CHAPTER 11

Hercule Poirot looked up at the facade of Quarry House. A solid, well-built example of mid-Victorian architecture. He had a vision of its interior—a heavy mahogany sideboard, a central rectangular table also of heavy mahogany, a billiard room, perhaps, a large kitchen with adjacent scullery, stone flags on the floor, a massive coal range now no doubt replaced by electricity or gas.

He noted that most of the upper windows were still curtained. He rang the front-door bell. It was answered by a thin, grey-haired woman who told him that Colonel and Mrs Weston were away in London and would not be back until next week.

He asked about the Quarry woods and was told that they were open to the public without charge. The entrance was about five minutes’ walk along the road. He would see a notice-board on an iron gate.

He found his way there easily enough, and passing through the gate began to descend a path that led downwards through trees and shrubs.

Presently he came to a halt and stood there lost in thought. His mind was not only on what he saw, on what lay around him. Instead he was conning over one or two sentences, and reflecting over one or two facts that had given him at the time, as he expressed it to himself, furiously to think. A forged will, a forged will and a girl. A girl who had disappeared, the girl in whose favour the will had been forged. A young artist who had come here professionally to make out of an abandoned quarry of rough stone a garden, a sunk garden. Here again, Poirot looked round him and nodded his head with approval of the phrase. a Quarry Garden was an ugly term. It suggested the noise of blasting rock, the carrying away by lorries of vast masses of stone for road making. It had behind it industrial demand. But a Sunk Garden—that was different. It brought with it vague remembrances in his own mind. So Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe had gone on a National Trust tour of gardens in Ireland. He himself, he remembered, had been in Ireland five or six years ago. He had gone there to investigate a robbery of old family silver. There had been some interesting points about the case which had aroused his curiosity, and having (as usual)—Poirot added this bracket to his thoughts—solved his mission with full success, he had put in a few days travelling around and seeing the sights.

He could not remember now the particular garden he had been to see. Somewhere, he thought, not very far from Cork. Killarney? No, not Killarney. Somewhere not far from Bantry Bay. And he remembered it because it had been a garden quite different from the gardens which he had so far acclaimed as the great successes of this age, the gardens of the Chateaux in France, the formal beauty of Versailles. Here, he remembered, he had started with a little group of people in a boat. A boat difficult to get into if two strong and able boatmen had not practically lifted him in. They had rowed towards a small island, not a very interesting island, Poirot had thought, and began to wish that he had not come. His feet were wet and cold and the wind was blowing through the crevices of his mackintosh. What beauty, he had thought, what formality, what symmetrical arrangement of great beauty could there be on this rocky island with its sparse trees? a mis ta ke—definitely a mistake.

They had landed at the little wharf. The fishermen had landed him with the same adroitness they had shown before. The remaining members of the party had gone on ahead, talking and laughing. Poirot, readjusting his mackintosh in position and tying up his shoes again, had followed them up the rather dull path with shrubs and bushes and a few sparse trees either side. A most uninteresting park, he thought.

And then, rather suddenly, they had come out from among the scrub on to a terrace with steps leading down from it. Below it he had looked down into what struck him at once as something entirely magical. Something as it might have been if elemental beings such as he believed were common in Irish poetry, had come out of their hollow hills and had created there, not so much by toil and hard labour as by waving a magic wand, a garden. You looked down into the garden. Its beauty, the flowers and bushes, the artificial water below in the fountain, the path round it, enchanted, beautiful and entirely unexpected. He wondered how it had been originally. It seemed too symmetrical to have been a quarry. A deep hollow here in the raised ground of the island, but beyond it you could see the waters of the Bay and the hills rising the other side, their misty tops an enchanting scene. He thought perhaps that it might have been that particular garden which had stirred Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe to possess such a garden of her own, to have the pleasure of taking an unkempt quarry set in this smug, tidy, elementary and essentially conventional countryside of that part of England.

And so she had looked about for the proper kind of well-paid slave to do her bidding. And she had found the professionally qualified young man called Michael Garfield and had brought him here and had paid him no doubt a large fee, and had in due course built a house for him. Michael Garfield, thought Poirot, had not failed her.

He went and sat down on a bench, a bench which had been strategically placed. He pictured to himself what the sunken quarry would look like in the spring. There were young beech trees and birches with their white shivering barks. Bushes of thorn and white rose, little juniper trees. But now it was autumn, and autumn had been catered for also. The gold and red of acers, a parrotia or two, a path that led along a winding way to fresh delights. There were flowering bushes of gorse or Spanish broom—Poirot was not famous for knowing the names of either flowers or shrubs—only roses and tulips could he approve and recognize.

