Third Girl

  And quite suddenly—just as his eyelids were relaxing in sleep—it came.…

  It was all there—waiting for him! He would have to work it all out. But he knew now. All the bits were there, disconnected bits and pieces, all fitting in. A wig, a picture, 5 a.m., women and their hairdos, the Peacock Boy—all leading to the phrase with which it had begun:

  Third Girl…

  “I may have committed a murder…” Of course!

  A ridiculous nursery rhyme came into his mind. He repeated it aloud.

  Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub

  And who do you think they be?

  A butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker….

  Too bad, he couldn’t remember the last line. A baker, yes, and in a far-fetched way, a butcher—He tried out a feminine parody:

  Pat a cake, pat, three girls in a flat

  And who do you think they be?

  A Personal Aide and a girl from the Slade

  And the Third is a—

  Miss Lemon came in.

  “Ah—I remember now—‘And they all came out of a weenie POTATO.’”

  Miss Lemon looked at him in anxiety.

  “Dr. Stillingfleet insists on speaking to you at once. He says it is urgent.”

  “Tell Dr. Stillingfleet he can—Dr. Stillingfleet, did you say?”

  He pushed past her, caught up the receiver. “I am here. Poirot speaking! Something has happened?”

  “She’s walked out on me.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. She’s walked out. Walked out through the front gate.”

  “You let her go?”

  “What else could I do?”

  “You could have stopped her.”

  “No.”

  “To let her go was madness.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “That was the arrangement. Free to go at any time.”

  “You don’t understand what may be involved.”

  “All right then, I don’t. But I know what I’m doing. And if I don’t let her go, all the work I’ve done on her would go for nothing. And I have worked on her. Your job and my job aren’t the same. We’re not out for the same thing. I tell you I was getting somewhere. Getting somewhere, so that I was quite sure she wouldn’t walk out on me.”

  “Ah yes. And then, mon ami, she did.”

  “Frankly, I can’t understand it. I can’t see why the setback came.”

  “Something happened.”

  “Yes, but what?”

  “Somebody she saw, somebody who spoke to her, somebody who found out where she was.”

  “I don’t see how that could have happened…But what you don’t seem to see is that she’s a free agent. She had to be a free agent.”

  “Somebody got at her. Somebody found out where she was. Did she get a letter, a telegram, a telephone call?”

  “No, nothing of that kind. That I am quite sure of.”

  “Then how—of course! Newspapers. You have newspapers, I suppose, in that establishment of yours?”

  “Certainly. Normal everyday life, that’s what I stand for in my place of business.”

  “Then that is how they got at her. Normal, everyday life. What papers do you take?”

  “Five.” He named the five.

  “When did she go?”

  “This morning. Half past ten.”

  “Exactly. After she read the papers. That is good enough to start on. Which paper did she usually read?”

  “I don’t think she had any special choice. Sometimes one, sometimes another, sometimes the whole lot of them—sometimes only glanced at them.”

  “Well, I must not waste time talking.”

  “You think she saw an advertisement. Something of that kind?”

  “What other explanation can there be? Good-bye, I can say no more now. I have to search. Search for the possible advertisement and then get on quickly.”

  He replaced the receiver.

  “Miss Lemon, bring me our two papers. The Morning News and the Daily Comet. Send Georges out for all the others.”

  As he opened out the papers to the Personal advertisements and went carefully down them, he followed his line of thought.

  He would be in time. He must be in time…There had been one murder already. There would be another one to come. But he, Hercule Poirot, would prevent that…If he was in time…He was Hercule Poirot—the avenger of the innocent. Did he not say (and people laughed when he said it), “I do not approve of murder.” They had thought it an understatement. But it was not an understatement. It was a simple statement of fact without melodrama. He did not approve of murder.

  George came in with a sheaf of newspapers.

  “There are all this morning’s, sir.”

  Poirot looked at Miss Lemon, who was standing by waiting to be efficient.

