Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by

Collins 1956

Copyright © 1956 Agatha Christie Ltd.

All rights reserved.

www.agathachristie.com

Ebook Edition 2010 ISBN: 9780007422258

Version: 2017-04-12

The moral right of the author is asserted

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

To Peggy and Humphrey Trevelyan

Contents

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

E-Book Extras

About Agatha Christie

The Agatha Christie Collection

www.agathachristie.com

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

I

It was Miss Lemon, Poirot’s efficient secretary, who took the telephone call.

Laying aside her shorthand notebook, she raised the receiver and said without emphasis, ‘Trafalgar 8137.’

Hercule Poirot leaned back in his upright chair and closed his eyes. His fingers beat a meditative soft tattoo on the edge of the table. In his head he continued to compose the polished periods of the letter he had been dictating.

Placing her hand over the receiver, Miss Lemon asked in a low voice:

‘Will you accept a personal call from Nassecombe, Devon?’

Poirot frowned. The place meant nothing to him.

‘The name of the caller?’ he demanded cautiously.

Miss Lemon spoke into the mouthpiece.

‘Air-raid?’ she asked doubtingly. ‘Oh, yes – what was the last name again?’

Once more she turned to Hercule Poirot.

‘Mrs Ariadne Oliver.’

Hercule Poirot’s eyebrows shot up. A memory rose in his mind: windswept grey hair…an eagle profile…

He rose and replaced Miss Lemon at the telephone.

‘Hercule Poirot speaks,’ he announced grandiloquently.

‘Is that Mr Hercules Porrot speaking personally?’ the suspicious voice of the telephone operator demanded.

Poirot assured her that that was the case.

‘You’re through to Mr Porrot,’ said the voice.

Its thin reedy accents were replaced by a magnificent booming contralto which caused Poirot hastily to shift the receiver a couple of inches farther from his ear.

‘M. Poirot, is that really you?’ demanded Mrs Oliver.

‘Myself in person, Madame.’

‘This is Mrs Oliver. I don’t know if you’ll remember me –’

‘But of course I remember you, Madame. Who could forget you?’

‘Well, people do sometimes,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Quite often, in fact. I don’t think that I’ve got a very distinctive personality. Or perhaps it’s because I’m always doing different things to my hair. But all that’s neither here nor there. I hope I’m not interrupting you when you’re frightfully busy?’

‘No, no, you do not derange me in the least.’

‘Good gracious – I’m sure I don’t want to drive you out of your mind. The fact is, I need you.’

‘Need me?’

‘Yes, at once. Can you take an aeroplane?’

‘I do not take aeroplanes. They make me sick.’

‘They do me, too. Anyway, I don’t suppose it would be any quicker than the train really, because I think the only airport near here is Exeter which is miles away. So come by train. Twelve o’clock from Paddington to Nassecombe. You can do it nicely. You’ve got three-quarters of an hour if my watch is right – though it isn’t usually.’

‘But where are you, Madame? What is all this about?’

‘Nasse House, Nassecombe. A car or taxi will meet you at the station at Nassecombe.’

‘But why do you need me? What is all this about?’ Poirot repeated frantically.

‘Telephones are in such awkward places,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘This one’s in the hall… People passing through and talking… I can’t really hear. But I’m expecting you. Everybody will be so thrilled. Goodbye.’

There was a sharp click as the receiver was replaced. The line hummed gently.

With a baffled air of bewilderment, Poirot put back the receiver and murmured something under his breath. Miss Lemon sat with her pencil poised, incurious. She repeated in muted tones the final phrase of dictation before the interruption.

‘– allow me to assure you, my dear sir, that the hypothesis you have advanced…’

Poirot waved aside the advancement of the hypothesis.

‘That was Mrs Oliver,’ he said. ‘Ariadne Oliver, the detective novelist. You may have read…’ But he stopped, remembering that Miss Lemon only read improving books and regarded such frivolities as fictional crime with contempt. ‘She wants me to go down to Devonshire today, at once, in’ – he glanced at the clock – ‘thirty-five minutes.’

Miss Lemon raised disapproving eyebrows.

‘That will be running it rather fine,’ she said. ‘For what reason?’

‘You may well ask! She did not tell me.’

‘How very peculiar. Why not?’

‘Because,’ said Hercule Poirot thoughtfully, ‘she was afraid of being overheard. Yes, she made that quite clear.’

‘Well, really,’ said Miss Lemon, bristling in her employer’s defence. ‘The things people expect! Fancy thinking that you’d go rushing off on some wild goose chase like that! An important man like you! I have always noticed that these artists and writers are very unbalanced – no sense of proportion. Shall I telephone through a telegram: Regret unable leave London?’

Her hand went out to the telephone. Poirot’s voice arrested the gesture.

‘Du tout!’ he said. ‘On the contrary. Be so kind as to summon a taxi immediately.’ He raised his voice. ‘Georges! A few necessities of toilet in my small valise. And quickly, very quickly, I have a train to catch.’

II

The train, having done one hundred and eighty-odd miles of its two hundred and twelve miles journey at top speed, puffed gently and apologetically through the last thirty and drew into Nassecombe station. Only one person alighted, Hercule Poirot. He negotiated with care a yawning gap between the step of the train and the platform and looked round him. At the far end of the train a porter was busy inside a luggage compartment. Poirot picked up his valise and walked back along the platform to the exit. He gave up his ticket and walked out through the booking-office.

A large Humber saloon was drawn up outside and a chauffeur in uniform came forward.

‘Mr Hercule Poirot?’ he inquired respectfully.

He took Poirot’s case from him and opened the door of the car. They drove away from the station over the railway bridge and turned down a country lane which wound between high hedges on either side. Presently the ground fell away on the right and disclosed a very beautiful river view with hills of a misty blue in the distance. The chauffeur drew into the hedge and stopped.

‘The River Helm, sir,’ he said. ‘With Dartmoor in the distance.’

It was clear that admiration was necessary. Poirot made the necessary noises, murmuring Magnifique! several times. Actually, Nature appealed to him very little. A well-cultivated neatly arranged kitchen garden was far more likely to bring a murmur of admiration to Poirot’s lips. Two girls passed the car, toiling slowly up the hill. They were carrying heavy rucksacks on their backs and wore shorts, with bright coloured scarves tied over their heads.

‘There is a Youth Hostel next door to us, sir,’ explained the chauffeur, who had clearly constituted himself Poirot’s guide to Devon. ‘Hoodown Park. Mr Fletcher’s place it used to be. The Youth Hostel Association bought it and it’s fairly crammed in summer time. Take in over a hundred a night, they do. They’re not allowed to stay longer than a couple of nights – then they’ve got to move on. Both sexes and mostly foreigners.’

Poirot nodded absently. He was reflecting, not for the first time, that seen from the back, shorts were becoming to very few of the female sex. He shut his eyes in pain. Why, oh why, must young women array themselves thus? Those scarlet thighs were singularly unattractive!

‘They seem heavily laden,’ he murmured.

‘Yes, sir, and it’s a long pull from the station or the bus stop. Best part of two miles to Hoodown Park.’ He hesitated. ‘If you don’t object, sir, we could give them a lift?’

‘By all means, by all means,’ said Poirot benignantly. There was he in luxury in an almost empty car and here were these two panting and perspiring young women weighed down with heavy rucksacks and without the least idea how to dress themselves so as to appear attractive to the other sex. The chauffeur started the car and came to a slow purring halt beside the two girls. Their flushed and perspiring faces were raised hopefully.

Poirot opened the door and the girls climbed in.

‘It is most kind, please,’ said one of them, a fair girl with a foreign accent. ‘It is longer way than I think, yes.’

The other girl, who had a sunburnt and deeply flushed face with bronzed chestnut curls peeping out beneath her headscarf, merely nodded her head several times, flashed her teeth, and murmured, Grazie. The fair girl continued to talk vivaciously.

‘I to England come for two week holiday. I come from Holland. I like England very much. I have been Stratford Avon, Shakespeare Theatre and Warwick Castle. Then I have been Clovelly, now I have seen Exeter Cathedral and Torquay – very nice – I come to famous beauty spot here and tomorrow I cross river, go to Plymouth where discovery of New World was made from Plymouth Hoe.’

‘And you, signorina?’ Poirot turned to the other girl. But she only smiled and shook her curls.

‘She does not much English speak,’ said the Dutch girl kindly. ‘We both a little French speak – so we talk in train. She is coming from near Milan and has relative in England married to gentleman who keeps shop for much groceries. She has come with friend to Exeter yesterday, but friend has eat veal ham pie not good from shop in Exeter and has to stay there sick. It is not good in hot weather, the veal ham pie.’

At this point the chauffeur slowed down where the road forked. The girls got out, uttered thanks in two languages and proceeded up the left-hand road. The chauffeur laid aside for a moment his Olympian aloofness and said feelingly to Poirot:

‘It’s not only veal and ham pie – you want to be careful of Cornish pasties too. Put anything in a pasty they will, holiday time!’

He restarted the car and drove down the right-hand road which shortly afterwards passed into thick woods. He proceeded to give a final verdict on the occupants of Hoodown Park Youth Hostel.

‘Nice enough young women, some of ’em, at that hostel,’ he said; ‘but it’s hard to get them to understand about trespassing. Absolutely shocking the way they trespass. Don’t seem to understand that a gentleman’s place is private here. Always coming through our woods, they are, and pretending that they don’t understand what you say to them.’ He shook his head darkly.

They went on, down a steep hill through woods, then through big iron gates, and along a drive, winding up finally in front of a big white Georgian house looking out over the river.

The chauffeur opened the door of the car as a tall black-haired butler appeared on the steps.

