Dead Man's Folly (3 page)

Mrs. Folliat nodded in a matter-of-fact manner.

“Yes. It was built by my husband's great-grandfather in 1790. There was an Elizabethan house previously. It fell into disrepair and burned down in about 1700. Our family has lived here since 1598.”

Her voice was calm and matter of fact. Poirot looked at her with closer attention. He saw a very small and compact little person, dressed in shabby tweeds. The most noticeable feature about her was her clear china-blue eyes. Her grey hair was closely confined by a hairnet. Though obviously careless of her appearance, she had that indefinable air of being someone which is so hard to explain.

As they walked together towards the house, Poirot said diffidently, “It must be hard for you to have strangers living here.”

There was a moment's pause before Mrs. Folliat answered. Her voice was clear and precise and curiously devoid of emotion.

“So many things are hard, M. Poirot,” she said.

I
t was Mrs. Folliat who led the way into the house and Poirot followed her. It was a gracious house, beautifully proportioned. Mrs. Folliat went through a door on the left into a small daintily furnished sitting room and on into the big drawing room beyond, which was full of people who all seemed, at the moment, to be talking at once.

“George,” said Mrs. Folliat, “this is M. Poirot who is so kind as to come and help us. Sir George Stubbs.”

Sir George, who had been talking in a loud voice, swung round. He was a big man with a rather florid red face and a slightly unexpected beard. It gave a rather disconcerting effect of an actor who had not quite made up his mind whether he was playing the part of a country squire, or of a “rough diamond” from the Dominions. It certainly did not suggest the navy, in spite of Michael Weyman's remarks. His manner and voice were jovial, but his eyes were small and shrewd, of a particularly penetrating pale blue.

He greeted Poirot heartily.

“We're so glad that your friend Mrs. Oliver managed to persuade you to come,” he said. “Quite a brain wave on her part. You'll be an enormous attraction.”

He looked round a little vaguely.

“Hattie?” He repeated the name in a slightly sharper tone. “Hattie!”

Lady Stubbs was reclining in a big armchair a little distance from the others. She seemed to be paying no attention to what was going on round her. Instead she was smiling down at her hand which was stretched out on the arm of the chair. She was turning it from left to right, so that a big solitaire emerald on her third finger caught the light in its green depths.

She looked up now in a slightly startled childlike way and said, “How do you do.”

Poirot bowed over her hand.

Sir George continued his introductions.

“Mrs. Masterton.”

Mrs. Masterton was a somewhat monumental woman who reminded Poirot faintly of a bloodhound. She had a full underhung jaw and large, mournful, slightly blood-shot eyes.

She bowed and resumed her discourse in a deep voice which again made Poirot think of a bloodhound's baying note.

“This silly dispute about the tea tent has got to be settled, Jim,” she said forcefully. “They've got to see sense about it. We can't have the whole show a fiasco because of these idiotic women's local feuds.”

“Oh, quite,” said the man addressed.

“Captain Warburton,” said Sir George.

Captain Warburton, who wore a check sports coat and had a vaguely horsy appearance, showed a lot of white teeth in a somewhat wolfish smile, then continued his conversation.

“Don't you worry, I'll settle it,” he said. “I'll go and talk to them like a Dutch uncle. What about the fortune-telling tent? In the space by the magnolia? Or at the far end of the lawn by the rhododendrons?”

Sir George continued his introductions.

“Mr. and Mrs. Legge.”

A tall young man with his face peeling badly from sunburn grinned agreeably. His wife, an attractive freckled redhead, nodded in a friendly fashion, then plunged into controversy with Mrs. Masterton, her agreeable high treble making a kind of duet with Mrs. Masterton's deep bay.

“—
not
by the magnolia—a bottle-neck—”

“—one wants to disperse things—but if there's a queue—”

“—much cooler. I mean, with the sun full on the house—”

“—and the coconut shy can't be too near the house—the boys are so wild when they throw—”

“And this,” said Sir George, “is Miss Brewis—who runs us all.”

Miss Brewis was seated behind the large silver tea tray.

She was a spare efficient-looking woman of fortyodd, with a brisk pleasant manner.

“How do you do, M. Poirot,” she said. “I do hope you didn't have too crowded a journey? The trains are sometimes too terrible this time of year. Let me give you some tea. Milk? Sugar?”

