第三个女郎11
文章来源:未知 文章作者:enread 发布时间:2025-07-01 02:06 字体: [ ]  进入论坛
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Seven
Mrs. Oliver woke up dissatisfied. She saw stretching before her a day withnothing to do. Having packed off her completed manuscript with a highlyvirtuous feeling, work was over. She had now only, as many times before,to relax, to enjoy herself; to lie fallow until the creative urge became activeonce more. She walked about her flat in a rather aimless fashion, touchingthings, picking them up, putting them down, looking in the drawers of herdesk, realising that there were plenty of letters there to be dealt with butfeeling also that in her present state of virtuous accomplishment, she wascertainly not going to deal with anything so tiresome as that now. Shewanted something interesting to do. She wanted—what did she want?
She thought about the conversation she had had with Hercule Poirot,the warning he had given her. Ridiculous! After all, why shouldn’t she par-ticipate in this problem which she was sharing with Poirot? Poirot mightchoose to sit in a chair, put the tips of his fingers together, and set his greycells whirring to work while his body reclined comfortably within fourwalls. That was not the procedure that appealed to Ariadne Oliver. Shehad said, very forcibly, that she at least was going to do something. Shewas going to find out more about this mysterious girl. Where was NormaRestarick? What was she doing? What more could she, Ariadne Oliver,find out about her?
Mrs. Oliver prowled about, more and more disconsolate. What could onedo? It wasn’t very easy to decide. Go somewhere and ask questions?
Should she go down to Long Basing? But Poirot had already been there—and found out presumably what there was to be found out. And what ex-cuse could she offer for barging into Sir Roderick Horsefield’s house?
She considered another visit to Borodene Mansions. Something still tobe found out there, perhaps? She would have to think of another excusefor going there. She wasn’t quite sure what excuse she would use but any-way, that seemed the only possible place where more information couldbe obtained. What was the time? Ten a.m. There were certain possibilit-ies….
On the way there she concocted an excuse. Not a very original excuse.
In fact, Mrs. Oliver would have liked to have found something more in-triguing, but perhaps, she reflected prudently, it was just as well to keep tosomething completely everyday and plausible. She arrived at the stately ifgrim elevation of Borodene Mansions and walked slowly round the court-yard considering it.
A porter was conversing with a furniture van—A milkman, pushing hismilk float, came to join Mrs. Oliver near the service lift.
He rattled bottles, cheerfully whistling, whilst Mrs. Oliver continued tostare abstractedly at the furniture van.
“Number 76 moving out,” explained the milkman to Mrs. Oliver, mistak-ing her interest. He transferred a clutch of bottles from his float to the lift.
“Not that she hasn’t moved already in a manner of speaking,” he added,emerging again. He seemed a cheery kind of milkman.
He pointed a thumb upwards.
“Pitched herself out of a window—seventh floor—only a week ago, itwas. Five o’clock in the morning. Funny time to choose.”
Mrs. Oliver didn’t think it so funny.
“Why?”
“Why did she do it? Nobody knows. Balance of mind disturbed, theysaid.”
“Was she—young?”
“Nah! Just an old trout. Fifty if she was a day.”
Two men struggled in the van with a chest of drawers. It resisted themand two mahogany drawers crashed to the ground—a loose piece of paperfloated toward Mrs. Oliver who caught it.
“Don’t smash everything, Charlie,” said the cheerful milkman reprov-ingly, and went up in the lift with his cargo of bottles.
An altercation broke out between the furniture movers. Mrs. Oliveroffered them the piece of paper, but they waved it away.
Making up her mind, Mrs. Oliver entered the building and went up toNo. 67. A clank came from inside and presently the door was opened by amiddle-aged woman with a mop who was clearly engaged in household la-bours.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Oliver, using her favourite monosyllable. “Good morn-ing. Is—I wonder—is anyone in?”
“No, I’m afraid not, Madam. They’re all out. They’ve gone to work.”
“Yes, of course…As a matter of fact when I was here last I left a little di-ary behind. So annoying. It must be in the sitting room somewhere.”
