Third Girl hp-37 Read online

  He saw at once the girl who had come to visit him at the breakfast table. She was sitting by herself at a table against the wall.

  She was smoking a cigarette and staring in front of her. She seemed to be lost in thought. No, Poirot thought, hardly that.

  There did not seem to be any thought there. She was lost in a kind of oblivion.

  She was somewhere else.

  He crossed the room quietly and sat down in the chair opposite her. She looked up then, and he was at least gratified to see that he was recognised.

  "So we meet again, Mademoiselle," he said pleasantly. "I see you recognise me."

  "Yes. Yes, I do."

  "It is always gratifying to be recognised by a young lady one has only met once and for a very short time." She continued to look at him without speaking.

  "And how did you know me, may I ask?

  What made you recognise me?"

  "Your moustache," said Norma immediately.

  "It couldn't be anyone else." He was gratified by that observation and stroked it with the pride and vanity that he was apt to display on these occasions.

  "Ah yes, very true. Yes, there are not many moustaches such as mine. It is a fine one, hein?"

  "Yes - well, yes - I suppose it is."

  "Ah, you are perhaps not a connoisseur of moustaches, but I can tell you. Miss Restarick-Miss Norma Restarick, is it not? - that it is a very fine moustache." He had dwelt deliberately upon her name. She had at first looked so oblivious to everything around her, so far away, that he wondered if she would notice. She did.

  It startled her.

  "How did you know my name?" she said.

  "True, you did not give your name to my servant when you came to see me that morning."

  "How did you know it? How did you get to know it? Who told you?" He saw the alarm, the fear.

  "A friend told me," he said. "One's friends can be very useful."

  "Who was it?"

  "Mademoiselle, you like keeping your little secrets from me. I, too, have a preference for keeping my little secrets from you."

  "I don't see how you could know who I was."

  "I am Hercule Poirot," said Poirot, with his usual magnificence. Then he left the initiative to her, merely sitting there smiling gently at her.

  "I -" she began, then stopped. "- Would - " Again she stopped.

  "We did not get very far that morning, I know," said Hercule Poirot. "Only so far as your telling me that you had committed a murder."

  "Oh!"

  "Yes, Mademoiselle, that."

  "But - I didn't mean it of course. I didn't mean anything like that. I mean, it was just a joke."

  "Vraiment? You came to see me rather early in the morning, at breakfast time. You said it was urgent. The urgency was because you might have committed a murder. That is your idea of a joke, eh?" A waitress who had been hovering, looking at Poirot with a fixed attention, suddenly came up to him and proffered him what appeared to be a paper boat such as it made for children to sail in a bath.

  "This for you?" she said. "Mr. Porritt?

  A lady left it."

  "Ah yes," said Poirot. "And how did you know who I was?"

  "The lady said I'd know by your moustache. Said I wouldn't have seen a moustache like that before. And it's true enough," she added, gazing at it.

  "Well, thank you very much." Poirot took the boat from her, untwisted it and smoothed it out; he read some hastily pencilled words: "He's just going. She's staying behind, so I'm going to leave her for you, and follow him." It was signed Ariadne.

  "Ah yes," said Hercule Poirot, folding it and slipping it into his pocket. "What were we talking about? Your sense of humour, I think. Miss Restarick."

  "Do you know just my name or - or do you know everything about me?"

  "I know a few things about you. You are Miss Norma Restarick, your address in London is 67 Borodene Mansions. Your home address is Crosshedges, Long Basing.

  You live there with a father, a stepmother, a great-uncle and - ah yes, an au pair girl.

  You see, I am quite well informed."

  "You've been having me followed."

  "No, no," said Poirot. "Not at all. As to that, I give you my word of honour."

  "But you are not police, are you? You didn't say you were."

  "I am not police, no." Her suspicion and defiance broke down.

  "I don't know what to do," she said.

