Third girl - Agatha Christie [52]
‘I am sure it could be a matter of much interest to people,’ said Poirot.
‘Ah-ha, yes! One knew a lot of people in the news. Everyone looked at them with awe. They didn’t know they were complete fools, but I knew. My goodness, the mistakes some of those brass-hats made — you’d be surprised. So I got out my papers, and I had the little girl help me sort ’em out. Nice little girl, that, and quite bright. Doesn’t know English very well, but apart from that, she’s very bright and helpful. I’d salted away a lot of stuff, but everything was in a bit of a muddle. The point of the whole thing is, the papers I wanted weren’t there.’
‘Weren’t there?’
‘No. We thought we’d given it a miss by mistake to begin with, but we went over it again and I can tell you, Poirot, a lot of stuff seemed to me to have been pinched. Some of it wasn’t important. Actually, the stuff I was looking for wasn’t particularly important — I mean, nobody had thought it was, otherwise I suppose I shouldn’t have been allowed to keep it. But anyway, these particular letters weren’t there.’
‘I wish of course to be discreet,’ said Poirot, ‘but can you tell me at all the nature of these letters you refer to?’
‘Don’t know that I can, old boy. The nearest I can go is of somebody who’s shooting off his mouth nowadays about what he did and what he said in the past. But he’s not speaking the truth, and these letters just show exactly how much of a liar he is! Mind you, I don’t suppose they’d be published now. We’ll just send him nice copies of them, and tell him this is exactly what he did say at the time, and that we’ve got it in writing. I shouldn’t be surprised if — well, things went a bit differently after that. See? I hardly need ask that, need I? You’re familiar with all that kind of talky-talky.’
‘You’re quite right, Sir Roderick. I know exactly the kind of thing you mean, but you see also that it is not easy to help you recover something if one does not know what that something is, and where it is likely to be now.’
‘First things first: I want to know who pinched ’em, because you see that’s the important point. There may be more top secret stuff in my little collection, and I want to know who’s tampering with it.’
‘Have you any ideas yourself?’
‘You think I ought to have, heh?’
‘Well, it would seem that the principal possibility —’
‘I know. You want me to say it’s the little girl. Well, I don’t think it is the little girl. She says she didn’t, and I believe her. Understand?’
‘Yes,’ said Poirot with a slight sigh, ‘I understand.’
‘For one thing she’s too young. She wouldn’t know these things were important. It’s before her time.’
‘Someone else might have instructed her as to that,’ Poirot pointed out.
‘Yes, yes, that’s true enough. But it’s too obvious as well.’
Poirot sighed. He doubted if it was any use insisting in view of Sir Roderick’s obvious partiality. ‘Who else had access?’
‘Andrew and Mary, of course, but I doubt if Andrew would even be interested in such things. Anyway, he’s always been a very decent boy. Always was. Not that I’ve ever known him very well. Used to come for the holidays once or twice with his brother and that’s about all. Of course, he ditched his wife, and went off with an attractive bit of goods to South Africa, but that might happen to any man, especially with a wife like Grace. Not that I ever saw much of her, either. Kind of woman who looked down her nose and was full of good works. Anyway you can’t imagine a chap like Andrew being a spy. As for