“Well, I haven’t picked up anything of the kind, Madam, as far as Iknow. Of course I mightn’t have known it was yours. Would you like tocome in?” She opened the door hospitably, set aside the mop with whichshe had been treating the kitchen floor, and accompanied Mrs. Oliver intothe sitting room.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Oliver, determined to establish friendly relations, “yes, Isee here—that’s the book I left for Miss Restarick, Miss Norma. Is she backfrom the country yet?”
“I don’t think she’s living here at the moment. Her bed wasn’t slept in.
Perhaps she’s still down with her people in the country. I know she wasgoing there last weekend.”
“Yes, I expect that’s it,” said Mrs. Oliver. “This was a book I brought her.
One of my books.”
One of Mrs. Oliver’s books did not seem to strike any chord of interest inthe cleaning woman.
“I was sitting here,” went on Mrs. Oliver, patting an armchair, “at least Ithink so. And then I moved to the window and perhaps to the sofa.”
She dug down vehemently behind the cushions of the chair. The clean-ing woman obliged by doing the same thing to the sofa cushions.
“You’ve no idea how maddening it is when one loses something likethat,” went on Mrs. Oliver, chattily. “One has all one’s engagements writ-ten down there. I’m quite sure I’m lunching with someone very importanttoday, and I can’t remember who it was or where the luncheon was to be.
Only, of course, it may be tomorrow. If so, I’m lunching with someone elsequite different. Oh dear.”
“Very trying for you, ma’am, I’m sure,” said the cleaning woman withsympathy.
“They’re such nice flats, these,” said Mrs. Oliver, looking round.
“A long way up.”
“Well, that gives you a very good view, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, but if they face east you get a lot of cold wind in winter. Comesright through these metal window frames. Some people have had doublewindows put in. Oh yes, I wouldn’t care for a flat facing this way inwinter. No, give me a nice ground floor flat every time. Much more con-venient too if you’ve got children. For prams and all that, you know. Ohyes, I’m all for the ground floor, I am. Think if there was to be a fire.”
“Yes, of course, that would be terrible,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I supposethere are fire escapes?”
“You can’t always get to a fire door. Terrified of fire, I am. Always havebeen. And they’re ever so expensive, these flats. You wouldn’t believe therents they ask! That’s why Miss Holland, she gets two other girls to go inwith her.”
“Oh yes, I think I met them both. Miss Cary’s an artist, isn’t she?”
“Works for an art gallery, she does. Don’t work at it very hard, though.
She paints a bit—cows and trees that you’d never recognise as being whatthey’re meant to be. An untidy young lady. The state her room is in—youwouldn’t believe it! Now Miss Holland, everything is always as neat as anew pin. She was a secretary in the Coal Board at one time but she’s aprivate secretary in the City now. She likes it better, she says. She’s secret-ary to a very rich gentleman just come back from South America or some-where like that. He’s Miss Norma’s father, and it was he who asked MissHolland to take her as a boarder when the last young lady went off to getmarried—and she mentioned as she was looking for another girl. Well,she couldn’t very well refuse, could she? Not since he was her employer.”
“Did she want to refuse?”
The woman sniffed.
“I think she would have—if she’d known.”
“Known what?” The question was too direct.
“It’s not for me to say anything, I’m sure. It’s not my business—”
Mrs. Oliver continued to look mildly inquiring. Mrs. Mop fell.
“It’s not that she isn’t a nice young lady. Scatty but then they’re nearlyall scatty. But I think as a doctor ought to see her. There are times whenshe doesn’t seem to know rightly what she’s doing, or where she is. It givesyou quite a turn, sometimes—Looks just how my husband’s nephew doesafter he’s had a fit. (Terrible fits he has—you wouldn’t believe!) Only I’venever known her have fits. Maybe she takes things—a lot do.”
“I believe there is a young man her family doesn’t approve of.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard. He’s come here to call for her once or twice—thoughI’ve never seen him. One of these Mods by all accounts. Miss Hollanddoesn’t like it—but what can you do nowadays? Girls go their own way.”
“Sometimes one feels very upset about girls nowadays,” said Mrs.
