'Why should they be afraid?'
'Because someone was killed here long ago. Before it wasn't a garden, I mean. It was a quarry once anod then there was a gravel pile or a sand pile and that's where they found her. In that. Do you think the old saying is true-About you're born to be hanged or born to be drowned?'
'Nobody is born to be hanged nowadays. You do not hang people any longer in this country.'
'But they hang them in some other countries. They hang them in the streets.
I've read it in the papers.'
'Ah. Do you think that is a good thing or a bad thing?'
Miranda's response was not strictly in answer to the question, but Poirot felt that it was perhaps meant to be.
'Joyce was drowned,' she said. 'Mummy didn't want to tell me, but that was rather silly, I think, don't you? I mean, I'm twelve years old.'
'Was Joyce a friend of yours?'
'Yes. She was a great friend in a way. She told me very interesting things sometimes.
All about elephants and rajahs.
She'd been to India once. I wish I'd been to India. Joyce and I used to tell each other all our secrets. I haven't so much to tell as Mummy. Mummy's been to Greece, you know. That's where she met Aunt Ariadne, but she didn't take me.'
'Who told you about Joyce?'
'Mrs. Perring. She's our cook. She was talking to Mrs. Minden who comes and cleans. Someone held her head down in a bucket of water.'
'Have you any idea who that someone was?'
'I shouldn't think so. They didn't seem to know, but then they're both rather stupid really.'
'Do you know, Miranda?'
'I wasn't there. I had a sore throat and a temperature so Mummy wouldn't take me to the party. But I think I could know.
Because she was drowned. That's why I asked if you thought people were born to be drowned. We go through the hedge here. Be careful of your clothes.'
Poirot followed her lead. The entrance through the hedge from the Quarry Garden was more suited to the build of his childish guide with her elfin slimness it was practically a highway to her. She was solicitous for Poirot, however, warning him of adjacent thorn bushes and holding back the more prickly components of the hedge. They emerged at a spot in the garden adjacent to a compost heap and turned a corner by a derelict cucumber frame to where two dustbins stood. From there on a small neat garden mostly planted with roses gave easy access to the small bungalow house. Miranda led the way through an open french window, announcing with the modest pride of a collector who has just secured a sample of a rare beetle:
'I've got him all right.'
'Miranda, you didn't bring him through the hedge, did you? You ought to have gone round by the path at the side gate.'
'This is a better way,' said Miranda. 'Quicker and shorter.'
'And much more painful, I suspect.'
'I forget,' said Mrs. Oliver 'I did introduce you, didn't I, to my friend Mrs. Butler?'
'Of course. In the post office.'
The introduction in question had been a matter of a few moments while there had been a queue in front of the counter.
Poirot was better able now to study Mrs. Oliver's friend at close quarters. Before it had been a matter of a slim woman in a disguising head-scarf and a mackintosh.
Judith Butler was a woman of about thirty-five, and whilst her daughter resembled a dryad or a wood-nymph, Judith had more the attributes of a water spirit. She could have been a Rhine maiden. Her long blonde hair hung limply on her shoulders, she was delicately made with a rather long face and faintly hollow cheeks, whilst above them were big sea green eyes fringed with long eyelashes.
'I'm very glad to thank you properly, Monsieur Poirot,' said Mrs. Butler. 'It was very good of you to come down here when Ariadne asked you.'
'When my friend, Mrs. Oliver, asks me to do anything I always have to do it,' said Poirot.
'What nonsense,' said Mrs. Oliver.
'She was sure, quite sure, that you would be able to find out all about this beastly thing. Miranda, dear, will you go into the kitchen?
You'll find the scones on the wire tray above the oven.'
Miranda disappeared. She gave, as she went, a knowledgeable smile directed at her mother that said as plainly as a smile could say,
'She's getting me out of the way for a short time.'
'I tried not to let her know,' said Miranda's mother, 'about this this horrible thing that happened. But I suppose that was a forlorn chance from the start.'
'Yes indeed,' said Poirot. 'There's nothing that goes round any residential centre with the same rapidity as news of a disaster, and particularly an unpleasant disaster. And anyway,' he added, 'one cannot go long through life without knowing what goes on around one. And children seem particularly apt at that sort of thing.'
'I don't know if it was Burns or Sir Walter Scott who said 'There's a chield among you taking notes',' said Mrs. Oliver, 'but he certainly knew what he was talking about.'
'Joyce Reynolds certainly seems to have noticed such a thing as a murder,' said Mrs. Butler. 'One can hardly believe it.'
'Believe that Joyce noticed it?'
'I meant believe that if she saw such a thing she never spoke about it earlier.
That seems very unlike Joyce.'
'The first thing that everybody seems to tell me here,' said Poirot, in a mild voice, 'is that this girl, Joyce Reynolds, was a liar.'
'I suppose it's possible,' said Judith Butler, 'that a child might make up a thing and then it might turn out to be true?'
'That is certainly the focal point from which we start,' said Poirot. 'Joyce Reynolds was unquestionably murdered.'
'And you have started. Probably you know already all about it,' said Mrs. Oliver.
'Madame, do not ask impossibilities of me. You are always in such a hurry.'
'Why not?' said Mrs. Oliver. 'Nobody would ever get anything done nowadays if they weren't in a hurry.'
Miranda returned at this moment with a plateful of scones.
'Shall I put them down here?' she asked. 'I expect you've finished talking by now, haven't you? Or is there anything else you would like me to get from the kitchen?'
There was a gentle malice in her voice.
Mrs. Butler lowered the Georgian silver teapot to the fender, switched on an electric kettle which had been turned off just before it came to the boil, duly filled the teapot and served the tea. Miranda handed hot scones and cucumber sandwiches with a serious elegance of manner.
'Ariadne and I met in Greece,' said Judith.
'I fell into the sea,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'when we were coming back from one of the islands. It had got rather rough and the sailors always say 'jump' and, of course, they say jump just when the
