Third Girl hp-37 Read online

  "Monsieur Hercule Poirot," said Claudia ReeceHolland.

  She went out again as Hercule Poirot advanced towards the desk. Restarick rose.

  "Monsieur Restarick? I am Hercule Poirot, at your service."

  "Oh yes. My wife mentioned that you'd called upon us or rather called upon my uncle. What can I do for you?"

  "I have presented myself in answer to your letter."

  "What letter? I did not write to you, M. Poirot." Poirot stared at him. Then he drew from his pocket a letter, unfolded it, glanced at it and handed it across the desk with a bow.

  "See for yourself, Monsieur." Restarick stared at it. It was typewritten on his own office stationery. His signature was written in ink at the bottom.

  Dear Monsieur Poirot, I should be very glad if you could call upon me at the above address at your earliest convenience. I understand from what my wife tells me and also from what I have learned by making various enquiries in London, that you are a man to be trusted when you agree to accept a mission that demands discretion.

  Yours truly, Andrew Restarick.

  He said sharply: "When did you receive this?"

  "This morning. I had no matters of moment on my hands so I came along here."

  "This is an extraordinary thing, M. Poirot. That letter was not written by me."

  "Not written by you?"

  "No. My signature is quite different - look for yourself." He cast out a hand as though looking for some example of his handwriting and without conscious thought turned the cheque book on which he had just written his signature, so that Poirot could see it. "You see? The signature on the letter is not in the least like mine."

  "But that is extraordinary," said Poirot.

  "Absolutely extraordinary. Who could have written this letter?"

  "That's just what I'm asking myself."

  "It could not - excuse me - have been your wife?"

  "No, no. Mary would never do a thing like that. And anyway why should she sign it with my name? Oh no, she would have told me if she'd done so, prepared me for your visit."

  "Then you have no idea why anyone might have sent this letter?"

  "No, indeed."

  "Have you no knowledge, Mr. Restarick, as to what the matter might be on which in this letter you apparently want to engage me?"

  "How could I have an idea?"

  "Excuse me," said Poirot, "you have not yet completely read this letter. You will notice at the bottom of the first page after the signature, there is a small p.t.o." Restarick turned the letter over. At the top of the next page the typewriting continued.

  The matter on which I wish to consult you concerns my daughter', Norma.

  Restarick's manner changed. His face darkened.

  "So that's it! But who could know - who could possibly meddle in this matter.

  Who knows about it?"

  "Could it be a way of urging you to consult me? Some well-meaning friend?

  You have really no idea who the writer may have been?"

  "I've no idea whatever."

  "And you are not in trouble over a daughter of yours - a daughter named Norma?" Restarick said slowly: "I have a daughter named Norma. My only daughter." His voice changed slightly as he said the last words.

  "And she is in trouble, difficulty of some kind?"

  "Not that I know of." But he hesitated slightly as he spoke the words.

  Poirot leaned forward.

  "I don't think that is exactly right, Mr. Restarick. I think there is some trouble or difficulty concerning your daughter."

  "Why should you think that? Has someone spoken to you on the subject?"

  "I was going entirely by your intonation, Monsieur. Many people," added Hercule Poirot, "are in trouble over daughters at the present date. They have a genius, young ladies, for getting into various kinds of trouble and difficulty. It is possible that the same obtains here." Restarick was silent for some few moments, drumming with his fingers on the desk.

  "Yes, I am worried about Norma," he said at last. "She is a difficult girl. Neurotic, inclined to be hysterical. I - unfortunately I don't know her very well."

  "Trouble, no doubt, over a young man?"

  "In a way, yes, but that is not entirely what is worrying me. I think -" he looked appraisingly at Poirot. "Am I to take it that you are a man of discretion?"

  "I should be very little good in my profession if I were not."

  "It is a case, you see, of wanting my daughter found."

  "Ah?"

  "She came home last weekend as she usually does to our house in the country.

  She went back on Sunday night ostensibly to the flat which she occupies in common with two other girls, but I now find that she did not go there. She must have gone - somewhere else."

  "In fact, she has disappeared?"

  "It sounds too much of a melodramatic statement, but it does amount to that. I expect there's a perfectly natural explanation, but-well, I suppose any father would be worried. She hasn't rung up, you see, or given any explanation to the girls with whom she shares her flat."

  "They too are worried?"

  "No, I should not say so. I think - well, I think they take such things easily enough.

  Girls are very independent. More so than when I left England fifteen years ago."

  "What about the young man of whom you say you do not approve? Can she have gone away with him?"

  "I devoutly hope not. It's possible, but I don't - my wife doesn't think so. You saw him, I believe, the day you came to our house to call on my uncle - "

  "Ah yes, I think I know the young man of whom you speak. A very handsome young man but not, if I may say so, a man of whom a father would approve. I noticed that your wife was not pleased, either."

  "My wife is quite certain that he came to the house that day hoping to escape observation."

  "He knows, perhaps, that he is not welcome there?"

  "He knows all right," said Restarick grimly.

  "Do you not then think that it is only too likely your daughter may have joined him?"

  "I don't know what to think. I didn't - at first."

  "You have been to the police."