But everything that grew here had the appearance of having grown by its own will. It had not been arranged or forced into submission. And yet, thought Poirot, that is not really so. All has been arranged, all has been planned to this tiny little plant that grows here and to that large towering bush that rises up so fiercely with its golden and red leaves. Oh yes. Аll has been planned here and arranged. what is more, I would say that it had obeyed.

He wondered then whom it had obeyed. Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe or Michael Garfield? It makes a difference, said Poirot to himself, yes, it makes a difference. Mrs Llewellyn- Smythe was knowledgeable, he felt sure. She had gardened for many years, she was no doubt a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society, she went to shows, she consulted catalogues, she visited gardens. She took journeys abroad, no doubt, for botanical reasons. She would know what she wanted, she would say what she wanted. Was that enough? Poirot thought it was not quite enough. She could have given orders to gardeners and made sure her orders were carried out. But did she know—really know—see in her mind’s eye exactly what her orders would look like when they had been carried out? Not in the first year of their planting, not even the second, but things that she would see two years later, three years later, perhaps, even six or seven years later. Michael Garfield, thought Poirot, Michael Garfield knows what she wants because she has told him what she wants, and he knows how to make this bare quarry of stone and rock blossom as a desert can blossom. He planned and he brought it about; he had no doubt the intense pleasure that comes to an artist who is commissioned by a client with plenty of money. Here was his conception of a fairy-land tucked away in a conventional and rather dull hillside, and here it would grow up. Expensive shrubs for which large cheques would have to be written, and rare plants that perhaps would only be obtainable through the goodwill of a friend, and here, too, the humble things that were needed and which cost next to nothing at all. In spring on the bank just to his left there would be primroses, their modest green leaves all bunched together up the side of it told him that.

‘In England,’ said Poirot, ‘people show you their herbaceous borders and they take you to see their roses and they talk at inordinate length about their iris gardens, and to show they appreciate one of the great beauties of England, they take you on a day when the sun shines and the beech trees are in leaf, and underneath them are all the bluebells. Yes, it is a very beautiful sight, but I have been shown it, I think, once too often. I prefer—’ the thought broke off in his mind as he thought back to what he had preferred. A drive through Devon lanes. A winding road with great banks up each side of it, and on those banks a great carpet and showing of primroses. So pale, so subtly and timidly yellow, and coming from them that sweet, faint, elusive smell that the primrose has in large quantities, which is the smell of spring almost more than any other smell. And so it would not be all rare shrubs here. There would be spring and autumn, there would be little wild cyclamen and there would be autumn crocus here too. It was a beautiful place.

He wondered about the people who lived in Quarry House now. He had their names, a retired elderly Colonel and his wife, but surely, he thought, Spence might have told him more about them. He had the feeling that whoever owned this now had not got the love of it that dead Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe had had. He got up and walked along the path a little way. It was an easy path, carefully levelled, designed, he thought, to be easy for an elderly person to walk where she would at will, without undue amount of steep steps, and at a convenient angle and convenient intervals a seat that looked rustic but was much less rustic than it looked. In fact, the angle for the back and for one’s feet was remarkably comfortable. Poirot thought to himself, I’d like to see this Michael Garfield. He made a good thing of this. He knew his job, he was a good planner and he got experienced people to carry his plans out, and he managed, I think, to get his patron’s plans so arranged that she would think that the whole planning had been hers. But I don’t think it was only hers. It was mostly his. Yes, I’d like to see him. If he’s still in the cottage—or the bungalow—that was built for him, I suppose—his thought broke off.

He stared. Stared across a hollow that lay at his feet where the path ran round the other side of it. Stared at one particular golden red branching shrub which framed something that Poirot did not know for a moment was really there or was a mere effect of shadow and sunshine and leaves.

‘What am I seeing?’ thought Poirot. ‘Is this the result of enchantment? It could be. In this place here, it could be. Is it a human being I see, or is it—what could it be?’ His mind reverted to some adventures of his many years ago which he had christened ‘The Labours of Hercules’. Somehow, he thought, this was not an English garden in which he was sitting. There was an atmosphere here. He tried to pin it down. It had qualities of magic, of enchantment, certainly of beauty, bashful beauty, yet wild. Here, if you were staging a scene in the theatre, you would have your nymphs, your fauns, you would have Greek beauty, you would have fear too. Yes, he thought, in this sunk garden there is fear. What did Spence’s sister say? Something about a murder that took place in the original quarry years ago? Blood had stained the rock there, and afterwards, death had been forgotten, all had been covered over, Michael Garfield had come, had planned and had created a garden of great beauty, and an elderly woman who had not many more years to live had paid out money for it.

