“Betty,” she said, “was an unmitigated little ass!”
Eleven
MEGAN BARNARD
As I said, Megan Barnard’s words, and still more the crisp businesslike tone in which they were uttered, made me jump.
Poirot, however, merely bowed his head gravely.
“A la bonne heure,” he said. “You are intelligent, mademoiselle.”
Megan Barnard said, still in the same detached tone:
“I was extremely fond of Betty. But my fondness didn’t blind me from seeing exactly the kind of silly little fool she was—and even telling her so upon occasions! Sisters are like that.”
“And did she pay any attention to your advice?”
“Probably not,” said Megan cynically.
“Will you, mademoiselle, be precise.”
The girl hesitated for a minute or two.
Poirot said with a slight smile:
“I will help you. I heard what you said to Hastings. That your sister was a bright, happy girl with no men friends. It was—un peu—the opposite that was true, was it not?”
Megan said slowly:
“There wasn’t any harm in Betty. I want you to understand that. She’d always go straight. She’s not the weekending kind. Nothing of that sort. But she liked being taken out and dancing and—oh, cheap flattery and compliments and all that sort of thing.”
“And she was pretty—yes?”
This question, the third time I had heard it, met this time with a practical response.
Megan slipped off the table, went to her suitcase, snapped it open and extracted something which she handed to Poirot.
In a leather frame was a head and shoulders of a fair-haired, smiling girl. Her hair had evidently recently been permed, it stood out from her head in a mass of rather frizzy curls. The smile was arch and artificial. It was certainly not a face that you could call beautiful, but it had an obvious and cheap prettiness.
Poirot handed it back, saying:
“You and she do not resemble each other, mademoiselle.”
“Oh! I’m the plain one of the family. I’ve always known that.” She seemed to brush aside the fact as unimportant.
“In what way exactly do you consider your sister was behaving foolishly? Do you mean, perhaps, in relation to Mr. Donald Fraser?”
“That’s it, exactly. Don’s a very quiet sort of person—but he—well, naturally he’d resent certain things—and then—”
“And then what, mademoiselle?”
His eyes were on her very steadily.
It may have been my fancy but it seemed to me that she hesitated a second before answering.
“I was afraid that he might—chuck her altogether. And that would have been a pity. He’s a very steady and hard-working man and would have made her a good husband.”
Poirot continued to gaze at her. She did not flush under his glance but returned it with one of her own equally steady and with something else in it—something that reminded me of her first defiant, disdainful manner.