Смерть на Ниле / Death on the Nile
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‘They don’t care any more.’ The words came low and fast. ‘They’ve got beyond me. I can’t reach them… They don’t mind if I’m here or not… I can’t – I can’t hurt them any more…’
er hands on the rail trembled.
‘Mademoiselle-’
She broke in: ‘Oh, it’s too late now – too late for warnings… You were right. I ought not to have come. Not on this journey. What did you call it? A journey of the soul? I can’t go back – I’ve got to go on. And I’m going on. They shan’t be happy together – they shan’t. I’d kill him sooner…’
She turned abruptly away. Poirot, staring after her, felt a hand on his shoulder.
‘Your girl friend seems a trifle upset, Monsieur Poirot.’
Poirot turned. He stared in surprise, seeing an old acquaintance.
‘Colonel Race.’
The tall bronzed man smiled.
‘Bit of a surprise, eh?’
Hercule Poirot had come across Colonel Race a year previously in London. They had been fellow guests at a very strange dinner party – a dinner party that had ended in death for that strange man, their host.
Poirot knew that Race was a man of unadvertised goings and comings. He was usually to be found in one of the outposts of Empire where trouble was brewing.
‘So you are here at Wadi Halfa,’ Poirot marked thoughtfully.
‘I am here on this boat.’
‘You mean?’
‘That I am making the return journey with you to Shellal.’
Hercule Poirot’s eyebrows rose.
‘That is very interesting. Shall we, perhaps, have a little drink?’
They went into the observation saloon, now quite empty. Poirot ordered a whisky for the Colonel and a double orangeade full of sugar for himself.
‘So you make the return journey with us,’ said Poirot as he sipped. ‘You would go faster, would you not, on the Government steamer, which travels by night as well as day?’
Colonel Race’s face creased appreciatively.
‘You’re right on the spot as usual, Monsieur Poirot,’ he said pleasantly.
‘It is, then, the passengers?’
‘One of the passengers.’
‘Now which one, I wonder?’ Hercule Poirot asked of the ornate ceiling.
‘Unfortunately I don’t know myself,’ said Race ruefully.
Poirot looked interested. Race said:
‘There’s no need to be mysterious to you. We’ve had a good deal of trouble out here – one way and another. It isn’t the people who ostensibly lead the rioters that we’re after. It’s the men who very cleverly put the match to the gunpowder. There were three of them. One’s dead. One’s in prison. I want the third man – a man with five or six cold-blooded murders to his credit. He’s one of the cleverest paid agitators that ever existed… He’s on this boat. I know that from a passage in a letter that passed through our hands. Decoded it said: “X will be on the Karnak trip February seventh to thirteenth.” It didn’t say under what name X would be passing.’
‘Have you any description of him?’
‘No. American, Irish, and French descent. That doesn’t help us much. Have you got any ideas?’
‘An idea – it is all very well,’ said Poirot meditatively.
Such was the understanding between them that Race pressed him no further. He knew Hercule Poirot did not ever speak unless he was sure.
Poirot rubbed his nose and said unhappily:
‘There passes itself something on this boat that causes me much inquietude.’
Race looked at him inquiringly.
‘Figure to yourself,’ said Poirot, ‘a person A who has grievously wronged a person B. The person B desires the revenge. The person B makes the threats.’
‘A and B being both on this boat?’
Poirot nodded.
‘Precisely.’
‘And B, I gather, being a woman?’
‘Exactly.’
Race lit a cigarette.
‘I shouldn’t worry. People who go about talking of what they are going to do don’t usually do it.’
‘And particularly is that the case with les femmes, you would say!
‘Yes, that is true.’
But he still did not look happy.
‘Anything else?’ asked Race.
‘Yes, there is something. Yesterday the person A had a very near escape from death. The kind of death that might very conveniently be called an accident.’
‘Engineered by B?’
‘No, that is just the point. B could have had nothing to do with it.’
‘Then it was an accident.’
‘I suppose so – but I do not like such accidents.’
‘You’re quite sure B could have had no hand in it?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Oh, well, coincidences do happen. Who is A, by the way? A particularly disagreeable person?’
‘On the contrary. A is a charming, rich, and beautiful young lady.’
Race grinned.
‘Sounds quite like a novelette.’
‘Peut-^etre. But I tell you, I am not happy, my friend. If I am right, and after all I am constantly in the habit of being right’-Race smiled into his moustache at this typical utterance-‘then there is matter for grave inquietude. And now, you come to add yet another complication. You tell me that there is a man on the Karnak who kills.’
‘He doesn’t usually kill charming young ladies.’
Poirot shook his head in a dissatisfied manner.
‘I am afraid, my friend,’ he said. ‘I am afraid… Today, I advised this lady, Madame Doyle, to go with her husband to Khartoum, not to return on this boat. But they would not agree. I pray to Heaven that we may arrive at Shellal without catastrophe.’
‘Aren’t you taking rather a gloomy view?’
Poirot shook his head.
‘I am afraid,’ he said simply. ‘Yes, I, Hercule Poirot, am afraid…’