‘There is a danger in thinking like that, Madame.’
She adopted a lighter tone:
‘After this conversation, Monsieur Poirot, I shall wonder that there is anyone left alive!’ She got up. ‘We must be getting back. We have to start immediately after lunch.’
When they reached the landing stage they found the young man in the polo jumper just taking his place in the boat. The Italian was already waiting. As the boatman cast the sail loose and they started, Poirot addressed a polite remark to the stranger:
‘There are very wonderful things to be seen in Egypt, are there not?’
The young man was now smoking a somewhat noisome pipe. He removed it from his mouth and remarked briefly and emphatically in astonishingly well-bred accents:
‘They make me sick.’
Mrs Allerton put on her pince-nez and surveyed him with pleasurable interest. Poirot said:
‘Indeed? And why is that?’
‘Take the Pyramids. Great blocks of useless masonry put up to minister to the egoism of a despotic bloated king. Think of the sweated masses who toiled to build them and died doing it. It makes me sick to think of the suffering and torture they represent.’
Mrs Allerton said cheerfully:
‘You’d rather have no Pyramids, no Parthenon, no beautiful tombs or temples – just the solid satisfaction of knowing that people got three meals a day and died in their beds.’
The young man directed his scowl in her direction.
‘I think human beings matter more than stones.’
‘But they do not endure as well,’ remarked Hercule Poirot.
‘I’d rather see a well fed worker than any so-called work of art. What matters is the future – not the past.’
This was too much for Signor Richetti, who burst into a torrent of impassioned speech not too easy to follow.
The young man retorted by telling everybody exactly what he thought of the capitalist system. He spoke with the utmost venom.
When the tirade was over they had arrived at the hotel landing-stage.
Mrs Allerton murmured cheerfully: ‘Well, well,’ and stepped ashore.
The young man directed a baleful glance after her.
In the hall of the hotel Poirot encountered Jacqueline de Bellefort. She was dressed in riding clothes. She gave him an ironical little bow.
‘I’m going donkey-riding. Do you recommend the local villages, Monsieur Poirot?’
‘Is that your excursion today, Mademoiselle?