Fourteen

“Chère Madame,” Poirot bowed and presented Mrs. Oliver with a bouquet,very stylised, a posy in the Victorian manner.

“M. Poirot! Well, really, that is very nice of you, and it’s very like yousomehow. All my flowers are always so untidy.” She looked towards avase of rather temperamental-looking chrysanthemums, then back to theprim circle of rosebuds. “And how nice of you to come and see me.”

“I come, Madame, to offer you my felicitations on your recovery.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Oliver, “I suppose I am all right again.” She shook herhead to and fro rather gingerly. “I get headaches, though,” she said. “Quitebad headaches.”

“You remember, Madame, that I warned you not to do anything danger-ous.”

“Not to stick my neck out, in fact. That I suppose is just what I did do.”

She added, “I felt something evil was about. I was frightened, too, and Itold myself I was a fool to be frightened, because what was I frightenedof? I mean, it was London. Right in the middle of London. People all about.

I mean—how could I be frightened? It wasn’t like a lonely wood or any-thing.”

Poirot looked at her thoughtfully. He wondered, had Mrs. Oliver reallyfelt this nervous fear, had she really suspected the presence of evil, thesinister feeling that something or someone wished her ill, or had she readit into the whole thing afterwards? He knew only too well how easily thatcould be done. Countless clients had spoken in much the same words thatMrs. Oliver had just used. “I knew something was wrong. I could feel evil.

I knew something was going to happen,” and actually they had not feltanything of the kind. What kind of a person was Mrs. Oliver?

He looked at her consideringly. Mrs. Oliver in her own opinion was fam-ous for her intuition. One intuition succeeded another with remarkablerapidity and Mrs. Oliver always claimed the right to justify the particularintuition which turned out to be right!

And yet one shared very often with animals the uneasiness of a dog or acat before a thunderstorm, the knowledge that there is something wrong,although one does not know what it is that is wrong.

“When did it come upon you, this fear?”

“When I left the main road,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Up till then it was all or-dinary and quite exciting and—yes, I was enjoying myself, though vexedat finding how difficult it was to trail anybody.”

She paused, considering. “Just like a game. Then suddenly it didn’t seemso much like a game, because there were queer little streets and rathersort of broken-down places, and sheds and open spaces being cleared forbuilding—oh, I don’t know, I can’t explain it. But it was all different. Like adream really. You know how dreams are. They start with one thing, aparty or something, and then suddenly you find you’re in a jungle orsomewhere quite different—and it’s all sinister.”

“A jungle?” said Poirot. “Yet, it is interesting you should put it like that.

So it felt to you as though you were in a jungle and you were afraid of apeacock?”

“I don’t know that I was especially afraid of him. After all, a peacockisn’t a dangerous sort of animal. It’s—well I mean I thought of him as apeacock because I thought of him as a decorative creature. A peacock isvery decorative, isn’t it? And this awful boy is decorative too.”

“You didn’t have any idea anyone was following you before you werehit?”

“No. No, I’d no idea—but I think he directed me wrong all the same.”

Poirot nodded thoughtfully.

“But of course it must have been the Peacock who hit me,” said Mrs.

Oliver. “Who else? The dirty boy in the greasy clothes? He smelt nasty buthe wasn’t sinister. And it could hardly be that limp Frances something—she was draped over a packing case with long black hair streaming allover the place. She reminded me of some actress or other.”

“You say she was acting as a model?”

“Yes. Not for the Peacock. For the dirty boy. I can’t remember if you’veseen her or not.”

“I have not yet had that pleasure—if it is a pleasure.”

“Well, she’s quite nice looking in an untidy, arty sort of way. Very muchmade up. Dead white and lots of mascara and the usual kind of limp hairhanging over her face. Works in an art gallery so I suppose it’s quite nat-ural that she should be all among the beatniks, acting as a model. Howthese girls can! I suppose she might have fallen for the Peacock. But it’sprobably the dirty one. All the same I don’t see her coshing me on thehead somehow.”

“I had another possibility in mind, Madame. Someone may have noticedyou following David—and in turn followed you.”

“Someone saw me trailing David, and then they trailed me?”

“Or someone may have been already in the mews or the yard, keepingperhaps an eye on the same people that you were observing.”

“That’s an idea, of course,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I wonder who they couldbe?”

Poirot gave an exasperated sigh. “Ah, it is there. It is difficult—too diffi-cult. Too many people, too many things. I cannot see anything clearly. Isee only a girl who said that she may have committed a murder! That is allthat I have to go on and you see even there there are difficulties.”

