第三个女郎23
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Sixteen
“Today I have much to do,” Hercule Poirot announced as he rose from thebreakfast table next morning and joined Miss Lemon. “Inquiries to make.
You have made the necessary researches for me, the appointments, the ne-cessary contacts?”
“Certainly,” said Miss Lemon. “It is all here.” She handed him a smallbriefcase. Poirot took a quick glance at its contents and nodded his head.
“I can always rely on you, Miss Lemon,” he said. “C’est fantastique.”
“Really, Monsieur Poirot, I cannot see anything fantastic about it. Yougave me instructions and I carried them out. Naturally.”
“Pah, it is not so natural as that,” said Poirot. “Do I not give instructionsoften to the gas men, the electricians, the man who comes to repair things,and do they always carry out my instructions? Very, very seldom.”
He went into the hall.
“My slightly heavier overcoat, Georges. I think the autumn chill is set-ting in.”
He popped his head back in his secretary’s room. “By the way, what didyou think of that young woman who came yesterday?”
Miss Lemon, arrested as she was about to plunge her fingers on thetypewriter, said briefly, “Foreign.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Obviously foreign.”
“You do not think anything more about her than that?”
Miss Lemon considered. “I had no means of judging her capability inany way.” She added rather doubtfully, “She seemed upset about some-thing.”
“Yes. She is suspected, you see, of stealing! Not money, but papers, fromher employer.”
“Dear, dear,” said Miss Lemon. “Important papers?”
“It seems highly probable. It is equally probable though, that he has notlost anything at all.”
“Oh well,” said Miss Lemon, giving her employer a special look that shealways gave and which announced that she wished to get rid of him sothat she could get on with proper fervour with her work. “Well, I alwayssay that it’s better to know where you are when you are employingsomeone, and buy British.”
Hercule Poirot went out. His first visit was to Borodene Mansions. Hetook a taxi. Alighting at the courtyard he cast his eyes around. A uni-formed porter was standing in one of the doorways, whistling a somewhatdoleful melody. As Poirot advanced upon him, he said:
“Yes, sir?”
“I wondered,” said Poirot, “if you can tell me anything about a very sadoccurrence that took place here recently.”
“Sad occurrence?” said the porter. “Nothing that I know of.”
“A lady who threw herself, or shall we say fell from one of the upperstoreys, and was killed.”
“Oh, that. I don’t know anything about that because I’ve only been herea week, you see. Hi, Joe.”
A porter emerging from the opposite side of the block came over.
“You’d know about the lady as fell from the seventh. About a month ago,was it?”
“Not quite as much as that,” said Joe. He was an elderly, slow-speakingman. “Nasty business it was.”
“She was killed instantly?”
“Yes.”
“What was her name? It may, you understand, have been a relative ofmine,” Poirot explained. He was not a man who had any scruples aboutdeparting from the truth.
“Indeed, sir. Very sorry to hear it. She was a Mrs. Charpentier.”
“She had been in the flat some time?”
“Well, let me see now. About a year—a year and a half perhaps. No, Ithink it must have been about two years. No. 76, seventh floor.”
“That is the top floor?”
“Yes, sir. A Mrs. Charpentier.”
Poirot did not press for any other descriptive information since hemight be presumed to know such things about his own relative. Instead heasked:
“Did it cause much excitement, much questioning? What time of daywas it?”
“Five or six o’clock in the morning, I think. No warning or anything. Justdown she came. In spite of being so early we got a crowd almost at once,pushing through the railing over there. You know what people are.”
“And the police, of course.”
“Oh yes, the police came quite quickly. And a doctor and an ambulance.
All the usual,” said the porter rather in the weary tone of one who had hadpeople throwing themselves out of a seventh-storey window once or twiceevery month.
“And I suppose people came down from the flats when they heard whathad happened.”
