‘So that’s how they met.’
‘Fact! Fellow played the wounded hero. Lady Carrington had no sense and oceans of money. Old Carrington had been in munitions. She’d been a widow only six months. This fellow snaps her up in no time. She wangled him a job at the War Office. Colonel Clapperton! Pah!’ he snorted.
‘And before the war he was on the music hall stage,’ mused Miss Henderson, trying to reconcile the distinguished grey-haired Colonel Clapperton with a red-nosed comedian singing mirth-provoking songs.
‘Fact!’ said General Forbes. ‘Heard it from old Bassington-ffrench. And he heard it from old Badger Cotterill who’d got it from Snooks Parker.’
Miss Henderson nodded brightly. ‘That does seem to settle it!’ she said.
A fleeting smile showed for a minute on the face of a small man sitting near them. Miss Henderson noticed the smile. She was observant. It had shown appreciation of the irony underlying her last remark—irony which the General never for a moment suspected.
The General himself did not notice the smile. He glanced at his watch, rose and remarked: ‘Exercise. Got to keep oneself fit on a boat,’ and passed out through the open door on to the deck.
Miss Henderson glanced at the man who had smiled. It was a well-bred glance indicating that she was ready to enter into conversation with a fellow traveller.
‘He is energetic—yes?’ said the little man.
‘He goes round the deck forty-eight times exactly,’ said Miss Henderson. ‘What an old gossip! And they say we are the scandal-loving sex.’
‘What an impoliteness!’
‘Frenchmen are always polite,’ said Miss Henderson—there was the nuance of a question in her voice.
The little man responded promptly. ‘Belgian, mademoiselle.’
‘Oh! Belgian.’
‘Hercule Poirot. At your service.’
The name aroused some memory. Surely she had heard it before—? ‘Are you enjoying this trip, M. Poirot?’
‘Frankly, no. It was an imbecility to allow myself to be persuaded to come. I detest la mer. Never does it remain tranquil—no, not for a little minute.’
‘Well, you admit it’s quite calm now.’
M. Poirot admitted this grudgingly. ‘A ce moment, yes. That is why I revive. I once more interest myself in what passes around me—your very adept handling of the General Forbes, for instance.’
‘You mean—’ Miss Henderson paused.
Hercule Poirot bowed. ‘Your methods of extracting the scandalous matter. Admirable!’
Miss Henderson laughed in an unashamed manner. ‘That touch about the Guards? I knew that would bring the old boy up spluttering and gasping.’ She leaned forward confidentially. ‘I admit I like scandal—the more ill-natured, the better!’
Poirot looked thoughtfully at her—her slim well-preserved figure, her keen dark eyes, her grey hair; a woman of forty-five who was content to look her age.
Ellie said abruptly: ‘I have it! Aren’t you the great detective?’
Poirot bowed. ‘You are too amiable, mademoiselle.’ But he made no disclaimer.
‘How thrilling,’ said Miss Henderson. ‘Are you “hot on the trail” as they say in books? Have we a criminal secretly in our midst? Or am I being indiscreet?’
‘Not at all. Not at all. It pains me to disappoint your expectations, but I am simply here, like everyone else, to amuse myself.’
He said it in such a gloomy voice that Miss Henderson laughed.
‘Oh! Well, you will be able to get ashore tomorrow at Alexandria. You have been to Egypt before?’
‘Never, mademoiselle.’
Miss Henderson rose somewhat abruptly.
‘I think I shall join the General on his constitutional,’ she announced.
Poirot sprang politely to his feet.
She gave him a little nod and passed on to the deck.
A faint puzzled look showed for a moment in Poirot’s eyes, then, a little smile creasing his lips, he rose, put his head through the door and glanced down the deck. Miss Henderson was leaning against the rail talking to a tall, soldierly-looking man.
Poirot’s smile deepened. He drew himself back into the smoking-room with the same exaggerated care with which a tortoise withdraws itself into its shell. For the moment he had the smoking-room to himself, though he rightly conjectured that that would not last long.
It did not. Mrs Clapperton, her carefully waved platinum head protected with a net, her massaged and dieted form dressed in a smart sports suit, came through the door from the bar with the purposeful air of a woman who has always been able to pay top price for anything she needed.