The Hollow by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online Page A

He had felt instinctively that the manufacture of nitro-glycerine was not the kind of occupation that would be encouraged by parents. With base opportunism he had selected a moment when he felt tolerable certain that he had a good chance of getting away with his statement. And his judgment had been justified. If, by any chance, there should be a fuss - if, that is, the properties of nitro-glycerine should manifest themselves too evidently, he would be able to say in an injured voice, I told Mother..."
    All the same, he felt vaguely disappointed.
    Even Mother, he thought, ought to know about nitro-glycerine.
    He sighed. There swept over him that intense sense of loneliness that only childhood can feel. His father was too impatient to listen, his mother was too inattentive. Zena was only a silly kid...
    Pages of interesting chemical tests. And who cared about them? Nobody!
    Bang! Gerda started. It was the door of John's consulting room. It was John running upstairs.
    John Christow burst into the room, bringing with him his own particular atmosphere of intense energy. He was good-humoured, hungry, impatient...
    “God,” he exclaimed as he sat down and energetically sharpened the carving knife against the steel. “how I hate sick people!”
    “Oh, John.” Gerda was quickly reproachful. “Don't say things like that. They'll think you mean it.”
    She gestured slightly with her head towards the children.
    “I do mean it,” said John Christow. “Nobody ought to be ill.”
    “Father's joking,” said Gerda quickly to Terence.
    Terence examined his father with the dispassionate attention he gave to everything.
    “I don't think he is,” he said.
    “If you hated sick people, you wouldn't be a doctor, dear,” said Gerda, laughing gently.
    “That's exactly the reason,” said John Christow. “No doctors like sickness. Good God, this meat's stone cold. Why on earth didn't you have it sent down to keep hot?”
    “Well, dear, I didn't know. You see, I thought you were just coming -”
    John Christow pressed the bell, a long, irritated push. Lewis came promptly.
    “Take this down, and tell cook to warm it up.”
    He spoke curtly.
    “Yes, sir.” Lewis, slightly impertinent, managed to convey in the two innocuous words exactly her opinion of a mistress who sat at the dining table watching a joint of meat grow cold.
    Gerda went on rather incoherently:
    “I'm so sorry, dear, it's all my fault, but first, you see, I thought you were coming, and then I thought, well, if I did send it back...”
    John interrupted her impatiently.
    “Oh, what does it matter? It isn't important. Not worth making a song and dance about.”
    Then he asked:
    “Is the car here?”
    “I think so. Collie ordered it.”
    “Then we can get away as soon as lunch is over.”
    Across Albert Bridge, he thought, and then over Clapham Common - the short cut by the Crystal Palace - Croydon - Purley Way, then avoid the main road - take that right-hand fork up Metherly Hill - along Haverston Ridge - get suddenly right out of the suburban belt, through Connerton, and then up Shovel Down - trees golden red - woodland below one everywhere - the soft Autumn smell, and down over the crest of the hill...
    Lucy and Henry... Henrietta...
    He hadn't seen Henrietta for four days. When he had last seen her, he'd been angry. She'd had that look in her eyes... Not abstracted, not inattentive - he couldn't quite describe it - that look of seeing something - something that wasn't there - something (and that was the crux of it) something that wasn't John Christow!
    He said to himself, “I know she's a sculptor. I know her work's good. But, damn it all, can't she put it aside sometimes? Can't she sometimes think of me - and nothing else?”
    He was unfair. He knew he was unfair. Henrietta seldom talked of her work - was indeed less obsessed by it than most artists he knew. It was only on very rare occasions that her absorption with some inner vision spoiled the completeness of