Oliver, and tried to look serious and responsible.
“Not brought up right, that’s what I says.”
“I’m afraid not. No, I’m afraid not. One feels really a girl like Norma Re-starick would be better at home than coming all alone to London andearning her living as an interior decorator.”
“She don’t like it at home.”
“Really?”
“Got a stepmother. Girls don’t like stepmothers. From what I’ve heardthe stepmother’s done her best, tried to pull her up, tried to keep flashyyoung men out of the house, that sort of thing. She knows girls pick upwith the wrong young man and a lot of harm may come of it. Sometimes—” the cleaning woman spoke impressively, “—I’m thankful I’ve neverhad any daughters.”
“Have you got sons?”
“Two boys, we’ve got. One’s doing very well at school, and the other one,he’s in a printer’s, doing well there too. Yes, very nice boys they are. Mindyou, boys can cause you trouble, too. But girls is more worrying, I think.
You feel you ought to be able to do something about them.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Oliver, thoughtfully, “one does feel that.”
She saw signs of the cleaning woman wishing to return to her cleaning.
“It’s too bad about my diary,” she said. “Well, thank you very much andI hope I haven’t wasted your time.”
“Well, I hope you’ll find it, I’m sure,” said the other woman obligingly.
Mrs. Oliver went out of the flat and considered what she should do next.
She couldn’t think of anything she could do further that day, but a plan fortomorrow began to form in her mind.
When she got home, Mrs. Oliver, in an important way, got out a note-book and jotted down in it various things under the heading “Facts I havelearned.” On the whole the facts did not amount to very much but Mrs.
Oliver, true to her calling, managed to make the most of them that couldbe made. Possibly the fact that Claudia Reece-Holland was employed byNorma’s father was the most salient fact of any. She had not known thatbefore, she rather doubted if Hercule Poirot had known it either. Shethought of ringing him up on the telephone and acquainting him with itbut decided to keep it to herself for the moment because of her plan forthe morrow. In fact, Mrs. Oliver felt at this moment less like a detectivenovelist than like an ardent bloodhound. She was on the trail, nose downon the scent, and tomorrow morning—well, tomorrow morning we wouldsee.
True to her plan, Mrs. Oliver rose early, partook of two cups of tea and aboiled egg and started out on her quest. Once more she arrived in the vi-cinity of Borodene Mansions. She wondered whether she might be gettinga bit well known there, so this time she did not enter the courtyard, butskulked around either one entrance to it or the other, scanning the vari-ous people who were turning out into the morning drizzle to trot off ontheir way to work. They were mostly girls, and looked deceptively alike.
How extraordinary human beings were when you considered them likethis, emerging purposefully from these large tall buildings—just like ant-hills, thought Mrs. Oliver. One had never considered an anthill properly,she decided. It always looked so aimless, as one disturbed it with the toe ofa shoe. All those little things rushing about with bits of grass in theirmouths, streaming along industriously, worried, anxious, looking asthough they were running to and fro and going nowhere, but presumablythey were just as well organised as these human beings here. That man,for instance, who had just passed her. Scurrying along, muttering to him-self. “I wonder what’s upsetting you,” thought Mrs. Oliver. She walked upand down a little more, then she drew back suddenly.
Claudia Reece-Holland came out of the entranceway walking at a briskbusinesslike pace. As before, she looked very well turned out. Mrs. Oliverturned away so that she should not be recognised. Once she had allowedClaudia to get a sufficient distance ahead of her, she wheeled round againand followed in her tracks. Claudia Reece-Holland came to the end of thestreet and turned right into a main thoroughfare. She came to a bus stopand joined the queue. Mrs. Oliver, still following her, felt a momentary un-easiness. Supposing Claudia should turn round, look at her, recognise her?
All Mrs. Oliver could think of was to do several protracted but noiselessblows of the nose. But Claudia Reece-Holland seemed totally absorbed inher own thoughts. She looked at none of her fellow waiters for buses. Mrs.
