"They appear to be so, I admit."
"You always want to make everything difficult," complained Mrs Oliver.
"Not at all. Things have been made difficult for me. I need information and there is only one person who can give me information. And she has disappeared."
"You mean Norma."
"Yes, I mean Norma."
"But she hasn't disappeared. We found her, you and I."
"She walked out of that cafй and once more she has disappeared."
"And you let her go?" Mrs Oliver's voice quivered with reproach.
"Alas!"
"You let her go? You didn't even try to find her again?"
"I did not say I had not tried to find her."
"But so far you have not succeeded. M. Poirot, I really am disappointed with you."
"There is a pattern," said Hercule Poirot almost dreamily. "Yes, there is a pattern. But because there is one factor missing, the pattern does not make sense. You see that, don't you?"
"No," said Mrs Oliver, whose head was aching.
Poirot continued to talk more to himself than his listener. If Mrs Oliver could be said to be listening. She was highly indignant with Poirot and she thought to herself that the Restarick girl had been quite right and that Poirot was too old!
There, she herself had found the girl for him, had telephoned him so that he might arrive in time, had gone off herself to shadow the other half of the couple. She had left the girl to Poirot, and what had Poirot done - lost her! In fact she could not really see that Poirot had done anything at all of any use at any time whatever.
She was disappointed in him. When he stopped talking she would tell him so again.
Poirot was quietly and methodically outlining what he called "the pattern".
"It interlocks. Yes it interlocks and that is why it is difficult. One thing relates to another and then you find that it relates to something else that seems outside the pattern. But it is not outside the pattern. And so it brings more people again into a ring of suspicion. Suspicion of what? There again one does not know. We have first the girl and through all the maze of conflicting patterns I have to search the answer to the most poignant of questions. Is the girl a victim, is she in danger? Or is the girl very astute. Is the girl creating the impression she wants to create for her own purposes? It can be taken either way. I need something still. Some one sure pointer, and it is there somewhere. I am sure it is there somewhere."
Mrs Oliver was rummaging in her handbag.
"I can't think why I can never find my aspirin when I want it," she said in a vexed voice.
"We have one set of relationships that hook up. The father, the daughter, the stepmother. Their lives are interrelated. We have the elderly uncle, somewhat gaga, with whom they live. We have the girl Sonia. She is linked with the uncle. She works for him. She has pretty manners, pretty ways. He is delighted with her. He is, shall we say, a little soft about her. But what is her role in the household?"
"Wants to learn English, I suppose," said Mrs Oliver.
"She meets one of the members of the Hertzogovinian Embassy - in Kew Gardens. She meets him there, but she does not speak to him. She leaves behind her a book and he takes it away -"
"What is all this?" said Mrs Oliver. "Has this anything to do with the other pattern? We do not as yet know. It seems unlikely but it may not be unlikely. Had Mary Restarick unwittingly stumbled upon something which might be dangerous to the girl?"
"Don't tell me all this has something to do with espionage or something."
"I am not telling you. I am wondering."
"You said yourself that old Sir Roderick was gaga."
"It is not a question of whether he is gaga or not. He was a person of some importance during the war. Important papers passed through his hands. Important letters can have been written to him. Letters which he was at perfect liberty to have kept once they had lost their importance."
"You're talking of the war and that was ages ago."
"Quite so. But the past is not always done with, because it is ages ago. New alliances are made. Public speeches are made repudiating this, denying that, telling various lies about something else. And suppose there exist still certain letters or documents that will change the picture of a certain personality. I am not telling you anything, you understand. I am only making assumptions. Assumptions such as I have known to be true in the past. It might be of the utmost importance that some letters or papers should be destroyed, or else passed to some foreign government. Who better to undertake that task than a charming young lady who assists and aids an elderly notability to collect material for his memoirs. Everyone is writing their memoirs nowadays. One cannot stop them from doing so! Suppose that the stepmother gets a little something in her food on the day that the helpful secretary plus au pair girl is doing the cooking? And suppose it is she who arranges that suspicion should fall on Norma?"
