Third girl - Agatha Christie [71]
‘Well, what progress have you made?’
‘At the moment,’ said Poirot reluctantly, ‘none.’
‘Really, M. Poirot, you really must take a grip on yourself.’
‘You, too!’
‘What do you mean, me too?’
‘Urging me on.’
‘Why don’t you go down to that place in Chelsea, where I was hit on the head?’
‘And get myself hit on the head also?’
‘I simply don’t understand you,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I gave you a clue by finding the girl in the café. You said so.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘What about that woman who threw herself out of a window? Haven’t you got anything out of that?’
‘I have made inquiries, yes.’
‘Well?’
‘Nothing. The woman is one of many. They are attractive when young, they have affairs, they are passionate, they have still more affairs, they get less attractive, they are unhappy and drink too much, they think they have cancer or some fatal disease and so at last in despair and loneliness they throw themselves out of a window!’
‘You said her death was important — that it meant something.’
‘It ought to have done.’
‘Really!’ At a loss for further comment, Mrs Oliver rang off.
Poirot leant back in his armchair, as far as he could lean back since it was of an upright nature, waved to George to remove the coffee pot and also the telephone and proceeded to reflect upon what he did or did not know. To clarify his thoughts he spoke out loud. He recalled three philosophic questions.
‘What do I know? What can I hope? What ought I to do?’
He was not sure that he got them in the right order or indeed if they were quite the right questions, but he reflected upon them.
‘Perhaps I am too old,’ said Hercule Poirot, at the bottom depths of despair. ‘What do I know?’
Upon reflection he thought that he knew too much! He laid that question aside for the moment.
‘What can I hope?’ Well, one could always hope. He could hope that those excellent brains of his, so much better than anybody else’s, would come up sooner or later with an answer to a problem which he felt uneasily that he did not really understand.
‘What ought I to do?’ Well, that was very definite. What he ought to do was to go and call upon Mr Andrew Restarick who was obviously distraught about his daughter, and who would no doubt blame Poirot for not having by now delivered the daughter in person. Poirot could understand that, and sympathised with his point of view, but disliked having to present himself in such a very unfavourable light. The only other thing he could do was to telephone to a certain number and ask what developments there had been.
But before he did that, he would go back to the question he had laid aside.
‘What do I know?’
He knew that the Wedderburn Gallery was under suspicion — so far it had kept on the right side of the law, but it would not hesitate at swindling ignorant millionaires by selling them dubious pictures.
He recalled Mr Boscombe with his plump white hands and his plentiful teeth, and decided that he did not like him. He was the kind of man who was almost certainly up to dirty work, though he would no doubt protect himself remarkably well. That was a fact that might come into use because it might connect up with David Baker. Then there was David Baker himself, the Peacock. What did he know about him? He had met him, he had conversed with him, and he had formed certain opinions about him. He would do a crooked deal of any kind for money, he would marry a rich heiress for her money and not for love, he might perhaps be bought off. Yes, he probably could be bought off. Andrew Restarick certainly believed so and he was probably right. Unless —
He considered Andrew Restarick, thinking more of the picture on the wall hanging above him than of the man himself. He remembered the strong features, the jutting out chin, the air of resolution, of decision. Then he thought of Mrs Andrew Restarick, deceased. The bitter lines of her mouth…Perhaps he would go down to Crosshedges again and look at that portrait, so as to see it more clearly because there might be