‘Mr Hercule Poirot?’ murmured the latter.

‘Yes.’

‘Mrs Oliver is expecting you, sir. You will find her down at the Battery. Allow me to show you the way.’

Poirot was directed to a winding path that led along the wood with glimpses of the river below. The path descended gradually until it came out at last on an open space, round in shape, with a low battlemented parapet. On the parapet Mrs Oliver was sitting.

She rose to meet him and several apples fell from her lap and rolled in all directions. Apples seemed to be an inescapable motif of meeting Mrs Oliver.

‘I can’t think why I always drop things,’ said Mrs Oliver somewhat indistinctly, since her mouth was full of apple. ‘How are you, M. Poirot?’

‘Tre`s bien, che`re Madame,’ replied Poirot politely. ‘And you?’

Mrs Oliver was looking somewhat different from when Poirot had last seen her, and the reason lay, as she had already hinted over the telephone, in the fact that she had once more experimented with her coiffure. The last time Poirot had seen her, she had been adopting a windswept effect. Today, her hair, richly blued, was piled upward in a multiplicity of rather artificial little curls in a pseudo Marquise style. The Marquise effect ended at her neck; the rest of her could have been definitely labelled ‘country practical,’ consisting of a violent yolk-of-egg rough tweed coat and skirt and a rather bilious-looking mustard-coloured jumper.

‘I knew you’d come,’ said Mrs Oliver cheerfully.

‘You could not possibly have known,’ said Poirot severely.

‘Oh, yes, I did.’

‘I still ask myself why I am here.’

‘Well, I know the answer. Curiosity.’

Poirot looked at her and his eyes twinkled a little. ‘Your famous woman’s intuition,’ he said, ‘has, perhaps, for once not led you too far astray.’

‘Now, don’t laugh at my woman’s intuition. Haven’t I always spotted the murderer right away?’

Poirot was gallantly silent. Otherwise he might have replied, ‘At the fifth attempt, perhaps, and not always then!’

Instead he said, looking round him:

‘It is indeed a beautiful property that you have here.’

‘This? But it doesn’t belong to me, M. Poirot. Did you think it did? Oh, no, it belongs to some people called Stubbs.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Oh, nobody really,’ said Mrs Oliver vaguely. ‘Just rich. No, I’m down here professionally, doing a job.’

‘Ah, you are getting local colour for one of your chefs-d’oeuvre?’

‘No, no. Just what I said. I’m doing a job. I’ve been engaged to arrange a murder.’

Poirot stared at her.

‘Oh, not a real one,’ said Mrs Oliver reassuringly. ‘There’s a big fête thing on tomorrow, and as a kind of novelty there’s going to be a Murder Hunt. Arranged by me. Like a Treasure Hunt, you see; only they’ve had a Treasure Hunt so often that they thought this would be a novelty. So they offered me a very substantial fee to come down and think it up. Quite fun, really – rather a change from the usual grim routine.’

‘How does it work?’

‘Well, there’ll be a Victim, of course. And Clues. And Suspects. All rather conventional – you know, the Vamp and the Blackmailer and the Young Lovers and the Sinister Butler and so on. Half a crown to enter and you get shown the first Clue and you’ve got to find the Victim, and the Weapon and say Whodunnit and the Motive. And there are Prizes.’

‘Remarkable!’ said Hercule Poirot.

‘Actually,’ said Mrs Oliver ruefully, ‘it’s all much harder to arrange than you’d think. Because you’ve got to allow for real people being quite intelligent, and in my books they needn’t be.’

‘And it is to assist you in arranging this that you have sent for me?’

Poirot did not try very hard to keep an outraged resentment out of his voice.

‘Oh, no,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Of course not! I’ve done all that. Everything’s all set for tomorrow. No, I wanted you for quite another reason.’

‘What reason?’

Mrs Oliver’s hands strayed upward to her head. She was just about to sweep them frenziedly through her hair in the old familiar gesture when she remembered the intricacy of her hair-do. Instead, she relieved her feelings by tugging at her ear lobes.

‘I dare say I’m a fool,’ she said. ‘But I think there’s something wrong.’

Chapter 2

There was a moment’s silence as Poirot stared at her. Then he asked sharply: ‘Something wrong? How?’

‘I don’t know…That’s what I want you to find out. But I’ve felt – more and more – that I was being – oh! – engineered…jockeyed along…Call me a fool if you like, but I can only say that if there was to be a real murder tomorrow instead of a fake one, I shouldn’t be surprised!’

Poirot stared at her and she looked back at him defiantly.

‘Very interesting,’ said Poirot.

‘I suppose you think I’m a complete fool,’ said Mrs Oliver defensively.

‘I have never thought you a fool,’ said Poirot.

‘And I know what you always say – or look – about intuition.’

‘One calls things by different names,’ said Poirot. ‘I am quite ready to believe that you have noticed something, or heard something, that has definitely aroused in you anxiety. I think it is possible that you yourself may not even know just what it is that you have seen or noticed or heard. You are aware only of the result. If I may so put it, you do not know what it is that you know. You may label that intuition if you like.’

‘It makes one feel such a fool,’ said Mrs Oliver, ruefully, ‘not to be able to be definite.’

‘We shall arrive,’ said Poirot encouragingly. ‘You say that you have had the feeling of being – how did you put it – jockeyed along? Can you explain a little more clearly what you mean by that?’

‘Well, it’s rather difficult…You see, this is my murder, so to speak. I’ve thought it out and planned it and it all fits in – dovetails. Well, if you know anything at all about writers, you’ll know that they can’t stand suggestions. People say “Splendid, but wouldn’t it be better if so and so did so and so?” or “Wouldn’t it be a wonderful idea if the victim was A instead of B? Or the murderer turned out to be D instead of E?” I mean, one wants to say: “All right then, write it yourself if you want it that way!”’

Poirot nodded.

‘And that is what has been happening?’

‘Not quite…That sort of silly suggestion has been made, and then I’ve flared up, and they’ve given in, but have just slipped in some quite minor trivial suggestion and because I’ve made a stand over the other, I’ve accepted the triviality without noticing much.’

‘I see,’ said Poirot. ‘Yes – it is a method, that…Something rather crude and preposterous is put forward – but that is not really the point. The small minor alteration is really the objective. Is that what you mean?’

‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘And, of course, I may be imagining it, but I don’t think I am – and none of the things seem to matter anyway. But it’s got me worried – that, and a sort of – well – atmosphere.’

‘Who has made these suggestions of alterations to you?’

‘Different people,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘If it was just one person I’d be more sure of my ground. But it’s not just one person – although I think it is really. I mean it’s one person working through other quite unsuspecting people.’

‘Have you an idea as to who that one person is?’

Mrs Oliver shook her head.

‘It’s somebody very clever and very careful,’ she said. ‘It might be anybody.’

‘Who is there?’ asked Poirot. ‘The cast of characters must be fairly limited?’

‘Well,’ began Mrs Oliver. ‘There’s Sir George Stubbs who owns this place. Rich and plebeian and frightfully stupid outside business, I should think, but probably dead sharp in it. And there’s Lady Stubbs – Hattie – about twenty years younger than he is, rather beautiful, but dumb as a fish – in fact, I think she’s definitely halfwitted. Married him for his money, of course, and doesn’t think about anything but clothes and jewels. Then there’s Michael Weyman – he’s an architect, quite young, and good-looking in a craggy kind of artistic way. He’s designing a tennis pavilion for Sir George and repairing the Folly.’

‘Folly? What is that – a masquerade?’

‘No, it’s architectural. One of those little sort of temple things, white, with columns. You’ve probably seen them at Kew. Then there’s Miss Brewis, she’s a sort of secretary housekeeper, who runs things and writes letters – very grim and efficient. And then there are the people round about who come in and help. A young married couple who have taken a cottage down by the river – Alec Legge and his wife Sally. And Captain Warburton, who’s the Mastertons’ agent. And the Mastertons, of course, and old Mrs Folliat who lives in what used to be the lodge. Her husband’s people owned Nasse originally. But they’ve died out, or been killed in wars, and there were lots of death duties so the last heir sold the place.’

Poirot considered this list of characters, but at the moment they were only names to him. He returned to the main issue.

‘Whose idea was the Murder Hunt?’

‘Mrs Masterton’s, I think. She’s the local M.P.’s wife, very good at organizing. It was she who persuaded Sir George to have the fête here. You see the place has been empty for so many years that she thinks people will be keen to pay and come in to see it.’

‘That all seems straightforward enough,’ said Poirot.

‘It all seems straightforward,’ said Mrs Oliver obstinately; ‘but it isn’t. I tell you, M. Poirot, there’s something wrong.’

Poirot looked at Mrs Oliver and Mrs Oliver looked back at Poirot.

‘How have you accounted for my presence here? For your summons to me?’ Poirot asked.

‘That was easy,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘You’re to give away the prizes for the Murder Hunt. Everybody’s awfully thrilled. I said I knew you, and could probably persuade you to come and that I was sure your name would be a terrific draw – as, of course, it will be,’ Mrs Oliver added tactfully.

‘And the suggestion was accepted – without demur?’

‘I tell you, everybody was thrilled.’

Mrs Oliver thought it unnecessary to mention that amongst the younger generation one or two had asked ‘Who is Hercule Poirot?’

‘Everybody? Nobody spoke against the idea?’

Mrs Oliver shook her head.

‘That is a pity,’ said Hercule Poirot.

‘You mean it might have given us a line?’

‘A would-be criminal could hardly be expected to welcome my presence.’

‘I suppose you think I’ve imagined the whole thing,’ said Mrs Oliver ruefully. ‘I must admit that until I started talking to you I hadn’t realized how very little I’ve got to go upon.’

