to know? What has John Christow to do with us?”

  With us, she thought, with Edward and me? Nothing! Comforting thought—she and Edward, linked, a dual entity. And yet—and yet—John Christow, for all that he had been laid in his grave and the words of the burial service read over him, was not buried deep enough. He is dead and gone, lady—But John Christow was not dead and gone—for all that Edward wished him to be. John Christow was still here at The Hollow.

  Edward said: “Where are we going?”

  Something in his tone surprised her. She said:

  “Let’s walk up on to the top of the ridge. Shall we?”

  “If you like.”

  For some reason he was unwilling. She wondered why. It was usually his favourite walk. He and Henrietta used nearly always—Her thought snapped and broke off. He and Henrietta! She said: “Have you been this way yet this autumn?”

  He said stiffly:

  “Henrietta and I walked up here that first afternoon.” They went on in silence.

  They came at last to the top and sat on the fallen tree.

  Midge thought: “He and Henrietta sat here, perhaps.”

  She turned the ring on her finger round and round. The diamond flashed coldly at her. (“Not emeralds,” he had said.)

  She said with a slight effort:

  “It will be lovely to be at Ainswick again for Christmas.”

  He did not seem to hear her. He had gone far away.

  She thought: “He is thinking of Henrietta and of John Christow.”

  Sitting here he had said something to Henrietta or she had said something to him. Henrietta might know what she didn’t want, but he belonged to Henrietta still. He always would, Midge thought, belong to Henrietta….

  Pain swooped down upon her. The happy bubble world in which she had lived for the last week quivered and broke.

  She thought: “I can’t live like that—with Henrietta always there in his mind. I can’t face it. I can’t bear it.”

  The wind sighed through the trees—the leaves were falling fast now—there was hardly any golden left, only brown.

  She said: “Edward!”

  The urgency of her voice aroused him. He turned his head.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry, Edward.” Her lips were trembling but she forced her voice to be quiet and self-controlled. “I’ve got to tell you. It’s no use. I can’t marry you. It wouldn’t work, Edward.”

  He said: “But, Midge—surely Ainswick—”

  She interrupted:

  “I can’t marry you just for Ainswick, Edward. You—you must see that.”

  He sighed then, a long gentle sigh. It was like an echo of the dead leaves slipping gently off the branches of the trees.

  “I see what you mean,” he said. “Yes, I suppose you are right.”

  “It was dear of you to ask me, dear and sweet. But it wouldn’t do, Edward. It wouldn’t work.”

  She had had a faint hope, perhaps, that he would argue with her, that he would try to persuade her, but he seemed, quite simply, to feel just as she did about it. Here, with the ghost of Henrietta close beside him, he too, apparently, saw that it couldn’t work.

  “No,” he said, echoing her words, “it wouldn’t work.”

  She slipped the ring off her finger and held it out to him.

  She would always love Edward and Edward would always love Henrietta and life was just plain unadulterated hell.

  She said with a little catch in her voice:

  “It’s a lovely ring, Edward.”

  “I wish you’d keep it, Midge. I’d like you to have it.”

  She shook her head.

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  He said with a faint, humorous twist of the lips:

  “I shan’t give it to anyone else, you know.”

  It was all quite friendly. He didn’t know—he would never know—just what she was feeling. Heaven on a plate—and the plate was broken and heaven had slipped between her fingers or had, perhaps, never been there.

  II

  That afternoon, Poirot received his third visitor.

  He had been visited by Henrietta Savernake and Veronica Cray. This time it was Lady Angkatell. She came floating up the path with her usual appearance of insubstantiality.

  He opened the door and she stood smiling at him.

  “I have come to see you,” she announced.

  So might a fairy confer a favour on a mere mortal.

  “I am enchanted, Madame.”

  He led the way into the sitting room. She sat down on the sofa and once more she smiled.

  Hercule Poirot thought: “She is old—her hair is grey—there are lines in her face. Yet she has magic—she will always have magic….”

  Lady Angkatell said softly:

  “I want you to do something for me.”

  “Yes, Lady Angkatell?”

  “To begin with, I must talk to you—about John Christow.”

  “About Dr. Christow?”

  “Yes. It seems to me that the only thing to do is to put a full stop to the whole thing. You understand what I mean, don’t you?”

  “I am not sure that I do know what you mean, Lady Angkatell.”

  She gave him her lovely dazzling smile again and she put one long white hand on his sleeve.

  “Dear M. Poirot, you know perfectly. The police will have to hunt about for the owner of those fingerprints and they won’t find him, and they’ll have, in the end, to let the whole thing drop. But I’m afraid, you know, that you won’t let it drop.”

