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‘Monday—and today is Saturday. Yes. Yes. And now, Mademoiselle, your friends—the ones with whom you were lunching today, for instance?’
‘Well, Freddie Rice—the fair girl—is practically my greatest friend. She’s had a rotten life. Married to a beast—a man who drank and drugged and was altogether a queer of the worst description. She had to leave him a year or two ago. Since then she’s drifted round. I wish to goodness she’d get a divorce and marry Jim Lazarus.’
‘Lazarus? The art dealer in Bond Street?’
‘Yes. Jim’s the only son. Rolling in money, of course. Did you see that car of his? He’s a Jew, of course, but a frightfully decent one. And he’s devoted to Freddie. They go about everywhere together. They are staying at the Majestic over the week-end and are coming to me on Monday.’
‘And Mrs Rice’s husband?’
‘The mess? Oh! he’s dropped out of everything. Nobody knows where he is. It makes it horribly awkward for Freddie. You can’t divorce a man when you don’t know where he is.’
‘Evidemment!’
‘Poor Freddie,’ said Nick, pensively. ‘She’s had rotten luck. The thing was all fixed once. She got hold of him and put it to him, and he said he was perfectly willing, but he simply hadn’t got the cash to take a woman to a hotel. So the end of it all was she forked out—and he took it and off he went and has never been heard of from that day to this. Pretty mean, I call it.’
‘Good heavens,’ I exclaimed.
‘My friend Hastings is shocked,’ remarked Poirot. ‘You must be more careful, Mademoiselle. He is out of date, you comprehend. He has just returned from those great clear open spaces, etc., and he has yet to learn the language of nowadays.’
‘Well, there’s nothing to get shocked about,’ said Nick, opening her eyes very wide. ‘I mean, everybody knows, don’t they, that there are such people. But I call it a low-down trick all the same. Poor old Freddie was so damned hard up at the time that she didn’t know where to turn.’
‘Yes, yes, not a very pretty affair. And your other friend, Mademoiselle. The good Commander Challenger?’
‘George? I’ve known George all my life—well, for the last five years anyway. He’s a good scout, George.’
‘He wishes you to marry him—eh?’
‘He does mention it now and again. In the small hours of the morning or after the second glass of port.’
‘But you remain hard-hearted.’
‘What would be the use of George and me marrying one another? We’ve neither of us got a bean. And one would get terribly bored with George. That “playing for one’s side,” “good old school” manner. After all, he’s forty if he’s a day.’
The remark made me wince slightly.
‘In fact he has one foot in the grave,’ said Poirot. ‘Oh! do not mind me, Mademoiselle. I am a grandpapa—a nobody. And now tell me more about these accidents. The picture, for instance?’
‘It’s been hung up again—on a new cord. You can come and see it if you like.’
She led the way out of the room and we followed her. The picture in question was an oil painting in a heavy frame. It hung directly over the bed-head.
With a murmured, ‘You permit, Mademoiselle,’ Poirot removed his shoes and mounted upon the bed. He examined the picture and the cord, and gingerly tested the weight of the painting. With an elegant grimace he descended.
‘To have that descend on one’s head—no, it would not be pretty. The cord by which it was hung, Mademoiselle, was it, like this one, a wire cable?’
‘Yes, but not so thick. I got a thicker one this time.’
‘That is comprehensible. And you examined the break—the edges were frayed?’
‘I think so—but I didn’t notice particularly. Why should I?’
‘Exactly. As you say, why should you? All the same, I should much like to look at that piece of wire. Is it about the house anywhere?’
‘It was still on the picture. I expect the man who put the new wire on just threw the old one away.’
‘A pity. I should like to have seen it.’
‘You don’t think it was just an accident after all? Surely it couldn’t have been anything else.’
‘It may have been an accident. It is impossible to say. But the damage to the brakes of your car—that was not an accident. And the stone that rolled down the cliff—I should like to see the spot where that accident occurred.’
