merriment, my dear Poirot? We have no bodies
here, positively not a single body to offer you."
108
Agatha Christie
Poirot sipped the champagne.
"You seem very gay, man cher?"
"Gay? I am steeped in miserymwallowing in
gloom. Tell me, you hear this tune they are playing.
You recognize it?"
Poirot lazarded cautiously:
"Something perhaps to do with your baby having
left you?"
"Not a bad guess," said the young man, "but
wrong for once. 'There's nothing like love for
making you miserable!' That's what it's called."
"Aha?"
"My favorite tune,." said Tony Chapell mournfully.
"And my favorite restaurant and my favorite
band--and my favorite girl's here and she's
dancing it with somebody else."
"Hence the melancholy?" said Poirot.
"Exactly. Pauline and I, you see, have had what
the vulgar call words. That is to say, she's had
ninety-five words to five of mine out of every hundred.
My five are: 'But darling--I can explain.' --Then she starts in on her ninety-five again and
we get no further. I think," added Tony sadly,
"that I shall poison myself."
"Pauline?" murmured Poirot.
"Pauline Weatherby. Barton Russell's young
sister-in-law. Young, lovely, disgustingly rich. Tonight