Cat Among the Pigeons - Agatha Christie [73]
“Miss Laurie is our visiting Drawing Mistress,” she said briskly. “But she isn’t here today. What do you want her to draw for you?” she added in a kindly manner as though to a child.
“Faces,” said Poirot.
“Miss Rich is good at sketching people. She’s clever at getting a likeness.”
“That is exactly what I need.”
Miss Bulstrode, he noted with approval, asked him no questions as to his reasons. She merely left the room and returned with Miss Rich.
After introductions, Poirot said: “You can sketch people? Quickly? With a pencil?”
Eileen Rich nodded.
“I often do. For amusement.”
“Good. Please, then, sketch for me the late Miss Springer.”
“That’s difficult. I knew her for such a short time. I’ll try.” She screwed up her eyes, then began to draw rapidly.
“Bien,” said Poirot, taking it from her. “And now, if you please, Miss Bulstrode, Miss Rowan, Mademoiselle Blanche and—yes—the gardener Adam.”
Eileen Rich looked at him doubtfully, then set to work. He looked at the result, and nodded appreciatively.
“You are good—you are very good. So few strokes—and yet the likeness is there. Now I will ask you to do something more difficult. Give, for example, to Miss Bulstrode a different hair arrangement. Change the shape of her eyebrows.”
Eileen stared at him as though she thought he was mad.
“No,” said Poirot. “I am not mad. I make an experiment, that is all. Please do as I ask.”
In a moment or two she said: “Here you are.”
“Excellent. Now do the same for Mademoiselle Blanche and Miss Rowan.”
When she had finished he lined up the three sketches.
“Now I will show you something,” he said. “Miss Bulstrode, in spite of the changes you have made is still unmistakably Miss Bulstrode. But look at the other two. Because their features are negative, and since they have not Miss Bulstrode’s personality, they appear almost different people, do they not?”
“I see what you mean,” said Eileen Rich.
She looked at him as he carefully folded the sketches away.
“What are you going to do with them?” she asked.
“Use them,” said Poirot.
Twenty
CONVERSATION
“Well—I don’t know what to say,” said Mrs. Sutcliffe. “Really I don’t know what to say—”
She looked with definite distaste at Hercule Poirot.
“Henry, of course,” she said, “is not at home.”
The meaning of this pronouncement was slightly obscure, but Hercule Poirot thought that he knew what was in her mind. Henry, she was feeling, would be able to deal with this sort of thing. Henry had so many international dealings. He was always flying to the Middle East and to Ghana and to South America and to Geneva, and even occasionally, but not so often, to Paris.
“The whole thing,” said Mrs. Sutcliffe, “has been most distressing. I was so glad to have Jennifer safely at home with me. Though, I must say,” she added, with a trace of vexation, “Jennifer has really been most tiresome. After having made a great fuss about going to Meadowbank and being quite sure she wouldn’t like it there, and saying it was a snobby kind of school and not the kind she wanted to go to, now she sulks all day long because I’ve taken her away. It’s really too bad.”
“It is undeniably a very good school,” said Hercule Poirot. “Many people say the best school in England.”
“It was, I daresay,” said Mrs. Sutcliffe.
“And will be again,” said Hercule Poirot.
“You think so?” Mrs. Sutcliffe looked at him doubtfully. His sympathetic manner was gradually piercing her defences. There is nothing that eases the burden of a mother’s life more than to be permitted to unburden herself of the difficulties, rebuffs and frustrations which she has in dealing with her offspring. Loyalty so often compels silent endurance. But to a foreigner like Hercule Poirot Mrs. Sutcliffe felt that this loyalty was not applicable. It was not like talking to the mother of another daughter.
“Meadowbank,” said Hercule Poirot, “is just passing through an unfortunate phase.”
It was the best thing he could think of to say at the moment. He felt its inadequacy and Mrs. Sutcliffe