  "I am not urging you to employ me," said Poirot. "For that you have said already that I am too old. Possibly you are right.

  But since I know who you are and something about you, there is no reason we should not discuss together in a friendly fashion the troubles that afflict you. The old, you must remember, though considered incapable of action, have nevertheless a good fund of experience on which to draw." Norma continued to look at him doubtfully, that wide-eyed stare that had disquieted Poirot before. But she was in a sense trapped, and she had at this particular moment, or so Poirot judged, a wish to talk about things. For some reason, Poirot had always been a person it was easy to talk to.

  "They think I'm crazy," she said bluntly. "And - and I rather think I'm crazy, too. Mad."

  "That is most interesting," said Hercule Poirot, cheerfully. "There are many different names for these things. Very grand names. Names rolled out happily by psychiatrists, psychologists and others. But when you say crazy, that describes very well what the general appearance may be to ordinary, everyday people. Eh bien, then, you are crazy, or you appear crazy or you think you are crazy, and possibly you may be crazy. But all the same that is not to say the condition is serious. It is a thing that people suffer from a good deal, and it is usually easily cured with the proper treatment.

  It comes about because people have had too much mental strain, too much worry, have studied too much for examinations, have dwelled too much perhaps on their emotions, have too much religion or have a lamentable lack of religion, or have good reasons for hating their fathers or their mothers! Or, of course, it can be as simple as having an unfortunate love affair."

  "I've got a stepmother. I hate her and I rather think I hate my father too. That seems rather a lot, doesn't it?"

  "It is more usual to hate one or the other," said Poirot. "You were, I suppose, very fond of your own mother. Is she divorced or dead?"

  "Dead. She died two or three years ago."

  "And you cared for her very much?"

  "Yes. I suppose I did. I mean of course I did. She was an invalid, you know and she had to go to nursing homes a good deal."

  "And your father?"

  "Father had gone abroad a long time before that. He went to South America when I was about five or six. I think he wanted Mother to divorce him but she wouldn't. He went to South America and was mixed up with mines or something like that. Anyway, he used to write to me at Christmas, and send me a Christmas present or arrange for one to come to me.

  That was about all. So he didn't really seem very real to me. He came home about a year ago because he had to wind up my uncle's affairs and all that sort of financial thing. And when he came home he - he brought this new wife with him."

  "And you resented the fact?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "But your mother was dead by then.

  It is not unusual, you know, for a man to marry again. Especially when he and his wife have been estranged for many years.

  This wife he brought, was she the same lady he had wished to marry previously, when he asked your mother for a divorce?"

  "Oh, no, this one is quite young. And she's very good-looking and she acts as though she just owns my father!" She went on after a pause-in a different rather childish voice. "I thought perhaps when he came home this time he would be fond of me and take notice of me and - but she won't let him. She's against me. She's crowded me out."

  "But that does not matter at all at the age you are. It is a good thing. You do not need anyone to look after you now. You can stand on your own feet, you can enjoy life, you can c
hoose your own friends -"

  "You wouldn't think so, the way they go on at home! Well, I mean to choose my own friends."

  "Most girls nowadays have to endure criticism about their friends," said Poirot.

  "It was all so different," said Norma. "My father isn't at all like I remember him when I was five years old. He used to play with me, all the time, and be so gay.

  He's not gay now. He's worried and rather fierce and - oh quite different."

  "That must be nearly fifteen years ago, I presume. People change."

  "But ought people to change so much?"

  "Has he changed in appearance?"

  "Oh no, no, not that. Oh no! If you look at his picture just over his chair, although it's of him when he was much younger, it's exactly like him now. But it isn't at all the way I remembered him."

  "But you know, my dear," said Poirot gently, "people are never like what you remember them. You make them as the years go by, more and more the way you wish them to be, and as you think you remember them. If you want to remember them as agreeable and gay and handsome, you make them far more so than they actually were."

