Appointment with Death. Agatha Christie

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      ‘And what were your impressions in this case?’

      ‘Well,’ she hesitated, ‘it was rather odd…To begin with, the boy flushed right up to the roots of his hair.’

      ‘Is that so remarkable?’ asked Gerard drily.

      Sarah laughed.

      ‘You mean that he thought I was a shameless hussy making advances to him? Oh, no, I don’t think he thought that. Men can always tell, can’t they?’

      She gave him a frank questioning glance. Dr Gerard nodded his head.

      ‘I got the impression,’ said Sarah, speaking slowly and frowning a little, ‘that he was—how shall I put it?—both excited and appalled. Excited out of all proportion—and quite absurdly apprehensive at the same time. Now that’s odd, isn’t it? Because I’ve always found Americans unusually self-possessed. An American boy of twenty, say, has infinitely more knowledge of the world and far more savoir-faire than an English boy of the same age. And this boy must be over twenty.’

      ‘About twenty-three or four, I should say.’

      ‘As much as that?’

      ‘I should think so.’

      ‘Yes…perhaps you’re right…Only, somehow, he seems very young…’

      ‘Maladjustment mentally. The “child” factor persists.’

      ‘Then I am right? I mean, there is something not quite normal about him?’

      Dr Gerard shrugged his shoulders, smiling a little at her earnestness.

      ‘My dear young lady, are any of us quite normal? But I grant you that there is probably a neurosis of some kind.’

      ‘Connected with that horrible old woman, I’m sure.’

      ‘You seem to dislike her very much,’ said Gerard, looking at her curiously.

      ‘I do. She’s got a—oh, a malevolent eye!’

      Gerard murmured: ‘So have many mothers when their sons are attracted to fascinating young ladies!’

      Sarah shrugged an impatient shoulder. Frenchmen were all alike, she thought, obsessed by sex! Though, of course, as a conscientious psychologist she herself was bound to admit that there was always an underlying basis of sex to most phenomena. Sarah’s thoughts ran along a familiar psychological track.

      She came out of her meditations with a start. Raymond Boynton was crossing the room to the centre table. He selected a magazine. As he passed her chair on his return journey she looked at him and spoke.

      ‘Have you been busy sightseeing today?’

      She selected her words at random, her real interest was to see how they would be received.

      Raymond half stopped, flushed, shied like a nervous horse and his eyes went apprehensively to the centre of his family group. He muttered: ‘Oh—oh, yes—why, yes, certainly. I—’

      Then, as suddenly as though he had received the prick of a spur, he hurried back to his family, holding out the magazine.

      The grotesque Buddha-like figure held out a fat hand for it, but as she took it her eyes, Dr Gerard noticed, were on the boy’s face. She gave a grunt, certainly no audible thanks. The position of her head shifted very slightly. The doctor saw that she was now looking hard at Sarah. Her face was quite impassive, it had no expression in it. Impossible to tell what was passing in the woman’s mind.

      Sarah looked at her watch and uttered an exclamation.

      ‘It’s much later than I thought.’ She got up. ‘Thank you so much, Dr Gerard, for standing me coffee. I must write some letters now.’

      He rose and took her hand.

      ‘We shall meet again, I hope,’ he said.

      ‘Oh, yes! Perhaps you will come to Petra?’

      ‘I shall certainly try to do so.’

      Sarah smiled at him and turned away. Her way out of the room led her past the Boynton family.

      Dr Gerard, watching, saw Mrs Boynton’s gaze shift to her son’s face. He saw the boy’s eyes meet hers. As Sarah passed, Raymond Boynton half turned his head—not towards her, but away from her…It was a slow, unwilling motion and conveyed the idea that old Mrs Boynton had pulled an invisible string.

      Sarah King noticed the avoidance, and was young enough and human enough to be annoyed by it. They had had such a friendly talk together in the swaying corridor of the wagons-lits. They had compared notes on Egypt, had laughed at the ridiculous language of the donkey boys and street touts. Sarah had described how a camel man when he had started hopefully and impudently, ‘You English lady or American?’ had received the answer: ‘No, Chinese.’ And her pleasure in seeing the man’s complete bewilderment as he stared at her. The boy had been, she thought, like a nice eager schoolboy—there had been, perhaps, something almost pathetic about his eagerness. And now, for no reason at all, he was shy, boorish—positively rude.

      ‘I shan’t take any more trouble with him,’ said Sarah indignantly.

      For Sarah, without being unduly conceited, had a fairly good opinion of herself. She knew herself to be definitely attractive to the opposite sex, and she was not one to take a snubbing lying down!

      She had been, perhaps, a shade over-friendly to this boy because, for some obscure reason, she had felt sorry for him.

      But now, it was apparent, he was merely a rude, stuck-up, boorish young American!

      Instead of writing the letters she had mentioned, Sarah King sat down in front of her dressing-table, combed the hair back from her forehead, looked into a pair of troubled hazel eyes in the glass, and took stock of her situation in life.

      She had just passed through a difficult emotional crisis. A month ago she had broken off her engagement to a young doctor some four years her senior. They had been very much attracted to each other, but had been too much alike in temperament. Disagreements and quarrels had been of common occurrence. Sarah was of too imperious a temperament herself to brook a calm assertion of autocracy. Like many high-spirited women, Sarah believed herself to admire strength. She had always told herself that she wanted to be mastered. When she met a man capable of mastering her she found that she did not like it at all! To break off her engagement had cost her a good deal of heart-burning, but she was clear-sighted enough to realize that mere mutual attraction was not a sufficient basis on which to build a lifetime of happiness. She had treated herself deliberately to an interesting holiday abroad in order to help on forgetfulness before she went back to start working in earnest.

      Sarah’s thoughts came back from the past to the present.

      ‘I wonder,’ she thought, ‘if Dr Gerard will let me talk to him about his work. He’s done such marvellous work. If only he’ll take me seriously…Perhaps—if he comes to Petra—’

      Then she thought again of the strange boorish young American.

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