“So now,” said Poirot, “there are no more Folliats at Nasse.”
The old man’s flow of talk died abruptly.
“Just as yu say, sir.”
Poirot looked curiously at the old man.
“Instead you have Sir George Stubbs. What is thought locally of him?”
“Us understands,” said the old man, “that he be powerful rich.”
His tone sounded dry and almost amused.
“And his wife?”
“Ah, she’s a fine lady from London, she is. No use for gardens, not her. They du say, tu, as her du be wanting up here.”
He tapped his temple significantly.
“Not as her isn’t always very nice spoken and friendly. Just over a year they’ve been here. Bought the place and had it all done up like new. I remember as though ’twere yesterday them arriving. Arrived in the evening, they did, day after the worst gale as I ever remember. Trees down right and left—one down across the drive and us had to get it sawn away in a hurry to get the drive clear for the car. And the big oak up along, that come down and brought a lot of others down with it, made a rare mess, it did.”
“Ah, yes, where the Folly stands now?”
The old man turned aside and spat disgustedly.
“Folly ’tis called and Folly ’tis—newfangled nonsense. Never was no Folly in the old Folliats’ time. Her ladyship’s idea that Folly was. Put up not three weeks after they first come, and I’ve no doubt she talked Sir George into it. Rare silly it looks stuck up there among the trees, like a heathen temple. A nice summerhouse now, made rustic like with stained glass. I’d have nothing against that.”
Poirot smiled faintly.
“The London ladies,” he said, “they must have their fancies. It is sad that the day of the Folliats is over.”
“Don’t ee never believe that, sir.” The old man gave a wheezy chuckle. “Always be Folliats at Nasse.”
“But the house belongs to Sir George Stubbs.”
“That’s as may be—but there’s still a Folliat here. Ah! Rare and cunning the Folliats are!”
“What do you mean?”
The old man gave him a sly sideways glance.
“Mrs. Folliat be living up tu Lodge, bain’t she?” he demanded.
“Yes,” said Poirot slowly. “Mrs. Folliat is living at the Lodge and the world is very wicked, and all the people in it are very wicked.”
The old man stared at him.
“Ah,” he said. “Yu’ve got something there, maybe.”
He shuffled away again.
“But what have I got?” Poirot asked himself with irritation as he slowly walked up the hill back to the house.
II
Hercule Poirot made a meticulous toilet, applying a scented pomade to his moustaches and twirling them to a ferocious couple of points. He stood back from the mirror and was satisfied with what he saw.
The sound of a gong resounded through the house, and he descended the stairs.
The butler, having finished a most artistic performance, crescendo, forte, diminuendo, rallentando, was just replacing the gong stick on its hook. His dark melancholy face showed pleasure.
Poirot thought to himself: “A blackmailing letter from the housekeeper—or it may be the butler…” This butler looked as though blackmailing letters would be well within his scope. Poirot wondered if Mrs. Oliver took her characters from life.
Miss Brewis crossed the hall in an unbecoming flowered chiffon dress and he caught up with her, asking as he did so:
“You have a housekeeper here?”
“Oh, no, M. Poirot. I’m afraid one doesn’t run to niceties of that kind nowadays, except in a really large establishment, of course. Oh, no, I’m the housekeeper—more housekeeper than secretary, sometimes, in this house.”
She gave a short acid laugh.
“So you are the housekeeper?” Poirot considered her thoughtfully.
He could not see Miss Brewis writing a blackmailing letter. Now, an anonymous letter—that would be a different thing. He had known anonymous letters written by women not unlike Miss Brewis—solid, dependable women, totally unsuspected by those around them.
“What is your butler’s name?” he asked.
“Henden.” Miss Brewis looked a little astonished.
Poirot recollected himself and explained quickly:
“I ask because I had a fancy I had seen him somewhere before.”
“Very likely,” said Miss Brewis. “None of these people ever seem to stay in any place more than four months. They must soon have done the round of all the available situations in England. After all, it’s not many people who can afford butlers and cooks nowadays.”
