Читать книгу The Killings at Kingfisher Hill онлайн | страница 7

‘No, thank you.’ She sounded vague and seemed distracted.

‘Are you quite certain?’

‘Yes. I … Yes. Thank you.’ She took four or five steps away from me and closer to the coach.

I could hardly insist on helping her if she was determined to forbid it, so I returned to Poirot and Alfred Bixby, but kept an eye on her movements, which soon grew more agitated. She started to walk round and round in little circles, her mouth moving silently. At no point did the terrible expression leave her face, not for a second.

I was about to interrupt Bixby’s monologue and draw Poirot’s attention to the object of my concern when I heard a loud, disdainful female voice to the left of me say, ‘Do you see that young woman over there? What on earth is wrong with her? Perhaps her mother dropped her hard on her head when she was a baby.’

The mother of the bundled infant gasped and held her child closer to her body. ‘There’s no need to be insulting, miss,’ said an old man, which remark inspired a general murmur of agreement. The only people who seemed not to notice all of this activity were the woman with the unfinished face and Alfred Bixby, who was still talking to Poirot, though Poirot was no longer listening.

‘She does appear to be disturbed,’ someone said. ‘We ought to check that her name is on the passenger manifest.’

This provoked a chorus of observations:

‘Mr Bixby said we’re all here.’

‘Then what’s keeping him from opening the doors? Driver! You’re the driver, aren’t you? May we board now?’

‘I suppose if her name is on the list then she cannot be an escaped lunatic from a nearby asylum, though her behaviour indicates otherwise,’ said the loud, rude woman. She too was young—around the same age as the woman with the unfinished face. Her voice was severely at odds with the viciousness of her words. It was a strikingly musical and feminine voice—light, bright, almost sparkling. If a diamond could speak, it would sound like her, I thought.

‘That gentleman was speaking to her a few seconds ago.’ An elderly lady gestured in my direction, then turned to face me. ‘What did you say to her? Do you know her?’