One, two, buckle my shoe - Agatha Christie [43]
Jane Olivera’s mother had just entered. She was very smartly dressed, with a hat clinging to an eyebrow in the midst of a very soignée coiffure.
‘Oh! Mr Selby, did Mr Blunt give you any instructions about those garden chairs? I meant to talk to him about them last night, because I knew we’d be going down this week-end and —’
Mrs Olivera took in Poirot and paused.
‘Do you know Mrs Olivera, M. Poirot?’
‘I have already had the pleasure of meeting Madame.’
Poirot bowed.
Mrs Olivera said vaguely:
‘Oh? How do you do. Of course, Mr Selby, I know that Alistair is a very busy man and that these small domestic matters mayn’t seem to him important —’
‘It’s quite all right, Mrs Olivera,’ said the efficient Mr Selby. ‘He told me about it and I rang up Messrs Deevers about them.’
‘Well, now, that’s a real load off my mind. Now, Mr Selby, can you tell me…’
Mrs Olivera clacked on. She was, thought Poirot, rather like a hen. A big, fat hen! Mrs Olivera, still clacking, moved majestically after her bust towards the door.
‘…And if you’re quite sure that there will only be ourselves this week-end —’
Mr Selby coughed.
‘Er — M. Poirot is also coming down for the week-end.’
Mrs Olivera stopped. She turned round and surveyed Poirot with visible distaste.
‘Is that really so?’
‘Mr Blunt has been kind enough to invite me,’ said Poirot.
‘Well, I wonder — why, if that isn’t queer of Alistair. You’ll excuse me, M. Poirot, but Mr Blunt particularly told me that he wanted a quiet, family week-end!’
Selby said firmly:
‘Mr Blunt is particularly anxious that M. Poirot should come.’
‘Oh really? He didn’t mention it to me.’
The door opened. Jane stood there. She said impatiently:
‘Mother, aren’t you coming? Our lunch appointment is at one-fifteen!’
‘I’m coming, Jane. Don’t be impatient.’
‘Well, get a move on, for goodness sake — Hallo, M. Poirot.’
She was suddenly very still — her petulance frozen. Her eyes more wary.
Mrs Olivera said in a cold voice:
‘M. Poirot is coming down to Exsham for the week-end.’
‘Oh — I see.’
Jane Olivera stood back to let her mother pass her. On the point of following her, she whirled back again.
‘M. Poirot!’
Her voice was imperious.
Poirot crossed the room to her.
She said in a low voice: ‘You’re coming down to Exsham? Why?’
Poirot shrugged his shoulders. He said:
‘It is a kind thought of your uncle’s.’
Jane said:
‘But he can’t know…He can’t…When did he ask you? Oh, there’s no need —’
‘Jane!’
Her mother was calling from the hall.
Jane said in a low, urgent tone:
‘Stay away. Please don’t come.’
She went out. Poirot heard the sounds of altercation. Heard Mrs Olivera’s high, complaining, clucking voice. ‘I really will not tolerate your rudeness, Jane…I shall take steps to see that you do not interfere —’
The secretary said:
‘Then at a little before six tomorrow, M. Poirot?’
Poirot nodded assent mechanically. He was standing like a man who has seen a ghost. But it was his ears, not his eyes, that had given him the shock.
Two of the sentences that had drifted in through the open door were almost identical with those he had heard last night through the telephone, and he knew why the voice had been faintly familiar.
As he walked out into the sunshine he shook his head blankly.
Mrs Olivera?
But it was impossible! It could not have been Mrs Olivera who had spoken over the ’phone!
That empty-headed society woman — selfish, brainless, grasping, self-centred? What had he called her to himself just now?
‘That good fat hen? C’est ridicule!’ said Hercule Poirot.
His ears, he decided, must have deceived him. And yet —
VI
The Rolls called punctually for Poirot at a little before six.
Alistair Blunt and his secretary were the only occupants. Mrs Olivera and Jane had gone down in another car earlier, it seemed.
The drive was uneventful. Blunt talked a little, mostly of his garden and of a recent horticultural show.
Poirot congratulated him on his escape from death, at which Blunt demurred. He said:
‘Oh, that! Don’t think the fellow was shooting at me particularly. Anyway,