Oliver was about third in the queue behind her. Finally the right bus cameand there was a surge forward. Claudia got on the bus and went straightup to the top. Mrs. Oliver got inside and was able to get a seat close to thedoor as the uncomfortable third person. When the conductor came roundfor fares Mrs. Oliver pressed a reckless one and sixpence into his hand.
After all, she had no idea by what route the bus went or indeed how farthe distance was to what the cleaning woman had described vaguely as“one of those new buildings by St. Paul’s.” She was on the alert and readywhen the venerable dome was at last sighted. Anytime now, she thoughtto herself, and fixed a steady eye on those who descended from the plat-form above. Ah yes, there came Claudia, neat and chic in her smart suit.
She got off the bus. Mrs. Oliver followed her in due course and kept at anicely calculated distance.
“Very interesting,” thought Mrs. Oliver. “Here I am actually trailingsomeone! Just like in my books. And, what’s more, I must be doing it verywell because she hasn’t the least idea.”
Claudia Reece-Holland, indeed, looked very much absorbed in her ownthoughts. “That’s a very capable looking girl,” thought Mrs. Oliver, as in-deed she had thought before. “If I was thinking of having a go at guessinga murderer, a good capable murderer, I’d choose someone very like her.”
Unfortunately, nobody had been murdered yet, that is to say, unless thegirl Norma had been entirely right in her assumption that she herself hadcommitted a murder.
This part of London seemed to have suffered or profited from a largeamount of building in the recent years. Enormous skyscrapers, most ofwhich Mrs. Oliver thought very hideous, mounted to the sky with a squarematchbox-like air.
Claudia turned into a building. “Now I shall find out exactly,” thoughtMrs. Oliver and turned into it after her. Four lifts appeared to be all goingup and down with frantic haste. This, Mrs. Oliver thought, was going to bemore difficult. However, they were of a very large size and by getting intoClaudia’s one at the last minute Mrs. Oliver was able to interpose largemasses of tall men between herself and the figure she was following.
Claudia’s destination turned out to be the fourth floor. She went along acorridor and Mrs. Oliver, lingering behind two of her tall men, noted thedoor where she went in. Three doors from the end of the corridor. Mrs.
Oliver arrived at the same door in due course and was able to read the le-gend on it. “Joshua Restarick Ltd.” was the legend it bore.
Having got as far as that Mrs. Oliver felt as though she did not quiteknow what to do next. She had found Norma’s father’s place of businessand the place where Claudia worked, but now, slightly disabused, she feltthat this was not as much of a discovery as it might have been. Frankly,did it help? Probably it didn’t.
She waited around a few moments, walking from one end to the other ofthe corridor looking to see if anybody else interesting went in at the doorof Restarick Enterprises. Two or three girls did but they did not look par-ticularly interesting. Mrs. Oliver went down again in the lift and walkedrather disconsolately out of the building. She couldn’t quite think what todo next. She took a walk round the adjacent streets, she meditated a visitto St. Paul’s.
“I might go up in the Whispering Gallery and whisper,” thought Mrs.
Oliver. “I wonder now how the Whispering Gallery would do for the sceneof a murder?
“No,” she decided, “too profane, I’m afraid. No, I don’t think that wouldbe quite nice.” She walked thoughtfully towards the Mermaid Theatre.
That, she thought, had far more possibilities.
She walked back in the direction of the various new buildings. Then,feeling the lack of a more substantial breakfast than she had had, sheturned into a local café. It was moderately well filled with people havingextra late breakfast or else early “elevenses.” Mrs. Oliver, looking roundvaguely for a suitable table, gave a gasp. At a table near the wall the girlNorma was sitting, and opposite her was sitting a young man with lavishchestnut hair curled on his shoulders, wearing a red velvet waistcoat anda very fancy jacket.
“David,” said Mrs. Oliver under her breath. “It must be David.” He andthe girl Norma were talking excitedly together.
Mrs. Oliver considered a plan of campaign, made up her mind, and nod-ding her head in satisfaction, crossed the floor of the café to a discreetdoor marked “Ladies.”
Mrs. Oliver was not quite sure whether Norma was likely to recogniseher or not. It was not always the vaguest looking people who proved thevaguest in fact. At the moment Norma did not look as though she waslikely to look at anybody but David, but who knows?