  "No."

  "In the case of anyone who is missing, it is usually much better to go to the police.

  They too are discreet and they have many means at their disposal which persons like myself have not."

  "I don't want to go to the police. It's my daughter., man, you understand? My daughter. If she's chosen to - to go away for a short time and not let us know, well, that's up to her. There's no reason to believe that she's in any danger or anything like that. I - I just want to know for my own satisfaction where she is."

  "Is it possible, Mr. Restarick - I hope I am not unduly presuming, that that is not the only thing that is worrying you about your daughter?"

  "Why should you think there was anything else?"

  "Because the mere fact that a girl is absent for a few days without telling her parents, or the friends with whom she is living, where she is going, is not particularly unusual nowadays. It is that, taken in conjunction with something else, I think, which has caused you this alarm."

  "Well, perhaps you're right. It's -" he looked doubtfully at Poirot. "It is very hard to speak of these things to strangers."

  "Not really," said Poirot. "It is infinitely easier to speak to strangers of such things than it would be to speak of them to friends or acquaintances. Surely you must agree to that?"

  "Perhaps. Perhaps. I can see what you mean. Well, I will admit I am upset about my girl. You see she - she's not quite like other girls and there's been something already that has definitely worried me- worried us both." Poirot said: "Your daughter, perhaps, is at that difficult age of young girlhood, an emotional adolescence when, quite frankly, they are capable of performing actions for which they are hardly to be held responsible. Do not take it amiss if I venture to make a surmise. Your daughter perhaps resents having a stepmother?"

  "That is unfortunately true.
And yet she has no reason to do so, M. Poirot. It is not as though my first wife and I had recently parted. The parting took place many years ago." He paused and then said, "I might as well speak frankly to you. After all, there has been no concealment about the matter.

  My first wife and I drifted apart. I need not mince matters. I had met someone else, someone with whom I was quite infatuated.

  I left England and went to South Africa with the other woman. My wife did not approve of divorce and I did not ask her for one. I made suitable financial provision for my wife and for the child - she was only five years old at the time - " He paused and then went on: "Looking back, I can see that I had been dissatisfied with life for some time. I'd been yearning to travel. At that period of my life I hated being tied down to an office desk. My brother reproached me several times with not taking more interest in the family business, now that I had come in with him. He said that I was not pulling my weight. But I didn't want that sort of life.

  I was restless. I wanted an adventurous life. I wanted to see the world and wild places…" He broke off abruptly.

  "Anyway - you don't want to hear the story of my life. I went to South Africa and Louise went with me. It wasn't a success.

  I'll admit that straight away. I was in love with her but we quarrelled incessantly. She hated life in South Africa. She wanted to get back to London and Paris - all the sophisticated places. We parted only about a year after we arrived there." He sighed.

  "Perhaps I ought to have gone back then, back to the tame life that I disliked the idea of so much. But I didn't. I don't know whether my wife would have had me back or not. Probably she would have considered it her duty to do so. She was a great woman for doing her duty." Poirot noted the slight bitterness that ran through that sentence.

  "But I ought to have thought more about Norma, I suppose. Well, there it was.

  The child was safely with her mother.

  Financial arrangements had been made. I wrote to her occasionally and sent her presents, but I never once thought of going back to England and seeing her. That was not entirely blameworthy on my part. I had adopted a different way of life and I thought it would be merely unsettling for the child to have a father who came and went, and perhaps disturbed her own peace of mind. Anyway, let's say I thought I was acting for the best." Restarick's words came fast now. It was as though he was feeling a definite solace in being able to pour out his story to a sympathetic listener. It was a reaction that Poirot had often noticed before and he encouraged it.

  "You never wished to come home on your own account?" Restarick shook his head very definitely.

  "No. You see, I was living the kind of life I liked, the kind of life I was meant for. I went from South Africa to East Africa. I was doing very well financially, everything I touched seemed to prosper, projects with which I was associated, occasionally with other people, sometimes on my own, all went well. I used to go off into the bush and trek. That was the life I'd always wanted. I am by nature an out-of-door man.

  Perhaps that's why when I was married to my first wife I felt trapped, held down. No, I enjoyed my freedom and I'd no wish to go back to the conventional type of life that I'd led here."

  "But you did come back in the end?" Restarick sighed. "Yes. I did come back. Ah well, one grows old, I suppose.

  Also, another man and I had made a very good strike. We'd secured a concession which might have very important consequences. It would need negotiation in London. There I could have depended on my brother to act, but my brother died.

  I was still a partner in the firm. I could return if I chose and see to things myself.

  It was the first time I had thought of doing so. Of returning, I mean, to City life."

  "Perhaps your wife - your second wife - "

  "Yes, you may have something there. I had been married to Mary just a month or two when my brother died. Mary was born in South Africa but she had been to England several times and she liked the life there. She liked particularly the idea of having an English garden!

  "And I? Well, for the first time perhaps I felt I would like life in England, too. And I thought of Norma as well. Her mother had died two years earlier. I talked to Mary about it all, and she was quite willing to help me make a home for my daughter.

