Poirot rapped gently upon the door of the Lodge. After a few moments' delay, he heard footsteps inside. They sounded to his ear slow and almost hesitant. Then the door was opened and Mrs Folliat stood framed in the doorway. He was startled to see how old and frail she looked. She stared at him incredulously for a moment or two, then she said:
"M. Poirot? You!"
He thought for a moment that he had seen fear leap into her eyes, but perhaps that was sheer imagination on his part. He said politely:
"May I come in, Madame?"
"But of course."
She had recovered all her poise now, beckoned him in with a gesture and led the way into her small sitting-room. There were some delicate Chelsea figures on the mantelpiece, a couple of chairs covered in exquisite petit point, and a Derby tea service stood on the small table. Mrs Folliat said:
"I will fetch another cup."
Poirot raised a faintly protesting hand, but she pushed the protest aside.
"Of course you must have some tea."
She went out of the room. He looked round him once more. A piece of needlework, a petit point chair seat, lay on a table with a needle sticking in it. Against the wall was a bookcase with books. There was a little cluster of miniatures on the wall and a faded photograph in a silver frame of a man in uniform with a stiff moustache and a weak chin.
Mrs Folliat came back into the room with a cup and saucer in her hand.
Poirot said, "Your husband, Madame?"
"Yes."
Noticing that Poirot's eyes swept along the top of the bookcase as though in search of further photographs, she said brusquely:
"I'm not fond of photographs. They make one live in the past too much. One must learn to forget. One must cut away the dead wood."
Poirot remembered how the first time he had seen Mrs Folliat she had been clipping with secateurs at a shrub on the bank. She had said then, he remembered, something about dead wood. He looked at her thoughtfully, appraising her character. An enigmatical woman, he thought, and a woman who, in spite of the gentleness and fragility of her appearance, had a side to her that could be ruthless. A woman who could cut away dead wood not only from plants but from her own life...
She sat down and poured out a cup of tea, asking:
"Milk? Sugar?"
"Three lumps if you will be so good, Madame?"
She handed him his cup and said conversationally:
"I was surprised to see you. Somehow I did not imagine you would be passing through this part of the world again."
"I am not exactly passing through," said Poirot.
"No?" She queried him with slightly uplifted eyebrows.
"My visit to this part of the world is intentional."
She still looked at him in inquiry.
"I came here partly to see you, Madame."
"Really?"
"First of all - there has been no news of the young Lady Stubbs?"
Mrs Folliat shook her head.
"There was a body washed up the other day in Cornwall," she said. "George went there to see if he could identify it. But it was not her." She added: "I am very sorry for George. The strain has been very great."
"Does he still believe that his wife may be alive?"
Slowly Mrs Folliat shook her head.
"I think," she said, "that he has given up hope. After all, if Hattie were alive, she couldn't possibly conceal herself successfully with the whole of the Press and the Police looking for her. Even if something like loss of memory had happened to her - well, surely the police would have found her by now?"
"It would seem so, yes," said Poirot. "Do the police still search?"
"I suppose so. I do not really know."
"But Sir George has given up hope."
"He does not say so," said Mrs Folliat. "Of course I have not seen him lately. He has been mostly in London."
"And the murdered girl? There have been no developments there?"
"Not that I know of." She added, "It seems a senseless crime - absolutely pointless. Poor child -"
"It still upsets you, I see, to think of her, Madame."
Mrs Folliat did not reply for a moment or two. Then she said:
"I think when one is old, the death of anyone who is young upsets one out of due proportion. We old folks expect to die, but that child had her life before her."
"It might not have been a very interesting life."
"Not from our point of view, perhaps, but it might have been interesting to her."
"And although, as you say, we old folk must expect to die," said Poirot, "we do not really want to. At least I do not want to. I find life very interesting still."
"I don't think that I do."
She spoke more to herself than him, her shoulders drooped still more.
"I am very tired, M. Poirot. I shall be not only ready, but thankful, when my time comes."
