Third Girl hp-37 Read online

  Nevertheless, she thought it.

  "This then must be the one piece of knowledge that had not yet come to me.

  This ought to tie up the whole thing!

  Yes, yes, I do not see yet how, but it must be so. I must think. That is what I must do.

  I must go home and think until slowly the pieces fit together - because this will be the key piece that ties them all together… Yes. At last. At last I shall see my way." He rose to his feet and said "Adieu, chere Madame," and hurried from the room. Mrs. Oliver at last relieved her feelings.

  "Nonsense," she said to the empty room. "Absolute nonsense. I wonder if four would be too many aspirins to take?"

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hercule Poirot's elbow was a tisane prepared for him by George. He sipped at it and thought. He thought in a certain way peculiar to himself. It was the technique of a man who selected thoughts as one might select pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In due course they would be reassembled together so as to make a clear and coherent picture. At the moment the important thing was the selection, the separation. He sipped his tisane, put down the cup, rested his hands on the arms of his chair and let various pieces of his puzzle come one by one into his mind. Once he recognised them all, he would select.

  Pieces of shy, pieces of green bank, perhaps striped pieces like those of a tiger.

  The painfulness of his own feet in patent-leather shoes. He started there.

  Walking along a road set on this path by his good friend, Mrs. Oliver. A stepmother.

  He saw himself with his hand on a gate.

  A woman who turned, a woman bending her head cutting out the weak growth of a rose, turning and looking at him? What was there for him there? Nothing. A golden head, a golden head bright as a cornfield, with twists and loops of hair slightly reminiscent of Mrs. Oliver's own in shape. He smiled a little. But Mary Restarick's hair was more tidily arranged than Mrs. Oliver's ever was. A golden frame for her face that seemed just a little too large for her. He remembered that old Sir Roderick had said that she had to wear a wig, because of an illness. Sad for so young a woman. There was, when he came to think of it, something unusually heavy about her head. Far too static, too perfectly arranged. He considered Mary Restarick's wig - if it was a wig - for he was by no means sure that he could depend on Sir Roderick. He examined the possibilities of the wig in case they should be of significance. He reviewed the conversation they had had. Had they said anything important? He thought not. He remembered the room into which they had gone. A characterless room recently inhabited in someone else's house. Two pictures on the wall, the picture of a woman in a dove-grey dress. Thin mouth, lips set closely together. Hair that was greyish brown. The first Mrs. Restarick.

  She looked as though she might have been older than her husband. His picture was on the opposite wall, facing her. Good portraits, both of them. Lansberger had been a good portrait painter. His mind dwelt on the portrait of the husband. He had not seen it so well that first day, as he had later in Restarick's office.

  Andrew Restarick and Claudia ReeceHolland.

  Was there anything there? Was their association more than a merely secretarial one? It need not be. Here was a man who had come back to this country after year of absence, who had no near friends or relatives, who was perplexed and troubled over his daughter's character and conduct. It was probably natural enough that he should turn to his recently acquired eminently competent secretary and ask her to suggest somewhere for his daughter to live in London. It would be a favour on her part to provide that accommodation since she was looking for a Third Girl. Third girl… The phrase that he had acquired from Mrs. Oliver always seemed to be coming to his mind. As though it had a second significance which for some reason he could not see.

  His manservant, George, entered the room, closing the door discreetly behind him.

  "A young lady is here, sir. The young lady who came the other day." The words came too aptly with what Poirot was thinking. He sat up in a startled fashion.

  "The young lady who came at breakfast time?"

  "Oh no, sir. I mean the young lady who came with Sir Roderick Horsefield."

  "Ah, indeed." Poirot raised his eyebrows. "Bring her in. Where is she?"

  "I showed her into Miss Lemon's room, sir."

  "Ah. Yes, bring her in." Sonia did not wait for George to announce her. She came into the room ahead of him with a quick and rather aggressive step.

  "It has been difficult for me to get away, but I have come to tell you that I did not take those papers. I did not steal anything.

  You understand?"

  "Has anybody said that you had?" Poirot asked. "Sit down. Mademoiselle."

  "I do not want to sit down. I have very little time. I just came to tell you that it is absolutely untrue. I am very honest and I do what I am told."

