III
Hercule Poirot caught a bus back to Broadhinny feeling slightly more cheerful. At any rate therewas one person who shared his belief in James Bentley’s innocence¹. Bentley was not so friendlessas he had made himself out to be.
His mind went back again to Bentley in prison. What a dispiriting interview it had been.
There had been no hope aroused, hardly a stirring of interest.
“Thank you,” Bentley had said dully, “but I don’t suppose there is anything anyone can do.”
No, he was sure he had not got any enemies.
“When people barely notice you’re alive, you’re not likely to have any enemies.”
“Your mother? Did she have an enemy?”
“Certainly not. Everyone liked and respected her.”
There was a faint indignation in his tone.
“What about your friends?”
And James Bentley had said, or rather muttered, “I haven’t any friends. .?.?.”
But that had not been quite true. For Maude Williams was a friend.
“What a wonderful dispensation it is of Nature’s,” thought Hercule Poirot, “that every man,however superficially unattractive, should be some woman’s choice.”
For all Miss Williams’s sexy appearance, he had a shrewd suspicion that she was really thematernal type.
She had the qualities that James Bentley lacked, the energy, the drive, the refusal to bebeaten, the determination to succeed.
He sighed.
What monstrous² lies he had told that day! Never mind—they were necessary.
“For somewhere,” said Poirot to himself, indulging in an absolute riot of mixed metaphors,“there is in the hay a needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put myfoot, and by shooting the arrows into the air, one will come down and hit a glasshouse!”

下一页  尾页