Taken at the Flood (2 page)

Poirot nodded. He forbore to ask why, if the name Robert could be spelt out, the name Underhay could not have been treated the same way, and why it had been necessary to resort to a kind of cheap Secret service spy jargon.

“And my sister-in-law's name is Rosaleen,” finished Mrs. Cloade triumphantly. “You see? Confusing all these Rs. But the
meaning
is quite plain. ‘
Tell Rosaleen that Robert Underhay is not dead.
'”

“Aha, and did you tell her?”

Mrs. Cloade looked slightly taken aback.

“Er—well—no. You see, I mean—well, people are so
sceptical.
Rosaleen, I am sure, would be so. And then, poor child, it might upset her—wondering, you know, where he was—and what he was doing.”

“Besides projecting his voice through the ether? Quite so. A curious method, surely, of announcing his safety?”

“Ah, M. Poirot, you are not an initiate. And how do we know what the
circumstances
are? Poor Captain Underhay (or is it Major Underhay) may be a prisoner somewhere in the dark interior of Africa. But if he could be
found,
M. Poirot. If he could be restored to his dear young Rosaleen. Think of her happiness! Oh, M. Poirot, I have been
sent
to you—surely,
surely
you will not refuse the behest of the spiritual world.”

Poirot looked at her reflectively.

“My fees,” he said softly, “are very expensive. I may say enormously expensive! And the task you suggest would not be easy.”

“Oh dear—but surely—it is most unfortunate. I and my husband are very badly off—very badly off indeed. Actually my own plight is worse than my dear husband knows. I bought some shares—under spirit guidance—and so far they have proved very disappointing—in fact, quite alarming. They have gone right down and are now, I gather, practically unsaleable.”

She looked at him with dismayed blue eyes.

“I have not dared to tell my husband. I simply tell
you
in order to explain how I am situated. But surely, dear M. Poirot, to reunite a young husband and wife—it is such a
noble
mission—”

“Nobility,
chère Madame,
will not pay steamer and railway and air travel fares. Nor will it cover the cost of long telegrams and cables, and the interrogations of witnesses.”

“But if he is found—if Captain Underhay is found alive and well—then—well, I think I may safely say that, once that was accomplished, there—there would be no difficulty about—er—reimbursing you.”

“Ah, he is rich, then, this Captain Underhay?”

“No. Well, no…But I can assure you—I can give you my
word
—that—that the money situation will not present difficulties.”

Slowly Poirot shook his head.

“I am sorry, Madame. The answer is No.”

He had a little difficulty in getting her to accept that answer.

When she had finally gone away, he stood lost in thought, frowning to himself. He remembered now why the name of Cloade was familiar to him. The conversation at the club the day of the air
raid came back to him. The booming boring voice of Major Porter, going on and on, telling a story to which nobody wanted to listen.

He remembered the rustle of a newspaper and Major Porter's suddenly dropped jaw and expression of consternation.

But what worried him was trying to make up his mind about the eager middle-aged lady who had just left him. The glib spiritualistic patter, the vagueness, the floating scarves, the chains and amulets jingling round her neck—and finally, slightly at variance with all this, that sudden shrewd glint in a pair of pale-blue eyes.

“Just why exactly did she come to me?” he said to himself. “And what, I wonder, has been going on in”—he looked down at the card on his desk—“Warmsley Vale?”

III

It was exactly five days later that he saw a small paragraph in an evening paper—it referred to the death of a man called Enoch Arden—at Warmsley Vale, a small old-world village about three miles from the popular Warmsley Heath Golf Course.

Hercule Poirot said to himself again:

“I wonder what has been going on in Warmsley Vale….”

I

W
armsley Heath consists of a golf course, two hotels, some very expensive modern villas giving on to the golf course, a row of what were, before the war, luxury shops, and a railway station.

