Book Three: Judith
While I waved good-bye to Charlie, as Pedro drove him to the station, I felt an overwhelming sadness. The two people that had meant more to me than anything else were gone. Charlie had decided to leave early for Oxford because of Mother's death, and I was left alone. Well, not completely, but the fact that I was left with the three greatest nincompoops ever to walk the face of the earth, namely Father, Nina, and Frances (for a time) was hardly satisfying. I'm not naturally cruel enough to call them names like that, but I had an odd empty feeling inside me, and I had to fill it with something, even contempt. The first night that Mother was gone, I slept soundly. Charlie was silent during dinner, and during the fruit course told us that he was leaving early. I had remained as stony faced as I could during dinner, which by the way was nothing like it had been all the other days of my life, but I gave way to a bitter deluge of tears when I went to the barn for my night chores. When I reentered the house, Frances looked up from the dishes, which she was trying to wash. "Is it raining?" At first I didn't quite understand her reference, but then I noticed a tear still on my cheek. I wiped it away. "A bit." I saw her straighten, as if to go out and cover the crops. "That's my job now Frances, and I know when it is needed." I honestly didn't know why Mother's death caused me to bite peoples' heads off, but it did. "I'm sorry Frances. Where's Father?" "He's up in his room. I don't know what he's doing. I'd tell you to go to him if Nina weren't up there." "I see." I mounted the stairs anyway, and walked across the creaky floorboards outside their, no, Father's room (he did loosen them on purpose, no matter what Frances says.) He was sitting on his bed. Nina was asleep on the floor, surrounded by her toys. The sound of frogs croaking came in the open window. It was warm and there was a gentle breeze, making the grass rustle. Nina murmured a bit, and a solitary tear rolled onto her cheek. It stayed there a bit, and then it continued its way down her face and dripped off her chin onto the floor. The tear seemed to linger suspended in mid air, before it disappeared between the floorboards. My father sighed. I tore my gaze away from Nina and directed it towards Father. His face was as impassable as it usually was easy to analyze, or "alynize." His eyes were fixed on the window and his mouth was a thin line. All of a sudden he shuddered, as if he was trying to keep sobs inside and was tearing himself apart in the process. I was getting cramped, so I moved my foot and the floorboards went off. I was only surprised that they hadn't alerted Father earlier. He turned around abruptly, knocking a shoe off the bed. As he leaned over to pick it up he whispered, "Judith, I didn't see you." "You see me now." "Yes." He retrieved the shoe, got up, and put it in his sock drawer. He wasn't paying attention to what he was doing. At dinner he had put salt on his fruit. "And I could see you the whole time." He smiled at me and nodded his head. I sighed an inner sigh. I had been speaking cryptically, true enough, but I thought that he would know that I meant I had seen him and was ready to comfort him. I hadn't been speaking in a singsong way, but Father had seen in as the completion of an analogy. Nina rolled over and started sucking her thumb. Father sighed again. "Stop that. You aren't making things any better by expelling oxygen though your mouth." I stooped down and picked up Nina. I carried her into our room and set her down on her cot. She now shared a bed with me, but with the abrupt return of Frances, we had gone back to our regular habits. I returned to Father's room after I made sure that Nina was sound asleep after her voyage down the hall. When I reentered the room, I found Father looking through a large notebook that was full of his handwriting. "What's that?" "It's something I wrote when I was helping Poirot out on some little problems. You should read it some time. I sort of took the Watson approach and wrote it all down in first person." "Elementary," I murmured. "What?" "Nothing," I said, and went to bed.
As I said earlier, I slept well. The next day Charlie departed and I went for a walk. My walk took me in the general direction of the jungle, but then I turned around and started towards the barn. Frances was there playing with Nina and the cows. I was glad that Frances was there, but I truly couldn't wait until she left the next day and I would get Nina back. I turned away from the barn and decided to finish my aimless walk. It wasn't really taking me anywhere. On the way back to the house, I ran full throttle into Pedro. I wasn't in the mood to remain upright, so I sank to my knees. After many exclamations, Pedro helped me up and brushed me off. "Pardon me little one." "Pedro, I'm sixteen. I'm hardly little." "But perhaps you feel little?" This was hitting it a bit too close to the mark. All I wanted at that moment was to be hugged by someone whose shoulder I could cry on, but no one seemed to know, and I was too proud to tell them. Pedro was a prophet once more when he said, "Perhaps you would like to cry. Perhaps you aren't sure of your future. Perhaps you need to be told by one you hold dear that all will be right again." "Perhaps." "Then go up to your father. You are not the only one to feel so." Pedro didn't know that this was impossible. He didn't know that of the people that I could talk to, one was dead and one was on the other side of the world.
