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II
Mrs. Oliver prowled round her sitting room. She was very restless. Anhour ago she had parcelled up a typescript that she had just finished cor-recting. She was about to send it off to her publisher who was anxiouslyawaiting it and constantly prodding her about it every three or four days.
“There you are,” said Mrs. Oliver, addressing the empty air and conjur-ing up an imaginary publisher. “There you are, and I hope you like it! Idon’t. I think it’s lousy! I don’t believe you know whether anything I writeis good or bad. Anyway, I warned you. I told you it was frightful. You said‘Oh! no, no, I don’t believe that for a moment.’
“You just wait and see,” said Mrs. Oliver vengefully. “You just wait andsee.”
She opened the door, called to Edith, her maid, gave her the parcel anddirected that it should be taken to the post at once.
“And now,” said Mrs. Oliver, “what am I going to do with myself?”
She began strolling about again. “Yes,” thought Mrs. Oliver, “I wish I hadthose tropical birds and things back on the wall instead of these idioticcherries. I used to feel like something in a tropical wood. A lion or a tigeror a leopard or a cheetah! What could I possibly feel like in a cherry orch-ard except a bird scarer?”
She looked round again. “Cheeping like a bird, that’s what I ought to bedoing,” she said gloomily. “Eating cherries…I wish it was the right time ofyear for cherries. I’d like some cherries. I wonder now—” She went to thetelephone. “I will ascertain, Madam,” said the voice of George in answer toher inquiry. Presently another voice spoke.
“Hercule Poirot, at your service, Madame,” he said.
“Where’ve you been?” said Mrs. Oliver. “You’ve been away all day. Isuppose you went down to look up the Restaricks. Is that it? Did you seeSir Roderick? What did you find out?”
“Nothing,” said Hercule Poirot.
“How dreadfully dull,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“No, I do not think it is really so dull. It is rather astonishing that I havenot found out anything.”
“Why is it so astonishing? I don’t understand.”
“Because,” said Poirot, “it means either there was nothing to find out,and that, let me tell you, does not accord with the facts; or else somethingwas being very cleverly concealed. That, you see, would be interesting.
Mrs. Restarick, by the way, did not know the girl was missing.”
“You mean—she has nothing to do with the girl having disappeared?”
“So it seems. I met there the young man.”
“You mean the unsatisfactory young man that nobody likes?”
“That is right. The unsatisfactory young man.”
“Did you think he was unsatisfactory?”
“From whose point of view?”
“Not from the girl’s point of view, I suppose.”
“The girl who came to see me I am sure would have been highly de-lighted with him.”
“Did he look very awful?”
“He looked very beautiful,” said Hercule Poirot.
“Beautiful?” said Mrs. Oliver. “I don’t know that I like beautiful youngmen.”
“Girls do,” said Poirot.
“Yes, you’re quite right. They like beautiful young men. I don’t meangood-looking young men or smart-looking young men or well-dressed orwell-washed looking young men. I mean they either like young men look-ing as though they were just going on in a Restoration comedy, or elsevery dirty young men looking as though they were just going to take someawful tramp’s job.”
“It seemed that he also did not know where the girl is now—”
“Or else he wasn’t admitting it.”
“Perhaps. He had gone down there. Why? He was actually in the house.
He had taken the trouble to walk in without anyone seeing him. Againwhy? For what reason? Was he looking for the girl? Or was he looking forsomething else?”
“You think he was looking for something?”
“He was looking for something in the girl’s room,” said Poirot.
“How do you know? Did you see him there?”
“No, I only saw him coming down the stairs, but I found a very nice littlepiece of damp mud in Norma’s room that could have come from his shoe.
It is possible that she herself may have asked him to bring her somethingfrom that room—there are a lot of possibilities. There is another girl inthat house—and a pretty one—He may have come down there to meet her.
Yes—many possibilities.”
“What are you going to do next?” demanded Mrs. Oliver.
“Nothing,” said Poirot.
“That’s very dull,” said Mrs. Oliver disapprovingly.
“I am going to receive, perhaps, a little information from those I haveemployed to find it; though it is quite possible that I shall receive nothingat all.”
“But aren’t you going to do something?”
“Not till the right moment,” said Poirot.
“Well, I shall,” said Mrs. Oliver.
“Pray, pray be very careful,” he implored her.
“What nonsense! What could happen to me?”
“Where there is murder, anything can happen. I tell that to you. I,Poirot.”
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