“Oh, there wasn’t so many coming from the flats because for one thingwith the noise of traffic and everything around here most of them didn’tknow about it. Someone or other said she gave a bit of a scream as shecame down, but not so that it caused any real commotion. It was onlypeople in the street, passing by, who saw it happen. And then, of course,they craned their necks over the railings, and other people saw them cran-ing, and joined them. You know what an accident is!”
Poirot assured him he knew what an accident was.
“She lived alone?” he said, making it only half a question.
“That’s right.”
“But she had friends, I suppose, among the other flat dwellers?”
Joe shrugged and shook his head. “May have done. I couldn’t say. Neversaw her in the restaurant much with any of our lot. She had outsidefriends to dinner here sometimes. No, I wouldn’t say she was speciallypally with anybody here. You’d do best,” said Joe, getting slightly restive,“to go and have a chat with Mr. McFarlane who’s in charge here if youwant to know about her.”
“Ah, I thank you. Yes, that is what I mean to do.”
“His office is in that block over there, sir. On the ground floor. You’ll seeit marked up on the door.”
Poirot went as directed. He detached from his briefcase the top letterwith which Miss Lemon had supplied him, and which was marked “Mr.
McFarlane.” Mr. McFarlane turned out to be a good-looking, shrewd-look-ing man of about forty-five. Poirot handed him the letter. He opened andread it.
“Ah yes,” he said, “I see.”
He laid it down on the desk and looked at Poirot.
“The owners have instructed me to give you all the help I can about thesad death of Mrs. Louise Charpentier. Now what do you want to know ex-actly, Monsieur”—he glanced at the letter again—“Monsieur Poirot?”
“This is, of course, all quite confidential,” said Poirot. “Her relatives havebeen communicated with by the police and by a solicitor, but they wereanxious, as I was coming to England, that I should get a few more personalfacts, if you understand me. It is distressing when one can get only officialreports.”
“Yes, quite so. Yes, I quite understand that it must be. Well, I’ll tell youanything I can.”
“How long had she been here and how did she come to take the flat?”
“She’d been here—I can look it up exactly—about two years. There wasa vacant tenancy and I imagine that the lady who was leaving, being anacquaintance of hers, told her in advance that she was giving it up. Thatwas a Mrs. Wilder. Worked for the BBC. Had been in London for sometime, but was going to Canada. Very nice lady—I don’t think she knew thedeceased well at all. Just happened to mention she was giving up the flat.
Mrs. Charpentier liked the flat.”
“You found her a suitable tenant?” There was a very faint hesitation be-fore Mr. McFarlane answered:
“She was a satisfactory tenant, yes.”
“You need not mind telling me,” said Hercule Poirot. “There were wildparties, eh? A little too—shall we say—gay in her entertaining?”
Mr. McFarlane stopped being so discreet.
“There were a few complaints from time to time, but mostly from elderlypeople.”
Hercule Poirot made a significant gesture.
“A bit too fond of the bottle, yes, sir—and in with quite a gay lot. It madefor a bit of trouble now and again.”
“And she was fond of the gentlemen?”
“Well, I wouldn’t like to go as far as that.”
“No, no, but one understands.”
“Of course she wasn’t so young.”
“Appearances are very often deceptive. How old would you have saidshe was?”
“It’s difficult to say. Forty—forty-five.” He added, “Her health wasn’tgood, you know.”
“So I understand.”
“She drank too much—no doubt about it. And then she’d get very de-pressed. Nervous about herself. Always going to doctors, I believe, and notbelieving what they told her. Ladies do get it into their heads—especiallyabout that time of life—she thought that she had cancer. Was quite sure ofit. The doctor reassured her but she didn’t believe him. He said at the in-quest that there was nothing really wrong with her. Oh well, one hears ofthings like that every day. She got all worked up and one fine day—” henodded.
“It is very sad,” said Poirot. “Did she have any special friends among theresidents of the flats?”
“Not that I know of. This place, you see, isn’t what I call the matey kind.
They’re mostly people in business, in jobs.”
