Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie Page B

should be wrong?”
    Mary murmured, “You - you looked -”
    Elinor said with a little laugh, “Was I staring? I'm so sorry. I do sometimes - when I'm thinking of something else.”
    Nurse Hopkins looked in at the door and remarked brightly, “I've put the kettle on,” and went out again.
    Elinor was taken with a sudden fit of laughter. “Polly put the kettle on, Polly put the kettle on, Polly put the kettle on - we'll all have tea! Do you remember playing that, Mary, when we were children?”
    “Yes, indeed I do.”
    Elinor said, “When we were children. It's a pity, Mary, isn't it, that one can never go back?”
    Mary said, “Would you like to go back?”
    Elinor said with force, “Yes - yes.”
    Silence fell between them for a little while.
    Then Mary said, her face flushing, “Miss Elinor, you mustn't think -”
    She stopped, warned by the sudden stiffening of Elinor's slender figure, the uplifted line of her chin.
    Elinor said in a cold, steel-like voice, “What mustn't I think?” Mary murmured, “I - I've forgotten what I was going to say.” Elinor's body relaxed - as at a danger past.
    Nurse Hopkins came in with a tray. On it was a brown teapot, and milk and three cups. She said, quite unconscious of anticlimax, “Here's the tea!”
    She put the tray in front of Elinor. Elinor shook her head. “I won't have any.” She pushed the tray along toward Mary. Mary poured out two cups.
    Nurse Hopkins sighed with satisfaction. “It's nice and strong.”
    Elinor got up and moved over to the window. Nurse Hopkins said persuasively, “Are you sure you won't have a cup, Miss Carlisle? Do you good.”
    Elinor murmured, “No, thank you.”
    Nurse Hopkins drained her cup, replaced it in the saucer, and murmured, “I'll just turn off the kettle. I put it on in case we needed to fill up the pot again.”
    She bustled out.
    Elinor wheeled round from the window. She said, and her voice was suddenly charged with a desperate appeal, “Mary -”
    Mary Gerrard answered quickly, “Yes?”
    Slowly the light died out of Elinor's face. The lips closed. The desperate pleading faded and left a mere mask - frozen and still.
    She said, “Nothing.”
    The silence came down heavily on the room.
    Mary thought, How queer everything is today. As though - as though we were waiting for something.
    Elinor moved at last.
    She came from the window and picked up the tea-tray, placing on it the empty sandwich plate.
    Mary jumped up. “Oh, Miss Elinor, let me.” Elinor said sharply, “No, you stay here. I'll do this.”
    She carried the tray out of the room. She looked back once over her shoulder at Mary Gerrard by the window, young and alive and beautiful....

Sad Cypress
    III
    Nurse Hopkins was in the pantry. She was wiping her face with a handkerchief. She looked up sharply as Elinor entered.
    She said, “My word, it's hot in here!”
    Elinor answered mechanically, “Yes, the pantry faces south.”
    Nurse Hopkins relieved her of the tray.
    “You let me wash up, Miss Carlisle. You're not looking quite the thing.”
    Elinor said, “Oh, I'm all right.”
    She picked up a dish-cloth. “I'll dry.”
    Nurse Hopkins slipped off her cuffs. She poured hot water from the kettle into the basin.
    Elinor said idly, looking at her wrist, “You've pricked yourself.”
    Nurse Hopkins laughed. “On the rose trellis at the lodge - a thorn. I'll get it out presently.”
    The rose trellis at the lodge. Memory poured in waves over Elinor. She and Roddy quarrelling - the Wars of the Roses. She and Roddy quarrelling - and making it up. Lovely, laughing, happy days. A sick wave of revulsion passed over her. What had she come to now? What black abyss of hate -of evil? She swayed a little as she stood. She thought, I've been mad -quite mad.
    Nurse Hopkins was staring at her curiously.
    “Downright odd, she seemed,” so ran Nurse Hopkins's narrative later. “Talking as if she didn't know what she was saying, and her eyes so bright and queer.”
    The