‘Calm yourself,’ said Poirot kindly. ‘I am intrigued and interested. Where do we begin?’

Mrs Oliver glanced at her watch.

‘It’s just tea-time. We’ll go back to the house and then you can meet everybody.’

She took a different path from the one by which Poirot had come. This one seemed to lead in the opposite direction.

‘We pass by the boathouse this way,’ Mrs Oliver explained.

As she spoke the boathouse came into view. It jutted out on to the river and was a picturesque thatched affair.

‘That’s where the Body’s going to be,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘The body for the Murder Hunt, I mean.’

‘And who is going to be killed?’

‘Oh, a girl hiker, who is really the Yugoslavian first wife of a young Atom Scientist,’ said Mrs Oliver glibly.

Poirot blinked.

‘Of course it looks as though the Atom Scientist had killed her – but naturally it’s not as simple as that.’

‘Naturally not – since you are concerned…’

Mrs Oliver accepted the compliment with a wave of the hand.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘she’s killed by the Country Squire – and the motive is really rather ingenious – I don’t believe many people will get it – though there’s a perfectly clear pointer in the fifth clue.’

Poirot abandoned the subtleties of Mrs Oliver’s plot to ask a practical question:

‘But how do you arrange for a suitable body?’

‘Girl Guide,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Sally Legge was going to be it – but now they want her to dress up in a turban and do the fortune telling. So it’s a Girl Guide called Marlene Tucker. Rather dumb and sniffs,’ she added in an explanatory manner. ‘It’s quite easy – just peasant scarves and a rucksack – and all she has to do when she hears someone coming is to flop down on the floor and arrange the cord round her neck. Rather dull for the poor kid – just sticking inside that boathouse until she’s found, but I’ve arranged for her to have a nice bundle of comics – there’s a clue to the murderer scribbled on one of them as a matter of fact – so it all works in.’

‘Your ingenuity leaves me spellbound! The things you think of !’

‘It’s never difficult to think of things,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘The trouble is that you think of too many, and then it all becomes too complicated, so you have to relinquish some of them and that is rather agony. We go up this way now.’

They started up a steep zig-zagging path that led them back along the river at a higher level. At a twist through the trees they came out on a space surmounted by a small white pilastered temple. Standing back and frowning at it was a young man wearing dilapidated flannel trousers and a shirt of rather virulent green. He spun round towards them.

‘Mr Michael Weyman, M. Hercule Poirot,’ said Mrs Oliver.

The young man acknowledged the introduction with a careless nod.

‘Extraordinary,’ he said bitterly, ‘the places people put things! This thing here, for instance. Put up only about a year ago – quite nice of its kind and quite in keeping with the period of the house. But why here? These things were meant to be seen – “situated on an eminence” – that’s how they phrased it – with a nice grassy approach and daffodils, et cetera. But here’s this poor little devil, stuck away in the midst of trees – not visible from anywhere – you’d have to cut down about twenty trees before you’d even see it from the river.’

‘Perhaps there wasn’t any other place,’ said Mrs Oliver.

Michael Weyman snorted.

‘Top of that grassy bank by the house – perfect natural setting. But no, these tycoon fellows are all the same – no artistic sense. Has a fancy for a “Folly,” as he calls it, orders one. Looks round for somewhere to put it. Then, I understand, a big oak tree crashes down in a gale. Leaves a nasty scar. “Oh, we’ll tidy the place up by putting a Folly there,” says the silly ass. That’s all they ever think about, these rich city fellows, tidying up! I wonder he hasn’t put beds of red geraniums and calceolarias all round the house! A man like that shouldn’t be allowed to own a place like this!’

He sounded heated.

‘This young man,’ Poirot observed to himself, ‘assuredly does not like Sir George Stubbs.’

‘It’s bedded down in concrete,’ said Weyman. ‘And there’s loose soil underneath – so it’s subsided. Cracked all up here – it will be dangerous soon…Better pull the whole thing down and re-erect it on the top of the bank near the house. That’s my advice, but the obstinate old fool won’t hear of it.’

‘What about the tennis pavilion?’ asked Mrs Oliver.

Gloom settled even more deeply on the young man.

‘He wants a kind of Chinese pagoda,’ he said, with a groan. ‘Dragons if you please! Just because Lady Stubbs fancies herself in Chinese coolie hats. Who’d be an architect? Anyone who wants something decent built hasn’t got the money, and those who have the money want something too utterly goddam awful!’

‘You have my commiserations,’ said Poirot gravely.

‘George Stubbs,’ said the architect scornfully. ‘Who does he think he is? Dug himself into some cushy Admiralty job in the safe depths of Wales during the war – and grows a beard to suggest he saw active naval service on convoy duty – or that’s what they say. Stinking with money – absolutely stinking!’

‘Well, you architects have got to have someone who’s got money to spend, or you’d never have a job,’ Mrs Oliver pointed out reasonably enough. She moved on towards the house and Poirot and the dispirited architect prepared to follow her.

‘These tycoons,’ said the latter bitterly, ‘can’t understand first principles.’ He delivered a final kick to the lopsided Folly. ‘If the foundations are rotten – everything’s rotten.’

‘It is profound what you say there,’ said Poirot. ‘Yes, it is profound.’

The path they were following came out from the trees and the house showed white and beautiful before them in its setting of dark trees rising up behind it.

‘It is of a veritable beauty, yes,’ murmured Poirot.

‘He wants to build a billiard room on,’ said Mr Weyman venomously.

On the bank below them a small elderly lady was busy with sécateurs on a clump of shrubs. She climbed up to greet them, panting slightly.

‘Everything neglected for years,’ she said. ‘And so difficult nowadays to get a man who understands shrubs. This hillside should be a blaze of colour in March and April, but very disappointing this year – all this dead wood ought to have been cut away last autumn –’

‘M. Hercule Poirot, Mrs Folliat,’ said Mrs Oliver.

The elderly lady beamed.

‘So this is the great M. Poirot! It is kind of you to come and help us tomorrow. This clever lady here has thought out a most puzzling problem – it will be such a novelty.’

Poirot was faintly puzzled by the graciousness of the little lady’s manner. She might, he thought, have been his hostess.

He said politely:

‘Mrs Oliver is an old friend of mine. I was delighted to be able to respond to her request. This is indeed a beautiful spot, and what a superb and noble mansion.’

Mrs Folliat nodded in a matter-of-fact manner.

‘Yes. It was built by my husband’s great-grandfather in 1790. There was an Elizabethan house previously. It fell into disrepair and burned down in about 1700. Our family has lived here since 1598.’

Her voice was calm and matter of fact. Poirot looked at her with closer attention. He saw a very small and compact little person, dressed in shabby tweeds. The most noticeable feature about her was her clear china-blue eyes. Her grey hair was closely confined by a hairnet. Though obviously careless of her appearance, she had that indefinable air of being someone which is so hard to explain.

As they walked together towards the house, Poirot said diffidently, ‘It must be hard for you to have strangers living here.’

There was a moment’s pause before Mrs Folliat answered. Her voice was clear and precise and curiously devoid of emotion.

‘So many things are hard, M. Poirot,’ she said.

Chapter 3

It was Mrs Folliat who led the way into the house and Poirot followed her. It was a gracious house, beautifully proportioned. Mrs Folliat went through a door on the left into a small daintily furnished sitting-room and on into the big drawing-room beyond, which was full of people who all seemed, at the moment, to be talking at once.

‘George,’ said Mrs Folliat, ‘this is M. Poirot who is so kind as to come and help us. Sir George Stubbs.’

Sir George, who had been talking in a loud voice, swung round. He was a big man with a rather florid red face and a slightly unexpected beard. It gave a rather disconcerting effect of an actor who had not quite made up his mind whether he was playing the part of a country squire, or of a ‘rough diamond’ from the Dominions. It certainly did not suggest the navy, in spite of Michael Weyman’s remarks. His manner and voice were jovial, but his eyes were small and shrewd, of a particularly penetrating pale blue.

He greeted Poirot heartily.

‘We’re so glad that your friend Mrs Oliver managed to persuade you to come,’ he said. ‘Quite a brain-wave on her part. You’ll be an enormous attraction.’

He looked round a little vaguely.

‘Hattie?’ He repeated the name in a slightly sharper tone. ‘Hattie!’

Lady Stubbs was reclining in a big arm-chair a little distance from the others. She seemed to be paying no attention to what was going on round her. Instead she was smiling down at her hand which was stretched out on the arm of the chair. She was turning it from left to right, so that a big solitaire emerald on her third finger caught the light in its green depths.

She looked up now in a slightly startled childlike way and said, ‘How do you do.’

Poirot bowed over her hand.

Sir George continued his introductions.

‘Mrs Masterton.’

Mrs Masterton was a somewhat monumental woman who reminded Poirot faintly of a bloodhound. She had a full underhung jaw and large, mournful, slightly blood-shot eyes.

She bowed and resumed her discourse in a deep voice which again made Poirot think of a bloodhound’s baying note.

‘This silly dispute about the tea tent has got to be settled, Jim,’ she said forcefully. ‘They’ve got to see sense about it. We can’t have the whole show a fiasco because of these idiotic women’s local feuds.’

‘Oh, quite,’ said the man addressed.

‘Captain Warburton,’ said Sir George.

Captain Warburton, who wore a check sports coat and had a vaguely horsy appearance, showed a lot of white teeth in a somewhat wolfish smile, then continued his conversation.

‘Don’t you worry, I’ll settle it,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and talk to them like a Dutch uncle. What about the fortune-telling tent? In the space by the magnolia? Or at the far end of the lawn by the rhododendrons?’

