Dead Man's Folly - Agatha Christie [68]
Marilyn giggled again.
‘Mum never knew.’
‘Didn’t your mother find these things after your sister died?’
Marilyn shook her fair fluffy head.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I got ’em now – in my drawer. Mum doesn’t know.’
Poirot eyed her consideringly, and said:
‘You seem a very clever girl, Marilyn.’
Marilyn grinned rather sheepishly.
‘Miss Bird says it’s no good my trying for the grammar school.’
‘Grammar school is not everything,’ said Poirot. ‘Tell me, how did Marlene get the money to buy these things?’
Marilyn looked with close attention at a drain-pipe.
‘Dunno,’ she muttered.
‘I think you do know,’ said Poirot.
Shamelessly he drew out a half-crown from his pocket and added another half-crown to it.
‘I believe,’ he said, ‘there is a new, very attractive shade of lipstick called “Carmine Kiss.”’
‘Sounds smashing,’ said Marilyn, her hand advanced towards the five shillings. She spoke in a rapid whisper. ‘She used to snoop about a bit, Marlene did. Used to see goings-on – you know what. Marlene would promise not to tell and then they’d give her a present, see?’
Poirot relinquished the five shillings.
‘I see,’ he said.
He nodded to Marilyn and walked away. He murmured again under his breath, but this time with intensified meaning:
‘I see.’
So many things now fell into place. Not all of it. Not clear yet by any means – but he was on the right track. A perfectly clear trail all the way if only he had had the wit to see it. That first conversation with Mrs Oliver, some casual words of Michael Weyman’s, the significant conversation with old Merdell on the quay, an illuminating phrase spoken by Miss Brewis – the arrival of Etienne de Sousa.
A public telephone box stood adjacent to the village post office. He entered it and rang up a number. A few minutes later he was speaking to Inspector Bland.
‘Well, M. Poirot, where are you?’
‘I am here, in Nassecombe.’
‘But you were in London yesterday afternoon?’
‘It only takes three and a half hours to come here by a good train,’ Poirot pointed out. ‘I have a question for you.’
‘Yes?’
‘What kind of a yacht did Etienne de Sousa have?’
‘Maybe I can guess what you’re thinking, M. Poirot, but I assure you there was nothing of that kind. It wasn’t fitted up for smuggling if that’s what you mean. There were no fancy hidden partitions or secret cubby-holes. We’d have found them if there had been. There was nowhere on it you could have stowed away a body.’
‘You are wrong, mon cher, that is not what I mean. I only asked what kind of yacht, big or small?’
‘Oh, it was very fancy. Must have cost the earth. All very smart, newly painted, luxury fittings.’
‘Exactly,’ said Poirot. He sounded so pleased that Inspector Bland felt quite surprised.
‘What are you getting at, M. Poirot?’ he asked.
‘Etienne de Sousa,’ said Poirot, ‘is a rich man. That, my friend, is very significant.’
‘Why?’ demanded Inspector Bland.
‘It fits in with my latest idea,’ said Poirot.
‘You’ve got an idea, then?’
‘Yes. At last I have an idea. Up to now I have been very stupid.’
‘You mean we’ve all been very stupid.’
‘No,’ said Poirot, ‘I mean specially myself. I had the good fortune to have a perfectly clear trail presented to me, and I did not see it.’
‘But now you’re definitely on to something?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Look here, M. Poirot –’
But Poirot had rung off. After searching his pockets for available change, he put through a personal call to Mrs Oliver at her London number.
‘But do not,’ he hastened to add, when he made his demand, ‘disturb the lady to answer the telephone if she is at work.’
He remembered how bitterly Mrs Oliver had once reproached him for interrupting a train of creative thought and how the world in consequence had been deprived of an intriguing mystery centring round an old-fashioned long-sleeved