Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie [75]
‘“Ding dong dell”,’ said Poirot, thoughtfully. ‘One believes what one wants to believe, Michael Garfield. Was she right or was she not right?’
Michael Garfield looked at him thoughtfully, then he smiled.
‘She is quite right,’ he said. ‘There is a well, and it is as she says sealed up. I suppose it may have been dangerous. I don’t think it was ever a wishing well. I think that’s Mrs Goodbody’s own bit of fancy talk. There’s a wishing tree, or there was once. A beech tree half-way up the hillside that I believe people did go round three times backwards and wished.’
‘What’s happened to that? Don’t they go round it any more?’
‘No. I believe it was struck by lightning about six years ago. Split in two. So that pretty story’s gone west.’
‘Have you told Miranda about that?’
‘No. I thought I’d rather leave her with her well. A blasted beech wouldn’t be much fun for her, would it?’
‘I must go on my way,’ said Poirot.
‘Going back to your police friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘You look tired.’
‘I am tired,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘I am extremely tired.’
‘You’d be more comfortable in canvas shoes or sandals.’
‘Ah, ça, non.’
‘I see. You are sartorially ambitious.’ He looked at Poirot. ‘The tout ensemble, it is very good and especially, if I may mention it, your superb moustache.’
‘I am gratified,’ said Poirot, ‘that you have noticed it.’
‘The point is rather, could anyone not notice it?’
Poirot put his head on one side. Then he said:
‘You spoke of the drawing you are doing because you wish to remember the young Miranda. Does that mean you’re going away from here?’
‘I have thought of it, yes.’
‘Yet you are, it seems to me, bien placé ici.’
‘Oh yes, eminently so. I have a house to live in, a house small but designed by myself, and I have my work, but that is less satisfactory than it used to be. So restlessness is coming over me.’
‘Why is your work less satisfactory?’
‘Because people wish me to do the most atrocious things. People who want to improve their gardens, people who bought some land and they’re building a house and want the garden designed.’
‘Are you not doing her garden for Mrs Drake?’
‘She wants me to, yes. I made suggestions for it and she seemed to agree with them. I don’t think, though,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘that I really trust her.’
‘You mean that she would not let you have what you wanted?’
‘I mean that she would certainly have what she wanted herself and that though she is attracted by the ideas I have set out, she would suddenly demand something quite different. Something utilitarian, expensive and showy, perhaps. She would bully me, I think. She would insist on her ideas being carried out. I would not agree, and we should quarrel. So on the whole it is better I leave here before I quarrel. And not only with Mrs Drake but many other neighbours. I am quite well known. I don’t need to stay in one spot. I could go and find some other corner of England, or it could be some corner of Normandy or Brittany.’
‘Somewhere where you can improve, or help, nature? Somewhere where you can experiment or you can put strange things where they have never grown before, where neither sun will blister nor frost destroy? Some good stretch of barren land where you can have the fun of playing at being Adam all over again? Have you always been restless?’
‘I never stayed anywhere very long.’
‘You have been to Greece?’
‘Yes. I should like to go to Greece again. Yes, you have something there. A garden on a Greek hillside. There may be cypresses there, not much else. A barren rock. But if you wished, what could there not be?’
‘A garden for gods to walk–’
‘Yes. You’re quite a mind reader, aren’t you, Mr Poirot?’
‘I wish I were. There are so many things I would like to know and do not know.’
‘You are talking now of something quite prosaic, are you not?’
‘Unfortunately so.’
‘Arson, murder and sudden death?’
‘More or less. I do not know that I was considering arson. Tell me, Mr Garfield, you have been here