"Had you ever seen her before?" asked Poirot.
"Oh, no," said Jennifer. "I don't think she lived down there. She said she'd come down for a luncheon party or a cocktail parry or something."
Poirot looked at her thoughtfully. He was interested in Jennifer's complete acceptance of everything that was said to her. He said gently:
"But she might not have been speaking the truth?"
"Oh," said Jennifer. "No, I suppose not."
"You're quite sure you hadn't seen her before? She could not have been, for instance, one of the girls dressed up? Or one of the mistresses?"
"Dressed up?" Jennifer looked puzzled.
Poirot laid before her the sketch Eileen Rich had done for him of Mademoiselle Blanche.
"This was not the woman, was it?"
Jennifer looked at it doubtfully.
"It's a little like her - but I don't think it's her."
Poirot nodded thoughtfully.
There was no sign that Jennifer recognized that this was actually a sketch of Mademoiselle Blanche.
"You see," said Jennifer, "I didn't really look at her much. She was an American and a stranger, and then she told me about the racquet..."
After that, it was clear, Jennifer would have had eyes for nothing but her new possession.
"I see," said Poirot. He went on, "Did you ever see at Meadowbank anyone that you'd seen out in Ramat?"
"In Ramat?" Jennifer thought. "Oh, no - at least - I don't think so."
Poirot pounced on the slight expression of doubt. "But you are not sure, Mademoiselle Jennifer."
"Well," Jennifer scratched her forehead with a worried expression, "I mean, you're always seeing people who look like somebody else. You can't quite remember who it is they look like. Sometimes you see people that you have met but you don't remember who they are. And they say to you, 'You don't remember me,' and then that's awfully awkward because really you don't. I mean, you sort of know their face but you can't remember their names or where you saw them."
"That is very true," said Poirot. "Yes, that is very true. One often has that experience." He paused a moment then he went on, prodding gently, "Princess Shaista, for instance, you probably recognized her when you saw her because you must have seen her in Ramat."
"Oh, was she in Ramat?"
"Very likely," said Poirot. "After all she is a relation of the ruling house. You might have seen her there?"
"I don't think I did," said Jennifer frowning. "Anyway, she wouldn't go about with her face showing there, would she? I mean, they all wear veils and things like that. Though they take them off in Paris and Cairo, I believe. And in London, of course," she added.
"Anyway, you had no feeling of having seen anyone at Meadowbank whom you had seen before?"
"No, I'm sure I hadn't. Of course most people do look rather alike and you might have seen them anywhere. It's only when somebody's got an odd sort of face like Miss Rich, that you notice it."
"Did you think you'd seen Miss Rich somewhere before?"
"I hadn't really. It must have been someone like her. But it was someone much fatter than she was."
"Someone much fatter," said Poirot thoughtfully.
"You couldn't imagine Miss Rich being fat," said Jennifer with a giggle. "She's so frightfully thin and nobbly. And anyway Miss Rich couldn't have been in Ramat because she was away ill last term."
"And the other girls," said Poirot, "had you seen any of the girls before?"
"Only the ones I knew already," said Jennifer. "I did know one or two of them. After all, you know, I was only there three weeks and I really don't know half of the people there even by sight. I wouldn't know most of them if I met them tomorrow."
"You should notice things more," said Poirot severely.
"One can't notice everything," protested Jennifer. She went on: "If Meadowbank is carrying on I would like to go back. See if you can do anything with Mummy. Though really," she added, "I think it's Daddy who's the stumbling block. It's awful here in the country. I get no opportunity to improve my tennis."
"I assure you I will do what I can," said Poirot.
Chapter 21
GATHERING THREADS
"I want to talk to you, Eileen," said Miss Bulstrode.
Eileen Rich followed Miss Bulstrode into the latter's sitting room. Meadowbank was strangely quiet. About twenty-five pupils were still there. Pupils whose parents had found it either difficult or unwelcome to fetch them. The panic-stricken rush had, as Miss Bulstrode had hoped, been checked by her own tactics. There was a general feeling that by next term everything would have been cleared up. It was much wiser of Miss Bulstrode, they felt, to close the school.
None of the staff had left. Miss Johnson fretted with too much time on her hands. A day in which there was too little to do did not in the least suit her. Miss Chadwick, looking old and miserable, wandered round in a kind of coma of misery. She was far harder hit to all appearance than Miss Bulstrode. Miss Bulstrode, indeed, managed apparently without difficulty to be completely herself, unperturbed, and with no sign of strain or of collapse. The two younger mistresses were not averse to the extra leisure. They bathed in the swimming pool, wrote long letters to friends and relations, and sent for cruise literature to study and compare. Ann Shapland had a good deal of time on her hands and did not appear to resent the fact. She spent a good deal of that time in the garden and devoted herself to gardening with quite unexpected efficiency. That she preferred to be instructed in the work by Adam rather than by old Briggs was perhaps a not unnatural phenomenon.
"Yes, Miss Bulstrode?" said Eileen Rich.
"I've been wanting to talk to you," said Miss Bulstrode. "Whether this school can continue or not I do not know. What people will feel is always fairly incalculable because they will all feel differently. But the result will be that whoever feels most strongly will end by converting all the rest. So either Meadowbank is finished -"
"No," said Eileen Rich, interrupting, "not finished." She almost stamped her foot and her hair immediately began coming down. "You mustn't let it be stopped," she said. "It would, be a sin - a crime."
"You speak very strongly," said Miss Bulstrode.
"I feel strongly. There are so many things that really don't seem worthwhile a bit, but Meadowbank does seem worthwhile. It seemed worthwhile to me the first moment I came here."
"You're a fighter," said Miss Bulstrode. "I like fighters, and I assure you that I don't intend to give in tamely. In a way I'm going to enjoy the fight. You know, when everything's too easy and things go too well one gets - I don't know the exact word I mean - complacent? Bored? A kind of hybrid of the two. But I'm not bored now and I'm not complacent and I'm going to fight with every ounce of strength I've got, and with every penny I've got, too. Now what I want to say to you is this: If Meadowbank continues, will you come in on a partnership basis?"
"Me?" Eileen Rich stared at her. "Me?"
"Yes, my dear," said Miss Bulstrode. "You."
"I couldn't," said Eileen Rich. "I don't know enough. I'm too young. Why, I haven't got the experience, the knowledge that you'd want."
"You must leave it to me to know what I want," said Miss Bulstrode. "Mind you, this isn't, at the present moment of talking, a good offer. You'd probably do better for yourself elsewhere. But I want to tell you this, and you've got to believe me. I had already decided before Miss Vansittart's unfortunate death, that you were the person I wanted - to carry on this school."
"You thought so then?" Eileen Rich stared at her. "But I thought - we all thought - that Miss Vansittart..."
"There was no arrangement made with Miss Vansittart," said Miss Bulstrode. "I had her in mind, I will confess. I've had her in mind for the last two years. But something's always held me back from saying anything definite to her about it. I daresay everyone assumed that she'd be my successor. She may have thought so herself. I myself thought so until very recently. And then I decided that she was not what I wanted."
"But she was so suitable in every way," said Eileen Rich. "She would have carried out things in exactly your ways, in exactly your ideas."
"Yes," said Miss Bulstrode, "and that's just what would have been wrong. You can't hold on to the past. A certain amount of tradition is good but never too much. A school is for the children of today. It's not for the children of fifty years ago or even of thirty years ago. There are some schools in which tradition is more important than others, but Meadowbank is not one of those. It's not a school with a long tradition behind it. It's a creation, if I may say it, of one woman. Myself. I've tried certain ideas and carried them out to the best of my ability, though occasionally I've had to modify them when they haven't produced the results I'd expected. It's not been a conventional school, but it has not prided itself on being an unconventional school either. It's a school that tries to make the best of both worlds - the past and the future, but the real stress is on the present. That's how it's going to go on, how it ought to go on. Run by someone with ideas - ideas of the present day. Keeping what is wise from the past, looking forward toward the future. You're very much the age I was when I started here but you've got what I no longer can have. You'll find it written in the Bible. Their old men dream dreams and their young men have visions. We don't need dreams here, we need vision. I believe you to have vision and that's why I decided that you were the person and not Eleanor Vansittart."
"It would have been wonderful," said Eileen Rich. "Wonderful. The thing I should have liked above all."
Miss Bulstrode was faintly surprised by the tense, although she did not show it. Instead she agreed promptly.
"Yes," she said, "it would have been wonderful. But it isn't wonderful now? Well, I suppose I understand that."
"No, no, I don't mean that at all," said Eileen Rich.
"Not at all. I - I can't go into details very well, but if you had - if you had asked me, spoken to me like this a week or a fortnight ago I should have said at once that I couldn't, that it would have been quite impossible. The only reason why it - why it might be possible now is because - well, because it is a case of fighting - of taking on things. May I - may I think it over, Miss Bulstrode? I don't know what to say now."
"Of course," said Miss Bulstrode. She was still surprised. One never really knew, she thought, about anybody.
II
"There goes Rich with her hair coming down again," said Ann Shapland as she straightened herself up from a flower bed. "If she can't control it I can't think why she doesn't get it cut off. She's got a good shaped head and she would look better."
"You ought to tell her so," said Adam.
"We're not on those terms," said Ann Shapland. She went on, "D'you think this place will be able to carry on?"
"That's a very doubtful question," said Adam, "and who am I to judge?"
"You could tell as well as another I should think," said Ann Shapland. "It might, you know. The old Bull, as the girls call her, has got what it takes. A hypnotizing effect on parents to begin with. How long is it since the beginning of term - only a month! It seems like a year. I shall be glad when it comes to an end."
"Will you come back if the school goes on?"
"No," said Ann with emphasis, "no indeed. I've had enough of schools to last me for a lifetime. I'm not cut out for being cooped up with a lot of women anyway. And, frankly, I don't like murder. It's the sort of thing that's fun to read about in the paper or to read yourself to sleep with in the way of a nice book. But the real thing isn't so good. I think," added Ann thoughtfully, "that when I leave here at the end of the term I shall marry Denis and settle down."
"Denis?" said Adam. "That's the one you mentioned to me, wasn't it? As far as I remember his work takes him to Burma and Malaya and Singapore and Japan and places like that. It won't be exactly settling down, will it, if you marry him?"
Ann laughed suddenly. "No, no, I suppose it won't. Not in the physical, geographical sense."
"I think you can do better than Denis," said Adam.
"Are you making me an offer?" said Ann.
"Certainly not," said Adam. "You're an ambitious girl, you wouldn't like to marry a humble jobbing gardener."
"I was wondering about marrying into the C.I.D.," said Ann.
"I'm not in the C.I.D.," said Adam.
"No, no, of course not," said Ann. "Let's preserve the niceties of speech. You're not in the C.I.D. Shaista wasn't kidnapped, everything in the garden's lovely. It is rather," she added, looking round. "All the same," she said after a moment or two, "I don't understand in the least about Shaista turning up in Geneva or whatever the story is. How did she get there? All you people must be very slack to allow her to be taken out of this country."
"My lips are sealed," said Adam.
"I don't think you know the first thing about it," said Ann.
"I will admit," said Adam, "that we have to thank Monsieur Hercule Poirot for having had a bright idea."
"What, the funny little man who brought Julia back and came to see Miss Bulstrode?"
"Yes. He calls himself," said Adam, "a consultant detective."