  “Look through the ones that I have searched in case I have missed anything.”

  “The Personal column, you mean?”

  “Yes. I thought there would be the name David perhaps. A girl’s name. Some pet name or nickname. They would not use Norma. An appeal for help, perhaps, or to a meeting.”

  Miss Lemon took the papers obediently with some distaste. This was not her kind of efficiency, but for the moment he had no other job to give her. He himself spread out the Morning Chronicle. That was the biggest field to search. Three columns of it. He bent over the open sheet.

  A lady who wanted to dispose of her fur coat…Passengers wanted for a car trip abroad…Lovely period house for sale…Paying guests…Backward children…Homemade chocolates…“Julia. Shall never forget. Always yours.” That was more the kind of thing. He considered it, but passed on. Louis XVth furniture…Middle-aged lady to help run a hotel…“In desperate trouble. Must see you. Come to flat 4:30 without fail. Our code Goliath.”

  He heard the doorbell ring just as he called out: “Georges, a taxi,” slipped on his overcoat, and went into the hall just as George was opening the front door and colliding with Mrs. Oliver. All three of them struggled to disentangle themselves in the narrow hall.

  Twenty-two

  I

  Frances Cary, carrying her overnight bag, walked down Mandeville Road, chattering with the friend she had just met on the corner, towards the bulk of Borodene Mansions.

  “Really, Frances, it’s like living in a prison block, that building. Wormwood Scrubs or something.”

  “Nonsense, Eileen. I tell you, they’re frightfully comfortable, these flats. I’m very lucky and Claudia is a splendid person to share with—never bothers you. And she’s got a wonderful daily. The flat’s really very nicely run.”

  “Are there just the two of you? I forget. I thought you had a third girl?”

  “Oh, well, she seems to have walked out on us.”

  “You mean she doesn’t pay her rent?”

  “Oh, I think the rent’s all right. I think she’s probably having some affair with a boyfriend.”

  Eileen lost interest. Boyfriends were too much a matter of course.

  “Where are you coming back from now?”

  “Manchester. Private view was on. Great success.”

  “Are you really going to Vienna next month?”

  “Yes, I think so. It’s pretty well fixed up by now. Rather fun.”

  “Wouldn’t it be awful if some of the pictures got stolen?”

  “Oh, they’re all insured,” said Frances. “All the really valuable ones, anyway.”

  “How did your friend Peter’s show go?”

  “Not terribly well, I’m afraid. But there was quite a good review by the critic of The Artist, and that counts a lot.”

  Frances turned into Borodene Mansions, and her friend went on her way to her own small mews house farther down the road. Frances said “Good evening” to the porter, and went up in the lift to the sixth floor. She walked along the passage, humming a little tune to herself.

  She inserted her key in the door of the flat. The light in the
hall was not on yet. Claudia was not due back from the office for another hour and a half. But in the sitting room, the door of which was ajar, the light was on.

  Frances said aloud: “Light’s on. That’s funny.”

  She slipped out of her coat, dropped her overnight bag, pushed the sitting room door farther open and went in….

  Then she stopped dead. Her mouth opened and then shut. She stiffened all over—her eyes staring at the prone figure on the floor; then they rose slowly to the mirror on the wall that reflected back at her her own horror-stricken face….

  Then she drew a deep breath. The momentary paralysis over, she flung back her head and screamed. Stumbling over her bag on the hall floor and kicking it aside, she ran out of the flat and along the passage and beat frenziedly at the door of the next flat.

  An elderly woman opened it.

  “What on earth—”

  “There’s someone dead—someone dead. And I think it’s someone I know…David Baker. He’s lying there on the floor…I think he’s stabbed…he must have been stabbed. There’s blood—blood everywhere.”

  She began to sob hysterically. Miss Jacobs shoved a glass into her hand. “Stay there and drink it.”

  Frances sipped obediently. Miss Jacobs went rapidly out of the door along the passage and through the open door from which the light was pouring out. The living room door was wide open and Miss Jacobs went straight through it.

