Hercule Poirot said:
“But, then…?”
He spread out his hands in a wide, appealing foreign gesture.
Ted Bigland nodded his head. His eyes had still the dumb, glazed look of an animal in pain.
He said:
“I know, sir. I know what you say’s true. She didn’t die natural. But I’ve been wondering….”
He paused.
Poirot said:
“Yes?”
Ted Bigland said slowly:
“I’ve been wondering if in some way it couldn’t have been an accident?”
“An accident? But what kind of an accident?”
“I know, sir. I know. It doesn’t sound like sense. But I keep thinking and thinking, and it seems to me it must have been that way. Something that wasn’t meant to happen or something that was all a mistake. Just—well, just an accident!”
He looked pleadingly at Poirot, embarrassed by his own lack of eloquence.
Poirot was silent a moment or two. He seemed to be considering. He said at last:
“It is interesting that you feel that.”
Ted Bigland said deprecatingly:
“I dare say it doesn’t make sense to you, sir. I can’t figure out any how and why about it. It’s just a feeling I’ve got.”
Hercule Poirot said:
“Feeling is sometimes an important guide… You will pardon me, I hope, if I seem to tread on painful ground, but you cared very much for Mary Gerrard, did you not?”
A little dark colour came up in the tanned face.
Ted said simply:
“Everyone knows that around here, I reckon.”
“You wanted to marry her?”
“Yes.”
“But she—was not willing?”
Ted’s face darkened a little. He said, with a hint of surpressed anger:
“Mean well, people do, but they shouldn’t muck up people’s lives by interfering. All this schooling and going abroad! It changed Mary. I don’t mean spoilt her, or that she was stuck-up—she wasn’t. But it…oh, it bewildered her! She didn’t know where she was any more. She was—well, put it crudely—she was too good for me; but she still wasn’t good enough for a real gentleman like Mr. Welman.”
Hercule Poirot said, watching him:
“You don’t like Mr. Welman?”