That night, I thought of what Pedro had said. Seeing as I couldn't fall asleep, I navigated the floorboards and crept into Father's room and took his stories from where they were kept. I then went downstairs so I wouldn't awake Nina and Frances, and entered the kitchen. I put on the lights and opened the book, which was thick and contained papers of various sizes. The first few hundred sheets were miscellaneous types of paper, but the last were Father's own stationary sheets, which could be found on his desk upstairs. I opened the book to the first set of papers and started reading. After a few hours, I had left my sadness behind; so funny was Father's account of various mysteries solved by Mr.Poirot. At about three in the morning I found the account of how Mother met Father, and I nearly cried, not with sadness, but with happiness. It's hard to explain how I felt while I read that story, but at the end, I knew a little more about my family than I ever had before. I then plunged into the next of many more amusing and mysterious tales, and by the time dawn came along and Father came downstairs, I had finished the book and was fast asleep with my head on the table. I slept well into the day. When I awoke it was almost evening and Francis was just setting off. I said good-bye to her and told her to say hello to Mr. Poirot for me. When she left, I realized that I was the next one to take that voyage across the water. The thought filled me with pride. I would be the first female in my family to be a successful scientist. I would see the world and learn what fun was, something I had asked Frances when I was young, to which she was unable to provide the answer.
No matter what I had thought a year before, I was not ready to leave when the time came. I said good-bye to everything with a fondness that I didn't think I harbored. After I took my favorite little pig off my head, I turned to Father. "Well then," he said. "Well then." "Look, Judith, I've never really understood you, and well, look here girl...I'm really quite fond of you." I was trying not to cry, and Father's little outburst of tenderness didn't help matters. I choked out some response and hugged Nina before I whirled around and got into the car, to bury my face in my hands and sob. As Pedro pulled out of the gate, I waved to Nina and called back, "Take care of each other!" and then we went around the side of the barn and they were gone. Pedro's voice brought me back to the present. "Are you going to see much of that brother or that sister of yours?" "I'll be in the same place as Frances, but in a completely different department. She's in English. I probably will only see Charlie on holidays." "Too bad." "Yes, too bad." When we pulled up to the platform, Pedro opened my door and helped me out. "I'll miss you senorita." "I'll miss you too Pedro. Take care of the ranch." I turned to go. "And, Pedro?" "Yes?" "Send my love to Father." And I boarded the train.
Docking at Dover wasn't at all like it was the first time I had arrived on the now familiar soil. I had no idea where I was going. Frances had taken the liberty of being smarter than me and I was not pleased. When I realized this I was sitting in a cab and the cabby was waiting for me to give directions. He said, noticing my hesitation, "Do you plan on goin' anywhere little missy?" I missed Pedro's 'senorita', "I.... I... Portland Place please." I didn't remember Poirot's number, but when I asked the doorman, he told me readily enough. As I rode the elevator up I prayed that he was at home. When I knocked at number one, I was greeted by dead silence. My last hope was shot. I sat down outside his door and took stock of my predicament. I could always call Frances from a public phone, which I didn't know how to operate I reminded myself, but my idiotic pride kept me from it. I could also go downstairs and ask for directions from the doorman, but I had counted on the banks being open to obtain English currency at the college, and had only brought one cab fare. The only thing to do was sit here and wait for Poirot to appear. Luckily, like Frances, I had decided to arrive early incase there was trouble with the boat or the like, so I wasn't expected at the Science House until Monday. The Science House was the dorm where all the scientists resided. Since there weren't very many females in this department the dorm could be regular sized, however some feminist had decided that the little dorm aspired to greater things, so it was called Science House. I was deep in these thoughts when I looked up to find Poirot looking down at me with a paper bag in his hands. I rapidly stood up. "Hullo Mr. Poirot." "Ah, it is the young Judith is it not? But how you have grown! Come in, arrange yourself. I shall only be a minute." He disappeared into another room while I arranged myself. When he emerged again I thought that he was going to embrace me in that fashion that had so frightened Charlie, but he didn't, instead he sat down. "What are you doing here?" "I've started school. I'm at the same place as Frances you see. And...ah... Mr. Poirot, I was wondering if you could tell me where it was, because... I've forgotten." I felt like blushing, but I left that sort of thing to the likes of Frances and Nina. "Ah, mon cherie but of course I will conduct you there." In about twenty minutes, I was safely settled in my room. My roommate hadn't arrived yet. It wasn't anything like Frances's building. It was built in the modern style and had a large statue of what could have been an amoeba, but was most likely a duck, in the courtyard. It was like nothing I had ever seen before, which was not unlikely.
