Free Peril at End House by Agatha Christie Page B

head round the door.
    ‘Come out of it, all of you! The animals are coming in two by two.’
    We rose obediently. Nick was busy greeting arrivals. About a dozen people had been asked. Most of them were rather uninteresting. Nick, I noticed, made a good hostess. She sank her modernisms and made everyone welcome in an old-fashioned way. Among the guests I noticed Charles Vyse.
    Presently we all moved out into the garden to a place overlooking the sea and the harbour. A few chairs had been placed there for the elderly people, but most of us stood. The first rocket flamed to Heaven.
    At that moment I heard a loud familiar voice, and turned my head to see Nick greeting Mr Croft.
    ‘It’s too bad,’ she was saying, ‘that Mrs Croft can’t be here too. We ought to have carried her on a stretcher or something.’
    ‘It’s bad luck on poor mother altogether. But shenever complains—that woman’s got the sweetest nature—Ha! that’s a good one.’ This as a shower of golden rain showed up in the sky.
    The night was a dark one—there was no moon—the new moon being due in three day’s time. It was also, like most summer evenings, cold. Maggie Buckley, who was next to me, shivered.
    ‘I’ll just run in and get a coat,’ she murmured.
    ‘Let me.’
    ‘No, you wouldn’t know where to find it.’
    She turned towards the house. At that moment Frederica Rice’s voice called:
    ‘Oh, Maggie, get mine too. It’s in my room.’
    ‘She didn’t hear,’ said Nick. ‘I’ll get it, Freddie. I want my fur one—this shawl isn’t nearly hot enough. It’s this wind.’
    There was, indeed, a sharp breeze blowing off the sea.
    Some set pieces started down on the quay. I fell into conversation with an elderly lady standing next to me who put me through a rigorous catechism as to life, career, tastes and probable length of stay.
    Bang! A shower of green stars filled the sky. They changed to blue, then red, then silver.
    Another and yet another.
    ‘“Oh!” and then “Ah!” that is what one says,’ observed Poirot suddenly close to my ear. ‘At the end it becomesmonotonous, do you not find? Brrr! The grass, it is damp to the feet! I shall suffer for this—a chill. And no possibility of obtaining a proper tisane !’
    ‘A chill? On a lovely night like this?’
    ‘A lovely night! A lovely night! You say that, because the rain it does not pour down in sheets! Always when the rain does not fall, it is a lovely night. But I tell you, my friend, if there were a little thermometer to consult you would see.’
    ‘Well,’ I admitted, ‘I wouldn’t mind putting on a coat myself.’
    ‘You are very sensible. You have come from a hot climate.’
    ‘I’ll bring yours.’
    Poirot lifted first one, then the other foot from the ground with a cat-like motion.
    ‘It is the dampness of the feet I fear. Would it, think you, be possible to lay hands on a pair of goloshes?’
    I repressed a smile.
    ‘Not a hope,’ I said. ‘You understand, Poirot, that it is no longer done.’
    ‘Then I shall sit in the house,’ he declared. ‘Just for the Guy Fawkes show, shall I want only enrhumer myself? And catch, perhaps, a fluxion de poitrine ?’
    Poirot still murmuring indignantly, we bent our footsteps towards the house. Loud clapping drifted up to us from the quay below where another set piece wasbeing shown—a ship, I believe, with Welcome to Our Visitors displayed across it.
    ‘We are all children at heart,’ said Poirot, thoughtfully. ‘ Les Feux D’Artifices , the party, the games with balls—yes, and even the conjurer, the man who deceives the eye, however carefully it watches— mais qu’est-ce que vous avez ?’
    I had caught him by the arm, and was clutching him with one hand, while with the other I pointed.
    We were within a hundred yards of the house, and just in front of us, between us and the open French window, there lay a huddled figure wrapped in a scarlet Chinese shawl …
    ‘ Mon Dieu! ’ whispered Poirot. ‘