He saw now it was a young man who stood on the other side of the hollow, framed by golden red leaves, and a young man, so Poirot now recognized, of an unusual beauty. One didn’t think of young men that way nowadays. You said of a young man that he was sexy or madly attractive, and these evidences of praise are often quite justly made. A man with a craggy face, a man with wild greasy hair and whose features were far from regular. You didn’t say a young man was beautiful. If you did say it, you said it apologetically as though you were praising some quality that had been long dead. The sexy girls didn’t want Orpheus with his lute, they wanted a pop singer with a raucous voice, expressive eyes and large masses of unruly hair.

Poirot got up and walked round the path. As he got to the other side of the steep descent, the young man came out from the trees to meet him. His youth seemed the most characteristic thing about him, yet, as Poirot saw, he was not really young. He was past thirty, perhaps nearer forty. The smile on his face was very, very faint. It was not quite a welcoming smile, it was just a smile of quiet recognition. He was tall, slender, with features of great perfection such as a classical sculptor might have produced. His eyes were dark, his hair was black and fitted him as a woven chain mail helmet or cap might have done. For a moment Poirot wondered whether he and this young man might not be meeting in the course of some pageant that was being rehearsed. If so, thought Poirot, looking down at his galoshes, I, alas, shall have to go to the wardrobe mistress to get myself better equipped. He said:

‘I am perhaps trespassing here. If so, I must apologize. I am a stranger in this part of the world. I only arrived yesterday.’

‘I don’t think one could call it trespassing.’ The voice was very quiet; it was polite yet in a curious way uninterested, as if this man’s thoughts were really somewhere quite far away. ‘It’s not exactly open to the public, but people do walk round here. Old Colonel Weston and his wife don’t mind. They would mind if there was any damage done, but that’s not really very likely.’

‘No vandalism,’ said Poirot, looking round him. ‘No litter that is noticeable. Not even a litter basket. That is very unusual, is it not? And it seems deserted—strange. Here you would think,’ he went on, ‘there would be lovers walking.’

‘Lovers don’t come here,’ said the young man. ‘It’s supposed to be unlucky for some reason.’

‘Are you, I wonder, the architect? But perhaps I’m guessing wrong.’

‘My name is Michael Garfield,’ said the young man.

‘I thought it might be,’ said Poirot. He gesticulated with a hand around him. ‘You made this?’

‘Yes,’ said Michael Garfield.

‘It is very beautiful,’ said Poirot. ‘Somehow one feels it is always rather unusual when something beautiful is made in—well, frankly, what is a dull part of the English landscape.

‘I congratulate you,’ he said. ‘You must be satisfied with what you have done here.’

‘Is one ever satisfied? I wonder.’

‘You made it, I think, for a Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe. No longer alive, I believe. There is a Colonel and Mrs Weston, I believe? Do they own it now?’

‘Yes. They got it cheap. It’s a big, ungainly house—not easy to run—not what most people want. She left it in her Will to me.’

‘And you sold it.’

‘I sold the house.’

‘And not the Quarry Garden?’

‘Oh yes. The Quarry Garden went with it, practically thrown in, as one might say.’

‘Now why?’ said Poirot. ‘It is interesting, that. You do not mind if I am perhaps a little curious?’

‘Your questions are not quite the usual ones,’ said Michael Garfield.

‘I ask not so much for facts as for reasons. Why did A do so and so? Why did B do something else? Why was C’s behaviour quite different from that of A and B?’

‘You should be talking to a scientist,’ said Michael. ‘It is a matter—or so we are told nowadays—of genes or chromosomes. The arrangement, the pattern, and so on.’

‘You said just now you were not entirely satisfied because no-one ever was. Was your employer, your patron, whatever you like to call her—was she satisfied? With this thing of beauty?’

‘Up to a point,’ said Michael. ‘I saw to that. She was easy to satisfy.’

‘That seems most unlikely,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘She was, I have learned, over sixty. Sixty-five at least. Are people of that age often satisfied?’

‘She was assured by me that what I had carried out was the exact carrying out of her instructions and imagination and ideas.’

‘And was it?’

‘Do you ask me that seriously?’