When I woke up in the morning, I went for a walk on the grounds. I stopped by Frances's dorm, but no one was there, so I left a message. When I returned to my room, it was to find another girl there, unpacking her bag. She looked up when I came in. She had reddish-auburn hair that was cut to her chin in the last fashion. She had brown eyes and a fairly expressionless face, somewhat like mine, but had the air about her of great intelligence and mischief. "Are you my roommate?" she asked. Her accent was like my father's and her voice was soft. "Yes. I'm Judith Hastings. And you are...." "Sandra Kyte. You're going to study science too?" "That's why I'm here." She went back to unpacking her bag. She put her cloths away and then proceeded to adorn her bedside table with various pictures of a group of people, presumably her family. I looked at my table. It had a particularly ridiculous picture of the whole family sitting on it. Pedro had taken the picture before everyone left- in one way or another- and he must have done it on purpose, for somehow he had captured each of us in a silly position. Nina, in Mother's arms, was about to fall to the ground, and Mother had her eyes open wide and her mouth in a shape somewhat like the statue outside. Father was scratching his head and looking at something in the sky, an action that gave him a rather hopeless air. Frances had obviously been rubbing her face, for she had a hand on either cheek, pulling her lips down into an odd grimace. Charlie was sneezing; that was all there was to it, and I myself was staring at the camera "like a deer in headlights" as my mother used to put it. "Is that your family?" Sandra's question caught me off guard. "Yes, it is," I must have been really flustered, for I went on to say, "My mother is dead, my sister is in the English department, my other sister is a spoiled brat, my brother is scarred for life, my father is a fool, and our servant is a potential murderer." Sandra greeted my tirade with silence. After a while she lowered her eyes to the floor. "I'm sorry I asked." "Quite alright. How's yours?" "My what?" "Your family." "Oh. Well you see... I haven't got one." Before I could apologize properly she explained. "I never knew my parents. My older brother was both for me, but two years ago he was out flying and he ran out of gasoline." She followed my gaze to the pictures, particularly to one of a young man with sandy brown hair. "That's my brother. The rest are the various families I stayed with the past few years." I mumbled that I was sorry. She said quite cheerfully, "Rubbish! It has been two years after all." I thought of my own loss of two years ago, and said nothing.
Classes went very well, but Christmas was still a relief. I was particularly excited because Frances and her roommate were having a Christmas Eve party and they had invited Sandra, me, and most importantly, Charlie. I was quite stunned when I woke up three days before Christmas and looked out the window to find everything white. I jumped out of bed. Sandra, across the room, rolled over and groaned, "What is it?" "It's snow! I've waited so long for this!" "Well then carry your joy outside please," and she rolled over and went back to sleep. I ran outside in my slippers and robe and shuffled around in the snow. I made a snowman like the people do in books, and I bombarded it with snowballs. I ran back inside, ready for hot chocolate. I think about half way up the stairs I began to wish I had asked Mother to teach me how to make it. As I was getting dressed, I realized that Mother had learned it from Father who had learned it from Mr. Poirot. I wondered whether Frances had invited him to her party. A few days later, I found out. Sandra and I walked briskly through the snow to Frances's dorm. When we knocked at her door we could hear music coming from the other side. After a few seconds we knocked again and heard Frances's roommate from far away calling, "Was that the door?" "I should say so," murmured Sandra. We heard Frances's voice ask Charlie to get it. I was glad he had already arrived. Apparently Sandra hadn't heard what Frances had said, for when my tall brother answered the door, she jumped backwards. I myself rushed to hug him. His dark hair settled in waves on the top of his head and the long scar that ran down his face gave him a rather distinguished air. "Charlie! I haven't seen you in ages!" "I say!" exclaimed Charlie, stepping back, "You've grown up. I suppose you don't play cowboys with Nina and Pedro anymore." "No." Charlie turned towards Sandra, "And you are...." "Sandra Kyte. I've heard a lot about you. May I call you Charlie?" "Please do. Nothing bad I hope?" "Nothing of the sort." At this point Frances wondered where Charlie had gone so she came to the door. "Come in! You're our first guests." She hugged me and gave Sandra a nod. Her roommate, Annie, a girl slightly on the round side, took our coats and we all went into the living room. I talked to Annie for a bit, for she had been to Brazil, and asked her if she had known a fellow named Pedro Graduedez, her face darkened in concentration, but it turned out that she didn't. Gradually, the rest of the guests arrived. Most of them were in English, but Mr. Poirot was there and I asked him how to make hot chocolate. We kept talking for a while and soon the party started to break up. Sandra and I were about to leave when Charlie came over and waylaid us.
