III

I don’t know when it was that I noticed that Stephen Norton had some-thing on his mind. He had been very silent after the inquest, and after thatand the funeral were over he still walked about, his eyes on the groundand his forehead puckered. He had a habit of running his hands throughhis short grey hair until it stuck up on end like Struwwelpeter. It was com-ical but quite unconscious and denoted some perplexity of his mind. Hereturned absent-minded answers when you spoke to him, and it did at lastdawn upon me that he was definitely worried about something. I askedhim tentatively if he had had bad news of any kind, which he promptlynegatived. That closed the subject for the time being.

But a little later he seemed to be trying to get an opinion from me onsome matter in a clumsy, roundabout way.

Stammering a little, as he always did when he was serious about a thing,he embarked on an involved story centring about a point of ethics.

‘You know, Hastings, it should be awfully simple to say when a thing’sright or wrong – but really when it comes to it, it isn’t quite such plain sail-ing. I mean, one may come across something – the kind of thing, you see,that isn’t meant for you – it’s all a kind of accident, and it’s the sort of thingyou couldn’t take advantage of, and yet it might be most frightfully im-portant. Do you see what I mean?’

‘Not very well, I’m afraid,’ I confessed.

Norton’s brow furrowed again. He ran his hands up through his hairagain so that it stood upright in its usual comical manner.

‘It’s so hard to explain. What I mean is, suppose you just happened tosee something in a private letter – one opened by mistake, that sort ofthing – a letter meant for someone else and you began reading it becauseyou thought it was written to you and so you actually read something youweren’t meant to before you realized. That could happen, you know.’

‘Oh yes, of course it could.’

‘Well, I mean, what would one do?’

‘Well –’ I gave my mind to the problem. ‘I suppose you’d go to the personand say, “I’m awfully sorry but I opened this by mistake.”’

Norton sighed. He said it wasn’t quite so simple as that.

‘You see, you might have read something rather embarrassing, Hast-ings.’

‘That would embarrass the other person, you mean? I suppose you’dhave to pretend you hadn’t actually read anything – that you’d discoveredyour mistake in time.’

‘Yes.’ Norton said it after a moment’s pause, and he did not seem to feelthat he had yet arrived at a satisfactory solution.

He said rather wistfully: ‘I wish I did know what I ought to do.’

I said that I couldn’t see that there was anything else he could do.

Norton said, the perplexed frown still on his forehead: ‘You see, Hast-ings, there’s rather more to it than that. Supposing that what you read was– well, rather important, to someone else again, I mean.’

I lost patience. ‘Really, Norton, I don’t see what you do mean. You can’tgo about reading other people’s private letters, can you?’

‘No, no, of course not. I didn’t mean that. And anyway, it wasn’t a letterat all. I only said that to try and explain the sort of thing. Naturally any-thing you saw or heard or read – by accident – you’d keep to yourself, un-less –’

‘Unless what?’

Norton said slowly: ‘Unless it was something you ought to speak about.’

I looked at him with suddenly awakened interest. He went on: ‘Lookhere, think of it this way, supposing you saw something through a – a key-hole –’

Keyholes made me think of Poirot! Norton was stumbling on:

‘What I mean is, you’d got a perfectly good reason for looking throughthe keyhole – the key might have stuck and you just looked to see if it wasclear – or – or some quite good reason – and you never for one minute ex-pected to see what you did see …’

For a moment or two I lost thread of his stumbling sentences, for en-lightenment had come to me. I remembered a day on a grassy knoll andNorton swinging up his glasses to see a speckled woodpecker. I re-membered his immediate distress and embarrassment, his endeavours toprevent me from looking through the glasses in my turn. At the moment Ihad leaped to the conclusion that what he had seen was something to dowith me – in fact that it was Allerton and Judith. But supposing that thatwas not the case? That he had seen something quite different? I had as-sumed that it was something to do with Allerton and Judith because I wasso obsessed by them at that time that I could think of nothing else.

I said abruptly: ‘Was it something you saw through those glasses ofyours?’

Norton was both startled and relieved. ‘I say, Hastings, how did youguess?’

‘It was that day when you and I and Elizabeth Cole were up on thatknoll, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘And you didn’t want me to see?’

‘No. It wasn’t – well, I mean it wasn’t meant for any of us to see.’

‘What was it?’

Norton frowned again. ‘That’s just it. Ought I to say? I mean it was –well, it was spying. I saw something I wasn’t meant to see. I wasn’t lookingfor it – there really was a speckled woodpecker – a lovely fellow, and thenI saw the other thing.’

He stopped. I was curious, intensely curious, yet I respected his scruples.

I asked: ‘Was it – something that mattered?’

He said slowly: ‘It might matter. That’s just it. I don’t know.’

I asked then: ‘Has it something to do with Mrs Franklin’s death?’

He started. ‘It’s queer you should say that.’

‘Then it has?’

‘No – no, not directly. But it might have.’ He said slowly: ‘It would throwa different light on certain things. It would mean that – Oh, damn it all, Idon’t know what to do!’

I was in a dilemma. I was agog with curiosity, yet I felt that Norton wasvery reluctant to say what he had seen. I could understand that. I shouldhave felt the same myself. It is always unpleasant to come into possessionof a piece of information that has been acquired in what the outside worldwould consider a dubious manner.

Then an idea struck me.

‘Why not consult Poirot?’

‘Poirot?’ Norton seemed a little doubtful.

‘Yes, ask his advice.’

‘Well,’ said Norton slowly, ‘it’s an idea. Only, of course, he’s a foreigner–’ he stopped, rather embarrassed.

I knew what he meant. Poirot’s scathing remarks on the subject of ‘play-ing the game’ were only too familiar to me. I only wondered that Poirothad never thought of taking to bird-glasses himself ! He would have doneif he had thought of it.

‘He’d respect your confidence,’ I urged. ‘And you needn’t act upon hisadvice if you don’t like it.’

‘That’s true,’ said Norton, his brow clearing. ‘You know, Hastings, I thinkthat’s just what I will do.’