“What do you mean by difficulties?”

“Reflect,” said Poirot.

Reflection had never been Mrs. Oliver’s strong point.

“You always mix me up,” she complained.

“I am talking about a murder, but what murder?”

“The murder of the stepmother, I suppose.”

“But the stepmother is not murdered. She is alive.”

“You really are the most maddening man,” said Mrs. Oliver.

Poirot sat up in his chair. He brought the tips of his fingers together andprepared—or so Mrs. Oliver suspected—to enjoy himself.

“You refuse to reflect,” he said. “But to get anywhere we must reflect.”

“I don’t want to reflect. What I want to know is what you’ve been doingabout everything while I’ve been in hospital. You must have done some-thing. What have you done?”

Poirot ignored this question.

“We must begin at the beginning. One day you ring me up. I was in dis-tress. Yes, I admit it, I was in distress. Something extremely painful hadbeen said to me. You, Madame, were kindness itself. You cheered me, youencouraged me. You gave me a delicious tasse de chocolat. And what ismore you not only offered to help me, but you did help me. You helped meto find a girl who had come to me and said that she thought she mighthave committed a murder! Let us ask ourselves, Madame, what about thismurder? Who has been murdered? Where have they been murdered?

Why have they been murdered?”

“Oh do stop,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You’re making my head ache again, andthat’s bad for me.”

Poirot paid no attention to this plea. “Have we got a murder at all? Yousay—the stepmother—but I reply that the stepmother is not dead—so asyet we have no murder. But there ought to have been a murder. So me, Iinquire first of all, who is dead? Somebody comes to me and mentions amurder. A murder that has been committed somewhere and somehow.

But I cannot find that murder, and what you are about to say once again,that the attempted murder of Mary Restarick will do very well, does notsatisfy Hercule Poirot.”

“I really can’t think what more you want,” said Mrs. Oliver.

“I want a murder,” said Hercule Poirot.

“It sounds very bloodthirsty when you say it like that!”

“I look for a murder and I cannot find a murder. It is exasperating—so Iask you to reflect with me.”

“I’ve got a splendid idea,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Suppose Andrew Restarickmurdered his first wife before he went off in a hurry to South Africa. Hadyou thought of that possibility?”

“I certainly did not think of any such thing,” said Poirot indignantly.

“Well, I’ve thought of it,” said Mrs. Oliver. “It’s very interesting. He wasin love with this other woman, and he wanted like Crippen to go off withher, and so he murdered the first one and nobody ever suspected.”

Poirot drew a long, exasperated sigh. “But his wife did not die until elevenor twelve years after he’d left this country for South Africa, and his childcould not have been concerned in the murder of her own mother at theage of five years old.”

“She could have given her mother the wrong medicine or perhaps Re-starick just said that she died. After all, we don’t know that she’s dead.”

“I do,” said Hercule Poirot. “I have made inquiries. The first Mrs. Re-starick died on the 14th April, 1963.”

“How can you know these things?”

“Because I have employed someone to check the facts. I beg of you, Ma-dame, do not jump to impossible conclusions in this rash way.”

“I thought I was being rather clever,” said Mrs. Oliver obstinately. “If Iwas making it happen in a book that’s how I would arrange it. And I’dmake the child have done it. Not meaning to, but just by her father tellingher to give her mother a drink made of pounded up box hedge.”

“Non d’un nom d’un nom!” said Poirot.

“All right,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You tell it your way.”

“Alas, I have nothing to tell. I look for a murder and I do not find one.”

“Not after Mary Restarick is ill and goes to hospital and gets better andcomes back and is ill again, and if they looked they’d probably find arsenicor something hidden away by Norma somewhere.”

“That is exactly what they did find.”

“Well, really, M. Poirot, what more do you want?”

“I want you to pay some attention to the meaning of language. That girlsaid to me the same thing as she had said to my manservant, Georges. Shedid not say on either occasion ‘I have tried to kill someone’ or ‘I have triedto kill my stepmother.’ She spoke each time of a deed that had been done,something that had already happened. Definitely happened. In the pasttense.”

“I give up,” said Mrs. Oliver. “You just won’t believe that Norma tried tokill her stepmother.”

“Yes, I believe it is perfectly possible that Norma may have tried to killher stepmother. I think it is probably what happened—it is in accord psy-chologically. With her distraught frame of mind. But it is not proved. Any-one, remember, could have hidden a preparation of arsenic amongstNorma’s things. It could even have been put there by the husband.”

