死亡约会 Part II Chapter 18（3）（在线收听）

‘Good lord,’ said Colonel Carbury, suddenly sitting up very straight. ‘Are you suggesting—?’

‘I am suggesting that, having ascertained just what Miss Pierce (the only witness likely to beawake) was doing, Lady Westholme returned to her tent, put on her riding breeches, boots andkhaki-coloured coat, made herself an Arab head-dress with her checked duster and a skein ofknitting-wool and that, thus attired, she went boldly up to Dr Gerard’s tent, looked in his medicinechest, selected a suitable drug, took the hypodermic, filled it and went boldly up to her victim.

‘Mrs Boynton may have been dozing. Lady Westholme was quick. She caught her by the wristand injected the stuff. Mrs Boynton half cried out—tried to rise—then sank back. The “Arab”

hurried away with every evidence of being ashamed and abashed. Mrs Boynton shook her stick,tried to rise, then fell back into her chair.

‘Five minutes later Lady Westholme rejoins Miss Pierce and comments on the scene she hasjust witnessed, impressing her own version of it on the other. Then they go for a walk, pausingbelow the ledge where Lady Westholme shouts up to the old lady. She receives no answer. MrsBoynton is dead—but she remarks to Miss Pierce, “Very rude just to snort at us like that!” MissPierce accepts the suggestion—she has often heard Mrs Boynton receive a remark with a snort—she will swear quite sincerely if necessary that she actually heard it. Lady Westholme has sat oncommittees often enough with women of Miss Pierce’s type to know exactly how her owneminence and masterful personality can influence them. The only point where her plan went astraywas the replacing of the syringe. Dr Gerard returning so soon upset her scheme. She hoped hemight not have noticed its absence, or might think he had overlooked it, and she put it back duringthe night.’

He stopped.

Sarah said: ‘But why? Why should Lady Westholme want to kill old Mrs Boynton?’

‘Did you not tell me that Lady Westholme had been quite near you in Jerusalem when youspoke to Mrs Boynton? It was to Lady Westholme that Mrs Boynton’s words were addressed.

“I’ve never forgotten anything—not an action, not a name, not a face.” Put that with the fact thatMrs Boynton had been a wardress in a prison and you can get a very shrewd idea of the truth.

Lord Westholme met his wife on a voyage back from America. Lady Westholme before hermarriage had been a criminal and had served a prison sentence.

‘You see the terrible dilemma she was in? Her career, her ambitions, her social position—all atstake! What the crime was for which she served a sentence in prison we do not yet know (thoughwe soon shall), but it must have been one that would effectually blast her political career if it wasmade public. And remember this, Mrs Boynton was not an ordinary blackmailer. She did not wantmoney. She wanted the pleasure of torturing her victim for a while and then she would haveenjoyed revealing the truth in the most spectacular fashion! No, while Mrs Boynton lived, LadyWestholme was not safe. She obeyed Mrs Boynton’s instructions to meet her at Petra (I thought itstrange all along that a woman with such a sense of her own importance as Lady Westholmeshould have preferred to travel as a mere tourist), but in her own mind she was doubtless revolvingways and means of murder. She saw her chance and carried it out boldly. She only made two slips.

One was to say a little too much—the description of the torn breeches—which first drew myattention to her, and the other was when she mistook Dr Gerard’s tent and looked first into the onewhere Ginevra was lying half asleep. Hence the girl’s story—half make-believe, half true—of asheikh in disguise. She put it the wrong way round, obeying her instinct to distort the truth bymaking it more dramatic, but the indication was quite significant enough for me.’

He paused.

‘But we shall soon know. I obtained Lady Westholme’s fingerprints today without her beingaware of the fact. If these are sent to the prison where Mrs Boynton was once a wardress, we shallsoon know the truth when they are compared with the files.’

He stopped.

In the momentary stillness a sharp sound was heard.

‘What’s that?’ asked Dr Gerard.

‘Sounded like a shot to me,’ said Colonel Carbury, rising to his feet quickly. ‘In the next room.

Who’s got that room, by the way?’

Poirot murmured: ‘I have a little idea—it is the room of Lady Westholme…’