"And you watch people?"
"Sometimes. But there aren't many people who come here."
"Why not, I wonder?"
"I suppose they are afraid."
"Why should they be afraid?"
"Because someone was killed here long ago. Before it was a garden, I mean. It was a quarry once and then there was a gravel pile or a sand pile and that's where they found her. Do you think the old saying is true - About you're born to be hanged or born to be drowned?"
"Nobody is born to be hanged nowadays. You do not hang people any longer in this country."
"But they are hanging them in some other countries. They hang them in the streets. I've read it in the papers."
"Ah. Do you think that is a good thing or a bad thing?"
Miranda's response was not strictly in answer to the question, but Poirot felt that it was perhaps meant to be.
"Joyce was drowned," she said. "Mummy didn't want to tell me, but that was rather silly, I think, don't you? I mean, I'm twelve years old."
"Was Joyce a friend of yours?"
"Yes. She was a great friend in a way. She told me very interesting things sometimes. All about elephants and rajahs. She'd been to India once. I wish I'd been to India. Joyce and I used to tell each other all our secrets. I haven't so much to tell as Mummy. Mummy's been to Greece, you know. That's where she met Aunt Ariadne, but she didn't take me."
"Who told you about Joyce?"
"Mrs Perring. She's our cook. She was talking to Mrs Minden who comes and cleans. Someone held her head down in a bucket of water."
"Have you any idea who that someone was?"
"I shouldn't think so. They didn't seem to know, but then they're both rather stupid really."
"Do you know, Miranda?"
"I wasn't there. I had a sore throat and a temperature so Mummy wouldn't take me to the party. But I think I could know. Because she was drowned. That's why I asked if you thought people were born to be drowned. We go through the hedge here. Be careful of your clothes."
Poirot followed her lead. The entrance through the hedge from the Quarry Garden was more suited to the build of his childish guide with her elfin slimness it was practically a highway to her. She was solicitous for Poirot, however, warning him of adjacent thorn bushes and holding back the more prickly components of the hedge. They emerged at a spot in the garden adjacent to a compost heap and turned a corner by a derelict cucumber frame to where two dustbins stood. From there on a small neat garden mostly planted with roses gave easy access to the small bungalow house. Miranda led the way through an open French window, announcing with the modest pride of a collector who has just secured a sample of a rare beetle: "I've got him all right."
"Miranda, you didn't bring him through the hedge, did you? You ought to have gone round by the path at the side gate."
"This is a better way," said Miranda. "Quicker and shorter." "And much more painful, I suspect."
"I forget," said Mrs Oliver "I did introduce you, didn't I, to my friend Mrs Butler?"
"Of course. In the post office."
The introduction in question had been a matter of a few moments while there had been a queue in front of the counter.
Poirot was better able now to study Mrs Oliver's friend at close quarters. Before it had been a matter of a slim woman in a disguising head-scarf and a mackintosh.
Judith Butler was a woman of about thirty-five, and whilst her daughter resembled a dryad or a wood-nymph, Judith had more the attributes of a water spirit. She could have been a Rhine maiden. Her long blonde hair hung limply on her shoulders, she was delicately made with a rather long face and faintly hollow cheeks, whilst above them were big sea green eyes fringed with long eyelashes.
"I'm very glad to thank you properly, Monsieur Poirot," said Mrs Butler. "It was very good of you to come down here when Ariadne asked you."
"When my friend, Mrs Oliver, asks me to do anything I always have to do it," said Poirot.
"What nonsense," said Mrs Oliver.
"She was sure, quite sure, that you would be able to find out all about this beastly thing. Miranda, dear, will you go into the kitchen? You'll find the scones on the wire tray above the oven."
Miranda disappeared. She gave, as she went, a knowledgeable smile directed at her mother that said as plainly as a smile could say, "She's getting me out of the way for a short time."
"I tried not to let her know," said Miranda's mother, "about this this horrible thing that happened. But I suppose that was a forlorn chance from the start."
