After the Funeral (Hercule Poirot, #33)

by Agatha Christie

Very spirited the young ladies had been. Miss Geraldine in particular. Miss Cora, too, although she was so much younger. And now Mr. Leo was dead, and Miss Laura gone too. And Mr. Timothy such a sad invalid.

On a foundation of Coral Cornplasters there had arisen this neo-Gothic palace, its acres of gardens, and the money that had paid out an income to seven sons and daughters and had allowed Richard Abernethie to die three days ago a very rich man. II Looking

Mrs. Leo, Helen, he knew well, of course. A very charming woman for whom he had both liking and respect.

Mr. Entwhistle transferred his attention to George Crossfield, Laura’s son. Dubious sort of fellow Laura had married. Nobody had ever known much about him. A stockbroker he had called himself. Young George was in a solicitor’s office—not a very reputable firm. Good-looking young fellow—but something a little shifty about him. He couldn’t have too much to live on. Laura had been a complete fool over her investments. She’d left next to nothing when she died five years ago. A handsome romantic girl she’d been, but no money sense.

Rosamund, Geraldine’s daughter, looking at the wax flowers on the malachite table. Pretty girl, beautiful, in fact—rather a silly face. On the stage.

Susan, Gordon’s daughter, would do much better on the stage than Rosamund. More personality. A little too much personality for everyday life, perhaps.

Of course Cora was a rather unbalanced and excessively stupid woman, and she had been noted, even as a girl, for the embarrassing manner in which she had blurted out unwelcome truths. At least, he didn’t mean truths—that was quite the wrong word to use. Awkward statements—that was a much better term.

The mannerisms of an enfant terrible can persist to then, but an enfant terrible of nearly fifty is decidedly disconcerting. To blurt out unwelcome truths—

most ways, thought Mr. Entwhistle, Cora had been a complete fool. She had no judgement, no balance, and a crude childish point of view, but she had also the child’s uncanny knack of sometimes hitting the nail on the head in a way that seemed quite startling.

“The value of money is always relative,” said Mr. Entwhistle. “It is the need that counts.”

What any woman saw in some particular man was beyond the comprehension of the average intelligent male.

It just was so. A woman who could be intelligent about everything else in the world could be a complete fool when it came to some particular man.

“Women are never kind,” remarked Poirot. “Though they can sometimes be tender.

“Things aren’t over when you’ve done them. It’s really a sort of beginning and then one’s got to arrange what to do next, and what’s important and what is not.”

“Because, don’t you see, nobody ever sees themselves—as they appear to other people. They always see themselves in a glass—that is—as a reversed image.”

“Sometimes, is it not, the Past will not be left, will not suffer itself to pass into oblivion? It stands at one’s elbow—it says, ‘I am not done with yet.’”