  “No, I shall not let it drop,” said Hercule Poirot.

&n
bsp; “That is just what I thought. And that is why I came. It’s the truth you want, isn’t it?”

  “Certainly I want the truth.”

  “I see I haven’t explained myself very well. I’m trying to find out just why you won’t let things drop. It isn’t because of your prestige—or because you want to hang a murderer (such an unpleasant kind of death, I’ve always thought—so mediæval). It’s just, I think, that you want to know. You do see what I mean, don’t you? If you were to know the truth—if you were to be told the truth, I think—I think perhaps that might satisfy you? Would it satisfy you, M. Poirot?”

  “You are offering to tell me the truth, Lady Angkatell?”

  She nodded.

  “You yourself know the truth, then?”

  Her eyes opened very wide.

  “Oh, yes, I’ve known for a long time. I’d like to tell you. And then we could agree that—well, that it was all over and done with.”

  She smiled at him.

  “Is it a bargain, M. Poirot?”

  It was quite an effort for Hercule Poirot to say:

  “No, Madame, it is not a bargain.”

  He wanted—he wanted, very badly, to let the whole thing drop, simply because Lady Angkatell asked him to do so.

  Lady Angkatell sat very still for a moment. Then she raised her eyebrows.

  “I wonder,” she said. “I wonder if you really know what you are doing.”

  Twenty-eight

  Midge, lying dry-eyed and awake in the darkness, turned restlessly on her pillows. She heard a door unlatch, a footstep in the corridor outside passing her door. It was Edward’s door and Edward’s step. She switched on the lamp by her bed and looked at the clock that stood by the lamp on the table. It was ten minutes to three.

  Edward passing her door and going down the stairs at this hour in the morning. It was odd.

  They had all gone to bed early, at half past ten. She herself had not slept, had lain there with burning eyelids and with a dry, aching misery racking her feverishly.

  She had heard the clock strike downstairs—had heard owls hoot outside her bedroom window. Had felt that depression that reaches its nadir at 2 a.m. Had thought to herself: “I can’t bear it—I can’t bear it. Tomorrow coming—another day. Day after day to be got through.”

  Banished by her own act from Ainswick—from all the loveliness and dearness of Ainswick which might have been her very own possession.

  But better banishment, better loneliness, better a drab and uninteresting life, than life with Edward and Henrietta’s ghost. Until that day in the wood she had not known her own capacity for bitter jealousy.

  And after all, Edward had never told her that he loved her. Affection, kindliness, he had never pretended to more than that. She had accepted the limitation, and not until she had realized what it would mean to live at close quarters with an Edward whose mind and heart had Henrietta as a permanent guest, did she know that for her Edward’s affection was not enough.

  Edward walking past her door, down the front stairs. It was odd—very odd. Where was he going?

  Uneasiness grew upon her. It was all part and parcel of the uneasiness that The Hollow gave her nowadays. What was Edward doing downstairs in the small hours of the morning? Had he gone out?

  Inactivity at last became too much for her. She got up, slipped on her dressing gown, and, taking a torch, she opened her door and came out into the passage.

  It was quite dark, no light had been switched on. Midge turned to the left and came to the head of the staircase. Below all was dark too. She ran down the stairs and after a moment’s hesitation switched on the light in the hall. Everything was silent. The front door was closed and locked. She tried the side door but that, too, was locked.

  Edward, then, had not gone out. Where could he be?

  And suddenly she raised her head and sniffed.

  A whiff, a very faint whiff of gas.

  The baize door to the kitchen quarters was just ajar. She went through it—a faint light was shining from the open kitchen door. The smell of gas was much stronger.

  Midge ran along the passage and into the kitchen. Edward was lying on the floor with his head inside the gas oven, which was turned full on.

  Midge was a quick, practical girl. Her first act was to swing open the shutters. She could not unlatch the window, and, winding a glass cloth round her arm, she smashed it. Then, holding her breath, she stooped down and tugged and pulled Edward out of the gas oven and switched off the taps.

  He was unconscious and breathing queerly, but she knew that he could not have been unconscious long. He could only just have gone under. The wind sweeping through from the window to the open door was fast dispelling the gas fumes. Midge dragged Edward to a spot near the window where the air would have full play. She sat down and gathered him into her strong young arms.

  She said his name, first softly, then with increasing desperation. “Edward, Edward, Edward….”

  He stirred, groaned, opened his eyes and looked up at her. He said very faintly: “Gas oven,” and his eyes went round to the gas stove.

  “I know, darling, but why—why?”