"Yes indeed," said Poirot. "There's nothing that goes round any residential centre with the same rapidity as news of a disaster, and particularly an unpleasant disaster. And anyway," he added, "one cannot go long through life without knowing what goes on around one. And children seem particularly apt at that sort of thing."
"I don't know if it was Burns or Sir Walter Scott who said: 'There's a child among you taking notes'," said Mrs Oliver, "but he certainly knew what he was talking about."
"Joyce Reynolds certainly seems to have noticed such a thing as a murder," said Mrs Butler. "One can hardly believe it."
"Believe that Joyce noticed it?"
"I meant believe that if she saw such a thing she never spoke about it earlier. That seems very unlike Joyce."
"The first thing that everybody seems to tell me here," said Poirot, in a mild voice, "is that this girl, Joyce Reynolds, was a liar."
"I suppose it's possible," said Judith Butler, "that a child might make up a thing and then it might turn out to be true?"
"That is certainly the focal point from which we start," said Poirot. "Joyce Reynolds was unquestionably murdered."
"And you have started. Probably you know already all about it," said Mrs Oliver. "Madame, do not ask impossibilities of me. You are always in such a hurry."
"Why not?" said Mrs Oliver. "Nobody would ever get anything done nowadays if they weren't in a hurry."
Miranda returned at this moment with a plateful of scones.
"Shall I put them down here?" she asked. "I expect you've finished talking by now, haven't you? Or is there anything else you would like me to get from the kitchen?" There was a gentle malice in her voice.
Mrs Butler lowered the Georgian silver teapot to the fender, switched on an electric kettle which had been turned off just before it came to the boil, duly filled the teapot and served the tea. Miranda handed hot scones and cucumber sandwiches with a serious elegance of manner.
"Ariadne and I met in Greece," said Judith.
"I fell into the sea," said Mrs Oliver, "when we were coming back from one of the islands. It had got rather rough and the sailors always say 'jump' and, of course, they say jump just when the thing's at its furthest point which makes it come right for you, but you don't think that can possibly happen and so you dither and you lose your nerve and you jump when it looks close and, of course, that's the moment when it goes far away." She paused for breath. "Judith helped fish me out and it made a kind of bond between us, didn't it?"
"Yes, indeed," said Mrs Butler. "Besides, I liked your Christian name," she added. "It seemed very appropriate, somehow."
"Yes, I suppose it is a Greek name," said Mrs Oliver. "It's my own, you know. I didn't just make it up for literary purposes. But nothing Ariadne-like has ever happened to me. I've never been deserted on a Greek island by my own true love or anything like that."
Poirot raised a hand to his moustache in order to hide the slight smile that he could not help coming to his lips as he envisaged Mrs Oliver in the role of a deserted Greek maiden.
"We can't all live up to our names," said Mrs Butler.
"No, indeed. I can't see you in the role of cutting off your lover's head. That is the way it happened, isn't it, Judith and Holofernes, I mean?"
"It was her patriotic duty," said Mrs Butler, "for which, if I remember rightly, she was highly commended and rewarded."
"I'm not really very well up in Judith and Holofernes. It's the Apochrypha, isn't it? Still, if one comes to think of it, people do give other people - their children, I mean - some very queer names, don't they? Who was the one who hammered some nails in someone's head? Jael or Sisera. I never remember which is the man or which is the woman there. Jael, I think. I don't think I remember any child having been christened Jael."
"She laid butter before him in a lordly dish," said Miranda unexpectedly, pausing as she was about to remove the tea-tray.
"Don't look at me," said Judith Butler to her friend, "it wasn't I who introduced Miranda to the Apochrypha. That's her school training."
"Rather unusual for schools nowadays, isn't it?" said Mrs Oliver. "They give them ethical ideas instead, don't they?"
