Problem at Sea: A Hercule Poirot Short Story. Агата Кристи

glanced down the deck. Miss Henderson was leaning against the rail talking to a tall, soldierly-looking man.

      Poirot’s smile deepened. He drew himself back into the smoking-room with the same exaggerated care with which a tortoise withdraws itself into its shell. For the moment he had the smoking-room to himself, though he rightly conjectured that that would not last long.

      It did not. Mrs Clapperton, her carefully waved platinum head protected with a net, her massaged and dieted form dressed in a smart sports suit, came through the door from the bar with the purposeful air of a woman who has always been able to pay top price for anything she needed.

      She said: ‘John –? Oh! Good morning, M. Poirot – have you seen John?’

      ‘He’s on the starboard deck, madame. Shall I –?’

      She arrested him with a gesture. ‘I’ll sit here a minute.’ She sat down in a regal fashion in the chair opposite him. From the distance she had looked a possible twenty-eight. Now, in spite of her exquisitely made-up face, her delicately plucked eyebrows, she looked not her actual forty-nine years, but a possible fifty-five. Her eyes were a hard pale blue with tiny pupils.