Third girl - Agatha Christie [58]
‘I had another possibility in mind, Madame. Someone may have noticed you following David — and in turn followed you.’
‘Someone saw me trailing David, and then they trailed me?’
‘Or someone may have been already in the mews or the yard, keeping perhaps an eye on the same people that you were observing.’
‘That’s an idea, of course,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I wonder who they could be?’
Poirot gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Ah, it is there. It is difficult — too difficult. Too many people, too many things. I cannot see anything clearly. I see only a girl who said that she may have committed a murder! That is all that I have to go on and you see even there there are difficulties.’
‘What do you mean by difficulties?’
‘Reflect,’ said Poirot.
Reflection had never been Mrs Oliver’s strong point.
‘You always mix me up,’ she complained.
‘I am talking about a murder, but what murder?’
‘The murder of the stepmother, I suppose.’
‘But the stepmother is not murdered. She is alive.’
‘You really are the most maddening man,’ said Mrs Oliver.
Poirot sat up in his chair. He brought the tips of his fingers together and prepared — or so Mrs Oliver suspected — to enjoy himself.
‘You refuse to reflect,’ he said. ‘But to get anywhere we must reflect.’
‘I don’t want to reflect. What I want to know is what you’ve been doing about everything while I’ve been in hospital. You must have done something. What have you done?’
Poirot ignored this question.
‘We must begin at the beginning. One day you ring me up. I was in distress. Yes, I admit it, I was in distress. Something extremely painful had been said to me. You, Madame, were kindness itself. You cheered me, you encouraged me. You gave me a delicious tasse de chocolat. And what is more you not only offered to help me, but you did help me. You helped me to find a girl who had come to me and said that she thought she might have committed a murder! Let us ask ourselves, Madame, what about this murder? Who has been murdered? Where have they been murdered? Why have they been murdered?’
‘Oh do stop,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘You’re making my head ache again, and that’s bad for me.’
Poirot paid no attention to this plea. ‘Have we got a murder at all? You say — the stepmother — but I reply that the stepmother is not dead — so as yet we have no murder. But there ought to have been a murder. So me, I inquire first of all, who is dead? Somebody comes to me and mentions a murder. A murder that has been committed somewhere and somehow. But I cannot find that murder, and what you are about to say once again, that the attempted murder of Mary Restarick will do very well, does not satisfy Hercule Poirot.’
‘I really can’t think what more you want,’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘I want a murder,’ said Hercule Poirot.
‘It sounds very bloodthirsty when you say it like that!’
‘I look for a murder and I cannot find a murder. It is exasperating — so I ask you to reflect with me.’
‘I’ve got a splendid idea,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Suppose Andrew Restarick murdered his first wife before he went off in a hurry to South Africa. Had you thought of that possibility?’
‘I certainly did not think of any such thing,’ said Poirot indignantly.
‘Well, I’ve thought of it,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘It’s very interesting. He was in love with this other woman, and he wanted like Crippen to go off with her, and so he murdered the first one and nobody ever suspected.’
Poirot drew a long, exasperated sigh. ‘But his wife did not die until eleven or twelve years after he’d left this country for South Africa, and his child could not have been concerned in the murder of her own mother at the age of five years old.’
‘She could have given her mother the wrong medicine or perhaps Restarick just said that she died. After all, we don’t know that she’s dead.’
‘I do,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘I have made inquiries. The first Mrs Restarick died