Nick took us out in the garden and led us to the cliff edge. The sea glittered blue below us. A rough path led down the face of the rock. Nick described just where the accident occurred and Poirot nodded thoughtfully. Then he asked:
‘How many ways are there into your garden, Mademoiselle?’
‘There’s the front way—past the lodge. And a tradesman’s entrance—a door in the wall half-way up that lane. Then there’s a gate just along here on the cliff edge. It leads out on to a zig zag path that leads up from that beach to the Majestic Hotel. And then, of course, you can go straight through a gap in the hedge into the Majestic garden—that’s the way I went this morning. To go through the Majestic garden is a short cut to the town anyway.’
‘And your gardener—where does he usually work?’
‘Well, he usually potters round the kitchen garden, or else he sits in the potting-shed and pretends to be sharpening the shears.’
‘Round the other side of the house, that is to say?’
‘So that if anyone were to come in here and dislodge a boulder he would be very unlikely to be noticed.’
Nick gave a sudden little shiver.
‘Do you—do you really think that is what happened?’ she asked, ‘I can’t believe it somehow. It seems so perfectly futile.’
Poirot drew the bullet from his pocket again and looked at it.
‘That was not futile, Mademoiselle,’ he said gently.
‘It must have been some madman.’
‘Possibly. It is an interesting subject of after-dinner conversation—are all criminals really madmen? There may be a malformation in their little grey cells—yes, it is very likely. That, it is the affair of the doctor. For me—I have different work to perform. I have the innocent to think of, not the guilty—the victim, not the criminal. It is you I am considering now, Mademoiselle, not your unknown assailant. You are young and beautiful, and the sun shines and the world is pleasant, and there is life and love ahead of you. It is all that of which I think, Mademoiselle. Tell me, these friends of yours, Mrs Rice and Mr Lazarus—they have been down here, how long?’
‘Freddie came down on Wednesday to this part of the world. She stopped with some people near Tavistock for a couple of nights. She came on here yesterday. Jim has been touring round about, I believe.’
‘And Commander Challenger?’
‘He’s at Devonport. He comes over in his car whenever he can—week-ends mostly.’
Poirot nodded. We were walking back to the house. There was a silence, and then he said suddenly:
/>
‘Have you a friend whom you can trust, Mademoiselle?’
‘There’s Freddie.’
‘Other than Mrs Rice.’
‘Well, I don’t know. I suppose I have. Why?’
‘Because I want you to have a friend to stay with you—immediately.’
‘Oh!’
Nick seemed rather taken aback. She was silent a moment or two, thinking. Then she said doubtfully:
‘There’s Maggie. I could get hold of her, I expect.’
‘Who is Maggie?’
‘One of my Yorkshire cousins. There’s a large family of them. He’s a clergyman, you know. Maggie’s about my age, and I usually have her to stay sometime or other in the summer. She’s no fun, though—one of those painfully pure girls, with the kind of hair that has just become fashionable by accident. I was hoping to get out of having her this year.’
‘Not at all. Your cousin, Mademoiselle, will do admirably. Just the type of person I had in mind.’
‘All right,’ said Nick, with a sigh. ‘I’ll wire her. I certainly don’t know who else I could get hold of just now. Everyone’s fixed up. But if it isn’t the Choirboys’ Outing or the Mothers’ Beanfeast she’ll come all right. Though what you expect her to do…’
‘Could you arrange for her to sleep in your room?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘She would not think that an odd request?’
‘Oh, no, Maggie never thinks. She just does—earnestly, you know. Christian works—with faith and perseverance. All right, I’ll wire her to come on Monday.’
‘Why not tomorrow?’
‘With Sunday trains? She’ll think I’m dying if I suggest that. No, I’ll say Monday. Are you going to tell her about the awful fate hanging over me?’
‘Nous verrons. You still make a jest of it? You have courage, I am glad to see.’
‘It makes a diversion anyway,’ said Nick.
Something in her tone struck me and I glanced at her curiously. I had a feeling that there was something she had left untold. We had re-entered the drawing-room. Poirot was fingering the newspaper on the sofa.