  "Do you think so? Do you really think so?" She paused and then said abruptly, "But why do you think I want to kill people?" The question came out quite naturally. It was there between them.

  They had, Poirot felt, got at last to a crucial moment.

  "That may be quite an interesting question," said Poirot, "and there may be quite an interesting reason. The person who can probably tell you the answer to that will be a doctor. The kind of doctor who knows." She reacted quickly.

  "I won't go to a doctor. I won't go near a doctor! They wanted to send me to a doctor, and then I'll be shut up in one of those loony places and they won't let me out again. I'm not going to do anything like that." She was struggling now to rise to her feet.

  "It is not I who can send you to one!

  You need not be alarmed. You could go to a doctor entirely on your own behalf if you liked. You can go and say to him the things you have been saying to me, and you may ask him why, and he will perhaps tell you the cause."

  "That's what David says. That's what David says I should do but I don't think - I don't think he understands. I'd have to tell a doctor that I - I might have tried to do things…"

  "What makes you think you have?"

  "Because I don't always remember what I've done - or where I've been. I lose an hour of time - two hours - and I can't remember. I was in a corridor once - a corridor outside a door, her door. I'd something in my hand - I don't know how I got it. She came walking along towards me - But when she got near me, her face changed. It wasn't her at all.

  She'd changed into somebody else."

  "You are remembering, perhaps, a nightmare. There people do change into somebody else."

  "It wasn't a nightmare. I picked up the revolver - It was lying there at my feet -"

  "In a corridor?"

  "No, in the courtyard. She came and took it away from me."

  "Who did?"

  "Claudia. She took me upstairs and gave me some bitter stuff to drink."

  "Where was your stepmother then?"

  "She was there, too- No, she wasn't.

  She was at Crosshedges. Or in hospital.

  That's where they found out she was being poisoned - and that it was me."

  "It need not have been you - It could have been someone else."

  "Who else could it have been?"

  "Perhaps - her husband."

  "Father? Why on earth should Father want to poison Mary. He's devoted to her.

  He's silly about her!"

  "There are others in the house, are there not?"

  "Old Uncle Roderick? Nonsense!"

  "One does not know," said Poirot, "he might be mentally afflicted. He might think it was his duty to poison a woman who might be a beautiful spy. Something like that."

  "That would be very interesting," said Norma, momentarily diverted, and speaking in a perfectly natural manner. "Uncle Roderick was mixed up a good deal with spies and things in the last war. Who else is there? Sonia? I suppose she might be a beautiful spy, but she's not quite my idea of one."

  "No, and there does not seem very much reason why she should wish to poison your stepmother. I suppose there might be servants, gardeners?"

  "No, they just come in for the day.

  I don't think - well, they wouldn't be the kind of people to have any reason."

  "She might have done it herself."

  "Committed suicide, do you mean? Like the other one?"

  "It is a possibility."

  "I can't imagine Mary committing suicide. She's far too sensible. And why should she want to?"

  "Yes, you feel that if she did, she would put her head in the gas oven, or she would lie on a bed nicely arranged and take an overdose of sleeping draught. Is that right?"

  "Well, it would have been more natural. So you see," said Norma earnestly, "it must have been me."

  "Aha," said Poirot, "that interests me.

  You would almost, it would seem, prefer that it should be you. You are attracted to the idea that it was your hand who slipped the fatal dose of this, that or the other.

  Yes, you like the idea."

  "How dare you say such a thing! How can you?"

  "Because I think it is true," said Poirot. "Why does the thought that you may have committed murder excite you, please you?"

  "It's not true."

  "I wonder," said Poirot.

  She scooped up her bag and began feeling in it with shaking fingers.

  "I'm not going to stop here and have you say these things to me." She signalled to the waitress who came, scribbled on a pad of paper, detached it and laid it down by Norma's plate.

  "Permit me," said Hercule Poirot.

  He removed the slip of paper deftly, and prepared to draw his notecase from his pocket. The girl snatched it back again.