“I was thinking possibly of Miss Claudia Reece-Holland. I wondered ifthey had known each other.”
“Miss Reece-Holland? No, I don’t think so. Oh I mean they were prob-ably acquaintances, talked when they went up in the lift together, that sortof thing. But I don’t think there was much social contact of any kind. Yousee, they would be in a different generation. I mean—” Mr. McFarlaneseemed a little flustered. Poirot wondered why.
He said, “One of the other girls who share Miss Holland’s flat knew Mrs.
Charpentier, I believe—Miss Norma Restarick.”
“Did she? I wouldn’t know — she’s only come here quite recently, Ihardly know her by sight. Rather a frightened-looking young lady. Notlong out of school, I’d say.” He added, “Is there anything more I can do foryou, sir?”
“No, thank you. You’ve been most kind. I wonder if possibly I could seethe flat. Just in order to be able to say—” Poirot paused, not particularisingwhat he wanted to be able to say.
“Well, now, let me see. A Mr. Travers has got it now. He’s in the City allday. Yes, come up with me if you like, sir.”
They went up to the seventh floor. As Mr. McFarlane introduced his keyone of the numbers fell from the door and narrowly avoided Poirot’s pat-ent leather shoe. He hopped nimbly and then bent to pick it up. He re-placed the spike which fixed it on the door very carefully.
“These numbers are loose,” he said.
“I’m very sorry, sir. I’ll make a note of it. Yes, they wear loose from timeto time. Well, here we are.”
Poirot went into the living room. At the moment it had little personality.
The walls were papered with a paper resembling grained wood. It hadconventional comfortable furniture, the only personal touch was a televi-sion set and a certain number of books.
“All the flats are partly furnished, you see,” said Mr. McFarlane. “Thetenants don’t need to bring anything of their own, unless they want to. Wecater very largely for people who come and go.”
“And the decorations are all the same?”
“Not entirely. People seem to like this raw wood effect. Good back-ground for pictures. The only things that are different are on the one wallfacing the door. We have a whole set of frescoes which people can choosefrom.
“We have a set of ten,” said Mr. McFarlane with some pride. “There isthe Japanese one—very artistic, don’t you think?—and there is an Englishgarden one; a very striking one of birds; one of trees, a Harlequin one, arather interesting abstract effect—lines and cubes, in vividly contrastingcolours, that sort of thing. They’re all designs by good artists. Our fur-niture is all the same. Two choices of colours, or of course people can addwhat they like of their own. But they don’t usually bother.”
“Most of them are not, as you might say, homemakers,” Poirot sugges-ted.
“No, rather the bird of passage type, or busy people who want solid com-fort, good plumbing and all that but aren’t particularly interested in decor-ation, though we’ve had one or two of the do-it-yourself type, which isn’treally satisfactory from our point of view. We’ve had to put a clause in thelease saying they’ve got to put things back as they found them—or pay forthat being done.”
They seemed to be getting rather far away from the subject of Mrs.
Charpentier’s death. Poirot approached the window.
“It was from here?” he murmured delicately.
“Yes. That’s the window. The left-hand one. It has a balcony.”
Poirot looked out down below.
“Seven floors,” he said. “A long way.”
“Yes, death was instantaneous, I am glad to say. Of course, it might havebeen an accident.”
Poirot shook his head.
“You cannot seriously suggest that, Mr. McFarlane. It must have been de-liberate.”
“Well, one always likes to suggest an easier possibility. She wasn’t ahappy woman, I’m afraid.”
“Thank you,” said Poirot, “for your great courtesy. I shall be able to giveher relations in France a very clear picture.”
His own picture of what had occurred was not as clear as he would haveliked. So far there had been nothing to support his theory that the death ofLouise Charpentier had been important. He repeated the Christian namethoughtfully. Louise…Why had the name Louise some haunting memoryabout it? He shook his head. He thanked Mr. McFarlane and left.
 

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