  He was shivering now, his hands were cold and lifeless. He said: “Midge?” There was a kind of wondering surprise and pleasure in his voice.

  She said: “I heard you pass my door. I didn’t know…I came down.”

  He sighed, a very long sigh as though from very far away. “Best way out,” he said. And then, inexplicably until she remembered Lucy’s conversation on the night of the tragedy, “News of the World.”

  “But, Edward, why, why?”

  He looked up at her, and the blank, cold darkness of his stare frightened her.

  “Because I know I’ve never been any good. Always a failure. Always ineffectual. It’s men like Christow who do things. They get there and women admire them. I’m nothing—I’m not even quite alive. I inherited Ainswick and I’ve enough to live on—otherwise I’d have gone under. No good at a career—never much good as a writer. Henrietta didn’t want me. No one wanted me. That day—at the Berkeley—I thought—but it was the same story. You couldn’t care either, Midge. Even for Ainswick you couldn’t put up with me. So I thought better get out altogether.”

  Her words came with a rush. “Darling, darling, you don’t understand. It was because of Henrietta—because I thought you still loved Henrietta so much.”

  “Henrietta?” He murmured it vaguely, as though speaking of someone infinitely remote. “Yes, I loved her very much.”

  And from even farther away she heard him murmur:

  “It’s so cold.”

  “Edward—my darling.”

  Her arms closed round him firmly. He smiled at her, murmuring:

  “You’re so warm, Midge—you’re so warm.”

  Yes, she thought, that was what despair was. A cold thing—a thing of infinite coldness and loneliness. She’d never understood until now that despair was a cold thing. She had thought of it as something hot and passionate, something violent, a hot-blooded desperation. But that was not so. This was despair—this utter outer darkness of coldness and loneliness. And the sin of despair, that priests talked of, was a cold sin, the sin of cutting oneself off from all warm and living human contacts.

  Edward said again: “You’re so warm, Midge.” And suddenly with a glad, proud confidence she thought: “But that’s what he wants—that’s what I can give him!” They were all cold, the Angkatells. Even Henrietta had something in her of the will-o’-the-wisp, of the elusive fairy coldness in the Angkatell blood. Let Edward love Henrietta as an intangible and unpossessable dream. It was warmth, permanence, stability that was his real need. It was daily companionship and love and laughter at Ainswick.

  She thought: “What Edward needs is someone to light a fire on his heart—and I am the person to do that.”

  Edward looked up. He saw Midge’s face bending over him, the warm colouring of the skin, the generous mouth, the steady eyes and the dark hair that lay back f
rom her forehead like two wings.

  He saw Henrietta always as a projection from the past. In the grown woman he sought and wanted only to see the seventeen-year-old girl he had first loved. But now, looking up at Midge, he had a queer sense of seeing a continuous Midge. He saw the school-girl with her winged hair springing back into two pigtails, he saw its dark waves framing her face now, and he saw exactly how those wings would look when the hair was not dark any longer but grey.

  “Midge,” he thought, “is real. The only real thing I have ever known…” He felt the warmth of her, and the strength—dark, positive, alive, real! “Midge,” he thought, “is the rock on which I can build my life.”

  He said: “Darling Midge, I love you so, never leave me again.”

  She bent down to him and he felt the warmth of her lips on his, felt her love enveloping him, shielding him, and happiness flowered in that cold desert where he had lived alone so long.

  Suddenly Midge said with a shaky laugh:

  “Look, Edward, a blackbeetle has come out to look at us. Isn’t he a nice blackbeetle? I never thought I could like a blackbeetle so much!”

  She added dreamily: “How odd life is. Here we are sitting on the floor in a kitchen that still smells of gas all amongst the black-beetles, and feeling that it’s heaven.”

  He murmured dreamily: “I could stay here forever.”

  “We’d better go and get some sleep. It’s four o’clock. How on earth are we to explain that broken window to Lucy?” Fortunately, Midge reflected, Lucy was an extraordinarily easy person to explain things to!

  Taking a leaf out of Lucy’s own book, Midge went into her room at six o’clock. She made a bald statement of fact.

  “Edward went down and put his head in the gas oven in the night,” she said. “Fortunately I heard him, and went down after him. I broke the window because I couldn’t get it open quickly.”

  Lucy, Midge had to admit, was wonderful.

  She smiled sweetly with no sign of surprise.

  “Dear Midge,” she said, “you are always so practical. I’m sure you will always be the greatest comfort to Edward.”

  After Midge had gone, Lady Angkatell lay thinking. Then she got up and went into her husband’s room, which for once was unlocked.