‘No,’ said Poirot. ‘No. Frankly I do not.’

‘For success in life,’ said Michael Garfield, ‘one has to pursue the career one wants, one has to satisfy such artistic leanings as one has got, but one has as well to be a tradesman. You have to sell your wares. Otherwise you are tied to carrying out other people’s ideas in a way which will not accord with one’s own. I carried out mainly my own ideas and I sold them, marketed them perhaps is a better word, to the client who employed me, as a direct carrying out of her plans and schemes. It is not a very difficult art to learn. There is no more to it than selling a child brown eggs rather than white ones. The customer has to be assured they are the best ones, the right ones. The essence of the countryside. Shall we say, the hen’s own preference? Brown, farm, country eggs. One does not sell them if one says “they are just eggs. there is only one difference in eggs. They are new laid or they are not”.’

‘You are an unusual young man,’ said Poirot. ‘Arrogant,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘Perhaps.’

‘You have made here something very beautiful. You have added vision and planning to the rough material of stone hollowed out in the pursuit of industry, with no thought of beauty in that hacking out. You have added imagination, a result seen in the mind’s eye, that you have managed to raise the money to fulfil. I congratulate you. I pay my tribute. The tribute of an old man who is approaching a time when the end of his own work is come.’

‘But at the moment you are still carrying it on?’

‘You know who I am, then?’

Poirot was pleased indubitably. He liked people to know who he was. Nowadays, he feared, most people did not.

‘You follow the trail of blood… It is already known here. It is a small community, news travels. Another public success brought you here.’

‘Ah, you mean Mrs Oliver.’

‘Ariadne Oliver. A best seller. People wish to interview her, to know what she thinks about such subjects as student unrest, socialism, girls’ clothing, should sex be permissive, and many other things that are no concern of hers.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Poirot, ‘deplorable, I think. They do not learn very much, I have noticed, from Mrs Oliver. They learn only that she is fond of apples. That has now been known for twenty years at least, I should think, but she still repeats it with a pleasant smile. Although now, I fear, she no longer likes apples.’

‘It was apples that brought you here, was it not?’

‘Apples at a Hallowe’en party,’ said Poirot. ‘You were at that party?’

‘No.’

‘You were fortunate.’

‘Fortunate?’ Michael Garfield repeated the word, something that sounded faintly like surprise in his voice.

‘To have been one of the guests at a party where murder is committed is not a pleasant experience. Perhaps you have not experienced it, but I tell you, you are fortunate because—’ Poirot became a little more foreign ‘—il y a des ennuis, vous comprenez? People ask you times, dates, impertinent questions.’ He went on, ‘You knew the child?’

‘Oh yes. The Reynolds are well known here. I know most of the people living round here. We all know each other in Woodleigh Common, though in varying degrees. There is some intimacy, some friendships, some people remain the merest acquaintances, and so on.’

‘What was she like, the child Joyce?’

‘She was—how can I put it?—not important. She had rather an ugly voice. Shrill. Really, that’s about all I remember about her. I’m not particularly fond of children. Mostly they bore me. Joyce bored me. When she talked, she talked about herself.’

‘She was not interesting?’

Michael Garfield looked slightly surprised.

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ he said. ‘Does she have to be?’

‘It is my view that people devoid of interest are unlikely to be murdered. People are murdered for gain, for fear or for love. One takes one’s choice, but one has to have a starting point—’

He broke off and glanced at his watch.

‘I must proceed. I have an engagement to fulfil. Once more, my felicitations.’

He went on down, following the path and picking his way carefully. He was glad that for once he was not wearing his tight patent leather shoes.

Michael Garfield was not the only person he was to meet in the sunk garden that day. As he reached the bottom he noted that three paths led from here in slightly different directions. At the entrance of the middle path, sitting on a fallen trunk of a tree, a child was awaiting him. She made this clear at once.

‘I expect you are Mr Hercule Poirot, aren’t you?’ she said.

Her voice was clear, almost bell-like in tone. She was a fragile creature. Something about her matched the sunk garden. A dryad or some elf-like being.

‘That is my name,’ said Poirot.

‘I came to meet you,’ said the child. ‘You are coming to tea with us, aren’t you?’

‘With Mrs Butler and Mrs Oliver? Yes.’

‘That’s right. That’s Mummy and Aunt Ariadne.’ She added with a note of censure: ‘You’re rather late.’

‘I am sorry. I stopped to speak to someone.’

‘Yes, I saw you. You were talking to Michael, weren’t you?’

‘You know him?’