"What a mind you have," said Mrs Oliver. "Tortuous, that's what I call it. I mean, all these things can't have happened."
"That is just it. There are too many patterns. Which is the right one? The girl Norma leaves home, goes to London. She is, as you have instructed me, a third girl sharing a flat with two other girls. There again you may have a pattern. The two girls are strangers to her. But then what do I learn? Claudia Reece-Holland is private secretary to Norma Restarick's father. Here again we have a link. Is that mere chance? Or could there be a pattern of some kind behind it. The other girl, you tell me, acts as a model, and is acquainted with the boy you call 'the Peacock' with whom Norma is in love. Again a link. More links. And what is David - the Peacock - doing in all this? Is he in love with Norma? It would seem so. Her parents dislike it as is only probable and natural."
"It's odd about Claudia Reece-Holland being Restarick's secretary," said Mrs Oliver thoughtfully. "I should judge she was unusually efficient at anything she undertook. Perhaps it was she who pushed the woman out of the window on the seventh floor."
Poirot turned slowly towards her. "What are you saying?" he demanded. "What are you saying?"
"Just someone in the flats - I don't even know her name, but she fell out of a window or threw herself out of a window on the seventh floor and killed herself."
Poirot's voice rose high and stern.
"And you never told me?" he said accusingly.
Mrs Oliver stared at him in surprise.
"I don't know what you mean."
"What I mean? I ask you to tell me of a death. That is what I mean. A death. And you say there are no deaths. You can think only of an attempted poisoning. And yet here is a death. A death at - what is the name of those mansions?"
"Borodene Mansions."
"Yes, yes. And when did it happen?"
"This suicide? Or whatever it was? I think - yes - I think it was about a week before I went there."
"Perfect! How did you hear about it?"
"A milkman told me."
"A milkman, bon Dieu!"
"He was just being chatty," said Mrs Oliver. "It sounded rather sad. It was in the day time - very early in the morning, I think."
"What was her name?"
"I've no idea. I don't think he mentioned it."
"Young, middle-aged, old?"
Mrs Oliver considered. "Well, he didn't say her exact age. Fifty-ish, I think, was what he said."
"I wonder now. Anyone the three girls knew?"
"How can I tell? Nobody has said anything about it."
"And you never thought of telling me."
"Well, really, M. Poirot, I cannot see that it has anything to do with all this. Well, I suppose it may have - but nobody seems to have said so, or thought of it."
"But yes, there is the link. There is this girl, Norma, and she lives in those flats, and one day somebody commits suicide (for that, I gather, was the general impression). That is, somebody throws herself or falls out of a seventh-floor high window and is killed. And then? Some days later this girl Norma, after having heard you talk about me at a party, comes to call upon me and she says to me that she is afraid that she may have committed a murder. Do you not see? A death - and not many days later someone who thinks she may have committed a murder. Yes, this must be the murder"
Mrs Oliver wanted to say "nonsense" but she did not quite dare to do so. Nevertheless, she thought it.
"This then must be the one piece of knowledge that had not yet come to me. This ought to tie up the whole thing! Yes, yes, I do not see yet how, but it must be so. I must think. That is what I must do. I must go home and think until slowly the pieces fit together - because this will be the key piece that ties them all together... Yes. At last. At last I shall see my way."
He rose to his feet and said "Adieu, chиre Madame," and hurried from the room. Mrs Oliver at last relieved her feelings.
"Nonsense," she said to the empty room. "Absolute nonsense. I wonder if four would be too many aspirins to take?"
Chapter 15
At Hercule Poirot's elbow was a tisane prepared for him by George. He sipped at it and thought. He thought in a certain way peculiar to himself. It was the technique of a man who selected thoughts as one might select pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In due course they would be reassembled together so as to make a clear and coherent picture. At the moment the important thing was the selection, the separation. He sipped his tisane, put down the cup, rested his hands on the arms of his chair and let various pieces of his puzzle come one by one into his mind. Once he recognised them all, he would select. Pieces of grey, pieces of green bank, perhaps striped pieces like those of a tiger...