Emerging from the railway station, a main road roars its way to London on your left—to your right a small path across a field is signposted

Warmsley Vale, tucked away amongst wooded hills, is as unlike Warmsley Heath as well can be. It is in essence a microscopic old-fashioned market town now degenerated into a village. It has a main street of Georgian houses, several pubs, a few unfashionable shops and a general air of being a hundred and fifty instead of twenty-eight miles from London.

Its occupants one and all unite in despising the mushroom growth of Warmsley Heath.

On the outskirts are some charming houses with pleasant old-world gardens. It was to one of these houses, the White House, that Lynn Marchmont returned in the early spring of 1946 when she was demobbed from the Wrens.

On her third morning she looked out of her bedroom window, across the untidy lawn to the elms in the meadow beyond, and sniffed the air happily. It was a gentle grey morning with a smell of soft wet earth. The kind of smell that she had been missing for the past two years and a half.

Wonderful to be home again, wonderful to be here in her own little bedroom which she had thought of so often and so nostalgically whilst she had been overseas. Wonderful to be out of uniform, to be able to get into a tweed skirt and a jumper—even if the moths
had
been rather too industrious during the war years!

It was good to be out of the Wrens and a free woman again, although she had really enjoyed her overseas service very much. The work had been reasonably interesting, there had been parties, plenty of fun, but there had also been the irksomeness of routine and the feeling of being herded together with her companions which had sometimes made her feel desperately anxious to escape.

It was then, during the long scorching summer out East, that she had thought so longingly of Warmsley Vale and the shabby cool pleasant house, and of dear Mums.

Lynn both loved her mother and was irritated by her. Far away from home, she had loved her still and had forgotten the irritation, or remembered it only with an additional homesick pang. Darling
Mums, so completely maddening! What she would not have given to have heard Mums enunciate one cliché in her sweet complaining voice. Oh, to be at home again and never,
never
to have to leave home again!

And now here she was, out of the service, free, and back at the White House. She had been back three days. And already a curious dissatisfied restlessness was creeping over her. It was all the same—almost too much all the same—the house and Mums and Rowley and the farm and the family. The thing that was different and that ought not to be different was herself….

“Darling…” Mrs. Marchmont's thin cry came up the stairs. “Shall I bring my girl a nice tray in bed?”

Lynn called out sharply:

“Of course not. I'm coming down.”

“And why,” she thought, “has Mums got to say ‘my girl.' It's so
silly!
”

She ran downstairs and entered the dining room. It was not a very good breakfast. Already Lynn was realizing the undue proportion of time and interest taken by the search for food. Except for a rather unreliable woman who came four mornings a week, Mrs. Marchmont was alone in the house, struggling with cooking and cleaning. She had been nearly forty when Lynn was born and her health was not good. Also Lynn realized with some dismay how their financial position had changed. The small but adequate fixed income which had kept them going comfortably before the war was now almost halved by taxation. Rates, expenses, wages had all gone up.

“Oh! brave new world,” thought Lynn grimly. Her eyes rested lightly on the columns of the daily paper.

Enterprise, initiative, command, those were the commodities offered. But what was wanted? People who could cook and clean, or write decent shorthand. Plodding people who knew a routine and could give good service.

Well, it didn't affect her. Her way ahead lay clear. Marriage to her cousin Rowley Cloade. They had got engaged seven years ago, just before the outbreak of war. Almost as long as she could remember, she had meant to marry Rowley. His choice of a farming life had been acquiesced in readily by her. A good life—not exciting perhaps, and with plenty of hard work, but they both loved the open air and the care of animals.

Not that their prospects were quite what they had been—Uncle Gordon had always promised….

Mrs. Marchmont's voice broke in plaintively apposite:

“It's been the most dreadful blow to us all, Lynn darling, as I wrote you. Gordon had only been in England two days. We hadn't even
seen
him. If
only
he hadn't stayed in London. If he'd come straight down here.”

II

“Yes, if only….”

Far away, Lynn had been shocked and grieved by the news of her uncle's death, but the true significance of it was only now beginning to come home to her.