  She was not the kind of woman who screams. She stood just within the doorway, her lips pursed hard together.

  What she was looking at had a nightmarish quality. On the floor lay a handsome young man, his arms flung wide, his chestnut hair falling on his shoulders. He wore a crimson velvet coat, and his white shirt was dappled with blood….

  She was aware with a start that there was a second figure with her in the room. A girl was standing pressed back against the wall, the great Harlequin above seeming to be leaping across the painted sky.

  The girl had a white woollen shift dress on, and her pale brown hair hung limp on either side of her face. In her hand she was holding a kitchen knife.

  Miss Jacobs stared at her and she stared back at Miss Jacobs.

  Then she said in a quiet reflective voice, as though she was answering what someone had said to her:

  “Yes, I’ve killed him…The blood got on my hands from the knife…I went into the bathroom to wash it off—but you can’t really wash things like that off, can you? And then I came back in here to see if it was really true…But it is…Poor David…But I suppose I had to do it.”

  Shock forced unlikely words from Miss Jacobs. As she said them, she thought how ridiculous they sounded!

  “Indeed? Why did you have to do anything of the kind?”

  “I don’t know…At least—I suppose I do—really. He was in great trouble. He sent for me—and I came…But I wanted to be free of him. I wanted to get away from him. I didn’t really love him.”

  She laid the knife carefully on the table and sat down on a chair.

  “It isn’t safe, is it?” she said. “To hate anyone…It isn’t safe because you never know what you might do…Like Louise….”

  Then she said quietly, “Hadn’t you better ring up the police?”

  Obediently, Miss Jacobs dialled 999.

  II

  There were six people now in the room with the Harlequin on the wall. A long time had passed. The police had come and gone.

  Andrew Restarick sat like a man stunned. Once or twice he said the same words. “I can’t believe it…” Telephoned for, he had come from his office, and Claudia Reece-Holland had come with him. In her quiet way, she had been ceaselessly efficient. She had put through telephone calls to lawyers, had rung Crosshedges and two firms of estate agents to try and get in touch with Mary Restarick. She had given Frances Cary a sedative and sent her to lie down.

  Hercule Poirot and Mrs. Oliver sat side by side on a sofa. They had arrived together at the same time as the police.

  Last of all to arrive, when nearly everyone else had gone, had been a quiet man with grey hair and a gentle manner, Chief Inspector Neele of Scotland Yard, who had greeted Poirot with a slight nod, and been introduced to Andrew Restarick. A tall red-haired young man was standing by the window staring down into the courtyard.

  What were they all waiting for? Mrs. Oliver wondered. The body had been removed, the photographers and other police officers had done their work, they themselves, after being herded into Claudia’s bedroom, had been readmitted into the sitting room, where they had been waiting, she supposed, for the Scotland Yard man to arrive.

  “If you want me to go,” Mrs. Oliver said to him uncertainly—

  “Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, aren’t you? No, if you have no objection, I’d rather you remained. I know it hasn’t been pleasant—”

  “It didn’t seem real.”

  Mrs. Oliver shut her eyes—seeing the whole thing again. The Peacock Boy, so picturesquely dead that he had seemed like a stage figure. And the girl—the girl had been different—not the uncertain Norma from Crosshedges—the unattractive Ophelia, as Poirot had called her—but some quiet figure of tragic dignity—accepting her doom.

  Poirot had asked if he might make two telephone calls. One had been to Scotland Yard, and that had been agreed to, after the sergeant had made a preliminary suspicious inquiry on the phone. The sergeant had directed Poirot to the extension in Claudia’s bedroom, and he had made his call from there, closing the door behind him.

  The sergeant had continued to look doubtful, murmuring to his subordinate, “They say it’s all right. Wonder who he is? Odd-looking little bloke.”

  “Foreign, isn’t he? Might be Special Branch?”

  “Don’t think so. It was Chief Inspector Neele he wanted.”