"Not Miss Emlyn," said Miranda. "She says that if we go to church nowadays we only get the modern version of the Bible read to us in the lessons and things, and that it has no literary merit whatsoever. We should at least know the fine prose and blank verse sometimes of the Authorised Version. I enjoyed the story of Jael and Sisera very much," she added. "It's not a thing," she said meditatively, "that I should ever have thought of doing myself. Hammering nails, I mean, into someone's head when they were asleep."
"I hope not indeed," said her mother.
"And how would you dispose of your enemies, Miranda?" asked Poirot.
"I should be very kind," said Miranda in a gently contemplative tone. "It would be more difficult, but I'd rather have it that way because I don't like hurting things. I'd use a sort of drug that gives people euthanasia. They would go to sleep and have beautiful dreams and they just wouldn't wake up." She lifted some tea cups and the bread and butter plate.
"I'll wash up, Mummy," she said, "if you'd like to take Monsieur Poirot to look at the garden. There are still some Queen Elizabeth roses at the back of the border."
She went out of the room carefully carrying the tea-tray. "She's an astonishing child, Miranda," said Mrs Oliver. "You have a very beautiful daughter, Madame," said Poirot.
"Yes, I think she is beautiful now. One doesn't know what they will look like by the time they grow up. They acquire puppy fat and look like well-fattened pigs sometimes. But now - now she is like a wood-nymph."
"One does not wonder that she is fond of the Quarry Garden which adjoins your house."
"I wish she wasn't so fond of it sometimes. One gets nervous about people wandering about in isolated places, even if they are quite near people or a village. One's - oh, one's frightened all the time nowadays. That's why - why you've got to find out why this awful thing happened to Joyce, Monsieur Poirot. Because until we know who that was, we shan't feel safe for a minute - about our children, I mean. Take Monsieur Poirot out in the garden, will you, Ariadne? I'll join you in a minute or two."
She took the remaining two cups and a plate and went into the kitchen. Poirot and Mrs Oliver went out through the French window. The small garden was like most autumn gardens. It retained a few candles of golden rod and michaelmas daisies in a border, and some Queen Elizabeth roses held their pink statuesque heads up high.
Mrs Oliver walked rapidly down to where there was a stone bench, sat down, and motioned Poirot to sit down beside her.
"You said you thought Miranda was like a wood-nymph," she said. "What do you think of Judith?"
"I think Judith's name ought to be Undine," said Poirot.
"A water-spirit, yes. Yes, she does look as though she'd just come out of the Rhine or the sea or a forest pool or something. Her hair looks as though it had been dipped in water. Yet there's nothing untidy or scatty about her, is there?"
"She, too, is a very lovely woman," said Poirot. "What do you think about her?"
"I have not had time to think as yet. I just think that she is beautiful and attractive and that something is giving her very great concern."
"Well, of course, wouldn't it?"
"What I would like, Madame, is for you to tell me what you know or think about her."
"Well, I got to know her very well on the cruise. You know, one does make quite intimate friends. Just one or two people. The rest of them, I mean, they like each other and all that, but you don't really go to any trouble to see them again. But one or two you do. Well, Judith was one of the ones I did want to see again."
"You did not know her before the cruise?"
"No."
"But you know something about her?"
"Well, just ordinary things. She's a widow," said Mrs Oliver. "Her husband died a good many years ago - he was an air pilot. He was killed in a car accident. One of those pile-up things, I think it was, coming off the what-is-it that runs near here on to the ordinary road one evening, or something of that kind. He left her rather badly off, I imagine. She was very broken up about it, I think. She doesn't like talking about him."
"Is Miranda her only child?"
"Yes. Judith does some part-time secretarial work in the neighbourhood, but she hasn't got a fixed job."
"Did she know the people who lived at the Quarry House?"
"You mean old Colonel and Mrs Weston?"
"I mean the former owner, Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe, wasn't it?"
"I think so. I think I've heard that name mentioned. But she died two or three years ago, so of course one doesn't hear about her much. Aren't the people who are alive enough for you?" demanded Mrs Oliver with some irritation.