Sir George continued his introductions.

‘Mr and Mrs Legge.’

A tall young man with his face peeling badly from sunburn grinned agreeably. His wife, an attractive freckled redhead, nodded in a friendly fashion, then plunged into controversy with Mrs Masterton, her agreeable high treble making a kind of duet with Mrs Masterton’s deep bay.

‘– not by the magnolia – a bottle-neck –’

‘– one wants to disperse things – but if there’s a queue –’

‘– much cooler. I mean, with the sun full on the house –’

‘– and the coconut shy can’t be too near the house – the boys are so wild when they throw –’

‘And this,’ said Sir George, ‘is Miss Brewis – who runs us all.’

Miss Brewis was seated behind the large silver tea tray.

She was a spare efficient-looking woman of forty-odd, with a brisk pleasant manner.

‘How do you do, M. Poirot,’ she said. ‘I do hope you didn’t have too crowded a journey? The trains are sometimes too terrible this time of year. Let me give you some tea. Milk? Sugar?’

‘Very little milk, mademoiselle, and four lumps of sugar.’ He added, as Miss Brewis dealt with his request, ‘I see that you are all in a great state of activity.’

‘Yes, indeed. There are always so many last-minute things to see to. And people let one down in the most extraordinary way nowadays. Over marquees, and tents and chairs and catering equipment. One has to keep on at them. I was on the telephone half the morning.’

‘What about these pegs, Amanda?’ said Sir George. ‘And the extra putters for the clock golf ?’

‘That’s all arranged, Sir George. Mr Benson at the golf club was most kind.’

She handed Poirot his cup.

‘A sandwich, M. Poirot? Those are tomato and these are paté. But perhaps,’ said Miss Brewis, thinking of the four lumps of sugar, ‘you would rather have a cream cake?’

Poirot would rather have a cream cake, and helped himself to a particularly sweet and squelchy one.

Then, balancing it carefully on his saucer, he went and sat down by his hostess. She was still letting the light play over the jewel on her hand, and she looked up at him with a pleased child’s smile.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty, isn’t it?’

He had been studying her carefully. She was wearing a big coolie-style hat of vivid magenta straw. Beneath it her face showed its pinky reflection on the dead-white surface of her skin. She was heavily made up in an exotic un-English style. Dead-white matt skin; vivid cyclamen lips, mascara applied lavishly to the eyes. Her hair showed beneath the hat, black and smooth, fitting like a velvet cap. There was a languorous un-English beauty about the face. She was a creature of the tropical sun, caught, as it were, by chance in an English drawing-room. But it was the eyes that startled Poirot. They had a childlike, almost vacant, stare.

She had asked her question in a confidential childish way, and it was as though to a child that Poirot answered.

‘It is a very lovely ring,’ he said.

She looked pleased.

‘George gave it to me yesterday,’ she said, dropping her voice as though she were sharing a secret with him. ‘He gives me lots of things. He’s very kind.’

Poirot looked down at the ring again and the hand outstretched on the side of the chair. The nails were very long and varnished a deep puce.

Into his mind a quotation came: ‘They toil not, neither do they spin…’

He certainly couldn’t imagine Lady Stubbs toiling or spinning. And yet he would hardly have described her as a lily of the field. She was a far more artificial product.

‘This is a beautiful room you have here, Madame,’ he said, looking round appreciatively.

‘I suppose it is,’ said Lady Stubbs vaguely.

Her attention was still on her ring; her head on one side, she watched the green fire in its depths as her hand moved.

She said in a confidential whisper, ‘D’you see? It’s winking at me.’

She burst out laughing and Poirot had a sense of sudden shock. It was a loud uncontrolled laugh.

From across the room Sir George said: ‘Hattie.’

His voice was quite kind but held a faint admonition. Lady Stubbs stopped laughing.

Poirot said in a conventional manner:

‘Devonshire is a very lovely county. Do you not think so?’

‘It’s nice in the daytime,’ said Lady Stubbs. ‘When it doesn’t rain,’ she added mournfully. ‘But there aren’t any nightclubs.’

‘Ah, I see. You like nightclubs?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Lady Stubbs fervently.

‘And why do you like nightclubs so much?’

‘There is music and you dance. And I wear my nicest clothes and bracelets and rings. And all the other women have nice clothes and jewels, but not as nice as mine.’

She smiled with enormous satisfaction. Poirot felt a slight pang of pity.

‘And all that amuses you very much?’

‘Yes. I like the casino, too. Why are there not any casinos in England?’

‘I have often wondered,’ said Poirot, with a sigh. ‘I do not think it would accord with the English character.’

She looked at him uncomprehendingly. Then she bent slightly towards him.

‘I won sixty thousand francs at Monte Carlo once. I put it on number twenty-seven and it came up.’

‘That must have been very exciting, Madame.’

‘Oh, it was. George gives me money to play with – but usually I lose it.’

She looked disconsolate.

‘That is sad.’

‘Oh, it does not really matter. George is very rich. It is nice to be rich, don’t you think so?’

‘Very nice,’ said Poirot gently.

‘Perhaps, if I was not rich, I should look like Amanda.’ Her gaze went to Miss Brewis at the tea table and studied her dispassionately. ‘She is very ugly, don’t you think?’

Miss Brewis looked up at that moment and across to where they were sitting. Lady Stubbs had not spoken loudly, but Poirot wondered whether Amanda Brewis had heard.

As he withdrew his gaze, his eyes met those of Captain Warburton. The Captain’s glance was ironic and amused.

Poirot endeavoured to change the subject.

‘Have you been very busy preparing for the fête?’ he asked.

Hattie Stubbs shook her head.

‘Oh, no, I think it is all very boring – very stupid. There are servants and gardeners. Why should not they make the preparations?’

‘Oh, my dear.’ It was Mrs Folliat who spoke. She had come to sit on the sofa nearby. ‘Those are the ideas you were brought up with on your island estates. But life isn’t like that in England these days. I wish it were.’ She sighed. ‘Nowadays one has to do nearly everything oneself.’

Lady Stubbs shrugged her shoulders.

‘I think it is stupid. What is the good of being rich if one has to do everything oneself ?’

‘Some people find it fun,’ said Mrs Folliat, smiling at her. ‘I do really. Not all things, but some. I like gardening myself and I like preparing for a festivity like this one tomorrow.’

‘It will be like a party?’ asked Lady Stubbs hopefully.

‘Just like a party – with lots and lots of people.’

‘Will it be like Ascot? With big hats and everyone very chic?’

‘Well, not quite like Ascot,’ said Mrs Folliat. She added gently, ‘But you must try and enjoy country things, Hattie. You should have helped us this morning, instead of staying in bed and not getting up until teatime.’

‘I had a headache,’ said Hattie sulkily. Then her mood changed and she smiled affectionately at Mrs Folliat.

‘But I will be good tomorrow. I will do everything you tell me.’

‘That’s very sweet of you, dear.’

‘I’ve got a new dress to wear. It came this morning. Come upstairs with me and look at it.’

Mrs Folliat hesitated. Lady Stubbs rose to her feet and said insistently:

‘You must come. Please. It is a lovely dress. Come now!’

‘Oh, very well.’ Mrs Folliat gave a half-laugh and rose.

As she went out of the room, her small figure following Hattie’s tall one, Poirot saw her face and was quite startled at the weariness on it which had replaced her smiling composure. It was as though, relaxed and off her guard for a moment, she no longer bothered to keep up the social mask. And yet – it seemed more than that. Perhaps she was suffering from some disease about which, like many women, she never spoke. She was not a person, he thought, who would care to invite pity or sympathy.

Captain Warburton dropped down in the chair Hattie Stubbs had just vacated. He, too, looked at the door through which the two women had just passed, but it was not of the older woman that he spoke. Instead he drawled, with a slight grin:

‘Beautiful creature, isn’t she?’ He observed with the tail of his eye Sir George’s exit through a french window with Mrs Masterton and Mrs Oliver in tow. ‘Bowled over old George Stubbs all right. Nothing’s too good for her! Jewels, mink, all the rest of it. Whether he realizes she’s a bit wanting in the top storey, I’ve never discovered. Probably thinks it doesn’t matter. After all, these financial johnnies don’t ask for intellectual companionship.’

‘What nationality is she?’ Poirot asked curiously.

‘Looks South American, I always think. But I believe she comes from the West Indies. One of those islands with sugar and rum and all that. One of the old families there – a creole, I don’t mean a half-caste. All very intermarried, I believe, on these islands. Accounts for the mental deficiency.’

Young Mrs Legge came over to join them.

‘Look here, Jim,’ she said, ‘you’ve got to be on my side. That tent’s got to be where we all decided – on the far side of the lawn backing on the rhododendrons. It’s the only possible place.’

‘Ma Masterton doesn’t think so.’

‘Well, you’ve got to talk her out of it.’

He gave her his foxy smile.

‘Mrs Masterton’s my boss.’

‘Wilfred Masterton’s your boss. He’s the M.P.’

‘I dare say, but she should be. She’s the one who wears the pants – and don’t I know it.’

Sir George re-entered the window.

‘Oh, there you are, Sally,’ he said. ‘We need you. You wouldn’t think everyone could get het up over who butters the buns and who raffles a cake, and why the garden produce stall is where the fancy woollens was promised it should be. Where’s Amy Folliat? She can deal with these people – about the only person who can.’

‘She went upstairs with Hattie.’

‘Oh, did she –?’

Sir George looked round in a vaguely helpless manner and Miss Brewis jumped up from where she was writing tickets, and said, ‘I’ll fetch her for you, Sir George.’

‘Thank you, Amanda.’

Miss Brewis went out of the room.

