ABC Murders - Agatha Christie [41]
“Well, I think it’s sense,” said Mary Drower. “I do really, miss. It’s often when you’re talking over things that you seem to see your way clear. Your mind gets made up for you sometimes without your knowing how it’s happened. Talking leads to a lot of things one way and another.”
“If ‘least said is soonest mended,’ it’s the converse we want here,” said Franklin Clarke.
“What do you say, Mr. Fraser?”
“I rather doubt the practical applicability of what you say, M. Poirot.”
“What do you think, Thora?” asked Clarke.
“I think the principle of talking things over is always sound.”
“Suppose,” suggested Poirot, “that you all go over your own remembrances of the time preceding the murder. Perhaps you’ll start, Mr. Clarke.”
“Let me see, on the morning of the day Car was killed I went off sailing. Caught eight mackerel. Lovely out there on the bay. Lunch at home. Irish stew, I remember. Slept in the hammock. Tea. Wrote some letters, missed the post, and drove into Paignton to post them. Then dinner and—I’m not ashamed to say it—reread a book of E. Nesbit’s that I used to love as a kid. Then the telephone rang—”
“No further. Now reflect, Mr. Clarke, did you meet anyone on your way down to the sea in the morning?”
“Lots of people.”
“Can you remember anything about them?”
“Not a damned thing now.”
“Sure?”
“Well—let’s see—I remember a remarkably fat woman—she wore a striped silk dress and I wondered why—had a couple of kids with her—two young men with a fox terrier on the beach throwing stones for it—Oh, yes, a girl with yellow hair squeaking as she bathed—funny how things come back—like a photograph developing.”
“You are a good subject. Now later in the day—the garden—going to the post—”
“The gardener watering…Going to the post? Nearly ran down a bicyclist—silly woman wobbling and shouting to a friend. That’s all, I’m afraid.”
Poirot turned to Thora Grey.
“Miss Grey?”
Thora Grey replied in her clear, positive voice:
“I did correspondence with Sir Carmichael in the morning—saw the housekeeper. I wrote letters and did needlework in the afternoon, I fancy. It is difficult to remember. It was quite an ordinary day. I went to bed early.”
Rather to my surprise, Poirot asked no further. He said:
“Miss Barnard—can you bring back your remembrances of the last time you saw your sister?”
“It would be about a fortnight before her death. I was down for Saturday and Sunday. It was fine weather. We went to Hastings to the swimming pool.”
“What did you talk about most of the time?”
“I gave her a piece of my mind,” said Megan.
“And what else? She conversed of what?”
The girl frowned in an effort of memory.
“She talked about being hard up—of a hat and a couple of summer frocks she’d just bought. And a little of Don…She also said she disliked Milly Higley—that’s the girl at the café—and we laughed about the Merrion woman who keeps the café…I don’t remember anything else….”
“She didn’t mention any man—forgive me, Mr. Fraser—she might be meeting?”
“She wouldn’t to me,” said Megan dryly.
Poirot turned to the red-haired young man with the square jaw.
“Mr. Fraser—I want you to cast your mind back. You went, you said, to the café on the fatal evening. Your first intention was to wait there and watch for Betty Barnard to come out. Can you remember anyone at all whom you noticed whilst you were waiting there?”
“There were a large number of people walking along the front. I can’t remember any of them.”
“Excuse me, but are you trying? However preoccupied the mind may be, the eye notices mechanically—unintelligently but accurately….”
The young man repeated doggedly:
“I don’t remember anybody.”
Poirot sighed and turned to Mary Drower.
“I suppose you got letters from your aunt?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“When was the last?”
Mary thought a minute.
“Two days before the murder, sir.”
“What did it say?”
“She said the old devil had been round and that she’d sent him off with a flea in the ear—excuse the expression, sir—said she expected me over on the Wednesday—that’s my day out, sir—and she said