There was a slow asthmatic wheezing cough—then the monumental knitting woman spoke.
‘Ginevra, you’re tired, you’d better go to bed.’
The girl started, her fingers stopped their mechanical action. ‘I’m not tired, Mother.’
Gerard recognized appreciatively the musical quality of her voice. It had the sweet singing quality that lends enchantment to the most commonplace utterances.
‘Yes, you are. I always know. I don’t think you’ll be able to do any sightseeing tomorrow.’
‘Oh! but I shall. I’m quite all right.’
In a thick hoarse voice—almost a grating voice, her mother said: ‘No, you’re not. You’re going to be ill.’
‘I’m not! I’m not!’
The girl began trembling violently.
A soft, calm voice said: ‘I’ll come up with you, Jinny.’
The quiet young woman with wide, thoughtful grey eyes and neatly-coiled dark hair rose to her feet.
Old Mrs Boynton said: ‘No. Let her go up alone.’
The girl cried: ‘I want Nadine to come!’
‘Then of course I will.’ The young woman moved a step forward.
The old woman said: ‘The child prefers to go by herself—don’t you, Jinny?’
There was a pause—a pause of a moment, then Ginevra Boynton said, her voice suddenly flat and dull:
‘Yes; I’d rather go alone. Thank you, Nadine.’
She moved away, a tall angular figure that moved with a surprising grace.
Dr Gerard lowered his paper and took a full satisfying gaze at old Mrs Boynton. She was looking after her daughter and her fat face was creased into a peculiar smile. It was, very faintly, a caricature of the lovely unearthly smile that had transformed the girl’s face so short a time before.
Then the old woman transferred her gaze to Nadine. The latter had just sat down again. She raised her eyes and met her mother-in-law’s glance. Her face was quite imperturbable. The old woman’s glance was malicious.
Dr Gerard thought: ‘What an absurdity of an old tyrant!’
And then, suddenly, the old woman’s eyes were full on him, and he drew in his breath sharply. Small black smouldering eyes they were, but something came from them, a power, a definite force, a wave of evil malignancy. Dr Gerard knew something about the power of personality. He realized that this was no spoilt tyrannical invalid indulging petty whims. This old woman was a definite force. In the malignancy of her glare he felt a resemblance to the effect produced by a cobra. Mrs Boynton might be old, infirm, a prey to disease, but she was not powerless. She was a woman who knew the meaning of power, who had exercised a lifetime of power and who had never once doubted her own force. Dr Gerard had once met a woman who performed a most dangerous and spectacular act with tigers. The great slinking brutes had crawled to their places and performed their degrading and humiliating tricks. Their eyes and subdued snarls told of hatred, bitter fanatical hatred, but they had obeyed, cringed. That had been a young woman, a woman with an arrogant dark beauty, but the look had been the same.
‘Une dompteuse,’ said Dr Gerard to himself.
And he understood now what that undercurrent to the harmless family talk had been. It was hatred—a dark eddying stream of hatred.
He thought: ‘How fanciful and absurd most people would think me! Here is a commonplace devoted American family reveling in Palestine—and I weave a story of black magic round it!’
Then he looked with interest at the quiet young woman who was called Nadine. There was a wedding ring on her left hand, and as he watched her he saw her give one swift betraying glance at the fair-haired, loose-limbed Lennox. He knew, then…
They were man and wife, those two. But it was a mother’s glance rather than a wife’s—a true mother’s glance—protecting, anxious. And he knew something more. He knew that, alone out of that group, Nadine Boynton was unaffected by her mother-in-law’s spell. She may have disliked the old woman, but she was not afraid of her. The power did not touch her.
She was unhappy, deeply concerned about her husband, but she was free.
Dr Gerard said to himself: ‘All this is very interesting.’
[Appointment with Death -Agatha Christie] Part 1. Chapter 4