‘Must get hold of some more wire fencing,’ murmured Sir George.

‘For the fête?’

‘No, no. To put up where we adjoin Hoodown Park in the woods. The old stuff’s rotted away, and that’s where they get through.’

‘Who get through?’

‘Trespassers!’ ejaculated Sir George.

Sally Legge said amusedly:

‘You sound like Betsy Trotwood campaigning against donkeys.’

‘Betsy Trotwood? Who’s she?’ asked Sir George simply.

‘Dickens.’

‘Oh, Dickens. I read the Pickwick Papers once. Not bad. Not bad at all – surprised me. But, seriously, trespassers are a menace since they’ve started this Youth Hostel tomfoolery. They come out at you from everywhere wearing the most incredible shirts – boy this morning had one all covered with crawling turtles and things – made me think I’d been hitting the bottle or something. Half of them can’t speak English – just gibber at you…’ He mimicked: ‘“Oh, plees – yes, haf you – tell me – iss way to ferry?” I say no, it isn’t, roar at them, and send them back where they’ve come from, but half the time they just blink and stare and don’t understand. And the girls giggle. All kinds of nationalities, Italian, Yugoslavian, Dutch, Finnish – Eskimos I shouldn’t be surprised! Half of them communists, I shouldn’t wonder,’ he ended darkly.

‘Come now, George, don’t get started on communists,’ said Mrs Legge. ‘I’ll come and help you deal with the rabid women.’

She led him out of the window and called over her shoulder: ‘Come on, Jim. Come and be torn to pieces in a good cause.’

‘All right, but I want to put M. Poirot in the picture about the Murder Hunt since he’s going to present the prizes.’

‘You can do that presently.’

‘I will await you here,’ said Poirot agreeably.

In the ensuing silence, Alec Legge stretched himself out in his chair and sighed.

‘Women!’ he said. ‘Like a swarm of bees.’

He turned his head to look out of the window.

‘And what’s it all about? Some silly garden fête that doesn’t matter to anyone.’

‘But obviously,’ Poirot pointed out, ‘there are those to whom it does matter.’

‘Why can’t people have some sense? Why can’t they think? Think of the mess the whole world has got itself into. Don’t they realize that the inhabitants of the globe are busy committing suicide?’

Poirot judged rightly that he was not intended to reply to this question. He merely shook his head doubtfully.

‘Unless we can do something before it’s too late…’ Alec Legge broke off. An angry look swept over his face. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘I know what you’re thinking. That I’m nervy, neurotic – all the rest of it. Like those damned doctors. Advising rest and change and sea air. All right, Sally and I came down here and took the Mill Cottage for three months, and I’ve followed their prescription. I’ve fished and bathed and taken long walks and sun-bathed –’

‘I noticed that you had sunbathed, yes,’ said Poirot politely.

‘Oh, this?’ Alec’s hand went to his sore face. ‘That’s the result of a fine English summer for once in a way. But what’s the good of it all? You can’t get away from facing truth just by running away from it.’

‘No, it is never any good running away.’

‘And being in a rural atmosphere like this just makes you realize things more keenly – that and the incredible apathy of the people of this country. Even Sally, who’s intelligent enough, is just the same. Why bother? That’s what she says. It makes me mad! Why bother?’

‘As a matter of interest, why do you?’

‘Good God, you too?’

‘No, it is not advice. It is just that I would like to know your answer.’

‘Don’t you see, somebody’s got to do something.’

‘And that somebody is you?’

‘No, no, not me personally. One can’t be personal in times like these.’

‘I do not see why not. Even in “these times” as you call it, one is still a person.’

‘But one shouldn’t be! In times of stress, when it’s a matter of life or death, one can’t think of one’s own insignificant ills or preoccupations.’

‘I assure you, you are quite wrong. In the late war, during a severe air-raid, I was much less preoccupied by the thought of death than of the pain from a corn on my little toe. It surprised me at the time that it should be so. “Think,” I said to myself, “at any moment now, death may come.” But I was still conscious of my corn – indeed, I felt injured that I should have that to suffer as well as the fear of death. It was because I might die that every small personal matter in my life acquired increased importance. I have seen a woman knocked down in a street accident, with a broken leg, and she has burst out crying because she sees that there is a ladder in her stocking.’

‘Which just shows you what fools women are!’

‘It shows you what people are. It is, perhaps, that absorption in one’s personal life that has led the human race to survive.’

Alec Legge gave a scornful laugh.

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I think it’s a pity they ever did.’

‘It is, you know,’ Poirot persisted, ‘a form of humility. And humility is valuable. There was a slogan that was written up in your underground railways here, I remember, during the war. “It all depends on you.” It was composed, I think, by some eminent divine – but in my opinion it was a dangerous and undesirable doctrine. For it is not true. Everything does not depend on, say, Mrs Blank of Little-Blank-in-the-Marsh. And if she is led to think it does, it will not be good for her character. While she thinks of the part she can play in world affairs, the baby pulls over the kettle.’

‘You are rather old-fashioned in your views, I think. Let’s hear what your slogan would be.’

‘I do not need to formulate one of my own. There is an older one in this country which contents me very well.’

‘What is that?’

‘“Put your trust in God, and keep your powder dry.”’

‘Well, well…’ Alec Legge seemed amused. ‘Most unexpected coming from you. Do you know what I should like to see done in this country?’

‘Something, no doubt, forceful and unpleasant,’ said Poirot, smiling.

Alec Legge remained serious.

‘I should like to see every feeble-minded person put out – right out! Don’t let them breed. If, for one generation, only the intelligent were allowed to breed, think what the result would be.’

‘A very large increase of patients in the psychiatric wards, perhaps,’ said Poirot dryly. ‘One needs roots as well as flowers on a plant, Mr Legge. However large and beautiful the flowers, if the earthy roots are destroyed there will be no more flowers.’ He added in a conversational tone: ‘Would you consider Lady Stubbs a candidate for the lethal chamber?’

‘Yes, indeed. What’s the good of a woman like that? What contribution has she ever made to society? Has she ever had an idea in her head that wasn’t of clothes or furs or jewels? As I say, what good is she?’

‘You and I,’ said Poirot blandly, ‘are certainly much more intelligent than Lady Stubbs. But’ – he shook his head sadly – ‘it is true, I fear, that we are not nearly so ornamental.’

‘Ornamental…’ Alec was beginning with a fierce snort, but he was interrupted by the re-entry of Mrs Oliver and Captain Warburton through the window.

Chapter 4

‘You must come and see the clues and things for the Murder Hunt, M. Poirot,’ said Mrs Oliver breathlessly.

Poirot rose and followed them obediently.

The three of them went across the hall and into a small room furnished plainly as a business office.

‘Lethal weapons to your left,’ observed Captain Warburton, waving his hand towards a small baize-covered card table. On it were laid out a small pistol, a piece of lead piping with a rusty sinister stain on it, a blue bottle labelled Poison, a length of clothes line and a hypodermic syringe.

‘Those are the Weapons,’ explained Mrs Oliver, ‘and these are the Suspects.’

She handed him a printed card which he read with interest.

Suspects

Estelle Glynne | – | a beautiful and mysterious young woman, the guest of
Colonel Blunt | – | the local Squire, whose daughter
Joan | – | is married to
Peter Gaye | – | a young Atom Scientist.
Miss Willing | – | a housekeeper.
Quiett | – | a butler.
Maya Stavisky | – | a girl hiker.
Esteban Loyola | – | an uninvited guest.

Poirot blinked and looked towards Mrs Oliver in mute incomprehension.

‘A magnificent Cast of Characters,’ he said politely. ‘But permit me to ask, Madame, what does the Competitor do?’

‘Turn the card over,’ said Captain Warburton.

Poirot did so.

On the other side was printed:

Name and address .….….….….….………

Solution:

Name of Murderer:….….….….….………

Weapon:….….….….….….….………

Motive:….….….….….….….….

Time and Place:….….….….….…..

Reasons for arriving at your conclusions:.….…..….….….….….….….….….…..

‘Everyone who enters gets one of these,’ explained Captain Warburton rapidly. ‘Also a notebook and pencil for copying clues. There will be six clues. You go on from one to the other like a Treasure Hunt, and the weapons are concealed in suspicious places. Here’s the first clue. A snapshot. Everyone starts with one of these.’

Poirot took the small print from him and studied it with a frown. Then he turned it upside down. He still looked puzzled. Warburton laughed.

‘Ingenious bit of trick photography, isn’t it?’ he said complacently. ‘Quite simple once you know what it is.’

Poirot, who did not know what it was, felt a mounting annoyance.

‘Some kind of barred window?’ he suggested.

‘Looks a bit like it, I admit. No, it’s a section of a tennis net.’

‘Ah.’ Poirot looked again at the snapshot. ‘Yes, it is as you say – quite obvious when you have been told what it is!’

‘So much depends on how you look at a thing,’ laughed Warburton.

‘That is a very profound truth.’

‘The second clue will be found in a box under the centre of the tennis net. In the box are this empty poison bottle – here, and a loose cork.’

‘Only, you see,’ said Mrs Oliver rapidly, ‘it’s a screw-topped bottle, so the cork is really the clue.’

‘I know, Madame, that you are always full of ingenuity, but I do not quite see –’

Mrs Oliver interrupted him.

‘Oh, but of course,’ she said, ‘there’s a story. Like in a magazine serial – a synopsis.’ She turned to Captain Warburton. ‘Have you got the leaflets?’

‘They’ve not come from the printers yet.’

‘But they promised!’

‘I know. I know. Everyone always promises. They’ll be ready this evening at six. I’m going in to fetch them in the car.’

‘Oh, good.’

