Read Online Endless Night by Agatha Christie - Free Book Online

being vetted before they’re allowed even to speak to me. Whenever I’ve made a friend they’ve had to be quite sure it wasn’t an unsuitable one. You don’t know what a terrible, terrible prisoner’s life it is! But now that’s all over, and if you don’t mind—”
    â€œOf course I don’t mind,” I said, “we shall have lots of fun. In fact,” I said, “you couldn’t be too rich a girl for me!”
    We both laughed. She said: “What I like about you is that you can be natural about things.”
    â€œBesides,” I said, “I expect you pay a lot of tax on it, don’t you? That’s one of the few nice things about being like me. Any money I make goes into my pocket and nobody can take it away from me.”
    â€œWe’ll have our house,” said Ellie, “our house on Gipsy’s Acre.” Just for a moment she gave a sudden little shiver.
    â€œYou’re not cold, darling,” I said. I looked up at the sunshine.
    â€œNo,” she said.
    It was really very hot. We’d been basking. It might almost have been the South of France.
    â€œNo,” said Ellie, “it was just that—that woman, that gipsy that day.”
    â€œOh, don’t think of her,” I said, “she was crazy anyway.”
    â€œDo you think she really thinks there’s a curse on the land?”
    â€œI think gipsies are like that. You know—always wanting to make a song and dance about some curse or something.”
    â€œDo you know much about gipsies?”
    â€œAbsolutely nothing,” I said truthfully. “If you don’t want Gipsy’s Acre, Ellie, we’ll buy a house somewhere else. On the top of a mountain in Wales, on the coast of Spain or an Italian hillside, and Santonix can build us a house there just as well.”
    â€œNo,” said Ellie, “that’s how I want it to be. It’s where I first saw you walking up the road, coming round the corner very suddenly, and then you saw me and stopped and stared at me. I’ll never forget that.”
    â€œNor will I,” I said.
    â€œSo that’s where it’s going to be. And your friend Santonix will build it.”
    â€œI hope he’s still alive,” I said with an uneasy pang. “He was a sick man.”
    â€œOh yes,” said Ellie, “he’s alive. I went to see him.”
    â€œYou went to see him?”
    â€œYes. When I was in the South of France. He was in a sanitorium there.”
    â€œEvery minute, Ellie, you seem to be more and more amazing. The things you do and manage.”
    â€œHe’s rather a wonderful person I think,” said Ellie, “but rather frightening.”
    â€œDid he frighten you?”
    â€œYes, he frightened me very much for some reason.”
    â€œDid you talk to him about us?”
    â€œYes. Oh yes, I told him all about us and about Gipsy’s Acre and about the house. He told me then that we’d have to take a chance with him. He’s a very ill man. He said he thought he still had the life left in him to go and see the site, to draw the plans, to visualize it and get it all sketched out. He said he wouldn’t mind really if he died before the house was finished, but I told him,” added Ellie, “that he mustn’t die before the house was finished because I wanted him to see us live in it.”
    â€œWhat did he say to that?”
    â€œHe asked me if I knew what I was doing marrying you, and I said of course I did.”
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œHe said he wondered if you knew what you were doing.”
    â€œI know all right,” I said.
    â€œHe said ‘You will always know where you’re going, Miss Guteman.’ He said ‘You’ll be going always where you want to go and because it’s your chosen way.’
    â€œâ€˜But Mike,’ he said, ‘might take the wrong road. He hasn’t grown up enough yet