"I have to go back to school Judith, so I guess the next time I see you will be a year from now." "I guess so." I was silent. I had waited all year to see Charlie and now it turned out that he wasn't even staying 'till New Year. He had turned towards Sandra. "Pleased to meet you Sandra." "You too Charlie." On our way back home, Sandra was unusually silent. When we finally arrived at our dorm I went to sleep at once, but Sandra stayed up a bit and when she did go to bed, she was crying.
At the end of that year, Frances graduated. Father and Nina were going to come and visit, but the seas were stormy and they had to put off their voyage. Sandra was going to stay with a friend of hers, so I was left virtually alone to wait for the next term. I went a few places with Frances, who had found a flat, and Annie, but the really fun thing to do was go over to Hercule Poirot's apartment and talk to him. He was so intelligent that talking to him was like a breath of fresh air. I missed Sandra. I wrote Charlie a few times, but he only answered me once. Apparently he was going to do some observing in a hospital that would take up all of his time. In the end, I broke down and wrote home. Nina responded. She said that everything was fine and asked why I hadn't written earlier. Mr. Poirot took a trip down the Nile in August, so when Sandra returned she found me very lonely. "Where was Frances this whole time?" "I saw her." "Mr. Poirot?" "We talked." "Didn't your family write you at all?" "Yes." "Then why are you so lonely?" I didn't have the answer to that one.
While I waved good-bye to Charlie, as Pedro drove him to the station, I felt an overwhelming sadness. The two people that had meant more to me than anything else were gone. Charlie had decided to leave early for Oxford because of Mother's death, and I was left alone. Well, not completely, but the fact that I was left with the three greatest nincompoops ever to walk the face of the earth, namely Father, Nina, and Frances (for a time) was hardly satisfying. I'm not naturally cruel enough to call them names like that, but I had an odd empty feeling inside me, and I had to fill it with something, even contempt. The first night that Mother was gone, I slept soundly. Charlie was silent during dinner, and during the fruit course told us that he was leaving early. I had remained as stony faced as I could during dinner, which by the way was nothing like it had been all the other days of my life, but I gave way to a bitter deluge of tears when I went to the barn for my night chores. When I reentered the house, Frances looked up from the dishes, which she was trying to wash. "Is it raining?" At first I didn't quite understand her reference, but then I noticed a tear still on my cheek. I wiped it away. "A bit." I saw her straighten, as if to go out and cover the crops. "That's my job now Frances, and I know when it is needed." I honestly didn't know why Mother's death caused me to bite peoples' heads off, but it did. "I'm sorry Frances. Where's Father?" "He's up in his room. I don't know what he's doing. I'd tell you to go to him if Nina weren't up there." "I see." I mounted the stairs anyway, and walked across the creaky floorboards outside their, no, Father's room (he did loosen them on purpose, no matter what Frances says.) He was sitting on his bed. Nina was asleep on the floor, surrounded by her toys. The sound of frogs croaking came in the open window. It was warm and there was a gentle breeze, making the grass rustle. Nina murmured a bit, and a solitary tear rolled onto her cheek. It stayed there a bit, and then it continued its way down her face and dripped off her chin onto the floor. The tear seemed to linger suspended in mid air, before it disappeared between the floorboards. My father sighed. I tore my gaze away from Nina and directed it towards Father. His face was as impassable as it usually was easy to analyze, or "alynize." His eyes were fixed on the window and his mouth was a thin line. All of a sudden he shuddered, as if he was trying to keep sobs inside and was tearing himself apart in the process. I was getting cramped, so I moved my foot and the floorboards went off. I was only surprised that they hadn't alerted Father earlier. He turned around abruptly, knocking a shoe off the bed. As he leaned over to pick it up he whispered, "Judith, I didn't see you." "You see me now." "Yes." He retrieved the shoe, got up, and put it in his sock drawer. He wasn't paying attention to what he was doing. At dinner he had put salt on his fruit. "And I could see you the whole time." He smiled at me and nodded his head. I sighed an inner sigh. I had been speaking cryptically, true enough, but I thought that he would know that I meant I had seen him and was ready to comfort him. I hadn't been speaking in a singsong way, but Father had seen in as the completion of an analogy. Nina rolled over and started sucking her thumb. Father sighed again. "Stop that. You aren't making things any better by expelling oxygen though your mouth." I stooped down and picked up Nina. I carried her into our room and set her down on her cot. She now shared a bed with me, but with the abrupt return of Frances, we had gone back to our regular habits. I returned to Father's room after I made sure that Nina was sound asleep after her voyage down the hall. When I reentered the room, I found Father looking through a large notebook that was full of his handwriting. "What's that?" "It's something I wrote when I was helping Poirot out on some little problems. You should read it some time. I sort of took the Watson approach and wrote it all down in first person." "Elementary," I murmured. "What?" "Nothing," I said, and went to bed.