The painfulness of his own feet in patent-leather shoes. He started there. Walking along a road set on this path by his good friend, Mrs Oliver. A stepmother. He saw himself with his hand on a gate. A woman who turned, a woman bending her head cutting out the weak growth of a rose, turning and looking at him? What was there for him there? Nothing. A golden head, a golden head bright as a cornfield, with twists and loops of hair slightly reminiscent of Mrs Oliver's own in shape. He smiled a little. But Mary Restarick's hair was more tidily arranged than Mrs Oliver's ever was. A golden frame for her face that seemed just a little too large for her. He remembered that old Sir Roderick had said that she had to wear a wig, because of an illness. Sad for so young a woman. There was, when he came to think of it, something unusually heavy about her head. Far too static, too perfectly arranged. He considered Mary Restarick's wig - if it was a wig - for he was by no means sure that he could depend on Sir Roderick. He examined the possibilities of the wig in case they should be of significance. He reviewed the conversation they had had. Had they said anything important? He thought not. He remembered the room into which they had gone. A characterless room recently inhabited in someone else's house. Two pictures on the wall, the picture of a woman in a dove-grey dress. Thin mouth, lips set closely together. Hair that was greyish brown. The first Mrs Restarick. She looked as though she might have been older than her husband. His picture was on the opposite wall, facing her. Good portraits, both of them. Lansberger had been a good portrait painter. His mind dwelt on the portrait of the husband. He had not seen it so well that first day, as he had later in Restarick's office...
Andrew Restarick and Claudia Reece-Holland. Was there anything there? Was their association more than a merely secretarial one? It need not be. Here was a man who had come back to this country after years of absence, who had no near friends or relatives, who was perplexed and troubled over his daughter's character and conduct. It was probably natural enough that he should turn to his recently acquired eminently competent secretary and ask her to suggest somewhere for his daughter to live in London. It would be a favour on her part to provide that accommodation since she was looking for a Third Girl. Third girl... The phrase that he had acquired from Mrs Oliver always seemed to be coming to his mind. As though it had a second significance which for some reason he could not see.
His manservant, George, entered the room, closing the door discreetly behind him.
"A young lady is here, sir. The young lady who came the other day."
The words came too aptly with what Poirot was thinking. He sat up in a startled fashion.
"The young lady who came at breakfast time?"
"Oh no, sir. I mean the young lady who came with Sir Roderick Horsefield."
"Ah, indeed."
Poirot raised his eyebrows. "Bring her in. Where is she?"
"I showed her into Miss Lemon's room, sir."
"Ah. Yes, bring her in."
Sonia did not wait for George to announce her. She came into the room ahead of him with a quick and rather aggressive step.
"It has been difficult for me to get away, but I have come to tell you that I did not take those papers. I did not steal anything. You understand?"
"Has anybody said that you had?" Poirot asked. "Sit down, Mademoiselle."
"I do not want to sit down. I have very little time. I just came to tell you that it is absolutely untrue. I am very honest and I do what I am told."
"I take your point. I have already taken it. Your statement is that you have not removed any papers, information, letters, documents of any kind from Sir Roderick Horsefield's house? That is so, is it not?"
"Yes, and I've come to tell you it is so. He believes me. He knows that I would not do such a thing."
"Very well then. That is a statement and I note it."
"Do you think you are going to find those papers?"
"I have other enquiries in hand," said Poirot. "Sir Roderick's papers will have to take their turn."
"He is worried. He is very worried. There is something that I cannot say to him. I will say it to you. He loses things. Things are not put away where he thinks they are. He puts them in - how do you say it - in funny places. Oh I know. You suspect me. Everyone suspects me because I am foreign. Because I come from a foreign country and so they think - they think I steal secret papers like in one of your silly English spy stories. I am not like that. I am an intellectual."
