波洛圣诞探案记01

PART ONE

DECEMBER 22ND

Stephen pulled up the collar of his coat as he walked briskly along the platform. Overhead a dimfog clouded the station. Large engines hissed¹ superbly, throwing off clouds of steam into the coldraw air. Everything was dirty and smoke-grimed.

Stephen thought with revulsion:

“What a foul² country—what a foul city!”

His first excited reaction to London, its shops, its restaurants, its well-dressed, attractivewomen, had faded. He saw it now as a glittering rhinestone³ set in a dingy⁴ setting.

Supposing he were back in South Africa now .?.?. He felt a quick pang⁵ of homesickness.

Sunshine—blue skies—gardens of flowers—cool blue flowers—hedges of plumbago—blueconvolvulus clinging to every little shanty⁶.

And here—dirt, grime, and endless, incessant⁷ crowds—moving, hurrying—jostling. Busyants running industriously⁸ about their anthill.

For a moment he thought, “I wish I hadn’t come. .?.?.”

Then he remembered his purpose and his lips set back in a grim line. No, by hell, he’d go onwith it! He’d planned this for years. He’d always meant to do—what he was going to do. Yes,he’d go on with it!

That momentary¹⁰ reluctance¹¹, that sudden questioning of himself: “Why? Is it worth it? Whydwell on the past? Why not wipe out the whole thing?”—all that was only weakness. He was not aboy—to be turned this way and that by the whim¹² of the moment. He was a man of forty, assured,purposeful. He would go on with it. He would do what he had come to England to do.

He got on the train and passed along the corridor looking for a place. He had waved aside aporter and was carrying his own raw-hide suitcase. He looked into carriage after carriage. Thetrain was full. It was only three days before Christmas. Stephen Farr looked distastefully at thecrowded carriages.

People! Incessant, innumerable people! And all so—so—what was the word—so drab-looking! So alike, so horribly alike! Those that hadn’t got faces like sheep had faces like rabbits,he thought. Some of them chattered¹³ and fussed. Some, heavily middle-aged¹⁴ men, grunted¹⁵. Morelike pigs, those. Even the girls, slender, egg-faced, scarlet-lipped, were of a depressing uniformity.

He thought with a sudden longing¹⁶ of open veldt, sunbaked and lonely. .?.?.

And then, suddenly, he caught his breath, looking into a carriage. This girl was different.

Black hair, rich creamy pallor—eyes with the depth and darkness of night in them. The sad proudeyes of the South .?.?. It was all wrong that this girl should be sitting in this train among these dull,drab-looking people—all wrong that she should be going into the dreary¹⁷ midlands of England. Sheshould have been on a balcony, a rose between her lips, a piece of black lace draping her proudhead, and there should have been dust and heat and the smell of blood—the smell of the bullring—in the air .?.?. She should be somewhere splendid, not squeezed into the corner of a third-classcarriage.

He was an observant man. He did not fail to note the shabbiness of her little black coat andskirt, the cheap quality of her fabric¹⁸ gloves, the flimsy shoes and the defiant¹⁹ note of a flame-redhandbag. Nevertheless splendour was the quality he associated with her. She was splendid, fine,exotic. .?.?.

What the hell was she doing in this country of fogs and chills and hurrying industrious⁹ ants?

He thought, “I’ve got to know who she is and what she’s doing here .?.?. I’ve got to know.

.?.?.”

 

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