Смерть на Ниле / Death on the Nile - стр. 51
M. Hercule Poirot spent his evening listening to an account of Mrs Otterbourne’s mission as a writer.
On his way to his cabin that night he encountered Jacqueline de Bellefort. She was leaning over the rail and as she turned her head he was struck by the look of acute misery on her face. There was now no insouciance, no malicious defiance, no dark flaming triumph.
‘Good night, Mademoiselle.’
‘Good night, Monsieur Poirot.’ She hesitated, then said: ‘You were surprised to find me here?’
‘I was not so much surprised as sorry – very sorry…’ He spoke gravely.
‘You mean sorry – for me?’
‘That is what I meant. You have chosen, Mademoiselle, the dangerous course… As we here in this boat have embarked on a journey, so you too have embarked on your own private journey – a journey on a swiftmoving river, between dangerous rocks, and heading for who knows what currents of disaster…’
‘Why do you say this?’
‘Because it is true… You have cut the bonds that moored you to safety. I doubt now if you could turn back if you would.’
She said very slowly: ‘That is true…’ Then she flung her head back. ‘Ah, well – one must follow one’s star – wherever it leads.’
‘Beware, Mademoiselle, that it is not a false star…’
She laughed and mimicked the parrot cry of the donkey boys:
‘That very bad star, sir! That star fall down…’
He was just dropping off to sleep when the murmur of voices awoke him. It was Simon Doyle’s voice he heard, repeating the same words he had used when the steamer left Shellal.
‘We’ve got to go through with it now…’
‘Yes,’ thought Hercule Poirot to himself, ‘we have got to go through with it now…’
He was not happy.
Chapter 8
The steamer arrived early next morning at Ez-Zebua. Cornelia Robson, her face beaming, a large flapping hat on her head, was one of the first to hurry on shore. Cornelia was not good at snubbing people. She was of an amiable disposition and disposed to like all her fellow creatures. The sight of Hercule Poirot, in a white suit, pink shirt, large black bow tie and a white topee, did not make her wince as the aristocratic Miss Van Schuyler would assuredly have winced. As they walked together up an avenue of sphinxes, she responded readily to his conventional opening,
‘Your companions are not coming ashore to view the temple?’
‘Well, you see, Cousin Marie – that’s Miss Van Schuyler – never gets up very early. She has to be very, very careful of her health. And of course she wanted Miss Bowers, that’s her hospital nurse, to do things for her. And she said, too, that this isn’t one of the best temples – but she was frightfully kind and said it would be quite all right for me to come.’