They came into the drawing room, where Sir George, looking somehow rather unnatural in a dinner jacket, was proffering sherry. Mrs. Oliver, in iron-grey satin, was looking like an obsolete battleship, and Lady Stubbs’ smooth black head was bent down as she studied the fashions in Vogue.
Alec and Sally Legge were dining and also Jim Warburton.
“We’ve a heavy evening ahead of us,” he warned them. “No bridge tonight. All hands to the pumps. There are any amount of notices to print, and the big card for the Fortune Telling. What name shall we have? Madame Zuleika? Esmeralda? Or Romany Leigh, the Gipsy Queen?”
“The Eastern touch,” said Sally. “Everyone in agricultural districts hates gipsies. Zuleika sounds all right. I brought my paint box over and I thought Michael could do us a curling snake to ornament the notice.”
“Cleopatra rather than Zuleika, then?”
Henden appeared at the door.
“Dinner is served, my lady.”
They went in. There were candles on the long table. The room was full of shadows.
Warburton and Alec Legge sat on either side of their hostess. Poirot was between Mrs. Oliver and Miss Brewis. The latter was engaged in brisk general conversation about further details of preparation for tomorrow.
Mrs. Oliver sat in brooding abstraction and hardly spoke.
When she did at last break her silence, it was with a somewhat contradictory explanation.
“Don’t bother about me,” she said to Poirot. “I’m just remembering if there’s anything I’ve forgotten.”
Sir George laughed heartily.
“The fatal flaw, eh?” he remarked.
“That’s just it,” said Mrs. Oliver. “There always is one. Sometimes one doesn’t realize it until a book’s actually in print. And then it’s agony!” Her face reflected this emotion. She sighed. “The curious thing is that most people never notice it. I say to myself, ‘But of course the cook would have been bound to notice that two cutlets hadn’t been eaten.’ But nobody else thinks of it at all.”
“You fascinate me.” Michael Weyman leant across the table. “The Mystery of the Second Cutlet. Please, please never explain. I shall wonder about it in my bath.”
Mrs. Oliver gave him an abstracted smile and relapsed into her preoccupations.
Lady Stubbs was also silent. Now and again she yawned. Warburton, Alec Legge and Miss Brewis talked across her.
As they came out of the dining room, Lady Stubbs stopped by the stairs.
“I’m going to bed,” she announced. “I’m very sleepy.”
“Oh, Lady Stubbs,” exclaimed Miss Brewis, “there’s so much to be done. We’ve been counting on you to help us.”
“Yes, I know,” said Lady Stubbs. “But I’m going to bed.”
She spoke with the satisfaction of a small child.
She turned her head as Sir George came out of the dining room.
“I’m tired, George. I’m going to bed. You don’t mind?”
He came up to her and patted her on the shoulder affectionately.
“You go and get your beauty sleep, Hattie. Be fresh for tomorrow.”
He kissed her lightly and she went up the stairs, waving her hand and calling out:
“Goodnight, all.”
Sir George smiled up at her. Miss Brewis drew
in her breath sharply and turned brusquely away.
“Come along, everybody,” she said, with a forced cheerfulness that did not ring true. “We’ve got to work.”
Presently everyone was set to their tasks. Since Miss Brewis could not be everywhere at once, there were soon some defaulters. Michael Weyman ornamented a placard with a ferociously magnificent serpent and the words, Madame Zuleika will tell your Fortune, and then vanished unobtrusively. Alec Legge did a few nondescript chores and then went out avowedly to measure for the hoopla and did not reappear. The women, as women do, worked energetically and conscientiously. Hercule Poirot followed his hostess’s example and went early to bed.
III
Poirot came down to breakfast on the following morning at nine-thirty. Breakfast was served in pre-war fashion. A row of hot dishes on an electric heater. Sir George was eating a full-sized Englishman’s breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and kidneys. Mrs. Oliver and Miss Brewis had a modified version of the same. Michael Weyman was eating a plateful of cold ham. Only Lady Stubbs was unheedful of the fleshpots and was nibbling thin toast and sipping black coffee. She was wearing a large pale-pink hat which looked odd at the breakfast table.