For as long as she could remember, her life, all their lives, had been dominated by Gordon Cloade. The rich, childless man had taken all his relatives completely under his wing.

Even Rowley…Rowley and his friend Johnnie Vavasour had started in partnership on the farm. Their capital was small, but they had been full of hope and energy. And Gordon Cloade had approved.

To her he had said more.

“You can't get anywhere in farming without capital. But the first thing to find out is whether these boys have really got the will and the energy to make a go of it. If I set them up now, I wouldn't know that—maybe for years. If they've got the right stuff in them, if I'm satisfied that their side of it is all right, well then, Lynn, you needn't worry. I'll finance them on the proper scale. So don't think badly of your prospects, my girl. You're just the wife Rowley needs. But keep what I've told you under your hat.”

Well, she had done that, but Rowley himself had sensed his uncle's benevolent interest. It was up to him to prove to the old boy that Rowley and Johnnie were a good investment for money.

Yes, they had all depended on Gordon Cloade. Not that any of the family had been spongers or idlers. Jeremy Cloade was senior partner in a firm of solicitors, Lionel Cloade was in practice as a doctor.

But behind the workaday life was the comforting assurance of money in the background. There was never any need to stint or to save. The future was assured. Gordon Cloade, a childless widower, would see to that. He had told them all, more than once, that that was so.

His widowed sister, Adela Marchmont, had stayed on at the
White House when she might, perhaps, have moved into a smaller, more labour-saving house. Lynn went to first-class schools. If the war had not come, she would have been able to take any kind of expensive training she had pleased. Cheques from Uncle Gordon flowed in with comfortable regularity to provide little luxuries.

Everything had been so
settled,
so
secure.
And then had come Gordon Cloade's wholly unexpected marriage.

“Of course, darling,” Adela went on, “we were all flabbergasted. If there was one thing that seemed quite certain, it was that Gordon would never marry again. It wasn't, you see, as though he hadn't got plenty of family ties.”

Yes, thought Lynn, plenty of family. Sometimes, possibly, rather too much family?

“He was so kind always,” went on Mrs. Marchmont. “Though perhaps just a weeny bit tyrannical on occasions. He never liked the habit of dining off a polished table. Always insisted on my sticking to the old-fashioned tablecloths. In fact, he sent me the most beautiful Venetian lace ones when he was in Italy.”

“It certainly paid to fall in with his wishes,” said Lynn dryly. She added with some curiosity, “How did he meet this—second wife? You never told me in your letters.”

“Oh, my dear, on some boat or plane or other. Coming from South America to New York, I believe. After all those years! And after all those secretaries and typists and housekeepers and everything.”

Lynn smiled. Ever since she could remember, Gordon Cloade's secretaries, housekeepers, and office staff had been subjected to the closest scrutiny and suspicion.

She asked curiously, “She's good-looking, I suppose?”

“Well, dear,” said Adela, “
I
think myself she has rather a
silly
face.”

“You're not a man, Mums!”

“Of course,” Mrs. Marchmont went on, “the poor girl was blitzed and had shock from blast and was really frightfully ill and all that, and it's my opinion she's never really quite recovered. She's a mass of nerves, if you know what I mean. And really, sometimes, she looks quite half-witted. I don't feel she could ever have made much of a companion for poor Gordon.

Lynn smiled. She doubted whether Gordon Cloade had chosen to marry a woman years younger than himself for her intellectual companionship.

“And then, dear,” Mrs. Marchmont lowered her voice, “I hate to say it, but of course she's
not
a lady!”

“What an expression, Mums! What does that matter nowadays?”

“It still matters in the country, dear,” said Adela placidly. “I simply mean that she isn't exactly one of
us!
”

“Poor little devil!”

“Really, Lynn, I don't know what you mean. We have all been
most
careful to be kind and polite and to welcome her amongst us for Gordon's sake.”

