Third girl - Agatha Christie [36]
‘Her name’s Norma Restarick.’
‘Norma Restarick. Oh, of course, yes, it was at a party in the country. A place called — wait a minute — Long Norton was it? — I don’t remember the name of the house. I went there with some friends. I don’t think I would have recognised her anyway, though I believe she did say something about my books. I even promised I’d give her one. It’s very odd, isn’t it, that I should make up my mind and actually choose to follow a person who was sitting with somebody I more or less knew. Very odd. I don’t think I could put anything like that in my book. It would look rather too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?’
Mrs Oliver rose from her seat.
‘Good gracious, what have I been sitting on? A dustbin! Really! Not a very nice dustbin either.’ She sniffed. ‘What is this place I’ve got to?’
David was looking at her. She felt suddenly that she was completely mistaken in everything she had previously thought. ‘Absurd of me,’ thought Mrs Oliver, ‘absurd of me. Thinking that he was dangerous, that he might do something to me.’ He was smiling at her with an extraordinary charm. He moved his head slightly and his chestnut ringlets moved on his shoulders. What fantastic creatures there were in the way of young men nowadays!
‘The least I can do,’ he said, ‘is to show you, I think, where you’ve been brought to, just by following me. Come on, up these stairs.’ He indicated a ram-shackle outside staircase running up to what seemed to be a loft.
‘Up those stairs?’ Mrs Oliver was not so certain about this. Perhaps he was trying to lure her up there with his charm, and he would then knock her on the head. ‘It’s no good, Ariadne,’ said Mrs Oliver to herself, ‘you’ve got yourself into this spot, and now you’ve got to go on with it and find out what you can find out.’
‘Do you think they’ll stand my weight?’ she said, ‘they look frightfully rickety.’
‘They’re quite all right. I’ll go up first,’ he said, ‘and show you the way.’
Mrs Oliver mounted the ladder-like stairs behind him. It was no good. She was, deep down, still frightened. Frightened, not so much of the Peacock, as frightened of where the Peacock might be taking her. Well, she’d know very soon. He pushed open the door at the top and went into a room. It was a large, bare room and it was an artist’s studio, an improvised kind of one. A few mattresses lay here and there on the floor, there were canvasses stacked against the wall, a couple of easels. There was a pervading smell of paint. There were two people in the room. A bearded young man was standing at an easel, painting. He turned his head as they entered.
‘Hallo, David,’ he said, ‘bringing us company?’
He was, Mrs Oliver thought, quite the dirtiest-looking young man she’d ever seen. Oily black hair hung in a kind of circular bob down the back of his neck and over his eyes in front. His face apart from the beard was unshaven, and his clothes seemed mainly composed of greasy black leather and high boots. Mrs Oliver’s glance went beyond him to a girl who was acting as a model. She was on a wooden chair on a dais, half flung across it, her head back and her dark hair drooping down from it. Mrs Oliver recognised her at once. It was the second one of the three girls in Borodene Mansions. Mrs Oliver couldn’t remember her last name, but she remembered her first one. It was the highly decorative and languid-looking girl called Frances.
‘Meet Peter,’ said David, indicating the somewhat revolting looking artist. ‘One of our budding geniuses. And Frances who is posing as a desperate girl demanding abortion.’
‘Shut up, you ape,’ said Peter.
‘I believe I know you, don’t I?’ said Mrs Oliver, cheerfully, without any air of conscious certainty. ‘I’m sure I’ve met you somewhere! Somewhere quite lately, too.’
‘You’re Mrs Oliver, aren’t you?’ said Frances.
‘That’s what she said she was,’ said David. ‘True, too, is it?’
‘Now, where did I meet you,’ continued Mrs Oliver. ‘Some party,