Dead Man's Folly - Agatha Christie [25]
He frowned over the entry in the notebook he carried.
‘I’ve copied the next clue but it doesn’t seem to make sense.’ He eyed them suspiciously. ‘You competing?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘We’re just – looking on.’
‘Righty-ho…“When lovely woman stoops to folly.”…I’ve an idea I’ve heard that somewhere.’
‘It is a well-known quotation,’ said Poirot.
‘A Folly can also be a building,’ said Mrs Oliver helpfully. ‘White – with pillars,’ she added.
‘That’s an idea! Thanks a lot. They say Mrs Ariadne Oliver is down here herself somewhere about. I’d like to get her autograph. You haven’t seen her about, have you?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Oliver firmly.
‘I’d like to meet her. Good yarns she writes.’ He lowered his voice. ‘But they say she drinks like a fish.’
He hurried off and Mrs Oliver said indignantly:
‘Really! That’s most unfair when I only like lemonade!’
‘And have you not just perpetrated the greatest unfairness in helping that young man towards the next clue?’
‘Considering he’s the only one who’s got here so far, I thought he ought to be encouraged.’
‘But you wouldn’t give him your autograph.’
‘That’s different,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Sh! Here come some more.’
But these were not clue hunters. They were two women who having paid for admittance were determined to get their money’s worth by seeing the grounds thoroughly.
They were hot and dissatisfied.
‘You’d think they’d have some nice flower-beds,’ said one to the other. ‘Nothing but trees and more trees. It’s not what I call a garden.’
Mrs Oliver nudged Poirot, and they slipped quietly away.
‘Supposing,’ said Mrs Oliver distractedly, ‘that nobody ever finds my body?’
‘Patience, Madame, and courage,’ said Poirot. ‘The afternoon is still young.’
‘That’s true,’ said Mrs Oliver, brightening. ‘And it’s half-price admission after four-thirty, so probably lots of people will flock in. Let’s go and see how that Marlene child is getting on. I don’t really trust that girl, you know. No sense of responsibility. I wouldn’t put it past her to sneak away quietly, instead of being a corpse, and go and have tea. You know what people are like about their teas.’
They proceeded amicably along the woodland path and Poirot commented on the geography of the property.
‘I find it very confusing,’ he said. ‘So many paths, and one is never sure where they lead. And trees, trees everywhere.’
‘You sound like that disgruntled woman we’ve just left.’
They passed the Folly and zig-zagged down the path to the river. The outlines of the boathouse showed beneath them.
Poirot remarked that it would be awkward if the murder searchers were to light upon the boathouse and find the body by accident.
‘A sort of short cut? I thought of that. That’s why the last clue is just a key. You can’t unlock the door without it. It’s a Yale. You can only open it from the inside.’
A short steep slope led down to the door of the boathouse which was build out over the river, with a little wharf and a storage place for boats underneath. Mrs Oliver took a key from a pocket concealed amongst her purple folds and unlocked the door.
‘We’ve just come to cheer you up, Marlene,’ she said brightly as she entered.
She felt slightly remorseful at her unjust suspicions of Marlene’s loyalty, for Marlene, artistically arranged as ‘the body,’ was playing her part nobly, sprawled on the floor by the window.
Marlene made no response. She lay quite motionless. The wind blowing gently through the open window rustled a pile of ‘comics’ spread out on the table.
‘It’s all right,’ said Mrs Oliver impatiently. ‘It’s only me and M. Poirot. Nobody’s got any distance with the clues yet.’
Poirot was frowning. Very gently he pushed Mrs Oliver aside and went and bent over the girl on the floor. A suppressed exclamation