“She's at Furrowbank, then?” Lynn asked curiously.

“Yes, naturally. Where else was there for her to go when she came out of the nursing home? The doctors said she must be out of London. She's at Furrowbank with her brother.”

“What's
he
like?” Lynn asked.

“A
dreadful
young man!” Mrs. Marchmont paused, and then added with a good deal of intensity: “
Rude.
”

A momentary flicker of sympathy crossed Lynn's mind. She thought: “I bet
I'd
be rude in his place!”

She asked: “What's his name?”

“Hunter. David Hunter. Irish, I believe. Of course they are not people one has ever heard of. She was a widow—a Mrs. Underhay. One doesn't wish to be
uncharitable,
but one can't help asking oneself—what
kind
of a widow would be likely to be travelling about from South America in wartime? One can't help feeling, you know, that she was just
looking
for a rich husband.”

“In which case, she didn't look in vain,” remarked Lynn.

Mrs. Marchmont sighed.

“It seems so extraordinary. Gordon was such a shrewd man always. And it wasn't, I mean, that women hadn't
tried.
That last secretary but one, for instance. Really quite
blatant.
She was very efficient, I believe, but he had to get rid of her.”

Lynn said vaguely: “I suppose there's always a Waterloo.”

“Sixty-two,” said Mrs. Marchmont. “A very dangerous age. And a war, I imagine, is unsettling. But I can't tell you what a
shock
it was when we got his letter from New York.”

“What did it say exactly?”

“He wrote to Frances—I really can't
think
why. Perhaps he imagined that owing to her upbringing she might be more sympathetic. He said that we'd probably be surprised to hear that he was married. It had all been rather sudden, but he was sure we should all soon grow very fond of Rosaleen (such a very
theatrical
name, don't you think, dear? I mean definitely rather bogus). She had had a very sad life, he said, and had gone through a lot although she was so young. Really it was wonderful the plucky way she had stood up to life.”

“Quite a well-known gambit,” murmured Lynn.

“Oh, I know. I do agree. One has heard it so
many
times. But one would really think that
Gordon
with all his experience—still, there it is. She has the most enormous eyes—dark blue and what they call put in with a smutty finger.”

“Attractive?”

“Oh, yes, she is certainly very
pretty.
It's not the kind of prettiness
I
admire.”

“It never is,” said Lynn with a wry smile.

“No, dear. Really,
men
—but well, there's no accounting for men! Even the most well-balanced of them do the most incredibly foolish things! Gordon's letter went on to say that we mustn't think for a moment that this would mean any loosening of old ties. He still considered us all his special responsibility.”

“But he didn't,” said Lynn, “make a will after his marriage?”

Mrs. Marchmont shook her head.

“The last will he made was in 1940. I don't know any details, but he gave us to understand at the time that we were all taken care of by it if anything should happen to him. That will, of course, was revoked by his marriage. I suppose he would have made a new will when he got home—but there just wasn't time. He was killed practically the day after he landed in this country.”

“And so she—Rosaleen—gets everything?”

“Yes. The old will was invalidated by his marriage.”

Lynn was silent. She was not more mercenary than most, but she would not have been human if she had not resented the new state of affairs. It was not, she felt, at all what Gordon Cloade himself would have envisaged. The bulk of his fortune he might have left to his young wife, but certain provisions he would certainly
have made for the family he had encouraged to depend upon him. Again and again he had urged them not to save, not to make provision for the future. She had heard him say to Jeremy, “You'll be a rich man when I die.” To her mother he had often said, “Don't worry, Adela. I'll always look after Lynn—you know that, and I'd hate you to leave this house—it's your
home.
Send all the bills for repairs to me.” Rowley he had encouraged to take up farming. Antony, Jeremy's son, he had insisted should go into the Guards and he had always made him a handsome allowance. Lionel Cloade had been encouraged to follow up certain lines of medical research that were not immediately profitable and to let his practice run down.