As I said earlier, I slept well. The next day Charlie departed and I went for a walk. My walk took me in the general direction of the jungle, but then I turned around and started towards the barn. Frances was there playing with Nina and the cows. I was glad that Frances was there, but I truly couldn't wait until she left the next day and I would get Nina back. I turned away from the barn and decided to finish my aimless walk. It wasn't really taking me anywhere. On the way back to the house, I ran full throttle into Pedro. I wasn't in the mood to remain upright, so I sank to my knees. After many exclamations, Pedro helped me up and brushed me off. "Pardon me little one." "Pedro, I'm sixteen. I'm hardly little." "But perhaps you feel little?" This was hitting it a bit too close to the mark. All I wanted at that moment was to be hugged by someone whose shoulder I could cry on, but no one seemed to know, and I was too proud to tell them. Pedro was a prophet once more when he said, "Perhaps you would like to cry. Perhaps you aren't sure of your future. Perhaps you need to be told by one you hold dear that all will be right again." "Perhaps." "Then go up to your father. You are not the only one to feel so." Pedro didn't know that this was impossible. He didn't know that of the people that I could talk to, one was dead and one was on the other side of the world.
That night, I thought of what Pedro had said. Seeing as I couldn't fall asleep, I navigated the floorboards and crept into Father's room and took his stories from where they were kept. I then went downstairs so I wouldn't awake Nina and Frances, and entered the kitchen. I put on the lights and opened the book, which was thick and contained papers of various sizes. The first few hundred sheets were miscellaneous types of paper, but the last were Father's own stationary sheets, which could be found on his desk upstairs. I opened the book to the first set of papers and started reading. After a few hours, I had left my sadness behind; so funny was Father's account of various mysteries solved by Mr.Poirot. At about three in the morning I found the account of how Mother met Father, and I nearly cried, not with sadness, but with happiness. It's hard to explain how I felt while I read that story, but at the end, I knew a little more about my family than I ever had before. I then plunged into the next of many more amusing and mysterious tales, and by the time dawn came along and Father came downstairs, I had finished the book and was fast asleep with my head on the table. I slept well into the day. When I awoke it was almost evening and Francis was just setting off. I said good-bye to her and told her to say hello to Mr. Poirot for me. When she left, I realized that I was the next one to take that voyage across the water. The thought filled me with pride. I would be the first female in my family to be a successful scientist. I would see the world and learn what fun was, something I had asked Frances when I was young, to which she was unable to provide the answer.
No matter what I had thought a year before, I was not ready to leave when the time came. I said good-bye to everything with a fondness that I didn't think I harbored. After I took my favorite little pig off my head, I turned to Father. "Well then," he said. "Well then." "Look, Judith, I've never really understood you, and well, look here girl...I'm really quite fond of you." I was trying not to cry, and Father's little outburst of tenderness didn't help matters. I choked out some response and hugged Nina before I whirled around and got into the car, to bury my face in my hands and sob. As Pedro pulled out of the gate, I waved to Nina and called back, "Take care of each other!" and then we went around the side of the barn and they were gone. Pedro's voice brought me back to the present. "Are you going to see much of that brother or that sister of yours?" "I'll be in the same place as Frances, but in a completely different department. She's in English. I probably will only see Charlie on holidays." "Too bad." "Yes, too bad." When we pulled up to the platform, Pedro opened my door and helped me out. "I'll miss you senorita." "I'll miss you too Pedro. Take care of the ranch." I turned to go. "And, Pedro?" "Yes?" "Send my love to Father." And I boarded the train.
