VII

In leaving the room Poirot almost cannoned¹ into a tall figure outside the door.

He said: “I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle.”

Jane Olivera drew apart a little.

She said. “Do you know what I think of you, M. Poirot?”

“Eh bien—Mademoiselle—”

She did not give time to finish. The question, indeed, had but a rhetorical value. All that it meantwas that Jane Olivera was about to answer it herself.

“You’re a spy, that’s what you are! A miserable², low, snooping spy, nosing round and makingtrouble!”

“I assure you, Mademoiselle—”

“I know just what you’re after! And I know now just what lies you tell! Why don’t you admit itstraight out? Well, I’ll tell you this—you won’t find out anything—anything at all! There’snothing to find out! No one’s going to harm a hair on my precious uncle’s head. He’s safe enough.

He’ll always be safe. Safe and smug and prosperous—and full of platitudes³! He’s just a stodgyJohn Bull, that’s what he is—without an ounce of imagination or vision.”

She paused, then, her agreeable, husky voice deepening, she said venomously: “I loathe⁴ thesight of you—you bloody⁵ little bourgeois⁶ detective!”

She swept away from him in a whirl of expensive model drapery.

Hercule Poirot remained, his eyes very wide open, his eyebrows⁷ raised and his handthoughtfully caressing⁸ his moustaches.

The epithet⁹ bourgeois was, he admitted, well-applied to him. His outlook on life was essentiallybourgeois, and always had been, but the employment of it as an epithet of contempt by theexquisitely turned out Jane Olivera gave him, as he expressed it to himself, furiously to think.

He went, still thinking, into the drawing room.

Mrs. Olivera was playing patience.

She looked up as Poirot entered, surveyed him with the cold look she might have bestowedupon a black beetle¹⁰ and murmured distantly:

“Red knave¹¹ on black queen.”

Chilled, Poirot retreated. He reflected mournfully:

“Alas, it would seem that nobody loves me!”

He strolled out of the window into the garden. It was an enchanting¹² evening with a smell ofnight-scented stocks in the air. Poirot sniffed¹³ happily and strolled along a path that ran betweentwo herbaceous borders.

He turned a corner and two dimly-seen figures sprang apart.

It would seem that he had interrupted a pair of lovers.

Poirot hastily turned and retraced¹⁴ his steps.

Even out here, it would seem, his presence was de trop.

He passed Alistair Blunt’s window and Alistair Blunt was dictating¹⁵ to Mr. Selby.

There seemed definitely only one place for Hercule Poirot.

He went up to his bedroom.

He pondered for some time on various fantastic aspects of the situation.

Had he or had he not made a mistake in believing the voice on the telephone to be that of Mrs.

Olivera? Surely the idea was absurd!

He recalled the melodramatic revelations of quiet little Mr. Barnes. He speculated on themysterious whereabouts of Mr. Q.X.912, alias¹⁶ Albert Chapman. He remembered, with a spasm¹⁷ ofannoyance, the anxious look in the eyes of the maidservant, Agnes—It was always the same way—people would keep things back! Usually quite unimportant things,but until they were cleared out of the way, impossible to pursue a straight path.

At the moment the path was anything but straight!

And the most unaccountable obstacle in the way of clear thinking and orderly progress waswhat he described to himself as the contradictory¹⁸ and impossible problem of Miss SainsburySeale. For, if the facts that Hercule Poirot had observed were true facts—then nothing whatevermade sense!

Hercule Poirot said to himself, with astonishment¹⁹ in the thought:

“Is it possible that I am growing old?”

 

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