Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online

easily attracted and influenced - she had definitely to be looked after. When after the final winding up of her parents estate it was discovered that the plantation was destroyed and there were more debts than assets, I could only be thankful that a man such as Sir George Stubbs had fallen in love with her and wanted to marry her.”
    “Possibly - yes - it was a solution.”
    “Sir George,” said Mrs Folliat, “though he is a self-made man and - let us face it - a complete vulgarian, is kindly and fundamentally decent, besides being extremely wealthy. I don't think he would ever ask for mental companionship from a wife, which is just as well. Hattie is everything he wants. She displays clothes and jewels to perfection, is affectionate and willing, and is completely happy with him. I confess that I am very thankful that that is so, for I admit that I deliberately influenced her to accept him. If it had turned out badly -” her voice faltered a little - “it would have been my fault for urging her to marry a man so many years older than herself. You see, as I told you, Hattie is completely suggestible. Anyone she is with at the time can dominate her.”
    “It seems to me,” said Poirot approvingly, “that you made there a most prudent arrangement for her. I am not, like the English, romantic. To arrange a good marriage, one must take more than romance into consideration.”
    He added:
    “And as for this place here, Nasse House, it is a most beautiful spot. Quite, as the saying goes, out of this world.”
    “Since Nasse had to be sold,” said Mrs Folliat, with a faint tremor in her voice, “I am glad that Sir George bought it. It was requisitioned during the war by the Army and afterwards it might have been bought and made into a guest house or a school, the rooms cut up and partitioned, distorted out of their natural beauty. Our neighbours, the Fletchers, at Hoodown, had to sell their place and it is now a Youth Hostel. One is glad that young people should enjoy themselves - and fortunately Hoodown is late-Victorian, and of no great architectural merit, so that the alterations do not matter. I'm afraid some of the young people trespass on our grounds. It makes Sir George very angry. It's true that they have occasionally damaged the rare shrubs by hacking them about - they come through here trying to get a short cut to the ferry across the river.”
    They were standing now by the front gate. The lodge, a small white one-storied building, lay a little back from the drive with a small railed garden round it.
    Mrs Folliat took back her basket from Poirot with a word of thanks.
    “I was always very fond of the lodge,” she said, looking at it affectionately. “Merdle, our head gardener for thirty years, used to live here. I much prefer it to the top cottage, though that has been enlarged and modernised by Sir George. It had to be; we've got quite a young man now as head gardener, with a young wife - and these young women must have electric irons and modern cookers and television, and all that. One must go with the times...” She sighed. “There is hardly a person left now on the estate from the old days - all new faces.”
    “I am glad, Madame,” said Poirot, “that you have at least found a haven.”
    “You know those lines of Spenser's? 'Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, ease after war, death after life, doth greatly please...'”
    She paused and said without any change of tone:
    “It's a very wicked world, M. Poirot. And there are very wicked people in the world. You probably know that as well as I do. I don't say so before the younger people, it might discourage them, but it's true... Yes, it's a very wicked world...”
    She gave him a little nod, then turned and went into the lodge. Poirot stood still, staring at the shut door.

Dead Man's Folly

Chapter 5
    In a mood of exploration Poirot went through the front gates and down the steeply twisting road that presently emerged on a small quay. A