Mrs Oliver gave a deep sigh and turned to Poirot.

‘Well, I’ll have to tell it you, then. Only I’m not very good at telling things. I mean if I write things, I get them perfectly clear, but if I talk, it always sounds the most frightful muddle; and that’s why I never discuss my plots with anyone. I’ve learnt not to, because if I do, they just look at me blankly and say “– er – yes, but – I don’t see what happened – and surely that can’t possibly make a book.” So damping. And not true, because when I write it, it does!’

Mrs Oliver paused for breath, and then went on:

‘Well, it’s like this. There’s Peter Gaye who’s a young Atom Scientist and he’s suspected of being in the pay of the Communists, and he’s married to this girl, Joan Blunt, and his first wife’s dead, but she isn’t, and she turns up because she’s a secret agent, or perhaps not, I mean she may really be a hiker – and the wife’s having an affair, and this man Loyola turns up either to meet Maya, or to spy upon her, and there’s a blackmailing letter which might be from the housekeeper, or again it might be the butler, and the revolver’s missing, and as you don’t know who the blackmailing letter’s to, and the hypodermic syringe fell out at dinner, and after that it disappeared…’

Mrs Oliver came to a full stop, estimating correctly Poirot’s reaction.

‘I know,’ she said sympathetically. ‘It sounds just a muddle, but it isn’t really – not in my head – and when you see the synopsis leaflet, you’ll find it’s quite clear.

‘And, anyway,’ she ended, ‘the story doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean, not to you. All you’ve got to do is to present the prizes – very nice prizes, the first’s a silver cigarette case shaped like a revolver – and say how remarkably clever the solver has been.’

Poirot thought to himself that the solver would indeed have been clever. In fact, he doubted very much that there would be a solver. The whole plot and action of the Murder Hunt seemed to him to be wrapped in impenetrable fog.

‘Well,’ said Captain Warburton cheerfully, glancing at his wrist-watch, ‘I’d better be off to the printers and collect.’

Mrs Oliver groaned.

‘If they’re not done –’

‘Oh, they’re done all right. I telephoned. So long.’

He left the room.

Mrs Oliver immediately clutched Poirot by the arm and demanded in a hoarse whisper:

‘Well?’

‘Well – what?’

‘Have you found out anything? Or spotted anybody?’

Poirot replied with mild reproof in his tones:

‘Everybody and everything seems to me completely normal.’

‘Normal?’

‘Well, perhaps that is not quite the right word. Lady Stubbs, as you say, is definitely subnormal, and Mr Legge would appear to be rather abnormal.’

‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Mrs Oliver impatiently. ‘He’s had a nervous breakdown.’

Poirot did not question the somewhat doubtful wording of this sentence but accepted it at its face value.

‘Everybody appears to be in the expected state of nervous agitation, high excitement, general fatigue, and strong irritation, which are characteristic of preparations for this form of entertainment. If you could only indicate –’

‘Sh!’ Mrs Oliver grasped his arm again. ‘Someone’s coming.’

It was just like a bad melodrama, Poirot felt, his own irritation mounting.

The pleasant mild face of Miss Brewis appeared round the door.

‘Oh, there you are, M. Poirot. I’ve been looking for you to show you your room.’

She led him up the staircase and along a passage to a big airy room looking out over the river.

‘There is a bathroom just opposite. Sir George talks of adding more bathrooms, but to do so would sadly impair the proportions of the rooms. I hope you’ll find everything quite comfortable.’

‘Yes, indeed.’ Poirot swept an appreciative eye over the small bookstand, the reading-lamp and the box labelled ‘Biscuits’ by the bedside. ‘You seem, in this house, to have everything organized to perfection. Am I to congratulate you, or my charming hostess?’

‘Lady Stubbs’ time is fully taken up in being charming,’ said Miss Brewis, a slightly acid note in her voice.

‘A very decorative young woman,’ mused Poirot.

‘As you say.’

‘But in other respects is she not, perhaps…’ He broke off. ‘Pardon. I am indiscreet. I comment on something I ought not, perhaps, to mention.’

Miss Brewis gave him a steady look. She said dryly:

‘Lady Stubbs knows perfectly well exactly what she is doing. Besides being, as you said, a very decorative young woman, she is also a very shrewd one.’

She had turned away and left the room before Poirot’s eyebrows had fully risen in surprise. So that was what the efficient Miss Brewis thought, was it? Or had she merely said so for some reason of her own? And why had she made such a statement to him – to a newcomer? Because he was a newcomer, perhaps? And also because he was a foreigner. As Hercule Poirot had discovered by experience, there were many English people who considered that what one said to foreigners didn’t count!

He frowned perplexedly, staring absentmindedly at the door out of which Miss Brewis had gone. Then he strolled over to the window and stood looking out. As he did so, he saw Lady Stubbs come out of the house with Mrs Folliat and they stood for a moment or two talking by the big magnolia tree. Then Mrs Folliat nodded a goodbye, picked up her gardening basket and gloves and trotted off down the drive. Lady Stubbs stood watching her for a moment, then absentmindedly pulled off a magnolia flower, smelt it and began slowly to walk down the path that led through the trees to the river. She looked just once over her shoulder before she disappeared from sight. From behind the magnolia tree Michael Weyman came quietly into view, paused a moment irresolutely and then followed the tall slim figure down into the trees.

A good-looking and dynamic young man, Poirot thought. With a more attractive personality, no doubt, than that of Sir George Stubbs…

But if so, what of it? Such patterns formed themselves eternally through life. Rich middle-aged unattractive husband, young and beautiful wife with or without sufficient mental development, attractive and susceptible young man. What was there in that to make Mrs Oliver utter a peremptory summons through the telephone? Mrs Oliver, no doubt, had a vivid imagination, but…

‘But after all,’ murmured Hercule Poirot to himself, ‘I am not a consultant in adultery – or in incipient adultery.’

Could there really be anything in this extraordinary notion of Mrs Oliver’s that something was wrong? Mrs Oliver was a singularly muddle-headed woman, and how she managed somehow or other to turn out coherent detective stories was beyond him, and yet, for all her muddle-headedness she often surprised him by her sudden perception of truth.

‘The time is short – short,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Is there something wrong here, as Mrs Oliver believes? I am inclined to think there is. But what? Who is there who could enlighten me? I need to know more, much more, about the people in this house. Who is there who could inform me?’

After a moment’s reflection he seized his hat (Poirot never risked going out in the evening air with uncovered head), and hurried out of his room and down the stairs. He heard afar the dictatorial baying of Mrs Masterton’s deep voice. Nearer at hand, Sir George’s voice rose with an amorous intonation.

‘Damned becoming that yashmak thing. Wish I had you in my harem, Sally. I shall come and have my fortune told a good deal tomorrow. What’ll you tell me, eh?’

There was a slight scuffle and Sally Legge’s voice said breathlessly:

‘George, you mustn’t.’

Poirot raised his eyebrows, and slipped out of a conveniently adjacent side door. He set off at top speed down a back drive which his sense of locality enabled him to predict would at some point join the front drive.

His manoeuvre was successful and enabled him – panting very slightly – to come up beside Mrs Folliat and relieve her in a gallant manner of her gardening basket.

‘You permit, Madame?’

‘Oh, thank you, M. Poirot, that’s very kind of you. But it’s not heavy.’

‘Allow me to carry it for you to your home. You live near here?’

‘I actually live in the lodge by the front gate. Sir George very kindly rents it to me.’

The lodge by the front gate of her former home…How did she really feel about that, Poirot wondered. Her composure was so absolute that he had no clue to her feelings. He changed the subject by observing:

‘Lady Stubbs is much younger than her husband, is she not?’

‘Twenty-three years younger.’

‘Physically she is very attractive.’

Mrs Folliat said quietly:

‘Hattie is a dear good child.’

It was not an answer he had expected. Mrs Folliat went on:

‘I know her very well, you see. For a short time she was under my care.’

‘I did not know that.’

‘How should you? It is in a way a sad story. Her people had estates, sugar estates, in the West Indies. As a result of an earthquake, the house there was burned down and her parents and brothers and sisters all lost their lives. Hattie herself was at a convent in Paris and was thus suddenly left without any near relatives. It was considered advisable by the executors that Hattie should be chaperoned and introduced into society after she had spent a certain time abroad. I accepted the charge of her.’ Mrs Folliat added with a dry smile: ‘I can smarten myself up on occasions and, naturally, I had the necessary connections – in fact, the late Governor had been a close friend of ours.’

‘Naturally, Madame, I understand all that.’

‘It suited me very well – I was going through a difficult time. My husband had died just before the outbreak of war. My elder son who was in the navy went down with his ship, my younger son, who had been out in Kenya, came back, joined the commandos and was killed in Italy. That meant three lots of death duties and this house had to be put up for sale. I myself was very badly off and I was glad of the distraction of having someone young to look after and travel about with. I became very fond of Hattie, all the more so, perhaps, because I soon realized that she was – shall we say – not fully capable of fending for herself ? Understand me, M. Poirot, Hattie is not mentally deficient, but she is what country folk describe as “simple.” She is easily imposed upon, over docile, completely open to suggestion. I think myself that it was a blessing that there was practically no money. If she had been an heiress her position might have been one of much greater difficulty. She was attractive to men and being of an affectionate nature was easily attracted and influenced – she had definitely to be looked after. When, after the final winding up of her parents’ estate, it was discovered that the plantation was destroyed and there were more debts than assets, I could only be thankful that a man such as Sir George Stubbs had fallen in love with her and wanted to marry her.’

‘Possibly – yes – it was a solution.’