“You always seem to think that husbands are the ones who kill theirwives,” said Mrs. Oliver.

“A husband is usually the most likely person,” said Hercule Poirot, “soone considers him first. It could have been the girl, Norma, or it couldhave been one of the servants, or it could have been the au pair girl, or itcould have been old Sir Roderick. Or it could have been Mrs. Restarick her-self.”

“Nonsense. Why?”

“There could be reasons. Rather far-fetched reasons, but not beyond thebounds of belief.”

“Really, Monsieur Poirot, you can’t suspect everybody.”

“Mais oui, that is just what I can do. I suspect everybody. First I suspect,then I look for reasons.”

“And what reason would that poor foreign child have?”

“It might depend on what she is doing in that house, and what her reas-ons are for coming to England and a good deal more beside.”

“You’re really crazy.”

“Or it could have been the boy David. Your Peacock.”

“Much too far-fetched. David wasn’t there. He’s never been near thehouse.”

“Oh yes he has. He was wandering about its corridors the day I wentthere.”

“But not putting poison in Norma’s room.”

“How do you know?”

“But she and that awful boy are in love with each other.”

“They appear to be so, I admit.”

“You always want to make everything difficult,” complained Mrs. Oliver.

“Not at all. Things have been made difficult for me. I need informationand there is only one person who can give me information. And she hasdisappeared.”

“You mean Norma.”

“Yes, I mean Norma.”

“But she hasn’t disappeared. We found her, you and I.”

“She walked out of that café and once more she has disappeared.”

“And you let her go?” Mrs. Oliver’s voice quivered with reproach.

“Alas!”

“You let her go? You didn’t even try to find her again?”

“I did not say I had not tried to find her.”

“But so far you have not succeeded. M. Poirot, I really am disappointedwith you.”

“There is a pattern,” said Hercule Poirot almost dreamily. “Yes, there is apattern. But because there is one factor missing, the pattern does notmake sense. You see that, don’t you?”

“No,” said Mrs. Oliver, whose head was aching.

Poirot continued to talk more to himself than his listener. If Mrs. Olivercould be said to be listening. She was highly indignant with Poirot and shethought to herself that the Restarick girl had been quite right and thatPoirot was too old! There, she herself had found the girl for him, had tele-phoned him so that he might arrive in time, had gone off herself toshadow the other half of the couple. She had left the girl to Poirot, andwhat had Poirot done—lost her! In fact she could not really see that Poirothad done anything at all of any use at any time whatever. She was disap-pointed in him. When he stopped talking she would tell him so again.

Poirot was quietly and methodically outlining what he called “the pat-tern.”

“It interlocks. Yes, it interlocks and that is why it is difficult. One thingrelates to another and then you find that it relates to something else thatseems outside the pattern. But it is not outside the pattern. And so it bringsmore people again into a ring of suspicion. Suspicion of what? There againone does not know. We have first the girl and through all the maze of con-flicting patterns I have to search the answer to the most poignant of ques-tions. Is the girl a victim, is she in danger? Or is the girl very astute? Is thegirl creating the impression she wants to create for her own purposes? Itcan be taken either way. I need something still. Some one sure pointer,and it is there somewhere. I am sure it is there somewhere.”

Mrs. Oliver was rummaging in her handbag.

“I can’t think why I can never find my aspirin when I want it,” she saidin a vexed voice.

“We have one set of relationships that hook up. The father, the daugh-ter, the stepmother. Their lives are interrelated. We have the elderlyuncle, somewhat gaga, with whom they live. We have the girl Sonia. She islinked with the uncle. She works for him. She has pretty manners, prettyways. He is delighted with her. He is, shall we say, a little soft about her.

But what is her role in the household?”

“Wants to learn English, I suppose,” said Mrs. Oliver.

“She meets one of the members of the Herzogovinian Embassy—in KewGardens. She meets him there, but she does not speak to him. She leavesbehind her a book and he takes it away—”

“What is all this?” said Mrs. Oliver.

“Has this anything to do with the other pattern? We do not as yet know.

It seems unlikely but it may not be unlikely. Had Mary Restarick unwit-tingly stumbled upon something which might be dangerous to the girl?”

“Don’t tell me all this has something to do with espionage or something.”

“I am not telling you. I am wondering.”

“You said yourself that old Sir Roderick was gaga.”

“It is not a question of whether he is gaga or not. He was a person ofsome importance during the war. Important papers passed through hishands. Important letters can have been written to him. Letters which hewas at perfect liberty to have kept once they had lost their importance.”