He shot a quick glance at her. He wondered, as he had wondered before, whether it was a sick woman who sat talking to him, a woman who had perhaps the knowledge or even the certainty of approaching death. He could not otherwise account for the intense weariness and lassitude of her manner. That lassitude, he felt, was not really characteristic of the woman. Amy Folliat, he felt, was a woman of character, energy and determination. She had lived through many troubles, loss of her home, loss of wealth, the deaths of her sons. All these, he felt, she had survived. She had cut away the "dead wood," as she herself had expressed it. But there was something now in her life that she could not cut away, that no one could cut away for her. If it was not physical illness he did not see what it could be. She gave a sudden little smile as though she were reading his thoughts.
"Really, you know, I have not very much to live for, M. Poirot," she said. "I have many friends but no near relations, no family."
"You have your home," said Poirot on an impulse.
"You mean Nasse? Yes -"
"It is your home, isn't it. although technically it is the property of Sir George Stubbs? Now Sir George Stubbs has gone to London you rule in his stead."
Again he saw the sharp look of fear in her eyes When she spoke her voice held an icy edge to it.
"I don't quite know what you mean, M. Poirot. I am grateful to Sir George for renting me this lodge, but I do rent it. I pay him a yearly sum for it with the right to walk in the grounds."
Poirot spread out his hands.
"I apologise, Madame. I did not mean to offend you."
"No doubt I misunderstood you," said Mrs Folliat coldly.
"It is a beautiful place," said Poirot. "A beautiful house, beautiful grounds. It has about it a great peace, great serenity."
"Yes." Her face lightened. "We have always felt that. I felt it as a child when I first came here."
"But is there the same peace and serenity now, Madame?"
"Why not?"
"Murder unavenged," said Poirot. "The spilling of innocent blood. Until that shadow lifts, there will not be peace." He added," I think you know that, Madame, as well as I do."
Mrs Folliat did not answer. She neither moved nor spoke. She sat quite still and Poirot had no idea what she was thinking. He leaned forward a little and spoke again.
"Madame, you know a good deal - perhaps everything - about this murder. You know who killed that girl, you know why. You know who killed Hattie Stubbs, you know, perhaps, where her body lies now."
Mrs Folliat spoke then. Her voice was loud, almost harsh.
"I know nothing," she said. "Nothing."
"Perhaps I have used the wrong word. You do not know, but I think you guess, Madame. I'm quite sure that you guess."
"Now you are being - excuse me - absurd!"
"It is not absurd - it is something quite different - it is dangerous"
"Dangerous? To whom?"
"To you, Madame. So long as you keep your knowledge to yourself you are in danger. I know murderers better than you do, Madame."
"I have told you already, I have no knowledge."
"Suspicions, then -"
"I have no suspicions."
"That, excuse me, is not true, Madame."
"To speak out of mere suspicion would be wrong - indeed, wicked."
Poirot leaned forward. "As wicked as what was done here just over a month ago?"
She shrank back into her chair, huddled into herself. She half whispered:
"Don't talk to me of it." And then added, with a long shuddering sigh. "Anyway, it's over now. Done - finished with."
"How can you tell that, Madame? I tell you of my own knowledge that it is never finished with a murderer."
She shook her head.
"No. No, it's the end. And, anyway, there is nothing I can do. Nothing."
He got up and stood looking down at her. She said almost fretfully:
"Why, even the police have given up."
Poirot shook his head.
"Oh, no, Madame, you are wrong there. The police do not give up. And I," he added, "do not give up either. Remember that, Madame. I, Hercule Poirot, do not give up."
It was a very typical exit line.
Chapter 17
After leaving Nasse, Poirot went to the village where, by inquiry, he found the cottage occupied by the Tuckers. His knock at the door went unanswered for some moments, as it was drowned by the high-pitched tones of Mrs Tucker's voice from inside,
"- And what be yu thinking of, Jim Tucker, bringing them boots of yours on to my nice linoleum? If I've tell ee once I've tell ee a thousand times. Been polishing it all the morning, I have, and now look at it."
A faint rumbling denoted Mr Tucker's reaction to these remarks. It was on the whole a placatory rumble.