‘Sir George,’ said Mrs Folliat, ‘though he is a self-made man and – let us face it – a complete vulgarian, is kindly and fundamentally decent, besides being extremely wealthy. I don’t think he would ever ask for mental companionship from a wife, which is just as well. Hattie is everything he wants. She displays clothes and jewels to perfection, is affectionate and willing, and is completely happy with him. I confess that I am very thankful that that is so, for I admit that I deliberately influenced her to accept him. If it had turned out badly’ – her voice faltered a little – ‘it would have been my fault for urging her to marry a man so many years older than herself. You see, as I told you, Hattie is completely suggestible. Anyone she is with at the time can dominate her.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Poirot approvingly, ‘that you made there a most prudent arrangement for her. I am not, like the English, romantic. To arrange a good marriage, one must take more than romance into consideration.’

He added:

‘And as for this place here, Nasse House, it is a most beautiful spot. Quite, as the saying goes, out of this world.’

‘Since Nasse had to be sold,’ said Mrs Folliat, with a faint tremor in her voice, ‘I am glad that Sir George bought it. It was requisitioned during the war by the Army and afterwards it might have been bought and made into a guest house or a school, the rooms cut up and partitioned, distorted out of their natural beauty. Our neighbours, the Fletchers, at Hoodown, had to sell their place and it is now a Youth Hostel. One is glad that young people should enjoy themselves – and fortunately Hoodown is late-Victorian, and of no great architectural merit, so that the alterations do not matter. I’m afraid some of the young people trespass on our grounds. It makes Sir George very angry. It’s true that they have occasionally damaged the rare shrubs by hacking them about – they come through here trying to get a short cut to the ferry across the river.’

They were standing now by the front gate. The lodge, a small white one-storied building, lay a little back from the drive with a small railed garden round it.

Mrs Folliat took back her basket from Poirot with a word of thanks.

‘I was always very fond of the lodge,’ she said, looking at it affectionately. ‘Merdle, our head gardener for thirty years, used to live there. I much prefer it to the top cottage, though that has been enlarged and modernized by Sir George. It had to be; we’ve got quite a young man now as head gardener, with a young wife – and these young women must have electric irons and modern cookers and television, and all that. One must go with the times…’ She sighed. ‘There is hardly a person left now on the estate from the old days – all new faces.’

‘I am glad, Madame,’ said Poirot, ‘that you at least have found a haven.’

‘You know those lines of Spenser’s? “Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, ease after war, death after life, doth greatly please…”’

She paused and said without any change of tone: ‘It’s a very wicked world, M. Poirot. And there are very wicked people in the world. You probably know that as well as I do. I don’t say so before the younger people, it might discourage them, but it’s true…Yes, it’s a very wicked world…’

She gave him a little nod, then turned and went into the lodge. Poirot stood still, staring at the shut door.

Chapter 5

I

In a mood of exploration Poirot went through the front gates and down the steeply twisting road that presently emerged on a small quay. A large bell with a chain had a notice upon it: ‘Ring for the Ferry.’ There were various boats moored by the side of the quay. A very old man with rheumy eyes, who had been leaning against a bollard, came shuffling towards Poirot.

‘Du ee want the ferry, sir?’

‘I thank you, no. I have just come down from Nasse House for a little walk.’

‘Ah, ’tis up at Nasse yu are? Worked there as a boy, I did, and my son, he were head gardener there. But I did use to look after the boats. Old Squire Folliat, he was fair mazed about boats. Sail in all weathers, he would. The Major, now, his son, he didn’t care for sailing. Horses, that’s all he cared about. And a pretty packet went on ’em. That and the bottle – had a hard time with him, his wife did. Yu’ve seen her, maybe – lives at the Lodge now, she du.’

‘Yes, I have just left her there now.’

‘Her be a Folliat, tu, second cousin from over Tiverton way. A great one for the garden, she is, all them there flowering shrubs she had put in. Even when it was took over during the war, and the two young gentlemen was gone to the war, she still looked after they shrubs and kept ’em from being over-run.’

‘It was hard on her, both her sons being killed.’

‘Ah, she’ve had a hard life, she have, what with this and that. Trouble with her husband, and trouble with the young gentlemen, tu. Not Mr Henry. He was as nice a young gentleman as yu could wish, took after his grandfather, fond of sailing and went into the Navy as a matter of course, but Mr James, he caused her a lot of trouble. Debts and women it were, and then, tu, he were real wild in his temper. Born one of they as can’t go straight. But the war suited him, as yu might say – give him his chance. Ah! There’s many who can’t go straight in peace who dies bravely in war.’

‘So now,’ said Poirot, ‘there are no more Folliats at Nasse.’

The old man’s flow of talk died abruptly.

‘Just as yu say, sir.’

Poirot looked curiously at the old man.

‘Instead you have Sir George Stubbs. What is thought locally of him?’

‘Us understands,’ said the old man, ‘that he be powerful rich.’

His tone sounded dry and almost amused.

‘And his wife?’

‘Ah, she’s a fine lady from London, she is. No use for gardens, not her. They du say, tu, as her du be wanting up here.’

He tapped his temple significantly.

‘Not as her isn’t always very nice spoken and friendly. Just over a year they’ve been here. Bought the place and had it all done up like new. I remember as though ’twere yesterday them arriving. Arrived in the evening, they did, day after the worst gale as I ever remember. Trees down right and left – one down across the drive and us had to get it sawn away in a hurry to get the drive clear for the car. And the big oak up along, that come down and brought a lot of others down with it, made a rare mess, it did.’

‘Ah, yes, where the Folly stands now?’

The old man turned aside and spat disgustedly.

‘Folly ’tis called and Folly ’tis – new-fangled nonsense. Never was no Folly in the old Folliats’ time. Her ladyship’s idea that Folly was. Put up not three weeks after they first come, and I’ve no doubt she talked Sir George into it. Rare silly it looks stuck up there among the trees, like a heathen temple. A nice summer-house now, made rustic like with stained glass. I’d have nothing against that.’

Poirot smiled faintly.

‘The London ladies,’ he said, ‘they must have their fancies. It is sad that the day of the Folliats is over.’

‘Don’t ee never believe that, sir.’ The old man gave a wheezy chuckle. ‘Always be Folliats at Nasse.’

‘But the house belongs to Sir George Stubbs.’

‘That’s as may be – but there’s still a Folliat here. Ah! Rare and cunning the Folliats are!’

‘What do you mean?’

The old man gave him a sly sideways glance.

‘Mrs Folliat be living up tu Lodge, bain’t she?’ he demanded.

‘Yes,’ said Poirot slowly. ‘Mrs Folliat is living at the Lodge and the world is very wicked, and all the people in it are very wicked.’

The old man stared at him.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Yu’ve got something there, maybe.’

He shuffled away again.

‘But what have I got?’ Poirot asked himself with irritation as he slowly walked up the hill back to the house.

II

Hercule Poirot made a meticulous toilet, applying a scented pomade to his moustaches and twirling them to a ferocious couple of points. He stood back from the mirror and was satisfied with what he saw.

The sound of a gong resounded through the house, and he descended the stairs.

The butler, having finished a most artistic performance, crescendo, forte, diminuendo, rallentando, was just replacing the gong stick on its hook. His dark melancholy face showed pleasure.

Poirot thought to himself: ‘A blackmailing letter from the housekeeper – or it may be the butler…’ This butler looked as though blackmailing letters would be well within his scope. Poirot wondered if Mrs Oliver took her characters from life.

Miss Brewis crossed the hall in an unbecoming flowered chiffon dress and he caught up with her, asking as he did so:

‘You have a housekeeper here?’

‘Oh, no, M. Poirot. I’m afraid one doesn’t run to niceties of that kind nowadays, except in a really large establishment, of course. Oh, no, I’m the housekeeper – more housekeeper than secretary, sometimes, in this house.’

She gave a short acid laugh.

‘So you are the housekeeper?’ Poirot considered her thoughtfully.

He could not see Miss Brewis writing a blackmailing letter. Now, an anonymous letter – that would be a different thing. He had known anonymous letters written by women not unlike Miss Brewis – solid, dependable women, totally unsuspected by those around them.

‘What is your butler’s name?’ he asked.

‘Henden.’ Miss Brewis looked a little astonished.

Poirot recollected himself and explained quickly:

‘I ask because I had a fancy I had seen him somewhere before.’

‘Very likely,’ said Miss Brewis. ‘None of these people ever seem to stay in any place more than four months. They must soon have done the round of all the available situations in England. After all, it’s not many people who can afford butlers and cooks nowadays.’

They came into the drawing-room, where Sir George, looking somehow rather unnatural in a dinner-jacket, was proffering sherry. Mrs Oliver, in iron-grey satin, was looking like an obsolete battleship, and Lady Stubbs’ smooth black head was bent down as she studied the fashions in Vogue.

Alec and Sally Legge were dining and also Jim Warburton.

‘We’ve a heavy evening ahead of us,’ he warned them. ‘No bridge tonight. All hands to the pumps. There are any amount of notices to print, and the big card for the Fortune Telling. What name shall we have? Madame Zuleika? Esmeralda? Or Romany Leigh, the Gipsy Queen?’

‘The Eastern touch,’ said Sally. ‘Everyone in agricultural districts hates gipsies. Zuleika sounds all right. I brought my paint box over and I thought Michael could do us a curling snake to ornament the notice.’

‘Cleopatra rather than Zuleika, then?’

Henden appeared at the door.

‘Dinner is served, my lady.’

They went in. There were candles on the long table. The room was full of shadows.

Warburton and Alec Legge sat on either side of their hostess. Poirot was between Mrs Oliver and Miss Brewis. The latter was engaged in brisk general conversation about further details of preparation for tomorrow.

