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 Peril at End House Pdf Chapter-20: J. It was so sudden that no one knew what had happened for a moment.

Then, with a violent exclamation, Poirot ran to the window. Challenger was with him.

A moment later they reappeared, carrying with them the limp body of a man. As they lowered him carefully into a big leather armchair and his face came into view, I uttered a cry.

‘The face-the face at the window…’

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Peril at End House Pdf Chapter-20 By Agatha Christie Novel

It was the man I had seen looking in on us the previous evening. I recognized him at once. I realized that when I had said he was hardly human I had exaggerated as Poirot had accused me of doing.

Yet there was something about his face that justified my impression. It was a lost face-the face of one removed from ordinary humanity.

White, weak, depraved-it seemed a mere mask-as though the spirit within had fled long ago.

Down the side of it there trickled a stream of blood.

Frederica came slowly forward till she stood by the chair.

Poirot intercepted her.

‘You are hurt, Madame?’

She shook her head.

‘The bullet grazed my shoulder-that is all.’

She put him aside with a gentle hand and bent down.

The man’s eyes opened and he saw her looking down at him.

‘I’ve done for you this time, I hope,’ he said in a low vicious snarl, and then, his voice changing suddenly till it sounded like a child’s, ‘Oh! Freddie, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it. You’ve always been so decent to me…’

‘It’s all right-‘

She knelt down beside him.

‘I didn’t mean-‘

His head dropped. The sentence was never finished.

Frederica looked up at Poirot.

‘Yes, Madame, he is dead,’ he said, gently.

She rose slowly from her knees and stood looking down at him. With one hand she touched his forehead-pitifully, it seemed. Then she sighed and turned to the rest of us.

‘He was my husband,’ she said, quietly.

‘J.,’ I murmured.

Poirot caught my remark and nodded a quick assent.

‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘Always I felt that there was a J. I said so from the beginning, did I not?’

‘He was my husband,’ said Frederica again. Her voice was terribly tired. She sank into a chair that Lazarus brought for her. ‘I might as well tell you everything now.’

‘He was thoroughly degraded and consumed by drug addiction, and unfortunately, he even introduced me to drug use.’. I have been fighting the habit ever since I left him. I think at last-I am nearly cured. But it has been difficult. Oh! so horribly difficult. Nobody knows how difficult!’

‘I could never escape from him. He used to turn up and demand money-with threats. A kind of blackmail. If I did not give him the money he would shoot himself. That was always his threat. Then he threatened to shoot me. He was not responsible. He was mad-crazy…’

‘I suppose it was he who shot Maggie Buckley. He didn’t mean to shoot her, of course. He must have thought it was me.

‘I ought to have said, I suppose. But, after all, I wasn’t sure. And those queer accidents Nick had-that made me feel that perhaps it wasn’t him after all. It might have been someone quite different.

‘And then-one day-I saw a bit of his handwriting on a torn piece of paper on M. Poirot’s table. It was part of a letter he had sent me. I knew then that M. Poirot was on the track.

‘Since then I have felt that it was only a matter of time…’

‘But I don’t understand about the sweets. He wouldn’t have wanted to poison Nick. And anyway, I don’t see how he could have had anything to do with that. I’ve puzzled and puzzled.’

She put both hands to her face, then took them away and said with a queer pathetic finality: ‘That’s all…’

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