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Five Little Pigs :: Christie Agatha
Страница: 35 из 147They eat it up-yes,eat it up.’
‘Ghouls,’ said Philip Blake.
But he said it good-humouredly-not with the fastidiousness and the distaste that a more sensitive man might have displayed.
Hercule Poirot said with a shrug of the shoulders:
‘It is human nature. You and I, Mr Blake, who know the world, have no illusions about our fellow human beings. Not bad people, most of them, but certainly not to be idealized.’
Blake said heartily:
‘I’ve parted with my illusions long ago.’
‘Instead, you tell a very good story, so I have been told.’
‘Ah!’ Blake’s eyes twinkled. ‘Heard this one?’
Poirot’s laugh came at the right place. It was not an edifying story, but it was funny.
Philip Blake lay back in his chair, his muscles relaxed, his eyes creased with good humour.
Hercule Poirot thought suddenly that he looked rather like a contented pig.
A pig.This little pig went to market…
What was he like, this man, this Philip Blake? A man, it would seem, without cares. Prosperous, contented. No remorseful thoughts, no uneasy twinges of conscience from the past, no haunting memories here. No, a well-fed pig who had gone to market-and fetched the full market price…
But once, perhaps, there had been more to Philip Blake. He must have been, when young, a handsome man. Eyes always a shade too small, a fraction too near together, perhaps-but otherwise a well made, well set up young man. How old was he now? At a guess between fifty and sixty. Nearing forty, then, at the time of Crale’s death. Less stultified, then, less sunk in the gratifications of the minute. Asking more of life, perhaps, and receiving less…
Poirot murmured as a mere catch-phrase:
‘You comprehend my position.’
‘No, really, you know, I’m hanged if I do.’ The stockbroker sat upright again, his glance was once more shrewd. ‘Whyyou? You’re not a writer?’
‘Not precisely-no. Actually I am a detective.’
The modesty of this remark had probably not been equalled before in Poirot’s conversation.
‘Of course you are. We all know that. The famous Hercule Poirot!’
But his tone held a subtly mocking note. Intrinsically, Philip Blake was too much of an Englishman to take the pretensions of a foreigner seriously.
To his cronies he would have said:
‘Quaint little mountebank. Oh well, I expect his stuff goes down with the women all right.
‘Ghouls,’ said Philip Blake.
But he said it good-humouredly-not with the fastidiousness and the distaste that a more sensitive man might have displayed.
Hercule Poirot said with a shrug of the shoulders:
‘It is human nature. You and I, Mr Blake, who know the world, have no illusions about our fellow human beings. Not bad people, most of them, but certainly not to be idealized.’
Blake said heartily:
‘I’ve parted with my illusions long ago.’
‘Instead, you tell a very good story, so I have been told.’
‘Ah!’ Blake’s eyes twinkled. ‘Heard this one?’
Poirot’s laugh came at the right place. It was not an edifying story, but it was funny.
Philip Blake lay back in his chair, his muscles relaxed, his eyes creased with good humour.
Hercule Poirot thought suddenly that he looked rather like a contented pig.
A pig.This little pig went to market…
What was he like, this man, this Philip Blake? A man, it would seem, without cares. Prosperous, contented. No remorseful thoughts, no uneasy twinges of conscience from the past, no haunting memories here. No, a well-fed pig who had gone to market-and fetched the full market price…
But once, perhaps, there had been more to Philip Blake. He must have been, when young, a handsome man. Eyes always a shade too small, a fraction too near together, perhaps-but otherwise a well made, well set up young man. How old was he now? At a guess between fifty and sixty. Nearing forty, then, at the time of Crale’s death. Less stultified, then, less sunk in the gratifications of the minute. Asking more of life, perhaps, and receiving less…
Poirot murmured as a mere catch-phrase:
‘You comprehend my position.’
‘No, really, you know, I’m hanged if I do.’ The stockbroker sat upright again, his glance was once more shrewd. ‘Whyyou? You’re not a writer?’
‘Not precisely-no. Actually I am a detective.’
The modesty of this remark had probably not been equalled before in Poirot’s conversation.
‘Of course you are. We all know that. The famous Hercule Poirot!’
But his tone held a subtly mocking note. Intrinsically, Philip Blake was too much of an Englishman to take the pretensions of a foreigner seriously.
To his cronies he would have said:
‘Quaint little mountebank. Oh well, I expect his stuff goes down with the women all right.