The post had just arrived. Miss Brewis had an enormous pile of letters in front of her which she was rapidly sorting into piles. Any of Sir George’s marked “Personal” she passed over to him. The others she opened herself and sorted into categories.
Lady Stubbs had three letters. She opened what were clearly a couple of bills and tossed them aside. Then she opened the third letter and said suddenly and clearly:
“Oh!”
The exclamation was so startled that all heads turned towards her.
“It’s from Etienne,” she said. “My cousin Etienne. He’s coming here in a yacht.”
“Let’s see, Hattie.” Sir George held out his hand. She passed the letter down the table. He smoothed out the sheet and read.
“Who’s this Etienne de Sousa? A cousin, you say?”
“I think so. A second cousin. I do not remember him very well—hardly at all. He was—”
“Yes, my dear?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“It does not matter. It is all a long time ago. I was a little girl.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t remember him very well. But we must make him welcome, of course,” said Sir George heartily. “Pity in a way it’s the fête today, but we’ll ask him to dinner. Perhaps we could put him up for a night or two—show him something of the country?”
Sir George was being the hearty country squire.
Lady Stubbs said nothing. She stared down into her coffee cup.
Conversation on the inevitable subject of the fête became general. Only Poirot remained detached, watching the slim exotic figure at the head of the table. He wondered just what was going on in her mind. At that very moment her eyes came up and cast a swift glance along the table to where he sat. It was a look so shrewd and appraising that he was startled. As their eyes met, the shrewd expression vanished—emptiness returned. But that other look had been there, cold, calculating, watchful….
Or had he imagined it? In any case, wasn’t it true that people who were slightly mentally deficient very often had a kind of sly native cunning that sometimes surprised even the people who knew them best?
He thought to himself that Lady Stubbs was certainly an enigma. People seemed to hold diametrically opposite ideas concerning her. Miss Brewis had intimated that Lady Stubbs knew very well what she was doing. Yet Mrs. Oliver definitely thought her half-witted, and Mrs. Folliat who had known her long and intimately had spoken of her as someone not quite normal, who needed care and watchfulness.
Miss Brewis was probably prejudiced. She disliked Lady Stubbs for her indolence and her aloofness. Poirot wondered if Miss Brewis had been Sir George’s secretary prior to his marriage. If so, she might easily resent the coming of the new régime.
Poirot himself would have agreed wholeheartedly with Mrs. Folliat and Mrs. Oliver—until this morning. And, after all, could he really rely on what had been only a fleeting impression?
Lady Stubbs got up abruptly from the table.
“I have a headache,” she said. “I shall go and lie down in my room.”
Sir George sprang up anxiously.
“My dear girl. You’re all right, aren’t you?”
“It’s just a headache.”
“You’ll be fit enough for this afternoon, won’t you?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Take some aspirin, Lady Stubbs,” said Miss Brewis briskly. “Have you got some or shall I bring it to you?”
“I’ve got some.”
She moved towards the door. As she went she dropped the handkerchief she had been squeezing between her fingers. Poirot, moving quietly forward, picked it up unobtrusively.
Sir George, about to follow his wife, was stopped by Miss Brewis.
“About the parking of cars this afternoon, Sir George. I’m just going to give Mitchell instructions. Do you think that the best plan would be, as you said—?”
Poirot, going out of the room, heard no more.
He caught up his hostess on the stairs.
“Madame, you dropped this.”
He proffered the handkerchief with a bow.
She took it unheedingly.
“Did I? Thank you.”
“I am most distressed, Madame, that you should be suffering. Particularly when your cousin is coming.”
She answered quickly, almost violently.
“I don’t want to see Etienne. I don’t like him. He’s bad. He was always bad. I’m afraid of him. He does bad things.”
