Placing her hand over the receiver, Miss Lemon asked in a low voice:
‘Will you accept a personal call from Nassecombe, Devon?’
Poirot frowned. The place meant nothing to him.
‘The name of the caller?’ he demanded cautiously.
Miss Lemon spoke into the mouthpiece.
‘Air-raid?’ she asked doubtingly. ‘Oh, yes—what was the last name again?’
Once more she turned to Hercule Poirot.
‘Mrs Ariadne Oliver.’
Hercule Poirot’s eyebrows shot up. A memory rose in his mind: windswept grey hair… an eagle profile…
He rose and replaced Miss Lemon at the telephone.
‘Hercule Poirot speaks,’ he announced grandiloquently.
‘Is that Mr Hercules Porrot speaking personally?’ the suspicious voice of the telephone operator demanded.
Poirot assured her that that was the case.
‘You’re through to Mr Porrot,’ said the voice.
Its thin reedy accents were replaced by a magnificent booming contralto which caused Poirot hastily to shift the receiver a couple of inches farther from his ear.
‘M. Poirot, is that really you?’ demanded Mrs Oliver.
‘Myself in person, Madame.’
‘This is Mrs Oliver. I don’t know if you’ll remember me—’
‘But of course I remember you, Madame. Who could forget you?’
‘Well, people do sometimes,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Quite often, in fact. I don’t think that I’ve got a very distinctive personality. Or perhaps it’s because I’m always doing different things to my hair. But all that’s neither here nor there. I hope I’m not interrupting you when you’re frightfully busy?’
‘No, no, you do not derange me in the least.’
‘Good gracious—I’m sure I don’t want to drive you out of your mind. The fact is, I need you.’
‘Need me?’
‘Yes, at once. Can you take an aeroplane?’
‘I do not take aeroplanes. They make me sick.’
‘They do me, too. Anyway, I don’t suppose it would be any quicker than the train really, because I think the only airport near here is Exeter which is miles away. So come by train. Twelve o’clock from Paddington to Nassecombe. You can do it nicely. You’ve got three-quarters of an hour if my watch is right—though it isn’t usually.’
‘But where are you, Madame? What is all this about?’
‘Nasse House, Nassecombe. A car or taxi will meet you at the station at Nassecombe.’
‘But why do you need me? What is all this about?’ Poirot repeated frantically.
‘Telephones are in such awkward places,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘This one’s in the hall… People passing through and talking… I can’t really hear. But I’m expecting you. Everybody will be so thrilled. Goodbye.’
There was a sharp click as the receiver was replaced. The line hummed gently.
With a baffled air of bewilderment[2], Poirot put back the receiver and murmured something under his breath. Miss Lemon sat with her pencil poised, incurious. She repeated in muted tones the final phrase of dictation before the interruption.
‘—allow me to assure you, my dear sir, that the hypothesis you have advanced…’
Poirot waved aside the advancement of the hypothesis.
‘That was Mrs Oliver,’ he said. ‘Ariadne Oliver, the detective novelist. You may have read…’ But he stopped, remembering that Miss Lemon only read improving books and regarded such frivolities as fictional crime with contempt. ‘She wants me to go down to Devonshire today, at once, in’—he glanced at the clock—‘thirty-five minutes.’
Miss Lemon raised disapproving eyebrows.
‘That will be running it rather fine,’ she said. ‘For what reason?’
‘You may well ask! She did not tell me.’
‘How very peculiar. Why not?’
‘Because,’ said Hercule Poirot thoughtfully, ‘she was afraid of being overheard. Yes, she made that quite clear.’
‘Well, really,’ said Miss Lemon, bristling in her employer’s defence. ‘The things people expect! Fancy thinking that you’d go rushing off on some wild goose chase[3] like that! An important man like you! I have always noticed that these artists and writers are very unbalanced—no sense of proportion. Shall I telephone through a telegram: Regret unable leave London?’
Her hand went out to the telephone. Poirot’s voice arrested the gesture.
‘Du tout!’[4] he said. ‘On the contrary. Be so kind as to summon a taxi immediately.’ He raised his voice. ‘Georges! A few necessities of toilet in my small valise. And quickly, very quickly, I have a train to catch.’
II
The train, having done one hundred and eighty-odd miles of its two hundred and twelve miles journey at top speed, puffed gently and apologetically through the last thirty and drew into Nassecombe station. Only one person alighted, Hercule Poirot. He negotiated with care a yawning gap between the step of the train and the platform and looked round him. At the far end of the train a porter was busy inside a luggage compartment. Poirot picked up his valise and walked back along the platform to the exit. He gave up his ticket and walked out through the booking-office.
A large Humber[5] saloon was drawn up outside and a chauffeur in uniform came forward.
‘Mr Hercule Poirot?’ he inquired respectfully.
He took Poirot’s case from him and opened the door of the car. They drove away from the station over the railway bridge and turned down a country lane which wound between high hedges on either side. Presently the ground fell away on the right and disclosed a very beautiful river view with hills of a misty blue in the distance. The chauffeur drew into the hedge and stopped.
‘The River Helm, sir,’ he said. ‘With Dartmoor in the distance.’
It was clear that admiration was necessary. Poirot made the necessary noises, murmuring Magnifique![6] several times. Actually, Nature appealed to him very little. A well-cultivated neatly arranged kitchen garden was far more likely to bring a murmur of admiration to Poirot’s lips. Two girls passed the car, toiling slowly up the hill. They were carrying heavy rucksacks on their backs and wore shorts, with bright coloured scarves tied over their heads.
‘There is a Youth Hostel next door to us, sir,’ explained the chauffeur, who had clearly constituted himself Poirot’s guide to Devon. ‘Hoodown Park. Mr Fletcher’s place it used to be. The Youth Hostel Association bought it and it’s fairly crammed in summer time. Take in over a hundred a night, they do. They’re not allowed to stay longer than a couple of nights—then they’ve got to move on. Both sexes and mostly foreigners.’
Poirot nodded absently. He was reflecting, not for the first time, that seen from the back, shorts were becoming to very few of the female sex. He shut his eyes in pain. Why, oh why, must young women array themselves thus? Those scarlet thighs were singularly unattractive!
‘They seem heavily laden,’ he murmured.
‘Yes, sir, and it’s a long pull from the station or the bus stop. Best part of two miles to Hoodown Park.’ He hesitated. ‘If you don’t object, sir, we could give them a lift?’
‘By all means, by all means,’ said Poirot benignantly. There was he in luxury in an almost empty car and here were these two panting and perspiring young women weighed down with heavy rucksacks and without