Docking at Dover wasn't at all like it was the first time I had arrived on the now familiar soil. I had no idea where I was going. Frances had taken the liberty of being smarter than me and I was not pleased. When I realized this I was sitting in a cab and the cabby was waiting for me to give directions. He said, noticing my hesitation, "Do you plan on goin' anywhere little missy?" I missed Pedro's 'senorita', "I.... I... Portland Place please." I didn't remember Poirot's number, but when I asked the doorman, he told me readily enough. As I rode the elevator up I prayed that he was at home. When I knocked at number one, I was greeted by dead silence. My last hope was shot. I sat down outside his door and took stock of my predicament. I could always call Frances from a public phone, which I didn't know how to operate I reminded myself, but my idiotic pride kept me from it. I could also go downstairs and ask for directions from the doorman, but I had counted on the banks being open to obtain English currency at the college, and had only brought one cab fare. The only thing to do was sit here and wait for Poirot to appear. Luckily, like Frances, I had decided to arrive early incase there was trouble with the boat or the like, so I wasn't expected at the Science House until Monday. The Science House was the dorm where all the scientists resided. Since there weren't very many females in this department the dorm could be regular sized, however some feminist had decided that the little dorm aspired to greater things, so it was called Science House. I was deep in these thoughts when I looked up to find Poirot looking down at me with a paper bag in his hands. I rapidly stood up. "Hullo Mr. Poirot." "Ah, it is the young Judith is it not? But how you have grown! Come in, arrange yourself. I shall only be a minute." He disappeared into another room while I arranged myself. When he emerged again I thought that he was going to embrace me in that fashion that had so frightened Charlie, but he didn't, instead he sat down. "What are you doing here?" "I've started school. I'm at the same place as Frances you see. And...ah... Mr. Poirot, I was wondering if you could tell me where it was, because... I've forgotten." I felt like blushing, but I left that sort of thing to the likes of Frances and Nina. "Ah, mon cherie but of course I will conduct you there." In about twenty minutes, I was safely settled in my room. My roommate hadn't arrived yet. It wasn't anything like Frances's building. It was built in the modern style and had a large statue of what could have been an amoeba, but was most likely a duck, in the courtyard. It was like nothing I had ever seen before, which was not unlikely.
When I woke up in the morning, I went for a walk on the grounds. I stopped by Frances's dorm, but no one was there, so I left a message. When I returned to my room, it was to find another girl there, unpacking her bag. She looked up when I came in. She had reddish-auburn hair that was cut to her chin in the last fashion. She had brown eyes and a fairly expressionless face, somewhat like mine, but had the air about her of great intelligence and mischief. "Are you my roommate?" she asked. Her accent was like my father's and her voice was soft. "Yes. I'm Judith Hastings. And you are...." "Sandra Kyte. You're going to study science too?" "That's why I'm here." She went back to unpacking her bag. She put her cloths away and then proceeded to adorn her bedside table with various pictures of a group of people, presumably her family. I looked at my table. It had a particularly ridiculous picture of the whole family sitting on it. Pedro had taken the picture before everyone left- in one way or another- and he must have done it on purpose, for somehow he had captured each of us in a silly position. Nina, in Mother's arms, was about to fall to the ground, and Mother had her eyes open wide and her mouth in a shape somewhat like the statue outside. Father was scratching his head and looking at something in the sky, an action that gave him a rather hopeless air. Frances had obviously been rubbing her face, for she had a hand on either cheek, pulling her lips down into an odd grimace. Charlie was sneezing; that was all there was to it, and I myself was staring at the camera "like a deer in headlights" as my mother used to put it. "Is that your family?" Sandra's question caught me off guard. "Yes, it is," I must have been really flustered, for I went on to say, "My mother is dead, my sister is in the English department, my other sister is a spoiled brat, my brother is scarred for life, my father is a fool, and our servant is a potential murderer." Sandra greeted my tirade with silence. After a while she lowered her eyes to the floor. "I'm sorry I asked." "Quite alright. How's yours?" "My what?" "Your family." "Oh. Well you see... I haven't got one." Before I could apologize properly she explained. "I never knew my parents. My older brother was both for me, but two years ago he was out flying and he ran out of gasoline." She followed my gaze to the pictures, particularly to one of a young man with sandy brown hair. "That's my brother. The rest are the various families I stayed with the past few years." I mumbled that I was sorry. She said quite cheerfully, "Rubbish! It has been two years after all." I thought of my own loss of two years ago, and said nothing.