The door of the dining room opened and Sir George came across the hall and up the stairs.
“Hattie, my poor darling. Let me come and tuck you up.”
They went up the stairs together, his arm round her tenderly, his face worried and absorbed.
Poirot looked up after them, then turned to encounter Miss Brewis moving fast, and clasping papers.
“Lady Stubbs’ headache—” he began.
“No more headache than my foot,” said Miss Brewis crossly, and disappeared into her office, closing the door behind her.
Poirot sighed and went out through the front door on to the terrace. Mrs. Masterton had just driven up in a small car and was directing the elevation of a tea marquee, baying out orders in rich full-blooded tones.
She turned to greet Poirot.
“Such a nuisance, these affairs,” she observed. “And they will always put everything in the wrong place. No, Rogers! More to the left—left—not right! What do you think of the weather, M. Poirot? Looks doubtful to me. Rain, of course, would spoil everything. And we’ve had such a fine summer this year for a change. Where’s Sir George? I want to talk to him about car parking.”
“His wife had a headache and has gone to lie down.”
“She’ll be all right this afternoon,” said Mrs. Masterton confidently. “Likes functions, you know. She’ll make a terrific toilet and be as pleased about it as a child. Just fetch me a bundle of those pegs over there, will you? I want to mark the places for the clock golf numbers.”
Poirot, thus pressed into service, was worked by Mrs. Masterton relentlessly, as a useful apprentice. She condescended to talk to him in the intervals of hard labour.
“Got to do everything yourself, I find. Only way…By the way, you’re a friend of the Eliots, I believe?”
Poirot, after his long sojourn in England, comprehended that this was an indication of social recognition. Mrs. Masterton was in fact saying: “Although a foreigner, I understand you are One of Us.” She continued to chat in an intimate manner.
“Nice to have Nasse lived in again. We were all so afraid it was going to be a hotel. You know what it is nowadays; one drives through the country and passes place after place with the board up ‘Guest House’ or ‘Private Hotel’ or ‘Hotel A.A. Fully Licensed.’ All the houses one stayed in as a girl—or where
one went to dances. Very sad. Yes, I’m glad about Nasse and so is poor dear Amy Folliat, of course. She’s had such a hard life—but never complains, I will say. Sir George has done wonders for Nasse—and not vulgarized it. Don’t know whether that’s the result of Amy Folliat’s influence—or whether it’s his own natural good taste. He has got quite good taste, you know. Very surprising in a man like that.”
“He is not, I understand, one of the landed gentry?” said Poirot cautiously.
“He isn’t even really Sir George—was christened it, I understand. Took the idea from Lord George Sanger’s Circus, I suspect. Very amusing really. Of course we never let on. Rich men must be allowed their little snobberies, don’t you agree? The funny thing is that in spite of his origins George Stubbs would go down perfectly well anywhere. He’s a throwback. Pure type of the eighteenth-century country squire. Good blood in him, I’d say. Father a gent and mother a barmaid, is my guess.”
Mrs. Masterton interrupted herself to yell to a gardener.
“Not by that rhododendron. You must leave room for the skittles over to the right. Right—not left!”
She went on: “Extraordinary how they can’t tell their left from their right. The Brewis woman is efficient. Doesn’t like poor Hattie, though. Looks at her sometimes as though she’d like to murder her. So many of these good secretaries are in love with their boss. Now where do you think Jim Warburton can have got to? Silly the way he sticks to calling himself ‘Captain.’ Not a regular soldier and never within miles of a German. One has to put up, of course, with what one can get these days—and he’s a hard worker—but I feel there’s something rather fishy about him. Ah! Here are the Legges.”
Sally Legge, dressed in slacks and a yellow pullover, said brightly:
“We’ve come to help.”
“Lots to do,” boomed Mrs. Masterton. “Now, let me see…”
Poirot, profiting by her inattention, slipped away. As he came round the corner of the house on to the front terrace he became a spectator of a new drama.