“Very little milk, mademoiselle, and four lumps of sugar.” He added, as Miss Brewis dealt with his request, “I see that you are all in a great state of activity.”

“Yes, indeed. There are always so many last-minute things to see to. And people let one down in the most extraordinary way nowadays. Over marquees, and tents and chairs and catering equipment. One has to keep
on
at them. I was on the telephone half the morning.”

“What about these pegs, Amanda?” said Sir George. “And the extra putters for the clock golf?”

“That's all arranged, Sir George. Mr. Benson at the golf club was most kind.”

She handed Poirot his cup.

“A sandwich, M. Poirot? Those are tomato and these are
paté.
But perhaps,” said Miss Brewis, thinking of the four lumps of sugar, “you would rather have a cream cake?”

Poirot would rather have a cream cake, and helped himself to a particularly sweet and squelchy one.

Then, balancing it carefully on his saucer, he went and sat down by his hostess. She was still letting the light play over the jewel on her hand, and she looked up at him with a pleased child's smile.

“Look,” she said. “It's pretty, isn't it?”

He had been studying her carefully. She was wearing a big coolie-style hat of vivid magenta straw. Beneath it her face showed its pinky reflection on the dead-white surface of her skin. She was heavily made up in an exotic un-English style. Dead-white matt skin; vivid cyclamen lips, mascara applied lavishly to the eyes. Her hair showed beneath the hat, black and smooth, fitting like a velvet cap. There was a languorous un-English beauty about the face. She was a creature of the tropical sun, caught, as it were, by chance in an English drawing room. But it was the eyes that startled Poirot. They had a childlike, almost vacant, stare.

She had asked her question in a confidential childish way, and it was as though to a child that Poirot answered.

“It is a very lovely ring,” he said.

She looked pleased.

“George gave it to me yesterday,” she said, dropping her voice as though she were sharing a secret with him. “He gives me lots of things. He's very kind.”

Poirot looked down at the ring again and the hand outstretched on the side of the chair. The nails were very long and varnished a deep puce.

Into his mind a quotation came: “They toil not, neither do they spin….”

He certainly couldn't imagine Lady Stubbs toiling or spinning. And yet he would hardly have described her as a lily of the field. She was a far more artificial product.

“This is a beautiful room you have here, Madame,” he said, looking round appreciatively.

“I suppose it is,” said Lady Stubbs vaguely.

Her attention was still on her ring; her head on one side, she watched the green fire in its depths as her hand moved.

She said in a confidential whisper, “D'you see? It's winking at me.”

She burst out laughing and Poirot had a sense of sudden shock. It was a loud uncontrolled laugh.

From across the room Sir George said: “Hattie.”

His voice was quite kind but held a faint admonition. Lady Stubbs stopped laughing.

Poirot said in a conventional manner:

“Devonshire is a very lovely county. Do you not think so?”

“It's nice in the daytime,” said Lady Stubbs. “When it doesn't rain,” she added mournfully. “But there aren't any nightclubs.”

“Ah, I see. You like nightclubs?”

“Oh,
yes,
” said Lady Stubbs fervently.

“And why do you like nightclubs so much?”

“There is music and you dance. And I wear my nicest clothes and bracelets and rings. And all the other women have nice clothes and jewels, but not as nice as mine.”

She smiled with enormous satisfaction. Poirot felt a slight pang of pity.

“And all that amuses you very much?”

“Yes. I like the casino, too. Why are there not any casinos in England?”

“I have often wondered,” said Poirot, with a sigh. “I do not think it would accord with the English character.”

She looked at him uncomprehendingly. Then she bent slightly towards him.

“I won sixty thousand francs at Monte Carlo once. I put it on number twenty-seven and it came up.”

“That must have been very exciting, Madame.”

“Oh, it
was.
George gives me money to play with—but usually I lose it.”

She looked disconsolate.

“That is sad.”

“Oh, it does not really matter. George is very rich. It is nice to be rich, don't you think so?”

“Very nice,” said Poirot gently.

“Perhaps, if I was not rich, I should look like Amanda.” Her
gaze went to Miss Brewis at the tea table and studied her dispassionately. “She is very ugly, don't you think?”

Miss Brewis looked up at that moment and across to where they were sitting. Lady Stubbs had not spoken loudly, but Poirot wondered whether Amanda Brewis had heard.

As he withdrew his gaze, his eyes met those of Captain Warburton. The Captain's glance was ironic and amused.