  "I take your point. I have already taken it. Your statement is that you have not removed any papers, information, letters, documents of any kind from Sir Roderick Horsefield's house? That is so, is it not?"

  "Yes, and I've come to tell you it is so.

  He believes me. He knows that I would not do such a thing."

  "Very well then. That is a statement and I note it."

  "Do you think you are going to find those papers?"

  "I have other enquiries in hand," said Poirot. "Sir Roderick's papers will have to take their turn."

  "He is worried. He is very worried.

  There is something that I cannot say to him. I will say it to you. He loses things.

  Things are not put away where he thinks they are. He puts them in - how do you say it - in funny places. Oh I know.

  You suspect me. Everyone suspects me because I am foreign. Because I come from a foreign country and so they think - they think I steal secret papers like in one of your silly English spy stories. I am not like that. I am an intellectual."

  "Aha," said Poirot. "It is always nice to know." He added: "Is there anything else you wish to tell me?"

  "Why should I?"

  "One never knows."

  "What are these other cases you speak of?"

  "Ah, I do not want to detain you. It is your day out, perhaps."

  "Yes. I have one day a week when I can do what I like. I can come to London.

  I can go to the British Museum."

  "Ah yes and to the Victoria and Albert also, no doubt."

  "That is so."

  "And to the National Gallery and see the pictures. And on a fine day you can go to Kensington Gardens, or perhaps as far as Kew Gardens." She stiffened… She shot him an angry questioning glance.

  "Why do you say Kew Gardens?"

  "Because there are some very fine plants and shrubs and trees there. Ah! you should not miss Kew Gardens. The admission fee is very small. A penny I think, or twopence. And for that you can go and see tropical trees, or you can sit on a seat and read a book." He smiled at her disarmingly and was interested to notice that her uneasiness was increased. "But I must not detain you. Mademoiselle. You have perhaps friends to visit at one of the Embassies, maybe."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "No particular reason. You are, as you say, a foreigner and it is quite possible you may have friends connected with your own Embassy here."

  "Someone has told you things. Someone has made accusations against me! I tell you he is a silly old man who mislays things.

  That is all! And he knows nothing of importance. He has no secret papers or documents. He never has had."

  "Ah, but you are not quite thinking of what you are saying. Time passes, you know. He was once an important man who did know important secrets."

  "You are trying to frighten me."

  "No, no. I am not being so melodramatic as that."

  "Mrs. Restarick. It is Mrs. Restarick who has been telling you things. She does not like me."

  "She has not said so to me."

  "Well, I do not like her. She is the kind of woman I mistrust. I think she has secrets."

  "In
deed?"

  "Yes, I think she has secrets from her husband. I think she goes up to London or to other places to meet other men. To meet at any rate one other man."

  "Indeed," said Poirot, "that is very interesting. You think she goes to meet another man?"

  "Yes, I do. She goes up to London very often and I do not think she always tells her husband, or she says it is shopping or things she has to buy. All those sort of things. He is busy in the office and he does not think of why his wife comes up. She is more in London than she is in the country.

  And yet she pretends to like gardening so much."

  "You have no idea who this man is whom she meets?"

  "How should I know? I do not follow her. Mr. Restarick is not a suspicious man.

  He believes what his wife tells him. He thinks perhaps about business all the time.

  And, too, I think he is worried about his daughter."

  "Yes," said Poirot, "he is certainly worried about his daughter. How much do you know about the daughter? How well do you know her?"

  "I do not know her very well. If you ask what I think-well, I tell you! I think she is mad."

  "You think she is mad? Why?"

  "She says odd things sometimes. She sees things that are not there."

  "Sees things that are not there?"

  "People that are not there. Sometimes she is very excited and other times she seems as though she is in a dream. You speak to her and she does not hear what you say to her. She does not answer.

  I think there are people who she would like to have dead."

  "You mean Mrs. Restarick?"

  "And her father. She looks at him as though she hates him."

  "Because they are both trying to prevent her marrying a young man of her choice?"

  "Yes. They do not want that to happen.

  They are quite right, of course, but it makes her angry. Some day," added Sonia, nodding her head cheerfully, "I think she will kill herself. I hope she will do nothing so foolish, but that is the thing one does when one is much in love." She shrugged her shoulders. "Well - I go now."