  "No, I won't let you pay for me."

  "As you please," said Poirot.

  He had seen what he wanted to see.

  The bill was for two. It would seem therefore that David of the fine feathers had no objection to having his bills paid by an infatuated girl.

  "So it is you who entertain a friend to elevenses, I see."

  "How did you know that I was with anyone?"

  "I tell you, I know a good deal." She placed coins on the table and rose.

  "I'm going now," she said, "and I forbid you to follow me."

  "I doubt if I could," said Poirot. "You must remember my advanced age. If you were to run down the street I should certainly not be able to follow you." She got up and went towards the door.

  "Do you hear? You are not to follow me."

  "You permit me at least to open the door for you." He did so with something of a flourish. "Au revoir, Mademoiselle." She threw a suspicious glance at him and walked away down the street with a rapid step, turning her head back over her shoulder from time to time. Poirot remained by the door watching her, but made no attempt to gain the pavement or to catch her up. When she was out of sight, he turned back into the cafe.

  "And what the devil does all that mean?" said Poirot to himself.

  The waitress was advancing upon him, displeasure on her face. Poirot regained his seat at the table and placated her by ordering a cup of coffee. "There is something here very curious," he murmured to himself. "Yes, something very curious indeed." A cup of pale beige fluid was placed in front of him. He took a sip of it and made a grimace.

  He wondered where Mrs. Oliver was at this moment.

  Chapter Nine

  MRS. OLIVER was seated in a bus.

  She was slightly out of breath though full of the zest of the chase.

  What she called in her own mind the Peacock, had led a somewhat brisk pace.

  Mrs. Oliver was not a rapid walker.

  Going along the Embankment she followed him at a distance of some twenty yards or so. At Charing Cross he got into the underground. Mrs. Oliver
also got into the underground. At Sloane Square he got out, so did Mrs. Oliver. She waited in a bus queue some three or four people behind him. He got on a bus and so did she.

  He got out at World's End, so did Mrs. Oliver. He plunged into a bewildering maze of streets between King's Road and the river. He turned into what seemed a builder's yard. Mrs. Oliver stood in the shadow of a doorway and watched. He turned into an alleyway, Mrs. Oliver gave him a moment or two and then followed - he was nowhere to be seen. Mrs. Oliver reconnoitred her general surroundings.

  The whole place appeared somewhat decrepit. She wandered farther down the alleyway. Other alleyways led off from it - some of them culs-de-sac. She had completely lost her sense of direction when she once more came to the builder's yard and a voice spoke behind her, startling her considerably.

  It said, politely, "I hope I didn't walk too fast for you." She turned sharply. Suddenly what had recently been almost fun, a chase undertaken light-heartedly and in the best of spirits, now was that no longer. What she felt now was a sudden unexpected throb of fear. Yes, she was afraid. The atmosphere had suddenly become tinged with menace.

  Yet the voice was pleasant, polite, but behind it she knew there was anger. The sudden kind of anger that recalled to her in a confused fashion all the things one read in newspapers. Elderly women attacked by gangs of young men. Young men who were ruthless, cruel, who were driven by hate and the desire to do harm.

  This was the young man whom she had been following. He had known she was there, had given her the slip and had then followed her into this alleyway, and he stood there now barring her way out.

  As is the precarious fashion of London, one moment you are amongst people all round you and the next moment there is nobody in sight. There must be people in the next street, someone in the houses near, but nearer than that is a masterful figure, a figure with strong cruel hands.

  She felt sure that in this moment he was thinking of using those hands… The Peacock. A proud peacock. In his velvets, his tight, elegant black trousers, speaking in that quiet ironical amused voice that held behind it anger… Mrs. Oliver took three big gasps. Then, in a lightning moment of decision she put up a quickly imagined defence. Firmly and immediately she sat on a dustbin which was against the wall quite close to her.