‘Of course. We’ve lived here quite a long time. I know everybody.’

Poirot wondered how old she was. He asked her. She said,‘I’m twelve years old. I’m going to boarding-school next year.’

‘Will you be sorry or glad?’

‘I don’t really know till I get there. I don’t think I like this place very much, not as much as I did.’ She added, ‘I think you’d better come with me now, please.’

‘But certainly. But certainly. I apologize for being late.’

‘Oh, it doesn’t really matter.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Miranda.’

‘I think it suits you,’ said Poirot.

‘Are you thinking of Shakespeare?’

‘Yes. Do you have it in lessons?’

‘Yes. Miss Emlyn read us some of it. I asked Mummy to read some more. I liked it. It has a wonderful sound. A brave new world. There isn’t anything really like that, is there?’

‘You don’t believe in it?’

‘Do you?’

‘There is always a brave new world,’ said Poirot, ‘but only, you know, for very special people. The lucky ones. The ones who carry the making of that world within themselves.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Miranda, with an air of apparently seeing with the utmost ease, though what she saw Poirot rather wondered.

She turned, started along the path and said:

‘We go this way. It’s not very far. You can go through the hedge of our garden.’

Then she looked back over her shoulder and pointed, saying:

‘In the middle there, that’s where the fountain was.’

‘A fountain?’

‘Oh, years ago. I suppose it’s still there, underneath the shrubs and the azaleas and the other things. It was all broken up, you see. People took bits of it away but nobody has put a new one there.’

‘It seems a pity.’

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure. Do you like fountains very much?’

‘Ca dépend,’ said Poirot.

‘I know some French,’ said Miranda. ‘That’s it depends, isn’t it?’

‘You are quite right. You seem very well educated.’

‘Everyone says Miss Emlyn is a very fine teacher. She’s our head-mistress. She’s awfully strict and a bit stern, but she’s terribly interesting sometimes in the things she tells us.’

‘Then she is certainly a good teacher,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘You know this place very well—you seem to know all the paths. Do you come here often?’

‘Oh yes, it’s one of my favourite walks. Nobody knows where I am, you see, when I come here. I sit in trees—on the branches, and watch things. I like that. Watching things happen.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Mostly birds and squirrels. Birds are very quarrelsome, aren’t they? Not like in the bit of poetry that says “birds in their little nests agree”. They don’t really, do they? And I watch squirrels.’

‘And you watch people?’

‘Sometimes. But there aren’t many people who come here.’

‘Why not, I wonder?’

‘I suppose they are afraid.’

‘Why should they be afraid?’

‘Because someone was killed here long ago. Before it was a garden, I mean. It was a quarry once and then there was a gravel pile or a sand pile and that’s where they found her. In that. Do you think the old saying is true—about you’re born to be hanged or born to be drowned?’

‘Nobody is born to be hanged nowadays. You do not hang people any longer in this country.’

‘But they hang them in some other countries. They hang them in the streets. I’ve read it in the papers.’

‘Ah. Do you think that is a good thing or a bad thing?’

Miranda’s response was not strictly in answer to the question, but Poirot felt that it was perhaps meant to be.

‘Joyce was drowned,’ she said. ‘Mummy didn’t want to tell me, but that was rather silly, I think, don’t you? I mean, I’m twelve years old.’

‘Was Joyce a friend of yours?’

‘Yes. She was a great friend in a way. She told me very interesting things sometimes. All about elephants and rajahs. She’d been to India once. I wish I’d been to India. Joyce and I used to tell each other all our secrets. I haven’t so much to tell as Mummy. Mummy’s been to Greece, you know. That’s where she met Aunt Ariadne, but she didn’t take me.’

‘Who told you about Joyce?’

‘Mrs Perring. That’s our cook. She was talking to Mrs Minden who comes and cleans. Someone held her head down in a bucket of water.’

‘Have you any idea who that someone was?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. They didn’t seem to know, but then they’re both rather stupid really.’

‘Do you know, Miranda?’

‘I wasn’t there. I had a sore throat and a tempe rature so Mummy wouldn’t take me to the party. But I think I could know. Because she was drowned. That’s why I asked if you thought people were born to be drowned. We go through the hedge here. Be careful of your clothes.’