"Yu've no cause to go forgetting. 'Tis all this eagerness to get the sports news on the wireless. Why, it wouldn't have took ee to minutes to be off with them boots. And yu, Gary, do ee mind what yu'm doing with that lollipop. Sticky fingers I will not have on my best silver teapot. Marilyn, that be someone at the door, that be. Du ee go and see who 'tis."
The door was opened gingerly and a child of about eleven or twelve years old peered out suspiciously at Poirot. One cheek was bulged with a sweet. She was a fat child with small blue eyes and a rather piggy kind of prettiness.
"'Tis a gentleman, mum," she shouted.
Mrs Tucker, wisps of hair hanging over her somewhat hot face, came to the door.
"What is it?" she demanded sharply. "We don't need..." She paused, a faint look of recognition came across her face. "Why let me see, now, didn't I see you with the police that day?"
"Alas, Madame, that I have brought back painful memories," said Poirot, stepping firmly inside the door. Mrs Tucker cast a swift agonised glance at his feet, but Poirot's pointed patent leather shoes had only trodden the high road. No mud was being deposited on Mrs Tucker's brightly polished linoleum.
"Come in, won't you, sir," she said, backing before him, and throwing open the door of a room on her right hand.
Poirot was ushered into a devastatingly neat little parlour. It smelt of furniture polish and Brasso and contained a large Jacobean suite, a round table, two potted geraniums, an elaborate brass fender, and a large variety of china ornaments.
"Sit down, sir, do. I can't remember the name. Indeed, I don't think as I ever heard it."
"My name is Hercule Poirot," said Poirot rapidly. "I found myself once more in this part of the world and I called here to offer you my condolences and to ask you if there had been any developments. I trust the murderer of your daughter has been discovered?"
"Not sight or sound of him," said Mrs Tucker, speaking with some bitterness. "And 'tis a downright wicked shame if you ask me. 'Tis my opinion the police don't disturb themselves when it's only the likes of us. What's the police anyway? If they'm all like Bob Hoskins I wonder the whole country isn't a mass of crime. All that Bob Hoskins does is spend his time looking into parked cars on the Common."
At this point, Mr Tucker, his boots removed, appeared through the doorway, walking on his stockinged feet. He was a large, red-faced man with a pacific expression.
"Police be all right," he said in a husky voice. "Got their troubles just like anyone else. These here maniacs ar'n't so easy to find. Look the same as you or me, if you take my meaning," he added, speaking directly to Poirot.
The little girl who had opened the door to Poirot appeared behind her father, and a boy of about eight poked his head round her shoulder. They all stared at Poirot with intense interest.
"This is your younger daughter, I suppose," said Poirot.
"That's Marilyn, that is," said Mrs Tucker. "And that's Gary. Come and say how do you do, Gary, and mind your manners."
Gary backed away.
"Shy-like, he is," said his mother.
"Very civil of you, I'm sure, sir," said Mr Tucker, "to come and ask about Marlene. Ah, that was a terrible business, to be sure."
"I have just called upon Mrs Folliat," said M. Poirot. "She, too, seems to feel this very deeply."
"She's been poorly-like ever since," said Mrs Tucker. "She's an old lady and't was a shock to her, happening as it did at her own place."
Poirot noted once more everybody's unconscious assumption that Nasse House still belonged to Mrs Folliat.
"Makes her feel responsible-like in a way," said Mr Tucker, "not that 'twere anything to do with her."
"Who was it that actually suggested that Marlene should play the victim?" asked Poirot.
"The lady from London that writes the books," said Mrs Tucker promptly.
Poirot said mildly:
"But she was a stranger down here. She did not even know Marlene."
"'Twas Mrs Masterton what rounded the girls up," said Mrs Tucker, "and I suppose 'twas Mrs Masterton said Marlene was to do it. And Marlene, I must say, was pleased enough at the idea."
Once again, Poirot felt, he came up against a blank wall. But he knew now what Mrs Oliver had felt when she first sent for him. Someone had been working in the dark, someone who had pushed forward their own desires through other recognised personalities. Mrs Oliver, Mrs Masterton. Those were the figureheads. He said:
