“Yes, of course. You were to represent me at the Hever Trust meeting.”
Poirot said:
“But Norma slept here that night?”
“Yes.” Claudia seemed uncomfortable.
“Claudia?” Restarick laid his hand on her arm. “What is it you know about Norma? There’s something. Something that you’re holding back.”
“Nothing! What should I know about her?”
“You think she’s off her head, don’t you?” said Dr. Stillingfleet in a conversational voice. “And so does the girl with the black hair. And so do you,” he added, turning suddenly on Restarick. “All of us behaving nicely and avoiding the subject and thinking the same thing! Except, that is, the chief inspector. He’s not thinking anything. He’s collecting the facts: mad or a murderess. What about you, Madam?”
“Me?” Mrs. Oliver jumped. “I—don’t know.”
“You reserve judgment? I don’t blame you. It’s difficult. On the whole, most people agree on what they think. They use different terms for it—that’s all. Bats in the Belfry. Wanting in the top storey. Off her onion. Mental. Delusions. Does anyone think that girl is sane?”
“Miss Battersby,” said Poirot.
“Who the devil is Miss Battersby?”
“A schoolmistress.”
“If I ever have a daughter I shall send her to that school…Of course I’m in a different category. I know. I know everything about that girl!”
Norma’s father stared at him.
“Who is this man?” he demanded of Neele. “What can he possibly mean by saying that he knows everything about my daughter?”
“I know about her,” said Stillingfleet, “because she’s been under my professional care for the last ten days.”
“Dr. Stillingfleet,” said Chief Inspector Neele, “is a highly qualified and reputable psychiatrist.”
“And how did she come into your clutches—without someone getting my consent first?”
“Ask Moustaches,” said Dr. Stillingfleet, nodding towards Poirot.
“You—you…”
Restarick could hardly speak he was so angry.
Poirot spoke placidly.
“I had your instructions. You wanted care and protection for your daughter when she was found. I found her—and I was able to interest Dr. Stillingfleet in her case. She was in danger, Mr. Restarick, very grave danger.”
“She could hardly be in any more danger than she is now! Arrested on a charge of murder!”
“Technically she is not yet charged,” murmured Neele.
He went on:
“Dr. Stillingfleet, do I understand that you are willing to give your professional opinion as to Miss Restarick’s mental condition, and as to how well she knows the nature and meaning of her acts?”
“We can save the M’Naughten act for court,” said Stillingfleet. “What you want to know now is, quite simply, if the girl is mad or sane? All right, I’ll tell you. That girl is sane—as sane as any one of you sitting here in this room!”
Twenty-four
I
They stared at him.
“Didn’t expect that, did you?”
Restarick said angrily: “You’re wrong. That girl doesn’t even know what she’s done. She’s innocent—completely innocent. She can’t be held responsible for what she doesn’t know she’s done.”
“You let me talk for a while. I know what I’m talking about. You don’t. That girl is sane and responsible for her actions. In a moment or two we’ll have her in and let her speak for herself. She’s the only one who hasn’t had the chance of speaking for herself! Oh yes, they’ve got her here still—locked up with a police matron in her bedroom. But before we ask her a question or two, I’ve got something to say that you’d better hear first.
“When that girl came to me she was full of drugs.”
“And he gave them to her!” shouted Restarick. “That degenerate, miserable boy.”
“He started her on them, no doubt.”
“Thank God,” said Restarick. “Thank God for it.”
“What are you thanking God for?”
“I misunderstood you. I thought you were going to throw her to the lions when you kept harping on her being sane. I misjudged you. It was the drugs that did it. Drugs that made her do things she would never have done of her own volition, and left her with no knowledge of having done them.”
Stillingfleet raised his voice:
“If you let me talk instead of talking so much yourself, and being so sure you know all about everything, we might get on a bit. First of all, she’s not an addict. There are no marks of injections. She didn’t sniff snow. Someone or other, perhaps the boy, perhaps someone else, was administering drugs to her without her knowledge. Not just a purple heart or two in the modern fashion. A rather interesting medley of drugs—LSD giving vivid dream sequences—nightmares or pleasurable. Hemp distorting the time factor, so that she might believe an experience has lasted an hour instead of a few minutes. And a good many other curious substances that I have no intention of letting any of you know about. Somebody who was clever with drugs played merry hell with that girl. Stimulants, sedatives, they all played their part in controlling her, and showing her to herself as a completely different person.”
Restarick interrupted: “That’s what I say. Norma wasn’t responsible! Someone was hypnotising her to do these things.”
“You still haven’t got the point! Nobody could make the girl do what she didn’t want to do! What they could do, was make her think she had done it. Now we’ll have her in and make her see what’s been happening to her.”
He looked inquiringly at Chief Inspector Neele, who nodded.
Stillingfleet spoke over his shoulder to Claudia, as he went out of the sitting room. “Where’d you put that other girl, the one you took away from Jacobs, gave a sedative to? In her room on her bed? Better shake her up a bit, and drag her along, somehow. We’ll need all the help we can get.”
Claudia also went out of the sitting room.
Stillingfleet came back, propelling Norma, and uttering rough encouragement.
“There’s a good girl…Nobody’s going to bite you. Sit there.”
She sat obediently. Her docility was still rather frightening.
The policewoman hovered by the door looking scandalised.
“All I’m asking you to do is to speak the truth. It isn’t nearly as difficult as you think.”
Claudia came in with Frances Cary. Frances was yawning heavily. Her black hair hung like a curtain hiding half her mouth as she yawned and yawned again.
“You need a pick-me-up,” said Stillingfleet to her.
“I wish you’d all let me go to sleep,” murmured Frances indistinctly.
“Nobody’s going to have a chance of sleep until I’ve done with them! Now, Norma, you answer my questions—That woman along the passage says you admitted to her that you killed David Baker. Is that right?”
Her docile voice said:
“Yes. I killed David.”
“Stabbed him?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know you did?”
She looked faintly puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean. He was there on the floor—dead.”
“Where was the knife?”
“I picked it up.”
“It had blood on it?”
“Yes. And on his shirt.”
“What did it feel like—the blood on the knife? The blood that you got on your hand and had to wash off—Wet? Or more like strawberry jam?”
“It was like strawberry jam—sticky.” She shivered. “I had to go and wash it off my hands.”
“Very sensible. Well, that ties up everything very nicely. Victim, murderer—you—all complete with the weapon. Do you remember actually doing it?”
“No…I don’t remember that…But I must have done it, mustn’t I?”
“Don’t ask me! I wasn’t there. It’s you are the one who’s saying it. But there was another killing befo
re that, wasn’t there? An earlier killing.”
“You mean—Louise?”
“Yes. I mean Louise…When did you first think of killing her?”
“Years ago. Oh, years ago.”
“When you were a child.”
“Yes.”
“Had to wait a long time, didn’t you?”
“I’d forgotten all about it.”
“Until you saw her again and recognised her?”
“Yes.”
“When you were a child, you hated her. Why?”
“Because she took Father, my father, away.”
“And made your mother unhappy?”
“Mother hated Louise. She said Louise was a really wicked woman.”
“Talked to you about her a lot, I suppose?”
“Yes. I wish she hadn’t…I didn’t want to go on hearing about her.”
“Monotonous—I know. Hate isn’t creative. When you saw her again did you really want to kill her?”
Norma seemed to consider. A faintly interested look came into her face.
“I didn’t, really, you know…It seemed all so long ago. I couldn’t imagine myself—that’s why—”
“Why you weren’t sure you had?”
“Yes. I had some quite wild idea that I hadn’t killed her at all. That it had been all a dream. That perhaps she really had thrown herself out of the window.”
“Well—why not?”
“Because I knew I had done it—I said I had done it.”
“You said you had done it? Who did you say that to?”
Norma shook her head. “I mustn’t…It was someone who tried to be kind—to help me. She said she was going to pretend to have known nothing about it.” She went on, the words coming fast and excitedly: “I was outside Louise’s door, the door of 76, just coming out of it. I thought I’d been walking in my sleep. They—she—said there had been an accident. Down in the courtyard. She kept telling me it had been nothing to do with me. Nobody would ever know—And I couldn’t remember what I had done—but there was stuff in my hand—”
“Stuff? What stuff? Do you mean blood?”
“No, not blood—torn curtain stuff. When I’d pushed her out.”
“You remember pushing her out, do you?”
“No, no. That’s what was so awful. I didn’t remember anything. That’s why I hoped. That’s why I went—” She turned her head towards Poirot—“to him—”
She turned back again to Stillingfleet.
“I never remembered the things I’d done, none of them. But I got more and more frightened. Because there used to be quite long times that were blank—quite blank—hours I couldn’t account for, or remember where I’d been and what I’d been doing. But I found things—things I must have hidden away myself. Mary was being poisoned by me, they found out she was being poisoned at the hospital. And I found the weed killer I’d hidden away in the drawer. In the flat here there was a flick-knife. And I had a revolver that I didn’t even know I’d bought! I did kill people, but I didn’t remember killing them, so I’m not really a murderer—I’m just—mad! I realised that at last. I’m mad, and I can’t help it. People can’t blame you if you do things when you are mad. If I could come here and even kill David, it shows I am mad, doesn’t it?”
“You’d like to be mad, very much?”
“I—yes, I suppose so.”
“If so, why did you confess to someone that you had killed a woman by pushing her out of the window? Who was it you told?”
Norma turned her head, hesitated. Then raised her hand and pointed.
“I told Claudia.”
“That is absolutely untrue.” Claudia looked at her scornfully. “You never said anything of the kind to me!”
“I did. I did.”
“When? Where?”
“I—don’t know.”
“She told me that she had confessed it all to you,” said Frances indistinctly. “Frankly, I thought she was hysterical and making the whole thing up.”
Stillingfleet looked across at Poirot.
“She could be making it all up,” he said judicially. “There is quite a case for that solution. But if so, we would have to find the motive, a strong motive, for her desiring the death of those two people, Louise Carpenter and David Baker. A childish hate? Forgotten and done with years ago? Nonsense. David—just to be ‘free of him?’ It is not for that that girls kill! We want better motives than that. A whacking great lot of money—say!—Greed!” He looked round him and his voice changed to a conventional tone.
“We want a little more help. There’s still one person missing. Your wife is a long time joining us here, Mr. Restarick?”
“I can’t think where Mary can be. I’ve rung up. Claudia has left messages in every place we can think of. By now she ought to have rung up at least from somewhere.”
“Perhaps we have the wrong idea,” said Hercule Poirot. “Perhaps Madame is at least partly here already—in a manner of speaking.”
“What on earth do you mean?” shouted Restarick angrily.
“Might I trouble you, chère Madame?”
Poirot leaned towards Mrs. Oliver. Mrs. Oliver stared.
“The parcel I entrusted to you—”
“Oh.” Mrs. Oliver dived into her shopping bag. She handed the black folder to him.
He heard a sharply indrawn breath near him, but did not turn his head.
He shook off the wrappings delicately and held up—a wig of bouffant golden hair.
“Mrs. Restarick is not here,” he said, “but her wig is. Interesting.”
“Where the devil did you get that, Poirot?” asked Neele.
“From the overnight bag of Miss Frances Cary from which she had as yet no opportunity of removing it. Shall we see how it becomes her?”
With a single deft movement, he swept aside the black hair that masked Frances’s face so effectively. Crowned with a golden aureole before she could defend herself, she glared at them.
Mrs. Oliver exclaimed:
“Good gracious—it is Mary Restarick.”
Frances was twisting like an angry snake. Restarick jumped from his seat to come to her—but Neele’s strong grip restrained him.
“No. We don’t want any violence from you. The game’s up, you know, Mr. Restarick—or shall I call you Robert Orwell—”
A stream of profanity came from the man’s lips. Frances’s voice was raised sharply:
“Shut up, you damned fool!” she said.
II
Poirot had abandoned his trophy, the wig. He had gone to Norma, and taken her hand gently in his.
“Your ordeal is over, my child. The victim will not be sacrificed. You are neither mad, nor have you killed anyone. There are two cruel and heartless creatures who plotted against you, with cunningly administered drugs, with lies, doing their best to drive you either to suicide or to belief in your own guilt and madness.”
Norma was staring with horror at the other plotter.
“My father. My father? He could think of doing that to me. His daughter. My father who loved me—”
“Not your father, mon enfant—a man who came here after your father’s death, to impersonate him and lay hands on an enormous fortune. Only one person was likely to recognise him—or rather to recognise that this man was not Andrew Restarick—the woman who had been Andrew Restarick’s mistress fifteen years ago.”
Twenty-five
Four people sat in Poirot’s room. Poirot in his square chair was drinking a glass of sirop de cassis. Norma and Mrs. Oliver sat on the sofa. Mrs. Oliver was looking particularly festive in unbecoming apple green brocade, surmounted by one of her more painstaking coiffures. Dr. Stillingfleet was sprawled out in a chair with his long legs stretched out, so that they seemed to reach half across the room.
“Now then, there are lots of things I want to know,” said Mrs. Oliver. Her voice was accusatory.
Poirot hastened to pour oil on troubled waters.
“But, chère Madame, consider. What I
owe to you I can hardly express. All, but all my good ideas were suggested to me by you.”
Mrs. Oliver looked at him doubtfully.
“Was it not you who introduced to me the phrase ‘Third Girl?’ It is there that I started—and there, too, that I ended—at the third girl of three living in a flat. Norma was always technically, I suppose, the Third Girl—but when I looked at things the right way round it all fell into place. The missing answer, the lost piece of the puzzle, every time it was the same—the third girl.
“It was always, if you comprehend me, the person who was not there. She was a name to me, no more.”
“I wonder I never connected her with Mary Restarick,” said Mrs. Oliver. “I’d seen Mary Restarick at Crosshedges, talked to her. Of course the first time I saw Frances Cary, she had black hair hanging all over her face. That would have put anyone off!”
“Again it was you, Madame, who drew my attention to how easily a woman’s appearance is altered by the way she arranges her hair. Frances Cary, remember, had had dramatic training. She knew all about the art of swift makeup. She could alter her voice at need. As Frances, she had long black hair, framing her face and half hiding it, heavy dead white maquillage, dark pencilled eyebrows and mascara, with a drawling husky voice. Mary Restarick, with her wig of formally arranged golden hair with crimped waves, her conventional clothes, her slight Colonial accent, her brisk way of talking, presented a complete contrast. Yet one felt, from the beginning, that she was not quite real. What kind of a woman was she? I did not know.
“I was not clever about her—No—I, Hercule Poirot, was not clever at all.”
“Hear, hear,” said Dr. Stillingfleet. “First time I’ve ever heard you say that, Poirot! Wonders will never cease!”
“I don’t really see why she wanted two personalities,” said Mrs. Oliver. “It seems unnecessarily confusing.”
“No. It was very valuable to her. It gave her, you see, a perpetual alibi whenever she wanted it. To think that it was there, all the time, before my eyes, and I did not see it! There was the wig—I kept being subconsciously worried by it, but not seeing why I was worried. Two women—never, at any time, seen together. Their lives so arranged that no one noticed the large gaps in their time schedules when they were unaccounted for. Mary goes often to London, to shop, to visit house agents, to depart with a sheaf of orders to view, supposedly to spend her time that way. Frances goes to Birmingham, to Manchester, even flies abroad, frequents Chelsea with her special coterie of arty young men whom she employs in various capacities which would not be looked on with approval by the law. Special picture frames were designed for the Wedderburn Gallery. Rising young artists had ‘shows’ there—their pictures sold quite well, and were shipped abroad or sent on exhibition with their frames stuffed with secret packets of heroin—Art rackets—skilful forgeries of the more obscure Old Masters—She arranged and organised all these things. David Baker was one of the artists she employed. He had the gift of being a marvellous copyist.”