Poirot followed her lead. The entrance through the hedge from the Quarry Garden was more suited to the build of his childish guide with her elfin slimness—it was practically a highway to her. She was solicitous for Poirot, however, warning him of adjacent thorn bushes and holding back the more prickly components of the hedge. They emerged at a spot in the garden adjacent to a compost heap and turned a corner by a derelict cucumber frame to where two dustbins stood. From there on a small neat garden mostly planted with roses gave easy access to the small bungalow house. Miranda led the way through an open french window, announcing with the modest pride of a collector who has just secured a sample of a rare beetle:

‘I’ve got him all right.’

‘Miranda, you didn’t bring him through the hedge, did you? You ought to have gone round by the path at the side gate.’

‘This is a better way,’ said Miranda. ‘Quicker and shorter.’

‘And much more painful, I suspect.’

‘I forget,’ said Mrs Oliver—‘I did introduce you, didn’t I, to my friend Mrs Butler?’

‘Of course. In the post office.’

The introduction in question had been a matter of a few moments while there had been a queue in front of the counter. Poirot was better able now to study Mrs Oliver’s friend at close quarters. Before it had been a matter of a slim woman in a disguising head-scarf and a mackintosh. Judith Butler was a woman of about thirty-five, and whilst her daughter resembled a dryad or a wood-nymph, Judith had more the attributes of a water-spirit. She could have been a Rhine maiden. Her long blonde hair hung limply on her shoulders, she was delicately made with a rather long face and faintly hollow cheeks, whilst above them were big sea-green eyes fringed with long eyelashes.

‘I’m very glad to thank you properly, Monsieur Poirot,’ said Mrs Butler. ‘It was very good of you to come down here when Ariadne asked you.’

‘When my friend, Mrs Oliver, asks me to do anything I always have to do it,’ said Poirot.

‘What nonsense,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘She was sure, quite sure, that you would be able to find out all about this beastly thing. Miranda, dear, will you go into the kitchen? You’ll find the scones on the wire tray above the oven.’

Miranda disappeared. She gave, as she went, a knowledgeable smile directed at her mother that said as plainly as a smile could say, ‘She’s getting me out of the way for a short time.’

‘I tried not to let her know,’ said Miranda’s mother, ‘about this—this horrible thing that happened. But I suppose that was a forlorn chance from the start.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Poirot. ‘There’s nothing that goes round any residential centre with the same rapidity as news of a disaster, and particularly an unpleasant disaster. And anyway,’ he added, ‘one cannot go long through life without knowing what goes on around one. And children seem particularly apt at that sort of thing.’

‘I don’t know if it was Burns or Sir Walter Scott who said “There’s a chiel among you taking notes”,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘but he certainly knew what he was talking about.’

‘Joyce Reynolds certainly seems to have noticed such a thing as a murder,’ said Mrs Butler. ‘One can hardly believe it.’

‘Believe that Joyce noticed it?’

‘I meant believe that if she saw such a thing she never spoke about it earlier. That seems very unlike Joyce.’

‘The first thing that everybody seems to tell me here,’ said Poirot, in a mild voice, ‘is that this girl, Joyce Reynolds, was a liar.’

‘I suppose it’s possible,’ said Judith Butler, ‘that a child might make up a thing and then it might turn out to be true?’

‘That is certainly the focal point from which we start,’ said Poirot. ‘Joyce Reynolds was unquestionably murdered.’ ‘

And you have started. Probably you know already all about it,’ said Mrs Oliver.

‘Madame, do not ask impossibilities of me. You are always in such a hurry.’

‘Why not?’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Nobody would ever get anything done nowadays if they weren’t in a hurry.’

Miranda returned at this moment with a plateful of scones.

‘Shall I put them down here?’ she asked. ‘I expect you’ve finished talking by now, haven’t you? Or is there anything else you would like me to get from the kitchen?’

There was a gentle malice in her voice. Mrs Butler lowered the Georgian silver teapot to the fender, switched on an electric kettle which had been turned off just before it came to the boil, duly filled the teapot and served the tea. Miranda handed hot scones and cucumber sandwiches with a serious elegance of manner.

‘Ariadne and I met in Greece,’ said Judith.

‘I fell into the sea,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘when we were coming back from one of the islands. It had got rather rough and the sailors always say “jump” and, of course, they always say jump just when the thing’s at its furthest point which makes it come right for you, but you don’t think that can possibly happen and so you dither and you lose your nerve and you jump when it looks close and, of course, that’s the moment when it goes far away.’ She paused for breath. ‘Judith helped fish me out and it made a kind of bond between us, didn’t it?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mrs Butler. ‘Besides, I liked your Christian name,’ she added. ‘It seemed very appropriate, somehow.’