“I expect I can do something to myself anyway,” thought Mrs. Oliver. Shelooked at herself in a small flyblown mirror provided by the café’s man-agement, studying particularly what she considered to be the focal pointof a woman’s appearance, her hair. No one knew this better than Mrs.
Oliver, owing to the innumerable times that she had changed her mode ofhairdressing, and had failed to be recognised by her friends in conse-quence. Giving her head an appraising eye she started work. Out came thepins, she took off several coils of hair, wrapped them up in her handker-chief and stuffed them into her handbag, parted her hair in the middle,combed it sternly back from her face and rolled it up into a modest bun atthe back of her neck. She also took out a pair of spectacles and put themon her nose. There was a really earnest look about her now! “Almost intel-lectual,” Mrs. Oliver thought approvingly. She altered the shape of hermouth by an application of lipstick, and emerged once more into the café;moving carefully since the spectacles were only for reading and in conse-quence the landscape was blurred. She crossed the café, and made herway to an empty table next to that occupied by Norma and David. She satdown so that she was facing David. Norma, on the near side, sat with herback to her. Norma, therefore, would not see her unless she turned herhead right round. The waitress drifted up. Mrs. Oliver ordered a cup ofcoffee and a Bath bun and settled down to be inconspicuous.
Norma and David did not even notice her. They were deeply in themiddle of a passionate discussion. It took Mrs. Oliver just a minute or twoto tune into them.
“… But you only fancy these things,” David was saying. “You imaginethem. They’re all utter, utter nonsense, my dear girl.”
“I don’t know. I can’t tell.” Norma’s voice had a queer lack of resonancein it.
Mrs. Oliver could not hear her as well as she heard David, since Norma’sback was turned to her, but the dullness of the girl’s tone struck her dis-agreeably. There was something wrong here, she thought. Very wrong.
She remembered the story as Poirot had first told it to her. “She thinks shemay have committed a murder.” What was the matter with the girl? Hallu-cinations? Was her mind really slightly affected, or was it no more and noless than truth, and in consequence the girl had suffered a bad shock?
“If you ask me, it’s all fuss on Mary’s part! She’s a thoroughly stupid wo-man anyway, and she imagines she has illnesses and all that sort of thing.”
“She was ill.”
“All right then, she was ill. Any sensible woman would get the doctor togive her some antibiotic or other, and not get het up.”
“She thought I did it to her. My father thinks so too.”
“I tell you, Norma, you imagine all these things.”
“You just say that to me, David. You say it to me to cheer me up. Suppos-ing I did give her the stuff?”
“What do you mean, suppose? You must know whether you did or youdidn’t. You can’t be so idiotic, Norma.”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that. You keep coming back to that, and saying it againand again. ‘I don’t know.’ ‘I don’t know.’”
“You don’t understand. You don’t understand in the least what hate is. Ihated her from the first moment I saw her.”
“I know. You told me that.”
“That’s the queer part of it. I told you that, and yet I don’t even remem-ber telling you that. D’you see? Every now and then I—I tell people things.
I tell people things that I want to do, or that I have done, or that I’m goingto do. But I don’t even remember telling them the things. It’s as though Iwas thinking all these things in my mind, and sometimes they come out inthe open and I say them to people. I did say them to you, didn’t I?”
“Well—I mean—look here, don’t let’s harp back to that.”
“But I did say it to you? Didn’t I?”
“All right, all right! One says things like that. ‘I hate her and I’d like tokill her. I think I’ll poison her!’ But that’s only kid stuff, if you know what Imean, as though you weren’t quite grown-up. It’s a very natural thing.
Children say it a lot. ‘I hate so and so. I’ll cut off his head!’ Kids say it atschool. About some master they particularly dislike.”
“You think it was just that? But—that sounds as though I wasn’t grown-up.”
“Well, you’re not in some ways. If you’d just pull yourself together, real-ise how silly it all is. What can it matter if you do hate her? You’ve gotaway from home and don’t have to live with her.”
