Necessary?
That is the word I used, mademoiselle.
There are some questions I shall have to ask you.
Again her eyebrows went up but she said nothing further.
She turned her face to the window as though determined to ignore what went on in the room behind her.
And now, said Captain Maitland, perhaps we shall get at the truth!
He spoke rather impatiently.
He was essentially a man of action.
At this very moment I felt sure that he was fretting to be out and doing things directing the search for Father Lavignys body, or alternatively sending out parties for his capture and arrest.
He looked at Poirot with something akin to dislike.
If the beggars got anything to say, why doesnt he say it? I could see the words on the tip of his tongue.
Poirot gave a slow appraising glance at us all, then rose to his feet.
I dont know what I expected him to say something dramatic certainly.
He was that kind of person.
But I certainly didnt expect him to start off with a phrase in Arabic.
Yet that is what happened. He said the words slowly and solemnly and really quite religiously, if you know what I mean.
Bismillahi ar rahman ar rahim.
And then he gave the translation in English.
In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
Chapter 27.
Beginning of a Journey
Bismillahi ar rahman ar rahim.
That is the Arab phrase used before starting out on a journey.Eh bien, we too start on a journey.
A journey into the past.
A journey into the strange places of the human soul.
I dont think that up till that moment Id ever felt any of the so-called glamour of the East.
Frankly, what had struck me was themess everywhere.
But suddenly, with M. Poirots words, a queer sort of vision seemed to grow up before my eyes.
I thought of words like Samarkand and Ispahan and of merchants with long beards and kneeling camels and staggering porters carrying great bales on their backs held by a rope round the forehead and women with henna-stained hair and tattooed faces kneeling by the Tigris and washing clothes, and I heard their queer wailing chants and the far-off groaning of the water-wheel.
They were mostly things Id seen and heard and thought nothing much of.
But now, somehow they seemed different like a piece of fusty old stuff you take into the light and suddenly see the rich colours of an old embroidery
Then I looked round the room we were sitting in and I got a queer feeling that what M. Poirot said was true we were all starting on a journey.
We were here together now, but we were all going our different ways.
And I looked at everyone as though, in a sort of way, I were seeing them for the first time and for the last time which sounds stupid, but it was what I felt all the same.
Mr Mercado was twisting his fingers nervously his queer light eyes with their dilated pupils were staring at Poirot.
Mrs Mercado was looking at her husband. She had a strange watchful look like a tigress waiting to spring.
Dr Leidner seemed to have shrunk in some curious fashion.
This last blow had just crumpled him up.
You might almost say he wasnt in the room at all. He was somewhere far away in a place of his own.
Mr Coleman was looking straight at Poirot.
His mouth was slightly open and his eyes protruded.
He looked almost idiotic.
Mr Emmott was looking down at his feet and I couldnt see his face properly.
Mr Reiter looked bewildered.
His mouth was pushed out in a pout and that made him look more like a nice clean pig than ever.
Miss Reilly was looking steadily out of the window.
I dont know what she was thinking or feeling.
Then I looked at Mr Carey, and somehow his face hurt me and I looked away.
There we were, all of us.
And somehow I felt that when M. Poirot had finished wed all be somewhere quite different