Читать книгу The Killings at Kingfisher Hill онлайн | страница 15
‘Bien sûr.’ Poirot turned to face the woman. ‘Mademoiselle, you wish to sit in a different seat?’
‘Yes. I must. It’s … it’s important. I would not ask otherwise.’
A sharp, bright voice that I recognized only too well said, ‘M. Poirot, please be kind enough to grant her wish and give her your seat. I should much rather sit beside a world-renowned detective than a gibbering fool. She’s done nothing but gasp and shudder for the last fifteen minutes. It’s fatiguing in the extreme.’
So la pauvre mademoiselle, as Poirot had called her, had been sitting beside the owner of that wretched book all this while! No wonder she didn’t want to stay there any longer. She had probably made the mistake of glancing at the book’s cover and received a thorough savaging.
‘What is wrong with your seat?’ Poirot asked. ‘Why do you wish to move?’
She shook her head wildly. Then she cried out, ‘You won’t believe me, but … I will die if I sit there. Someone will kill me!’
‘Please explain to me what you mean,’ said Poirot. ‘Who will kill you?’
‘I don’t know!’ the woman sobbed. ‘But I know that it’s this seat. Next to the aisle, seven rows back, on the right. Only this seat, and none of the others. That’s what he said. Nothing will happen to me if I sit anywhere else. Please, sir, let me take your place and you take mine?’
‘Who said this to you?’
‘The man! A man. I … I don’t know who he was.’
‘And if you sit in this particular seat, what did the man say would happen?’ asked Poirot.
‘Haven’t I just told you?’ the woman wailed. ‘He said I’d be murdered! “Mark my words,”’ he said. ‘“You heed this warning, or you won’t get off that coach alive.”’
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