  His assistant raised his eyebrows and suppressed a whistle.

  After making his calls, Poirot had reopened the door and beckoned Mrs. Oliver from where she was standing uncertainly inside the kitchen, to join him. They had sat down side by side on Claudia Reece-Holland’s bed.

  “I wish we could do something,” said Mrs. Oliver—always one for action.

  “Patience, chère Madame.”

  “Surely you can do something?”

  “I have. I have rung up the people it is necessary to ring up. We can do nothing here until the police have finished their preliminary investigations.”

  “Who did you ring up after the inspector man? Her father? Couldn’t he come and bail her out or something?”

  “Bail is not likely to be granted where murder is concerned,” said Poirot dryly. “The police have already notified her father. They got his number from Miss Cary.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Having hysterics in the flat of a Miss Jacobs next door, I understand. She was the one who discovered the body. It seems to have upset her. She rushed out of here screaming.”

  “She’s the arty one, isn’t she? Claudia would have kept her head.”

  “I agree with you. A very—poised young woman.”

  “Who did you ring up, then?”

  “First, as perhaps you heard, Chief Inspector Neele of Scotland Yard.”

  “Will this lot like his coming and meddling?”

  “He is not coming to meddle. He has of late been making certain inquiries for me, which may throw light on this matter.”

  “Oh—I see…Who else did you ring up?”

  “Dr. John Stillingfleet.”

  “Who’s he? To say that poor Norma is potty and can’t help killing people?”

  “His qualifications would entitle him to give evidence to that effect in court if necessary.”

  “Does he know anything about her?”

  “A good deal, I should say. She has been in his care since the day you found her in the Shamrock café.”

  “Who sent her there?”

  Poirot smiled. “I did. I made certain arrangements by telephone before I came to join you at the café.”

  “What? All the time I
was so disappointed in you and kept urging you to do something—you had done something? And you never told me! Really, Poirot! Not a word! How could you be so—so mean.”

  “Do not enrage yourself, Madame, I beg. What I did, I did for the best.”

  “People always say that when they have done something particularly maddening. What else did you do?”

  “I arranged that my services should be retained by her father, so that I could make the necessary arrangements for her safety.”

  “Meaning this Doctor Stillingwater?”

  “Stilling fleet. Yes.”

  “How on earth did you manage that? I shouldn’t have thought for a moment that you would be the kind of person that her father would choose to make all these arrangements. He looks the kind of man who would be very suspicious of foreigners.”

  “I forced myself upon him—as a conjurer forces a card. I called upon him, purporting to have received a letter from him asking me to do so.”

  “And did he believe you?”

  “Naturally. I showed the letter to him. It was typed on his office stationery and signed with his name—though as he pointed out to me, the handwriting was not his.”

  “Do you mean you had actually written that letter yourself?”

  “Yes. I judged correctly that it would awaken his curiosity, and that he would want to see me. Having got so far, I trusted to my own talents.”

  “You told him what you were going to do about this Dr. Stillingfleet?”

  “No. I told no one. There was danger, you see.”

  “Danger to Norma?”

  “To Norma, or Norma was dangerous to someone else. From the very beginning there have always been the two possibilities. The facts could be interpreted in either way. The attempted poisoning of Mrs. Restarick was not convincing—it was delayed too long, it was not a serious attempt to kill. Then there was an indeterminate story of a revolver shot fired here in Borodene Mansions—and another tale of flick-knives and bloodstains. Every time these things happen, Norma knows nothing about them, cannot remember, etcetera. She finds arsenic in a drawer—but does not remember putting it there. Claims to have had lapses of memory, to have lost long periods of time when she does not remember what she had been doing. So one has to ask oneself—is what she says true, or did she, for some reason of her own, invent it? Is she a potential victim of some monstrous and perhaps crazy plot—or is it she herself who is the moving spirit? Is she painting a picture of herself as a girl suffering from mental instability, or has she murder in mind, with a defence of diminished responsibility?”