Mrs Oliver sat in brooding abstraction and hardly spoke.

When she did at last break her silence, it was with a somewhat contradictory explanation.

‘Don’t bother about me,’ she said to Poirot. ‘I’m just remembering if there’s anything I’ve forgotten.’

Sir George laughed heartily.

‘The fatal flaw, eh?’ he remarked.

‘That’s just it,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘There always is one. Sometimes one doesn’t realize it until a book’s actually in print. And then it’s agony!’ Her face reflected this emotion. She sighed. ‘The curious thing is that most people never notice it. I say to myself, “But of course the cook would have been bound to notice that two cutlets hadn’t been eaten.” But nobody else thinks of it at all.’

‘You fascinate me.’ Michael Weyman leant across the table. ‘The Mystery of the Second Cutlet. Please, please never explain. I shall wonder about it in my bath.’

Mrs Oliver gave him an abstracted smile and relapsed into her preoccupations.

Lady Stubbs was also silent. Now and again she yawned. Warburton, Alec Legge and Miss Brewis talked across her.

As they came out of the dining-room, Lady Stubbs stopped by the stairs.

‘I’m going to bed,’ she announced. ‘I’m very sleepy.’

‘Oh, Lady Stubbs,’ exclaimed Miss Brewis, ‘there’s so much to be done. We’ve been counting on you to help us.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Lady Stubbs. ‘But I’m going to bed.’

She spoke with the satisfaction of a small child.

She turned her head as Sir George came out of the dining-room.

‘I’m tired, George. I’m going to bed. You don’t mind?’

He came up to her and patted her on the shoulder affectionately.

‘You go and get your beauty sleep, Hattie. Be fresh for tomorrow.’

He kissed her lightly and she went up the stairs, waving her hand and calling out:

‘Goodnight, all.’

Sir George smiled up at her. Miss Brewis drew in her breath sharply and turned brusquely away.

‘Come along, everybody,’ she said, with a forced cheerfulness that did not ring true. ‘We’ve got to work.’

Presently everyone was set to their tasks. Since Miss Brewis could not be everywhere at once, there were soon some defaulters. Michael Weyman ornamented a placard with a ferociously magnificent serpent and the words, Madame Zuleika will tell your Fortune, and then vanished unobtrusively. Alec Legge did a few nondescript chores and then went out avowedly to measure for the hoop-la and did not reappear. The women, as women do, worked energetically and conscientiously. Hercule Poirot followed his hostess’s example and went early to bed.

III

Poirot came down to breakfast on the following morning at nine-thirty. Breakfast was served in pre-war fashion. A row of hot dishes on an electric heater. Sir George was eating a full-sized Englishman’s breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and kidneys. Mrs Oliver and Miss Brewis had a modified version of the same. Michael Weyman was eating a plateful of cold ham. Only Lady Stubbs was unheedful of the fleshpots and was nibbling thin toast and sipping black coffee. She was wearing a large pale-pink hat which looked odd at the breakfast table.

The post had just arrived. Miss Brewis had an enormous pile of letters in front of her which she was rapidly sorting into piles. Any of Sir George’s marked ‘Personal’ she passed over to him. The others she opened herself and sorted into categories.

Lady Stubbs had three letters. She opened what were clearly a couple of bills and tossed them aside. Then she opened the third letter and said suddenly and clearly:

‘Oh!’

The exclamation was so startled that all heads turned towards her.

‘It’s from Etienne,’ she said. ‘My cousin Etienne. He’s coming here in a yacht.’

‘Let’s see, Hattie.’ Sir George held out his hand. She passed the letter down the table. He smoothed out the sheet and read.

‘Who’s this Etienne de Sousa? A cousin, you say?’

‘I think so. A second cousin. I do not remember him very well – hardly at all. He was –’

‘Yes, my dear?’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘It does not matter. It is all a long time ago. I was a little girl.’

‘I suppose you wouldn’t remember him very well. But we must make him welcome, of course,’ said Sir George heartily. ‘Pity in a way it’s the fête today, but we’ll ask him to dinner. Perhaps we could put him up for a night or two – show him something of the country?’

Sir George was being the hearty country squire.

Lady Stubbs said nothing. She stared down into her coffee-cup.

Conversation on the inevitable subject of the fête became general. Only Poirot remained detached, watching the slim exotic figure at the head of the table. He wondered just what was going on in her mind. At that very moment her eyes came up and cast a swift glance along the table to where he sat. It was a look so shrewd and appraising that he was startled. As their eyes met, the shrewd expression vanished – emptiness returned. But that other look had been there, cold, calculating, watchful…

Or had he imagined it? In any case, wasn’t it true that people who were slightly mentally deficient very often had a kind of sly native cunning that sometimes surprised even the people who knew them best?

He thought to himself that Lady Stubbs was certainly an enigma. People seemed to hold diametrically opposite ideas concerning her. Miss Brewis had intimated that Lady Stubbs knew very well what she was doing. Yet Mrs Oliver definitely thought her halfwitted, and Mrs Folliat who had known her long and intimately had spoken of her as someone not quite normal, who needed care and watchfulness.

Miss Brewis was probably prejudiced. She disliked Lady Stubbs for her indolence and her aloofness. Poirot wondered if Miss Brewis had been Sir George’s secretary prior to his marriage. If so, she might easily resent the coming of the new régime.

Poirot himself would have agreed wholeheartedly with Mrs Folliat and Mrs Oliver – until this morning. And, after all, could he really rely on what had been only a fleeting impression?

Lady Stubbs got up abruptly from the table.

‘I have a headache,’ she said. ‘I shall go and lie down in my room.’

Sir George sprang up anxiously.

‘My dear girl. You’re all right, aren’t you?’

‘It’s just a headache.’

‘You’ll be fit enough for this afternoon, won’t you?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Take some aspirin, Lady Stubbs,’ said Miss Brewis briskly. ‘Have you got some or shall I bring it to you?’

‘I’ve got some.’

She moved towards the door. As she went she dropped the handkerchief she had been squeezing between her fingers. Poirot, moving quietly forward, picked it up unobtrusively.

Sir George, about to follow his wife, was stopped by Miss Brewis.

‘About the parking of cars this afternoon, Sir George. I’m just going to give Mitchell instructions. Do you think that the best plan would be, as you said –?’

Poirot, going out of the room, heard no more.

He caught up his hostess on the stairs.

‘Madame, you dropped this.’

He proffered the handkerchief with a bow.

She took it unheedingly.

‘Did I? Thank you.’

‘I am most distressed, Madame, that you should be suffering. Particularly when your cousin is coming.’

She answered quickly, almost violently.

‘I don’t want to see Etienne. I don’t like him. He’s bad. He was always bad. I’m afraid of him. He does bad things.’

The door of the dining-room opened and Sir George came across the hall and up the stairs.

‘Hattie, my poor darling. Let me come and tuck you up.’

They went up the stairs together, his arm round her tenderly, his face worried and absorbed.

Poirot looked up after them, then turned to encounter Miss Brewis moving fast, and clasping papers.

‘Lady Stubbs’ headache –’ he began.

‘No more headache than my foot,’ said Miss Brewis crossly, and disappeared into her office, closing the door behind her.

Poirot sighed and went out through the front door on to the terrace. Mrs Masterton had just driven up in a small car and was directing the elevation of a tea marquee, baying out orders in rich full-blooded tones.

She turned to greet Poirot.

‘Such a nuisance, these affairs,’ she observed. ‘And they will always put everything in the wrong place. No, Rogers! More to the left – left – not right! What do you think of the weather, M. Poirot? Looks doubtful to me. Rain, of course, would spoil everything. And we’ve had such a fine summer this year for a change. Where’s Sir George? I want to talk to him about car parking.’

‘His wife had a headache and has gone to lie down.’

‘She’ll be all right this afternoon,’ said Mrs Masterton confidently. ‘Likes functions, you know. She’ll make a terrific toilet and be as pleased about it as a child. Just fetch me a bundle of those pegs over there, will you? I want to mark the places for the clock golf numbers.’

Poirot, thus pressed into service, was worked by Mrs Masterton relentlessly, as a useful apprentice. She condescended to talk to him in the intervals of hard labour.

‘Got to do everything yourself, I find. Only way…By the way, you’re a friend of the Eliots, I believe?’

Poirot, after his long sojourn in England, comprehended that this was an indication of social recognition. Mrs Masterton was in fact saying: ‘Although a foreigner, I understand you are One of Us.’ She continued to chat in an intimate manner.

‘Nice to have Nasse lived in again. We were all so afraid it was going to be a hotel. You know what it is nowadays; one drives through the country and passes place after place with the board up “Guest House” or “Private Hotel” or “Hotel A.A. Fully Licensed.” All the houses one stayed in as a girl – or where one went to dances. Very sad. Yes, I’m glad about Nasse and so is poor dear Amy Folliat, of course. She’s had such a hard life – but never complains, I will say. Sir George has done wonders for Nasse – and not vulgarized it. Don’t know whether that’s the result of Amy Folliat’s influence – or whether it’s his own natural good taste. He has got quite good taste, you know. Very surprising in a man like that.’

‘He is not, I understand, one of the landed gentry?’ said Poirot cautiously.

‘He isn’t even really Sir George – was christened it, I understand. Took the idea from Lord George Sanger’s Circus, I suspect. Very amusing really. Of course we never let on. Rich men must be allowed their little snobberies, don’t you agree? The funny thing is that in spite of his origins George Stubbs would go down perfectly well anywhere. He’s a throwback. Pure type of the eighteenth-century country squire. Good blood in him, I’d say. Father a gent and mother a barmaid, is my guess.’

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