‘Yes, I suppose it is a Greek name,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘It’s my own, you know. I didn’t just make it up for literary purposes. But nothing Ariadne-like has ever happened to me. I’ve never been deserted on a Greek island by my own true love or anything like that.’

Poirot raised a hand to his moustache in order to hide the slight smile that he could not help coming to his lips as he envisaged Mrs Oliver in the role of a deserted Greek maiden.

‘We can’t all live up to our names,’ said Mrs Butler.

‘No, indeed. I can’t see you in the rôle of cutting off your lover’s head. That is the way it happened, isn’t it, Judith and Holofernes, I mean?’

‘It was her patriotic duty,’ said Mrs Butler, ‘for which, if I remember rightly, she was highly commended and rewarded.’

‘I’m not really very well up in Judith and Holofernes. It’s the Apocrypha, isn’t it? Still, if one comes to think of it, people do give other people—their children, I mean— some very queer names, don’t they? Who was the one who hammered some nails in someone’s head? Jael or Sisera. I never remember which is the man or which is the woman there. Jael, I think. I don’t think I remember any child having been christened Jael.’

‘She laid butter before him in a lordly dish,’ said Miranda unexpectedly, pausing as she was about to remove the tea-tray.

‘Don’t look at me,’ said Judith Butler to her friend, ‘it wasn’t I who introduced Miranda to the Apocrypha. That’s her school training.’

‘Rather unusual for schools nowadays, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘They give them ethical ideas instead, don’t they?’

‘Not Miss Emlyn,’ said Miranda. ‘She says that if we go to church nowadays we only get the modern version of the Bible read to us in the lessons and things, and that it has no literary merit whatsoever. We should at least know the fine prose and blank verse sometimes of the Authorized Version. I enjoyed the story of Jael and Sisera very much,’ she added. ‘It’s not a thing,’ she said meditatively, ‘that I should ever have thought of doing myself. Hammering nails, I mean, into someone’s head when they were asleep.’

‘I hope not indeed,’ said her mother.

‘And how would you dispose of your enemies, Miranda?’ asked Poirot.

‘I should be very kind,’ said Miranda in a gently contemplative tone. ‘It would be more difficult, but I’d rather have it that way because I don’t like hurting things. I’d use a sort of drug that gives people euthanasia. They would go to sleep and have beautiful dreams and they just wouldn’t wake up.’ She lifted some tea cups and the bread and butter plate. ‘I’ll wash up, Mummy,’ she said, ‘if you like to take Monsieur Poirot to look at the garden. There are still some Queen Elizabeth roses at the back of the border.’

She went out of the room carefully carrying the tea-tray.

‘She’s an astonishing child, Miranda,’ said Mrs Ol iver.

‘You have a very beautiful daughter, Madame,’ said Poirot.

‘Yes, I think she is beautiful now. One doesn’t know what they will look like by the time they grow up. They acquire puppy fat and look like well-fattened pigs sometimes. But now—now she is like a wood-nymph.’

‘One does not wonder that she is fond of the Quarry Garden which adjoins your house.’

‘I wish she wasn’t so fond of it sometimes. One gets nervous about people wandering about in isolated places, even if they are quite near people or a village. one’s—oh, one’s very frightened all the time nowadays. That’s why—why you’ve got to find out why this awful thing happened to Joyce, Monsieur Poirot. Because until we know who that was, we shan’t feel safe for a minute—about our children, I mean. Take Monsieur Poirot out in the garden, will you, Ariadne? I’ll join you in a minute or two.’

She took the remaining two cups and a plate and went into the kitchen. Poirot and Mrs Oliver went out through the French window. The small garden was like most autumn gardens. It retained a few candles of golden rod and michaelmas daisies in a border, and some Queen Elizabeth roses held their pink statuesque heads up high. Mrs Oliver walked rapidly down to where there was a stone bench, sat down, and motioned Poirot to sit down beside her.

‘You said you thought Miranda was like a wood-nymph,’ she said. ‘What do you think of Judith?’

‘I think Judith’s name ought to be Undine,’ said Poirot.

‘A water-spirit, yes. Yes, she does look as though she’d just come out of the Rhine or the sea or a forest pool or something. Her hair looks as though it had been dipped in water. Yet there’s nothing untidy or scatty about her, is there?’

‘She, too, is a very lovely woman,’ said Poirot.

‘What do you think about her?’

‘I have not had time to think as yet. I just think that she is beautiful and attractive and that something is giving her great concern.’

‘Well, of course, wouldn’t it?’

