Endless Night by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online Page B

older. One more birthday can’t make that difference to a girl. She and her family had been in the South of France and she told me a little about it. And then rather awkwardly she said:
    “I—I saw that house there, the one you told me about. The one that architect friend of yours had built.”
    “What—Santonix?”
    “Yes. We went there to lunch one day.”
    “How did you do that? Does your stepmother know the man who lives there?”
    “Dmitri Constantine? Well—not exactly but she met him and—well—Greta fixed it up for us to go there as a matter of fact.”
    “Greta again,” I said, allowing the usual exasperation to come into my voice.
    “I told you,” she said, “Greta is very good at arranging things.”
    “Oh all right. So she arranged that you and your stepmother—”
    “And Uncle Frank,” said Ellie.
    “Quite a family party,” I said, “and Greta too, I suppose.”
    “Well, no, Greta didn’t come because, well—” Ellie hesitated, “—Cora, my stepmother, doesn’t treat Greta exactly like that.”
    “She’s not one of the family, she’s a poor relation, is she?” I said. “Just the au pair girl, in fact. Greta must resent being treated that way sometimes.”
    “She’s not an au pair girl, she’s a kind of companion to me.”
    “A chaperone,” I said, “a cicerone, a duenna, a governess. There are lots of words.”
    “Oh do be quiet,” said Ellie, “I want to tell you. I know now what you mean about your friend Santonix. It’s a wonderful house. It’s—it’s quite different. I can see that if he built a house for us it would be a wonderful house.”
    She had used the word quite unconsciously. Us, she had said. She had gone to the Riviera and had made Greta arrange things so as to see the house I had described, because she wanted to visualize more clearly the house that we would, in the dream world we’d built ourselves, have built for us by Rudolf Santonix.
    “I’m glad you felt like that about it,” I said.
    She said: “What have you been doing?”
    “Just my dull job,” I said, “and I’ve been to a race meeting and I put some money on an outsider. Thirty to one. I put every penny I had on it and it won by a length. Who says my luck isn’t in?”
    “I’m glad you won,” said Ellie, but she said it without excitement, because putting all you had in the world on an outsider and the outsider winning didn’t mean anything to Ellie’s world. Not the kind of thing it meant in mine.
    “And I went to see my mother,” I added.
    “You’ve never spoken much of your mother.”
    “Why should I?” I said.
    “Aren’t you fond of her?”
    I considered. “I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes I don’t think I am. After all, one grows up and—outgrows parents. Mothers and fathers.”
    “I think you do care about her,” said Ellie. “You wouldn’t be so uncertain when you talk about her otherwise.”
    “I’m afraid of her in a way,” I said. “She knows me too well. She knows the worst of me, I mean.”
    “Somebody has to,” said Ellie.
    “What do you mean?”
    “There’s a saying by some great writer or other that no man is a hero to his valet. Perhaps everyone ought to have a valet. It must be so hard otherwise, always living up to people’s good opinion of one.”
    “Well, you certainly have ideas, Ellie,” I said. I took her hand. “Do you know all about me?” I said.
    “I think so,” said Ellie. She said it quite calmly and simply.
    “I never told you much.”
    “You mean you never told me anything at all, you always clammed up. That’s different. But I know quite well what you are like, you yourself.”
    “I wonder if you do,” I said. I went on, “It sounds rather silly saying I love you. It seems too late for that, doesn’t it? I mean, you’ve known about it a long time, practically from the beginning, haven’t you?”
    “Yes,” said Ellie, “and you knew, too, didn’t you, about me?”
    “The thing is,” I said,