  "Just tell me one thing. Does Mrs. Restarick wear a wig?"

  "A wig? How should I know?" she considered for a moment. "She might, yes," she admitted. "It is useful for travelling. Also it is fashionable. I wear a wig myself sometimes. A green one! Or did." She added again, "I go now," and went.

  Chapter Sixteen

  "TODAY I have much to do," Hercule Poirot announced as he rose from the breakfast table next morning and joined Miss Lemon. "Enquiries to make. You have made the necessary researches for me, the appointments, the necessary contacts?"

  "Certainly," said Miss Lemon. "It is all here," She handed him a small briefcase.

  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. You gave me instructions and I carried them out, naturally."

  "Pah, it is not so natural as that," said Poirot. "Do I not give instructions often 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 setting in." He popped his head back in his secretary's room. "By the way, what did you think of that young woman who came yesterday?" Miss Lemon, arrested as she was about to plunge her fingers on the typewriter, 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 in any way." She added rather doubtfully, "She seemed upset about something."

  "Yes. She is suspected, you see, of stealing! Not money, but papers, from her employer."

  "Dear, dear," said Miss Lemon. "Important papers?"

  "It seems highly probable. It is equally probable though, that he has not lost anything at all."

  "Oh well," said Miss Lemon, giving her employer a special look that she always gave and which announced that she wished to get rid of him so that she could get on with proper fervour with her work. "Well, I always say that it's better to know where you are when you are employing someone, and buy British." Hercule Poirot went out. His first visit was to Borodene Mansions. He took a taxi.

  Alighting at the courtyard he cast his eyes around. A uniformed porter was standing in one of the doorways, whistling a somewhat doleful melody. As Poirot advanced upon him, he said: "Yes, sir?"

  "I wondered," said Poirot, "if you can tell me anything about a very sad occurrence 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 upper stories, and was killed."

  "Oh that. I don't know anything about that because I've only been here a 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-speaking man.

  "Nasty business it was."

  "She was killed instantly?"

  "Yes."

  "What was her name? It may, you understand, have been a relative of mine," Poirot explained. He was not a man who had any scruples about departing 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, I think 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 he might be presumed to know such things about his own relative. Instead he asked: "Did it cause much excitement, much questioning? What time of day was it?"

  "Five or six o'clock in the morning, I think. No warning or anything. Just down 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 had people throwing themselves out of a seventh-storey window once or twice every month.

  "And I suppose people came down from the flats when they heard what had happened."

  "Oh, there wasn't so many coming from the flats because for one thing with the noise of traffic and everything around here most of them didn't know about it.

  Someone or other said she gave a bit of a scream as she came down, but not so that it caused any real commotion. It was only people 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 craning, 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. Never saw her in the restaurant much with any of our lot.

  She had outside friends to dinner here sometimes. No, I wouldn't say she was specially pally 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 you want 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 see it marked up on the door." Poirot went as directed. He detached from his brief-case the top letter with which Miss
Lemon had supplied him, and which was marked "Mr. McFarlane".

  Mr. McFarlane turned out to be a goodlooking, shrewd-looking man of about forty-five. Poirot handed him the letter.

  He opened and read 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 the sad death of Mrs. Louise Charpentier. Now what do you want to know exactly. Monsieur" - he glanced at the letter again - "Monsieur Poirot?"

  "This is, of course, all quite confidential," said Poirot. "Her relatives have been communicated with by the police and by a solicitor, but they were anxious as I was coming to England, that I should get a few more personal facts, if you understand me. It is distressing when one can get only official reports."

  "Yes, quite so. Yes, I quite understand that it must be. Well, I'll tell you anything 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 was a vacant tenancy and I imagine that the lady who was leaving, being an acquaintance of hers, told her in advance that she was giving it up. That was a Mrs. Wilder Worked for the B.B.C. Had been in London for some time, but was going to Canada. Very nice lady - I don't think she knew the deceased 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 before Mr. McFarlane answered: "She was a satisfactory tenant, yes."

  "You need not mind telling me," said Hercule Poirot. "There were wild parties, 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 elderly people." Hercule Poirot made a significant gesture.

  "A bit too fond of the bottle, yes, sir - and in with quite a gay lot. It made for a bit of trouble now and again."