Смерть на Ниле / Death on the Nile. Агата КристиЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Poirot shrugged his shoulders.

      ‘It may be, Madame.’

      He changed the subject, talking of Majorca and asking various practical questions from the point of view of a possible visit.

      Mrs Allerton had grown to like the little man very much – partly perhaps out of a contradictory spirit. Tim, she felt, was always trying to make her less friendly to Hercule Poirot, whom he had summarized firmly as ‘the worst kind of bounder’. But she herself did not call him a bounder; she supposed it was his somewhat foreign exotic clothing which roused her son’s prejudices. She herself found him an intelligent and stimulating companion. He was also extremely sympathetic. She found herself suddenly confiding in him her dislike of Joanna Southwood. It eased her to talk of the matter. And after all, why not? He did not know Joanna – would probably never meet her. Why should she not ease herself of that constantly borne burden of jealous thought?

      At the same moment Tim and Rosalie Otterbourne were talking of her. Tim had just been half-jestingly abusing his luck. His rotten health, never bad enough to be really interesting, yet not good enough for him to have led the life he would have chosen. Very little money, no congenial occupation.

      ‘A thoroughly lukewarm, tame existence,’ he finished discontentedly.

      Rosalie said abruptly: ‘You’ve got something heaps of people would envy you.’

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘Your mother.’

      Tim was surprised and pleased.

      ‘Mother? Yes, of course she is quite unique. It’s nice of you to see it.’

      ‘I think she’s marvellous. She looks so lovely – so composed and calm – as though nothing could ever touch her, and yet – and yet somehow she’s always ready to be funny about things too…’

      Rosalie was stammering slightly in her earnestness.

      Tim felt a rising warmth towards the girl. He wished he could return the compliment, but lamentably Mrs Otterbourne was his idea of the world’s greatest menace. The inability to respond in kind made him embarrassed.

      Miss Van Schuyler had stayed in the launch. She could not risk the ascent either on a camel or on her legs. She had said snappily:

      ‘I’m sorry to have to ask you to stay with me, Miss Bowers. I intended you to go and Cornelia to stay, but girls are so selfish. She rushed off without a word to me. And I actually saw her talking to that very unpleasant and ill-bred young man, Ferguson. Cornelia has disappointed me sadly. She has absolutely no social sense.’