Agatha Christie - The Hollow: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Agatha Christie Collection)

The Hollow

John Christow came out from the chestnut woods onto the green slope by the house. There was a moon and the house basked in the moonlight with a strange innocence in its curtained windows. He looked down at the wrist-watch he wore.

It was three o'clock. He drew a deep breath and his face was anxious. He was no longer, even remotely, a young man of twenty-four in love. He was a shrewd practical man of just on forty and his mind was clear and level-headed.

He'd been a fool, of course, a complete damned fool, but he didn't regret that! For he was, he now realized, completely master of himself. It was as though, for years, he had dragged a weight upon his leg - and now the weight was gone. He was free.

He was free and himself, John Christow - and he knew that to John Christow, successful Harley Street specialist, Veronica Cray meant nothing whatsoever. All that had been in the past - and because that conflict had never been resolved, because he had always suffered humiliatingly from the fear that he had, in plain language, run away, Veronica's image had never completely left him. She had come to him tonight out of a dream... and he had accepted the dream, and now, thank God, he was delivered from it for ever. He was back in the present - and it was 3:00 a.m., and it was just possible that he had mucked up things rather badly.

He'd been with Veronica for three hours. She had sailed in like a frigate, and cut him out of the circle and carried him off as her prize, and he wondered now what on earth everybody had thought about it.

What, for instance, would Gerda think?

And Henrietta? (But he didn't care quite so much about Henrietta. He could, he felt, at a pinch explain to Henrietta. He could never explain to Gerda.)

And he didn't, definitely he didn't, want to lose anything.

All his life he had been a man who took a justifiable amount of risks. Risks with patients, risks with treatment risks with investments. Never a fantastic risk - only the kind of risk that was just beyond the margin of safety.

If Gerda guessed - if Gerda had the least suspicion.

But would she have? How much did he really know about Gerda? Normally, Gerda would believe white was black if he told her so. But over a thing like this...

What had he looked like when he followed Veronica's tall, triumphant figure out of that window? What had he shown in his face? Had they seen a boy's dazed, love-sick face? Or had they only observed a man doing a polite duty? He didn't know! He hadn't the least idea.

But he was afraid - afraid for the ease and order and safety of his life. He'd been mad - quite mad, he thought with exasperation - and then took comfort in that very thought. Nobody would believe, surely, he could have been as mad as that?

Everybody was in bed and asleep, that was clear. The French window of the drawing-room stood half open, left for his return. He looked up again at the innocent sleeping house. It looked, somehow, too innocent.

Suddenly he started. He had heard, or he had imagined he heard, the faint closing of a door.

He turned his head sharply. If someone had come down to the pool, following him there. If someone had waited and followed him back, that someone could have taken a higher path and so gained entrance to the house again by the side garden door and the soft closing of the garden door would have made just the sound that he had heard.

He looked up sharply at the windows. Was that curtain moving, had it been pushed aside for someone to look out, and then allowed to fall? Henrietta's room...

Henrietta! Not Henrietta, his heart cried in a sudden panic. I can't lose Henrietta!

He wanted suddenly to fling up a handful of pebbles at her window, to cry out to her.

Come out, my dear love. Come out to me now and walk with me up through the woods to Shovel Down and there listen - listen to everything that I now know about myself and that you must know, too. If you do not know it already...

He wanted to say to Henrietta:

I am starting again. A new life begins from today. The things that crippled and hindered me from living have fallen away. You were right this afternoon when you asked me if I was running away from myself. That is what I have been doing for years. Because I never knew whether it was strength or weakness that took me away from Veronica, I have been afraid of myself, afraid of life, afraid of you.

If he were to wake Henrietta and make her come out with him now - up through the woods to where they could watch, together, the sun come up over the rim of the world...

You're mad, he said to himself. He shivered. It was cold now, late September after all. What the devil is the matter with you? he asked himself. You've behaved quite insanely enough for one night. If you get away with it as it is, you're damned lucky! What on earth would Gerda think if he stayed out all night and came home with the milk?

What, for the matter of that, would the Angkatells think?

But that did not worry him for a moment. The Angkatells took Greenwich time, as it were, from Lucy Angkatell. And to Lucy Angkatell, the unusual always appeared perfectly reasonable.

But Gerda, unfortunately, was not an Angkatell.

Gerda would have to be dealt with, and he'd better go in and deal with Gerda as soon as possible.

Supposing it had been Gerda who had followed him tonight. No good saying people didn't do such things. As a doctor, he knew only too well what people, high-minded, sensitive, fastidious, honourable people constantly did. They listened at doors, and opened letters and spied and snooped - not because for one moment they approved of such conduct, but because, before the sheer necessity of human anguish, they were rendered desperate.

Poor devils, he thought, poor suffering human devils... John Christow knew a good deal about human suffering. He had not very much pity for weakness, but he had for suffering, for it was, he knew, the strong who suffer...

If Gerda knew. Nonsense, he said to himself, why should she? She's gone up to bed and she's fast asleep. She's no imagination, never has had.

He went in through the French windows, switched on a lamp, closed and locked the windows. Then, switching off the light, he left the room, found the switch in the hall, went quickly and lightly up the stairs. A second switch turned off the hall light. He stood for a moment by the bedroom door, his hand on the doorknob, then he turned it, and went in.

The room was dark and he could hear Gerda's even breathing. She stirred as he came in and closed the door. Her voice came to him, blurred and indistinct with sleep:

Is that you, John?

Yes.

Aren't you very late? What time is it?

He said easily,

I've no idea. Sorry I woke you up. I had to go in with the woman and have a drink.

He made his voice sound bored and sleepy.

Gerda murmured, Oh? Good night, John.

There was a rustle as she turned over in bed.

It was all right! As usual, he'd been lucky... As usual - just for a moment it sobered him, the thought of how often his luck had held! Time and again there had been a moment when he'd held his breath and said, If this goes wrong... And it hadn't gone wrong! But some day, surely, his luck would change...

He undressed quickly and got into bed. Funny, that kid's fortune telling. And this one is over your head and has power over you... Veronica! And she had had power over him all right.

But not any more, my girl, he thought with a kind of savage satisfaction. All that's over. I'm quit of you now!

It was ten o'clock the next morning when John came down. Breakfast was on the sideboard. Gerda had had her breakfast sent up to her in bed and had been rather perturbed since perhaps she might be giving trouble.