“Oh, you’ve got it wrong. He was going to Doncaster all right. Some people have all the luck. I’ve got a bit on Firefly for the Leger and I’d love to see it run.”
“I shouldn’t think Mr. Cust went to race meetings, he doesn’t look the kind. Oh, Tom, I hope he won’t get murdered. It’s Doncaster the A B C murder’s going to be.”
“Cust’ll be all right. His name doesn’t begin with a D.”
“He might have been murdered last time. He was down near Churston at Torquay when the last murder happened.”
“Was he? That’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?”
He laughed.
“He wasn’t at Bexhill the time before, was he?”
Lily crinkled her brows.
“He was away…Yes, I remember he was away…because he forgot his bathing-dress. Mother was mending it for him. And she said: ‘There—Mr. Cust went away yesterday without his bathing-dress after all,’ and I said: ‘Oh, never mind the old bathing-dress—there’s been the most awful murder,’ I said, ‘a girl strangled at Bexhill.’”
“Well, if he wanted his bathing-dress, he must have been going to the seaside. I say, Lily”—his face crinkled up with amusement. “What price your old dugout being the murderer himself?”
“Poor Mr. Cust? He wouldn’t hurt a fly,” laughed Lily.
They danced on happily—in their conscious minds nothing but the pleasure of being together.
In their unconscious minds something stirred….
Twenty-three
SEPTEMBER 11TH. DONCASTER
Doncaster!
I shall, I think, remember that 11th of September all my life.
Indeed, whenever I see a mention of the St. Leger my mind flies au
tomatically not to horse racing but to murder.
When I recall my own sensations, the thing that stands out most is a sickening sense of insufficiency. We were here—on the spot—Poirot, myself, Clarke, Fraser, Megan Barnard, Thora Grey and Mary Drower, and in the last resort what could any of us do?
We were building on a forlorn hope—on the chance of recognizing amongst a crowd of thousands of people a face or figure imperfectly seen on an occasion one, two or three months back.
The odds were in reality greater than that. Of us all, the only person likely to make such a recognition was Thora Grey.
Some of her serenity had broken down under the strain. Her calm, efficient manner was gone. She sat twisting her hands together, almost weeping, appealing incoherently to Poirot.
“I never really looked at him…Why didn’t I? What a fool I was. You’re depending on me, all of you…and I shall let you down. Because even if I did see him again I mightn’t recognize him. I’ve got a bad memory for faces.”
Poirot, whatever he might say to me, and however harshly he might seem to criticize the girl, showed nothing but kindness now. His manner was tender in the extreme. It struck me that Poirot was no more indifferent to beauty in distress than I was.
He patted her shoulder kindly.
“Now then, petite, not the hysteria. We cannot have that. If you should see this man you would recognize him.”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, a great many reasons—for one, because the red succeeds the black.”
“What do you mean, Poirot?” I cried.