Read Online Taken at the Flood by Agatha Christie - Free Book Online

just half-way up the hill.
    “Good morning,” said David. “When's the wedding?”
    “You've asked that before,” she retorted. “You know well enough. It's in June.”
    “You're going through with it?”
    “I don't know what you mean, David.”
    “Oh, yes, you do.” He gave a contemptuous laugh. “Rowley. What's Rowley?”
    “A better man than you - touch him if you dare,” she said lightly.
    “I've no doubt he's a better man than me - but I do dare. I'd dare anything for you, Lynn.”
    She was silent for a moment or two. She said at last:
    “What you don't understand is that I love Rowley.”
    “I wonder.”
    She said vehemently:
    “I do, I tell you. I do.”
    David looked at her searchingly.
    “We all see pictures of ourselves - of ourselves as we want to be. You see yourself in love with Rowley, settling down with Rowley, living here contented with Rowley, never wanting to get away. But that's not the real you, is it, Lynn?”
    “Oh, what is the real me? What's the real you, if it comes to that? What do you want?”
    “I'd have said I wanted safety, peace after storm, ease after troubled seas. But I don't know. Sometimes I suspect, Lynn, that both you and I want - trouble.” He added moodily, “I wish you'd never turned up here. I was remarkably happy until you came.”
    “Aren't you happy now?”
    He looked at her. She felt excitement rising in her. Her breath became faster. Never had she felt so strongly David's queer moody attraction. He shot out a hand, grasped her shoulder, swung her round...
    Then as suddenly she felt his grasp slacken. He was staring over her shoulder up the hill. She twisted her head to see what it was that had caught his attention.
    A woman was just going through the small gate above Furrowback. David said sharply: “Who's that?”
    Lynn said:
    “It looks like Frances.”
    “Frances?” He frowned.
    “What does Frances want?”
    “My dear Lynn! Only those who want something drop in to see Rosaleen. Your mother has already dropped in this morning.”
    “Mother?” Lynn drew back. She frowned. “What did she want?”
    “Don't you know? Money!”
    “Money?” Lynn stiffened.
    “She got it all right,” said David. He was smiling now the cool cruel smile that flitted his face so well.
    They had been near a moment or two ago, now they were miles apart, divided by a sharp antagonism.
    Lynn cried out, “Oh, no, no, no!”
    He mimicked her.
    “Yes, yes, yes!”
    “I don't believe it! How much?”
    “Five hundred pounds.”
    She drew her breath in sharply.
    David said musingly:
    “I wonder how much Frances is going to ask for? Really it's hardly safe to leave Rosaleen alone for five minutes! The poor girl doesn't know how to say no.”
    “Have there been - who else?”
    David smiled mockingly.
    “Aunt Kathie had incurred certain debts - oh, nothing much, a mere two hundred and fifty covered them - but she was afraid it might get to the doctor's ears! Since they had been occasioned by payments to mediums, he might not have been sympathetic. She didn't know, of course,” added David, “that the doctor himself had applied for a loan.”
    Lynn said in a low voice, “What you must think of us - what you must think of us!”
    Then, taking him by surprise, she turned and ran helter-skelter down the hill to the farm.
    He frowned as he watched her go. She had gone to Rowley, flown there as a homing pigeon flies, and the fact disturbed him more than he cared to acknowledge.
    He looked up the hill again and frowned.
    “No, Frances,” he said under his breath. “I think not. You've chosen a bad day,” and he strode purposefully up the hill.
    He went through the gate and down through the azaleas - crossed the lawn, and came quietly in through the window of the drawing-room just as Frances Cloade was saying:
    “- I wish I could make it all clearer. But you see, Rosaleen, it really is frightfully difficult to explain -”
    A voice from behind her said:
    “Is