“You’re talking of the war and that was ages ago.”

“Quite so. But the past is not always done with, because it is ages ago.

New alliances are made. Public speeches are made repudiating this, deny-ing that, telling various lies about something else. And suppose there existstill certain letters or documents that will change the picture of a certainpersonality. I am not telling you anything, you understand. I am only mak-ing assumptions. Assumptions such as I have known to be true in the past.

It might be of the utmost importance that some letters or papers should bedestroyed, or else passed to some foreign government. Who better to un-dertake that task than a charming young lady who assists and aids an eld-erly notability to collect material for his memoirs. Everyone is writingtheir memoirs nowadays. One cannot stop them from doing so! Supposethat the stepmother gets a little something in her food on the day that thehelpful secretary plus au pair girl is doing the cooking? And suppose it isshe who arranges that suspicion should fall on Norma?”

“What a mind you have,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Tortuous, that’s what I callit. I mean, all these things can’t have happened.”

“That is just it. There are too many patterns. Which is the right one? Thegirl Norma leaves home, goes to London. She is, as you have instructedme, a third girl sharing a flat with two other girls. There again you mayhave a pattern. The two girls are strangers to her. But then what do Ilearn? Claudia Reece- Holland is private secretary to Norma Restarick’sfather. Here again we have a link. Is that mere chance? Or could there bea pattern of some kind behind it? The other girl, you tell me, acts as amodel, and is acquainted with the boy you call ‘the Peacock’ with whomNorma is in love. Again a link. More links. And what is David—the Pea-cock—doing in all this? Is he in love with Norma? It would seem so. Herparents dislike it as is only probable and natural.”

“It’s odd about Claudia Reece-Holland being Restarick’s secretary,” saidMrs. Oliver thoughtfully. “I should judge she was unusually efficient atanything she undertook. Perhaps it was she who pushed the woman out ofthe window on the seventh floor.”

Poirot turned slowly towards her.

“What are you saying?” he demanded. “What are you saying?”

“Just someone in the flats—I don’t even know her name, but she fell outof a window or threw herself out of a window on the seventh floor andkilled herself.”

Poirot’s voice rose high and stern.

“And you never told me?” he said accusingly.

Mrs. Oliver stared at him in surprise.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“What I mean? I ask you to tell me of a death. That is what I mean. Adeath. And you say there are no deaths. You can think only of an attemp-ted poisoning. And yet here is a death. A death at—what is the name ofthose mansions?”

“Borodene Mansions.”

“Yes, yes. And when did it happen?”

“This suicide? Or whatever it was? I think—yes—I think it was about aweek before I went there.”

“Perfect! How did you hear about it?”

“A milkman told me.”

“A milkman, bon Dieu!”

“He was just being chatty,” said Mrs. Oliver. “It sounded rather sad. Itwas in the daytime—very early in the morning, I think.”

“What was her name?”

“I’ve no idea. I don’t think he mentioned it.”

“Young, middle-aged, old?”

Mrs. Oliver considered. “Well, he didn’t say her exact age. Fifty-ish, Ithink, was what he said.”

“I wonder now. Anyone the three girls knew?”

“How can I tell? Nobody has said anything about it.”

“And you never thought of telling me.”

“Well, really, M. Poirot, I cannot say that it has anything to do with allthis. Well, I suppose it may have—but nobody seems to have said so, orthought of it.”

“But yes, there is the link. There is this girl, Norma, and she lives inthose flats, and one day somebody commits suicide (for that, I gather, wasthe general impression). That is, somebody throws herself or falls out of aseventh-floor high window and is killed. And then? Some days later thisgirl Norma, after having heard you talk about me at a party, comes to callupon me and she says to me that she is afraid that she may have commit-ted a murder. Do you not see? A death—and not many days later someonewho thinks she may have committed a murder. Yes, this must be themurder.”

Mrs. Oliver wanted to say “Nonsense” but she did not quite dare to doso. Nevertheless, she thought it.

“This then must be the one piece of knowledge that had not yet come tome. This ought to tie up the whole thing! Yes, yes, I do not see yet how, butit must be so. I must think. That is what I must do. I must go home andthink until slowly the pieces fit together — because this will be the keypiece that ties them all together…Yes. At last. At last I shall see my way.”

He rose to his feet and said, “Adieu, chère Madame,” and hurried fromthe room. Mrs. Oliver at last relieved her feelings.

“Nonsense,” she said to the empty room. “Absolute nonsense. I wonderif four would be too many aspirins to take?”