  The prospects all seemed good and so - " he smiled, " - and so I came home." Poirot looked at the portrait that hung behind Restarick's head. It was in a better light here than it had been at the house in the country. It showed very plainly the man who was sitting at the desk, there were the distinctive features, the obstinacy of the chin, the quizzical eyebrows, the poise of the head, but the portrait had one thing that the man sitting in the chair beneath it lacked. Youth!

  Another thought occurred to Poirot.

  Why had Andrew Restarick moved the portrait from the country to his London office? The two portraits of him and his wife had been companion portraits done at the same time and by that particular fashionable artist of the day whose speciality was portrait painting. It would have been more natural, Poirot thought, to have left them together, as they had been meant to be originally. But Restarick had moved one portrait, his own, to his office. Was it a kind of vanity on his part-a wish to display himself as a City man, as someone important to the City? Yet he was a man who had spent his time in wild places, who professed to prefer wild places. Or did he perhaps do it in order to keep before his mind himself in his City personality. Did he feel the need of reinforcement.

  "Or, of course," thought Poirot, "it could be simple vanity!"

  "Even I myself," said Poirot to himself, in an unusual fit of modesty, "even I myself am capable of vanity on occasions." The short silence, of which both men had seemed unaware, was broken. Restarick spoke apologetically.

  "You must forgive me, M. Poirot. I seem to have been boring you with the story of my life."

  "There is nothing to excuse, Mr. Restarick.

  You have been talking really only of your life as it may have affected that of your daughter. You are much disquieted about your daughter. But I do not think that you have yet told me the real reason.

  You want her found, you say?"

  "Yes, I want her found."

  "You want her found, yes, but do you want her found by me? Ah, do not hesitate. La politesse - it is very necessary in life, but it is not necessary here. Listen. I tell you, if you want your daughter found I advise you, I - Hercule Poirot - to go to the police for they have the facilities. And from my own knowledge they can be discreet."

  "I won't go to the police unless - well, unless I get very desperate."

  "You would rather go to a private agent?"

  "Yes. But you see, I don't know anything about private agents. I don't know who - who can be trusted. I don't know who - "

  "And what do you know about me?"

  "I do know something about you. I know, for instance, that you held a responsible position in Intelligence during the war, since, in fact, my own uncle vouches for you. That is an admitted fact." The faintly cynical expression on Poirot's face was not perceived by Restarick.

  The admitted fact was, as Poirot was well aware, a complete illusion - although Restarick must have known how undependable Sir Roderick was in the matter of memory and eyesight - he had swallowed Poirot's own account of himself, hook, line and sinker. Poirot did not disillusion him. It merely confirmed him in his long-held belief that you should never believe anything anyone said without first checking it. Suspect everybody, had been for many years, if not his whole life, one of his first axioms.

  "Let me reassure you," said Poirot. "I have been throughout my career exceptionally successful. I have been indeed in many ways unequalled." Restarick looked less reassured by this than he might have been! Indeed, to an Englishman, a man who praised himself in such terms aroused some misgivings.

  He said: "What do you feel yourself, M. Poirot? Have you confidence that you can find my daughter?"

  "Probably not as quickly as the police could do, but yes. I sh
all find her."

  "And - and if you do - "

  "But if you wish me to find her, Mr. Restarick, you must tell me all the circumstances."

  "But I have told them to you. The time, the place, where she ought to be. I can give you a list of her friends…" Poirot was making some violent shakings of his head. "No, no, I suggest you tell me the truth."

  "Do you suggest I haven't told you the truth?"

  "You have not told me all of it. Of that I am assured. What are you afraid of? What are the unknown facts - the facts that I have to know if I am to have success. Your daughter dislikes her stepmother. That is plain. There is nothing strange about that.

  It is a very natural reaction. You must remember that she may have secretly idealised you for many many years. That is quite possible in the case of a broken marriage where a child has had a severe blow in her affections. Yes, yes, I know what I am talking about. You say a child forgets. That is true. Your daughter could have forgotten you in the sense that when she saw you again she might not remember your face or your voice. She would make her own image of you. You went away.

  She wanted you to come back. Her mother, no doubt, discouraged her from talking about you, and therefore she thought about you perhaps all the more. You mattered to her all the more. And because she could not talk about you to her own mother she had what is a very natural reaction with a child - the blaming of the parent who remains for the absence of the parent who has gone. She said to herself something in the nature of 'Father was fond of me. It's Mother he didn't like', and from that was born a kind of idealisation, a kind of secret liaison between you and her. What had happened was not her father's fault. She will not believe it!

  "Oh yes, that often happens, I assure you. I know something of the psychology.

  So when she learns that you are coming home, that you and she will be reunited, many memories that she has pushed aside and not thought of for years return. Her father is coming back! He and she will be happy together! She hardly realises the stepmother, perhaps, until she sees her.

  And then she is violently jealous. It is most natural, I assure you. She is violently jealous partly because your wife is a goodlooking woman, sophisticated, and well poised, which is a thing girls often resent because they frequently lack confidence in themselves. She herself is possibly gauche with perhaps an inferiority complex. So when she sees her competent and goodlooking stepmother, quite possibly she hates her; but hates her as an adolescent girl who is still half a child might do."