Appointment with Death (Hercule Poirot, #19)

by Agatha Christie

‘You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?’ The question floated out into the still night air, seemed to hang there a moment and then drift away down into the darkness towards the Dead Sea.

‘They turned me out of one place today because I had on a sleeveless dress,’ she said ruefully. ‘Apparently the Almighty doesn’t like my arms in spite of having made them.’

Old, swollen, bloated, sitting there immovable in the midst of them—a distorted old Buddha—a gross spider in the centre of a web!

Instead of writing the letters she had mentioned, Sarah King sat down in front of her dressing-table, combed the hair back from her forehead, looked into a pair of troubled hazel eyes in the glass, and took stock of her situation in life.

Have you ever seen the old experiment with a cock? You chalk a line on the floor and put the cock’s beak on it. The cock believes he is tied there. He cannot raise his head. So with these unfortunates. She has worked on them, remember, since they were children. And her dominance has been mental. She has hypnotized them to believe that they cannot disobey her.

I am a doctor and I know that ambition—the desire to succeed—to have power—leads to most ills of the human soul. If the desire is realized it leads to arrogance, violence and final satiety—and if it is denied—ah! if it is denied—let all the asylums for the insane rise up and give their testimony!

Should one, if one sees a wrong being done, attempt to put it right? One’s interference may do good—but it may do incalculable harm! It is impossible to lay down any ruling on the subject. Some people have a genius for interference—they do it well! Some people do it clumsily and had therefore better leave it alone!

Young people have the courage of their ideals and convictions—their values are more theoretical than practical. They have not experienced, as yet, that fact contradicts theory!

So the result is even—the earnest young do both harm and good—the prudent middle-aged do neither!’

Now, suddenly, she saw the old woman as a pathetic ineffectual figure. To be born with such a lust for power, such a desire for dominion—and to achieve only a petty domestic tyranny! If only her children could see her as Sarah saw her that minute—an object of pity—a stupid, malignant, pathetic, posturing old woman.

Yes, she thought, the emptiness was marvellous…Healing…Peaceful…No human beings to agitate one with their tiresome inter-relationships…No burning personal problems!

He scratched his head again. ‘I’m a tidy man,’ he said unexpectedly. Colonel Carbury’s tie was under his left ear, his socks were wrinkled, his coat stained and torn. Yet Hercule Poirot did not smile. He saw, clearly enough, the inner neatness of Colonel Carbury’s mind, his neatly docketed facts, his carefully sorted impressions.

‘I am gifted—yes,’ said the little man. He smiled modestly.

Sarah King looked long and searchingly at Hercule Poirot. She noted the egg-shaped head, the gigantic moustaches, the dandified appearance and the suspicious blackness of his hair.

To me it is all the same. The victim may be one of the good God’s saints—or, on the contrary—a monster of infamy. It moves me not. The fact is the same. A life—taken!

When Lady Westholme’s public duty had held the stage for some minutes, Poirot was adroit enough to get in a question.

‘Your position certainly seems impeccable,’ said Poirot with gravity. ‘In a work of fiction you would be strongly suspected on that account.’