Classes went very well, but Christmas was still a relief. I was particularly excited because Frances and her roommate were having a Christmas Eve party and they had invited Sandra, me, and most importantly, Charlie. I was quite stunned when I woke up three days before Christmas and looked out the window to find everything white. I jumped out of bed. Sandra, across the room, rolled over and groaned, "What is it?" "It's snow! I've waited so long for this!" "Well then carry your joy outside please," and she rolled over and went back to sleep. I ran outside in my slippers and robe and shuffled around in the snow. I made a snowman like the people do in books, and I bombarded it with snowballs. I ran back inside, ready for hot chocolate. I think about half way up the stairs I began to wish I had asked Mother to teach me how to make it. As I was getting dressed, I realized that Mother had learned it from Father who had learned it from Mr. Poirot. I wondered whether Frances had invited him to her party. A few days later, I found out. Sandra and I walked briskly through the snow to Frances's dorm. When we knocked at her door we could hear music coming from the other side. After a few seconds we knocked again and heard Frances's roommate from far away calling, "Was that the door?" "I should say so," murmured Sandra. We heard Frances's voice ask Charlie to get it. I was glad he had already arrived. Apparently Sandra hadn't heard what Frances had said, for when my tall brother answered the door, she jumped backwards. I myself rushed to hug him. His dark hair settled in waves on the top of his head and the long scar that ran down his face gave him a rather distinguished air. "Charlie! I haven't seen you in ages!" "I say!" exclaimed Charlie, stepping back, "You've grown up. I suppose you don't play cowboys with Nina and Pedro anymore." "No." Charlie turned towards Sandra, "And you are...." "Sandra Kyte. I've heard a lot about you. May I call you Charlie?" "Please do. Nothing bad I hope?" "Nothing of the sort." At this point Frances wondered where Charlie had gone so she came to the door. "Come in! You're our first guests." She hugged me and gave Sandra a nod. Her roommate, Annie, a girl slightly on the round side, took our coats and we all went into the living room. I talked to Annie for a bit, for she had been to Brazil, and asked her if she had known a fellow named Pedro Graduedez, her face darkened in concentration, but it turned out that she didn't. Gradually, the rest of the guests arrived. Most of them were in English, but Mr. Poirot was there and I asked him how to make hot chocolate. We kept talking for a while and soon the party started to break up. Sandra and I were about to leave when Charlie came over and waylaid us.
"I have to go back to school Judith, so I guess the next time I see you will be a year from now." "I guess so." I was silent. I had waited all year to see Charlie and now it turned out that he wasn't even staying 'till New Year. He had turned towards Sandra. "Pleased to meet you Sandra." "You too Charlie." On our way back home, Sandra was unusually silent. When we finally arrived at our dorm I went to sleep at once, but Sandra stayed up a bit and when she did go to bed, she was crying.
At the end of that year, Frances graduated. Father and Nina were going to come and visit, but the seas were stormy and they had to put off their voyage. Sandra was going to stay with a friend of hers, so I was left virtually alone to wait for the next term. I went a few places with Frances, who had found a flat, and Annie, but the really fun thing to do was go over to Hercule Poirot's apartment and talk to him. He was so intelligent that talking to him was like a breath of fresh air. I missed Sandra. I wrote Charlie a few times, but he only answered me once. Apparently he was going to do some observing in a hospital that would take up all of his time. In the end, I broke down and wrote home. Nina responded. She said that everything was fine and asked why I hadn't written earlier. Mr. Poirot took a trip down the Nile in August, so when Sandra returned she found me very lonely. "Where was Frances this whole time?" "I saw her." "Mr. Poirot?" "We talked." "Didn't your family write you at all?" "Yes." "Then why are you so lonely?" I didn't have the answer to that one.