One, two, buckle my shoe - Agatha Christie [47]
‘It might possibly be a case of someone who is not a fanatic and not crazy.’
Blunt stared.
‘What are you driving at?’
‘In plain language, I want to know who benefits by your death.’
Blunt grinned.
‘Chiefly the St Edward’s Hospital, the Cancer Hospital, and the Royal Institute for the Blind.’
‘Ah!’
‘In addition, I have left a sum of money to my niece by marriage, Mrs Julia Olivera; an equivalent sum, but in trust, to her daughter, Jane Olivera, and also a substantial provision for my only surviving relative, a second cousin, Helen Montressor, who was left very badly off and who occupies a small cottage on the estate here.’
He paused and then said:
‘This, M. Poirot, is strictly in confidence.’
‘Naturally, Monsieur, naturally.’
Alistair Blunt added sarcastically:
‘I suppose you do not suggest, M. Poirot, that either Julia or Jane Olivera or my cousin Helen Montressor, are planning to murder me for my money?’
‘I suggest nothing — nothing at all.’
Blunt’s slight irritation subsided. He said:
‘And you’ll take on that other commission for me?’
‘The finding of Miss Sainsbury Seale? Yes, I will.’
Alistair Blunt said heartily:
‘Good man.’
VII
In leaving the room Poirot almost cannoned into a tall figure outside the door.
He said: ‘I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle.’
Jane Olivera drew apart a little.
She said. ‘Do you know what I think of you, M. Poirot?’
‘Eh bien — Mademoiselle —’
She did not give time to finish. The question, indeed, had but a rhetorical value. All that it meant was that Jane Olivera was about to answer it herself.
‘You’re a spy, that’s what you are! A miserable, low, snooping spy, nosing round and making trouble!’
‘I assure you, Mademoiselle —’
‘I know just what you’re after! And I know now just what lies you tell! Why don’t you admit it straight out? Well, I’ll tell you this — you won’t find out anything — anything at all! There’s nothing to find out! No one’s going to harm a hair on my precious uncle’s head. He’s safe enough. He’ll always be safe. Safe and smug and prosperous — and full of platitudes! He’s just a stodgy John Bull, that’s what he is — without an ounce of imagination or vision.’
She paused, then, her agreeable, husky voice deepening, she said venomously: ‘I loathe the sight of you — you bloody little bourgeois detective!’
She swept away from him in a whirl of expensive model drapery.
Hercule Poirot remained, his eyes very wide open, his eyebrows raised and his hand thoughtfully caressing his moustaches.
The epithet bourgeois was, he admitted, well applied to him. His outlook on life was essentially bourgeois, and always had been, but the employment of it as an epithet of contempt by the exquisitely turned out Jane Olivera gave him, as he expressed it to himself, furiously to think.
He went, still thinking, into the drawing room.
Mrs Olivera was playing patience.
She looked up as Poirot entered, surveyed him with the cold look she might have bestowed upon a black beetle and murmured distantly:
‘Red knave on black queen.’
Chilled, Poirot retreated. He reflected mournfully:
‘Alas, it would seem that nobody loves me!’
He strolled out of the window into the garden. It was an enchanting evening with a smell of night-scented stocks in the air. Poirot sniffed happily and strolled along a path that ran between two herbaceous borders.
He turned a corner and two dimly-seen figures sprang apart.
It would seem that he had interrupted a pair of lovers.
Poirot hastily turned and retraced his steps.
Even out here, it would seem, his presence was de trop.
He passed Alistair Blunt’s window and Alistair Blunt was dictating to Mr Selby.
There seemed definitely only one place for Hercule Poirot.
He went up to his bedroom.
He pondered for some time on various fantastic aspects of the situation.
Had he or had he not made a mistake in believing the voice on the telephone to be that of Mrs Olivera? Surely the idea was absurd!
He recalled the melodramatic revelations of quiet little