‘What I would like, Madame, is for you to tell me what you know or think about her.’

‘Well, I got to know her very well on the cruise. You know, one does make quite intimate friends. Just one or two people. The rest of them, I mean, they like each other and all that, but you don’t really go to any trouble to see them again. But one or two you do. well, Judith was one of the ones I did want to see again.’

‘You did not know her before the cruise?’

‘No.’

‘But you know something about her?’

‘Well, just ordinary things. She’s a widow,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Her husband died a good many years ago—he was an air pilot. He was killed in a car accident. One of those pile-up things, I think it was, coming off the M what-is-it that runs near here on to the ordinary road one evening, or something of that kind. He left her rather badly off, I imagine. She was very broken up about it, I think. She doesn’t like talking about him.’

‘Is Miranda her only child?’

‘Yes. Judith does some part-time secretarial work in the neighbourhood, but she hasn’t got a fixed job.’

‘Did she know the people who lived at the Quarry House?’

‘You mean old Colonel and Mrs Weston?’

‘I mean the former owner, Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe, wasn’t it?’

‘I think so. I think I’ve heard that name mentioned. But she died two or three years ago, so of course one doesn’t hear about her much. Aren’t the people who are alive enough for you?’ demanded Mrs Oliver with some irritation.

‘Certainly not,’ said Poirot. ‘I have also to inquire into those who have died or disappeared from the scene.’

‘Who’s disappeared?’

‘An au pair girl,’ said Poirot.

‘Oh well,’ said Mrs Oliver, ‘they’re always disappearing, aren’t they? I mean, they come over here and get their fare paid and then they go straight into hospital because they’re pregnant and have a baby, and call it Auguste, or Hans or Boris, or some name like that. Or they’ve come over to marry someone, or to follow up some young man they’re in love with. You wouldn’t believe the things friends tell me! The thing about au pair girls seems to be either they’re Heaven’s gift to over-worked mothers and you never want to part with them, or they pinch your stockings—or get themselves murdered—’ She stopped. ‘Oh!’ she said.

‘Calm yourself, Madame,’ said Poirot. ‘There seems no reason to believe that an au pair girl has been murdered— quite the contrary.’

‘What do you mean by quite the contrary? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Probably not. All the same—’

He took out his notebook and made an entry in it.

‘What are you writing down there?’

‘Certain things that have occurred in the past.’

‘You seem to be very perturbed by the past altogether.’

‘The past is the father of the present,’ said Poirot sententiously.

He offered her the notebook.

‘Do you wish to see what I have written?’

‘Of course I do. I daresay it won’t mean anything to me. The things you think important to write down, I never do.’

He held out the small black notebook.’

‘Deaths: e.g. Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe (Wealthy). Janet White (School-teacher). Lawyer’s clerk—Knifed, former prosecution for forgery.’

Below it was written ‘Opera girl disappears.’

‘What opera girl?’

‘It is the word my friend, Spence’s sister, uses for what you and I call an au pair girl.’

‘Why should she disappear?’

‘Because she was possibly about to get into some form of legal trouble.’

Poirot’s finger went down to the next entry. The word was simply ‘Forgery,’ with two question marks after it.

‘Forgery?’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Why forgery?’

‘That is what I asked. Why forgery?’

‘What kind of forgery?’

‘A Will was forged, or rather a codicil to a Will. A codicil in the au pair girl’s favour.’

‘Undue influence?’ suggested Mrs Oliver.

‘Forgery is something rather more serious than undue influence,’ said Poirot.

‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with the murder of poor Joyce.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Poirot. ‘But, therefore, it is interes ting.’

‘What is the next word? I can’t read it.’

‘Elephants.’

‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything.’

‘It might have,’ said Poirot, ‘believe me, it might have.’

He rose.

‘I must leave you now,’ he said. ‘Apologize, please, to my hostess for my not saying goodbye to her. I much enjoyed meeting her and her lovely and unusual daughter. Tell her to take care of that child.’

“My mother said I never should, play with the children in the wood”,’ quoted Mrs Oliver. ‘Well, goodbye. If you like to be mysterious, I suppose you will go on being mysterious. You don’t even say what you’re going to do next.’

‘I have made an appointment for tomorrow morning with Messrs Fullerton, Harrison and Leadbetter in Medchester.’

‘Why?’

‘To talk about forgery and other matters.’

‘And after that?’

‘I want to talk to certain people who were also present.’ ‘At the party?’

‘No—at the preparations for the party.’