Смерть на Ниле / Death on the Nile

Signor Richetti was determined and had waved aside each objection: (1) that the expedition was not worth making, (2) that the expedition could not be made, owing to the impossibility of getting a car there, (3) that no car could be obtained to do the trip, (4) that a car would be a prohibitive price. Having scoffed at (1), expressed incredulity at (2), offered to find a car himself to (3), and bargained fluently in Arabic for (4), Signor Richetti had at last departed – his departure being arranged in a secret and furtive manner in case some of the other tourists should take it into their heads to stray from the appointed paths of sightseeing.

‘Fey?’ Mrs Allerton put her head on one side as she considered her reply. ‘Well, it’s a Scottish word, really. It means the kind of exalted happiness that comes before disaster. You know – it’s too good to be true.’

She enlarged on the theme. Poirot listened attentively.

‘I thank you, Madame. I understand now. It is odd that you should have said that yesterday – when Madame Doyle was to escape death so shortly afterwards.

’

Mrs Allerton gave a little shiver.

‘It must have been a very near escape. Do you think some of these little wretches rolled it over for fun? It’s the sort of thing boys might do all over the world – not perhaps really meaning any harm.’

Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

‘It may be, Madame.’

He changed the subject, talking of Majorca and asking various practical questions from the point of view of a possible visit.

Mrs Allerton had grown to like the little man very much – partly perhaps out of a contradictory spirit. Tim, she felt, was always trying to make her less friendly to Hercule Poirot, whom he had summarized firmly as ‘the worst kind of bounder’. But she herself did not call him a bounder; she supposed it was his somewhat foreign exotic clothing which roused her son’s prejudices. She herself found him an intelligent and stimulating companion.

He was also extremely sympathetic. She found herself suddenly confiding in him her dislike of Joanna Southwood. It eased her to talk of the matter. And after all, why not? He did not know Joanna – would probably never meet her. Why should she not ease herself of that constantly borne burden of jealous thought?

At the same moment Tim and Rosalie Otterbourne were talking of her. Tim had just been half-jestingly abusing his luck.