“Why shouldn’t I live in my own home — with my own father?” saidNorma. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair. First he went away and left my mother,and now, just when he’s coming back to me, he goes and marries Mary. Ofcourse I hate her and she hates me too. I used to think about killing her,used to think of ways of doing it. I used to enjoy thinking like that. Butthen—when she really got ill….”
David said uneasily:
“You don’t think you’re a witch or anything, do you? You don’t make fig-ures in wax and stick pins into them or do that sort of thing?”
“Oh no. That would be silly. What I did was real. Quite real.”
“Look here, Norma, what do you mean when you say it was real?”
“The bottle was there, in my drawer. Yes, I opened the drawer andfound it.”
“What bottle?”
“The Dragon Exterminator. Selective weed killer. That’s what it was la-belled. Stuff in a dark green bottle and you were supposed to spray it onthings. And it had labels with Caution and Poison, too.”
“Did you buy it? Or did you just find it?”
“I don’t know where I got it, but it was there, in my drawer, and it washalf empty.”
“And then you—you—remembered—”
“Yes,” said Norma. “Yes…” Her voice was vague, almost dreamy. “Yes…Ithink it was then it all came back to me. You think so too, don’t you,David?”
“I don’t know what to make of you, Norma. I really don’t. I think in away, you’re making it all up, you’re telling it to yourself.”
“But she went to hospital, for observation. They said they were puzzled.
Then they said they couldn’t find anything wrong so she came home—andthen she got ill again, and I began to be frightened. My father began look-ing at me in a queer sort of way, and then the doctor came and they talkedtogether, shut up in Father’s study. I went round outside, and crept up tothe window and I tried to listen. I wanted to hear what they were saying.
They were planning together—to send me away to a place where I’d beshut up! A place where I’d have a ‘course of treatment’—or something.
They thought, you see, that I was crazy, and I was frightened…Because—because I wasn’t sure what I’d done or what I hadn’t done.”
“Is that when you ran away?”
“No—that was later—”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“You’ll have to let them know sooner or later where you are—”
“I won’t! I hate them. I hate my father as much as I hate Mary. I wishthey were dead. I wish they were both dead. Then—then I think I’d behappy again.”
“Don’t get all het up! Look here, Norma—” He paused in an embarrassedmanner—“I’m not very set on marriage and all that rubbish…I mean Ididn’t think I’d ever do anything of that kind…oh well, not for years. Onedoesn’t want to tie oneself up—but I think it’s the best thing we could do,you know. Get married. At a registry office or something. You’ll have tosay you’re over twenty-one. Roll up your hair, put on some spectacles orsomething. Make you look a bit older. Once we’re married, your fathercan’t do a thing! He can’t send you away to what you call a ‘place.’ He’ll bepowerless.”
“I hate him.”
“You seem to hate everybody.”
“Only my father and Mary.”
“Well, after all, it’s quite natural for a man to marry again.”
“Look what he did to my mother.”
“All that must have been a long time ago.”
“Yes. I was only a child, but I remember. He went away and left us. Hesent me presents at Christmas—but he never came himself. I wouldn’teven have known him if I’d met him in the street by the time he did comeback. He didn’t mean anything to me by then. I think he got my mothershut up, too. She used to go away when she was ill. I don’t know where. Idon’t know what was the matter with her. Sometimes I wonder…I wonder,David. I think, you know, there’s something wrong in my head, andsomeday it will make me do something really bad. Like the knife.”
“What knife?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just a knife.”
“Well, can’t you tell me what you’re talking about?”
“I think it had bloodstains on it—it was hidden there…under my stock-ings.”
“Do you remember hiding a knife there?”
“I think so. But I can’t remember what I’d done with it before that. I can’tremember where I’d been…There is a whole hour gone out of that evening.
A whole hour I didn’t know where I’d been. I’d been somewhere and donesomething.”
“Hush!” He hissed it quickly as the waitress approached their table.
“You’ll be all right. I’ll look after you. Let’s have something more,” he saidto the waitress in a loud voice, picking up the menu—“Two baked beanson toast.”
 

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