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“That’s different. There weren’t any Ram Lals about today. Carter was the only man on the spot. He fired that pistol all right! It was still in his hand when I jumped on him. He was going to try a second shot, I expect.”
Poirot said:
“You were very anxious to preserve the safety of M. Blunt?”
Raikes grinned—an engaging grin.
“A bit odd, you think, after all I’ve said? Oh, I admit it. I think Blunt is a guy who ought to be shot—for the sake of Progress and Humanity—I don’t mean personally—he’s a nice enough old boy in his British way. I think that, and yet when I saw someone taking a potshot at him I leap in and interfere. That shows you how illogical the human animal is. It’s crazy, isn’t it?”
“The gap between theory and practice is a wide one.”
“I’ll say it is!” Mr. Raikes got up from the bed where he had been sitting.
His smile was easy and confiding.
“I just thought,” he said, “that I’d come along and explain the thing to you.”
He went out shutting the door carefully behind him.
V
“Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man: and preserve me from the wicked man,” sang Mrs. Olivera in a firm voice, slightly off the note.
There was a relentlessness about her enunciation of the sentiment which made Hercule Poirot deduce that Mr. Howard Raikes was the wicked man immediately in her mind.
Hercule Poirot had accompanied his host and the family to the morning service in the village church.
Howard Raikes had said with a faint sneer: “So you always go to church, Mr. Blunt?”
And Alistair had murmured vaguely something about it being expected of you in the country—can’t let the parson down, you know—which typically English sentiment had merely bewildered the young man, and had made Hercule Poirot smile comprehendingly.
Mrs. Olivera had tactfully accompanied her host and commanded Jane to do likewise.
“They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent,” sang the choir boys in shrill treble, “adder’s poison is under their lips.”
The tenors and basses demanded with gusto:
“Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the ungodly. Preserve me from the wicked men who are purposed to overthrow my goings.”
Hercule Poirot essayed in a hesitant baritone.
“The proud have laid a snare for me,” he sang, “and spread a net with cords: yea, and set traps in my way….”
His mouth remained open.
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bsp; He saw it—saw clearly the trap into which he had so nearly fallen!
Like a man in a trance Hercule Poirot remained, mouth open, staring into space. He remained there as the congregation seated themselves with a rustle; until Jane Olivera tugged at his arm and murmured a sharp, “Sit down.”
Hercule Poirot sat down. An aged clergyman with a beard intoned: “Here beginneth the fifteenth chapter of the First Book of Samuel,” and began to read.
But Poirot heard nothing of the smiting of the Amalekites.
A snare cunningly laid—a net with cords—a pit open at his feet—dug carefully so that he should fall into it.
He was in a daze—a glorious daze where isolated facts spun wildly round before settling neatly into their appointed places.
