Смерть на Ниле / Death on the Nile - стр. 60
‘A very nice maiden, that,’ he announced to Poirot. ‘She does not look so starved as some of these young women – no, she has the nice curves. She listens too very intelligently; it is a pleasure to instruct her.’
It fleeted across Poirot’s mind that it seemed to be Cornelia’s fate either to be bullied or instructed. In any case she was always the listener, never the talker.
Miss Bowers, momentarily released by the peremptory summons of Cornelia, was standing in the middle of the temple, looking about her with her cool, incurious gaze. Her reaction to the wonders of the past was succinct.
‘The guide says the name of one of these gods or goddesses was Mut. Can you beat it?’
There was an inner sanctuary where sat four figures eternally presiding, stangely dignified in their dim aloofness.
Before them stood Linnet and her husband. Her arm was in his, her face lifted – a typical face of the new civilization, intelligent, curious, untouched by the past.
Simon said suddenly: ‘Let’s get out of here. I don’t like these four fellows – especially the one in the high hat.’
‘That’s Amon, I suppose. And that one is Rameses. Why don’t you like them? I think they’re very impressive.’
‘They’re a damned sight too impressive – there’s something uncanny about them. Come out into the sunlight.’
Linnet laughed, but yielded.
They came out of the temple into the sunshine with the sand yellow and warm about their feet. Linnet began to laugh. At their feet in a row, presenting a momentarily gruesome appearance as though sawn from their bodies, were the heads of half a dozen boys. The eyes rolled, the heads moved rhythmically from side to side, the lips chanted a new invocation:
‘Hip, hip hurray! Hip, hip hurray! Very good, very nice. Thank you very much.’
‘How absurd! How do they do it? Are they really buried very deep?’
Simon produced some small change.
‘Very good, very nice, very expensive,’ he mimicked.
Two small boys in charge of the ‘show’ picked up the coins neatly.
Linnet and Simon passed on. They had no wish to return to the boat, and they were weary of sightseeing. They settled themselves with their backs to the cliff and let the warm sun bake them through.
‘How lovely the sun is,’ thought Linnet. ‘How warm – how safe… How lovely it is to be happy… How lovely to be me – me – me – Linnet-’
Her eyes closed. She was half asleep, half awake, drifting in the midst of thought that was like the sand drifting and blowing.
Simon’s eyes were open. They too held contentment. What a fool he’d been to be rattled that first night… There was nothing to be rattled about… Everything was all right… After all, one could trust Jackie-