Poirot endeavoured to change the subject.

“Have you been very busy preparing for the fête?” he asked.

Hattie Stubbs shook her head.

“Oh, no, I think it is all very boring—very stupid. There are servants and gardeners. Why should not they make the preparations?”

“Oh, my dear.” It was Mrs. Folliat who spoke. She had come to sit on the sofa nearby. “Those are the ideas you were brought up with on your island estates. But life isn't like that in England these days. I wish it were.” She sighed. “Nowadays one has to do nearly everything oneself.”

Lady Stubbs shrugged her shoulders.

“I think it is stupid. What is the good of being rich if one has to do everything oneself?”

“Some people find it fun,” said Mrs. Folliat, smiling at her. “I do really. Not all things, but some. I like gardening myself and I like preparing for a festivity like this one tomorrow.”

“It will be like a party?” asked Lady Stubbs hopefully.

“Just like a party—with lots and lots of people.”

“Will it be like Ascot? With big hats and everyone very chic?”

“Well, not quite like Ascot,” said Mrs. Folliat. She added gen
tly, “But you must try and enjoy country things, Hattie. You should have helped us this morning, instead of staying in bed and not getting up until teatime.”

“I had a headache,” said Hattie sulkily. Then her mood changed and she smiled affectionately at Mrs. Folliat.

“But I will be good tomorrow. I will do everything you tell me.”

“That's very sweet of you, dear.”

“I've got a new dress to wear. It came this morning. Come upstairs with me and look at it.”

Mrs. Folliat hesitated. Lady Stubbs rose to her feet and said insistently:

“You must come. Please. It is a lovely dress. Come
now!
”

“Oh, very well.” Mrs. Folliat gave a half laugh and rose.

As she went out of the room, her small figure following Hattie's tall one, Poirot saw her face and was quite startled at the weariness on it which had replaced her smiling composure. It was as though, relaxed and off her guard for a moment, she no longer bothered to keep up the social mask. And yet—it seemed more than that. Perhaps she was suffering from some disease about which, like many women, she never spoke. She was not a person, he thought, who would care to invite pity or sympathy.

Captain Warburton dropped down in the chair Hattie Stubbs had just vacated. He, too, looked at the door through which the two women had just passed, but it was not of the older woman that he spoke. Instead he drawled, with a slight grin:

“Beautiful creature, isn't she?” He observed with the tail of his eye Sir George's exit through a french window with Mrs. Masterton and Mrs. Oliver in tow. “Bowled over old George Stubbs all
right. Nothing's too good for her! Jewels, mink, all the rest of it. Whether he realizes she's a bit wanting in the top storey, I've never discovered. Probably thinks it doesn't matter. After all, these financial johnnies don't ask for intellectual companionship.”

“What nationality is she?” Poirot asked curiously.

“Looks South American, I always think. But I believe she comes from the West Indies. One of those islands with sugar and rum and all that. One of the old families there—a creole, I don't mean a half-caste. All very intermarried, I believe, on these islands. Accounts for the mental deficiency.”

Young Mrs. Legge came over to join them.

“Look here, Jim,” she said, “you've got to be on my side. That tent's got to be where we all decided—on the far side of the lawn backing on the rhododendrons. It's the only possible place.”

“Ma Masterton doesn't think so.”

“Well, you've got to talk her out of it.”

He gave her his foxy smile.

“Mrs. Masterton's my boss.”

“Wilfred Masterton's your boss. He's the M.P.”

“I dare say, but she should be. She's the one who wears the pants—and don't I know it.”

Sir George reentered the window.

“Oh, there you are, Sally,” he said. “We need you. You wouldn't think everyone could get het up over who butters the buns and who raffles a cake, and why the garden produce stall is where the fancy woollens was promised it should be. Where's Amy Folliat? She can deal with these people—about the only person who can.”

“She went upstairs with Hattie.”

“Oh, did she—?”

Sir George looked round in a vaguely helpless manner and Miss Brewis jumped up from where she was writing tickets, and said, “I'll fetch her for you, Sir George.”

“Thank you, Amanda.”

Miss Brewis went out of the room.

“Must get hold of some more wire fencing,” murmured Sir George.

“For the fête?”

“No, no. To put up where we adjoin Hoodown Park in the woods. The old stuff's rotted away, and that's where they get through.”