‘Why not? She said she had.’
‘Yes, but—’ Mrs Oliver stopped. ‘She said she might have,’ she said slowly. ‘But what can she possibly mean by that?’
‘Exactly. It does not make sense.’
‘Who did she murder or did she think she murdered?’
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
‘And why did she murder someone?’
Again Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
‘Of course it could be all sorts of things.’ Mrs Oliver began to brighten as she set her ever prolific imagination to work. ‘She could have run over someone in her car and not stopped. She could have been assaulted by a man on a cliff and struggled with him and managed to push him over. She could have given someone the wrong medicine by mistake. She could have gone to one of those purple pill parties and had a fight with someone. She could have come to and found she had stabbed someone. She—’
‘Assez, madame, assez!’
But Mrs Oliver was well away.
‘She might have been a nurse in the operating theatre and administered the wrong anaesthetic or—’ she broke off, suddenly anxious for clearer details. ‘What did she look like?’
Poirot considered for a moment.
‘An Ophelia devoid of physical attraction.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘I can almost see her when you say that. How queer.’
‘She is not competent,’ said Poirot. ‘That is how I see her. She is not one who can cope with difficulties. She is not one of those who can see beforehand the dangers that must come. She is one of whom others will look round and say “we want a victim. That one will do”.’
But Mrs Oliver was no longer listening. She was clutching her rich coils of hair with both hands in a gesture with which Poirot was familiar.
‘Wait,’ she cried in a kind of agony. ‘Wait!’
Poirot waited, his eyebrows raised.
‘You didn’t tell me her name,’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘She did not give it. Unfortunate, I agree with you.’
‘Wait!’ implored Mrs Oliver, again with the same agony. She relaxed her grip on her head and uttered a deep sigh. Hair detached itself from its bonds and tumbled over her shoulders, a super imperial coil of hair detached itself completely and fell on the floor. Poirot picked it up and put it discreetly on the table.
‘Now then,’ said Mrs Oliver, suddenly restored to calm. She pushed in a hairpin or two, and nodded her head while she thought. ‘Who told this girl about you, M. Poirot?’
‘No one, so far as I know. Naturally, she had heard about me, no doubt.’
Mrs Oliver thought that ‘naturally’ was not the word at all. What was natural was that Poirot himself was sure that everyone had always heard of him. Actually large numbers of people would only look at you blankly if the name of Hercule Poirot was mentioned, especially the younger generation. ‘But how am I going to put that to him,’ thought Mrs Oliver, ‘in such a way that it won’t hurt his feelings?’
‘I think you’re wrong,’ she said. ‘Girls—well, girls and young men—they don’t know very much about detectives and things like that. They don’t hear about them.’
‘Everyone must have heard about Hercule Poirot,’ said Poirot, superbly.
It was an article of belief for Hercule Poirot.
‘But they are all so badly educated nowadays,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Really, the only people whose names they know are pop singers, or groups, or disc jockeys—that sort of thing. If you need someone special, I mean a doctor or a detective or a dentist—well, then, I mean you would ask someone—ask who’s the right person to go to? And then the other person says—“My dear, you must go to that absolutely wonderful man in Queen Anne’s Street, twists your legs three times round your head and you’re cured,” or “All my diamonds were stolen, and Henry would have been furious, so I couldn’t go to the police, but there’s a simply uncanny detective, most discreet, and he got them back for me and Henry never knew a thing.”—That’s the way it happens all the time. Someone sent that girl to you.’
‘I doubt it very much.’
‘You wouldn’t know until you were told. And you’re going to be told now. It’s only just come to me. I sent that girl to you.’
Poirot stared. ‘You? But why did you not say so at once?’
‘Because it’s only just come to me—when you spoke about Ophelia—long wet-looking hair, and rather plain. It seemed a description of someone I’d actually seen. Quite lately. And then it came to me who it was.’
‘Who is she?’
‘I don’t actually know her name, but I can easily find out. We were talking—about private detectives and private eyes—and I spoke about you and some of the amazing things you had done.’
‘And you gave her my address?’
‘No, of course I didn’t. I’d no idea she wanted a detective or anything like that. I thought we were just talking. But I’d mentioned the name several times, and of course it would be easy to look you up in the telephone book and just come along.’
‘Were you talking about murder?’
‘Not that I can remember. I don’t even know how we came to be talking about detectives—unless, yes, perhaps it was she who started the subject…’
‘Tell me then, tell me all you can—even if you do not know her name, tell me all you know about her.’
‘Well, it was last weekend. I was staying with the Lorrimers. They don’t come into it except that they took me over to some friends of theirs for drinks. There were several people there—and I didn’t enjoy myself much because, as you know, I don’t really like drink, and so people have to find a soft drink for me which is rather a bore for them. And then people say things to me—you know—how much they like my books, and how they’ve been longing to meet me—and it all makes me feel hot and bothered and rather silly. But I manage to cope more or less. And they say how much they love my awful detective Sven Hjerson. If they knew how I hated him! But my publisher always says I’m not to say so. Anyway, I suppose the talk about detectives in real life grew out of all that, and I talked a bit about you, and this girl was standing around listening. When you said an unattractive Ophelia it clicked somehow. I thought: “Now who does that remind me of?” And then it came to me: “Of course. The girl at the party that day.” I rather think she belonged there unless I’m confusing her with some other girl.’
Poirot sighed. With Mrs Oliver one always needed a lot of patience.
‘Who were these people with whom you went to have drinks?’
‘Trefusis, I think, unless it was Treherne. That sort of name—he’s a tycoon. Rich. Something in the City, but he’s spent most of his life in South Africa—’
‘He has a wife?’
‘Yes. Very good-looking woman. Much younger than he is. Lots of golden hair. Second wife. The daughter was the first wife’s daughter. Then there was an uncle of incredible antiquity. Rather deaf. He’s frightfully distinguished—strings of letters after his name. An admiral or an air-marshal or something. He’s an astronomer too, I think. Anyway, he’s got a kind of big telescope sticking out of the roof. Though I suppose that might be just a hobby. There was a foreign girl there, too, who sort of trots about after the old boy. Goes up to London with him, I believe, and sees he doesn’t get