thing's at its furthest point which makes it come right for you, but you don't think that can possibly happen and so you dither and you lose your nerve and you jump when it looks close and, of course, that's the moment when it goes far away.' She paused for breath. 'Judith helped fish me out and it made a kind of bond between us, didn't it?'
'Yes, indeed,' said Mrs. Butler.
'Besides, I liked your Christian name,' she added. 'It seemed very appropriate, somehow.'
'Yes, I suppose it is a Greek name,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'It's my own, you know. I didn't just make it up for literary purposes. But nothing Ariadne-like has ever happened to me. I've never been deserted on a Greek island by my own true love or anything like that.'
Poirot raised a hand to his moustache in order to hide the slight smile that he could not help coming to his lips as he envisaged Mrs. Oliver in the role of a deserted Greek maiden.
'We can't all live up to our names,' said Mrs. Butler.
'No, indeed. I can't see you in the role of cutting off your lover's head. That is the way it happened, isn't it, Judith and Holofernes, I mean?'
'It was her patriotic duty,' said Mrs. Butler, 'for which, if I remember rightly, she was highly commended and rewarded.'
'I'm not really very well up in Judith and Holofernes. It's the Apochrypha, isn't it? Still, if one comes to think of it, people do give other people their children, I mean some very queer names, don't they? Who was the one who hammered some nails in someone's head? Jael or Sisera. I never remember which is the man or which is the woman there. Jael, I think.
I don't think I remember any child having been christened Jael.'
'She laid butter before him in a lordly dish,' said Miranda unexpectedly, pausing as she was about to remove the tea-tray.
'Don't look at me,' said Judith Butler to her friend, 'it wasn't I who introduced Miranda to the Apochrypha. That's her school training,'
'Rather unusual for schools nowadays, isn't it?' said Mrs. Oliver. 'They give them ethical ideas instead, don't they?'
'Not Miss Ernlyn,' said Miranda. 'She says that if we go to church nowadays we only get the modern version of the Bible read to us in the lessons and things, and that it has no literary merit whatsoever.
We should at least know the fine prose and blank verse sometimes of the Authorised Version. I enjoyed the story of Jael and Sisera very much,' she added. 'It's not a thing,' she said meditatively, 'that I should ever have thought of doing myself. Hammering nails, I mean into someone's head when they were asleep.'
'I hope not indeed,' said her mother.
'And how would you dispose of your enemies, Miranda?' asked Poirot.
'I should be very kind,' said Miranda in a gently contemplative tone. 'It would be more difficult, but I'd rather have it that way because I don't like hurting things. I'd use a sort of drug that gives people euthanasia. They would go to sleep and have beautiful dreams and they just wouldn't wake up.' She lifted some tea cups and the bread and butter plate.
'I'll wash up. Mummy,' she said, 'if you like to take Monsieur Poirot to look at the garden. There are still some Queen Elizabeth roses at the back of the border.'
She went out of the room carefully carrying the tea-tray.
'She's an astonishing child, Miranda,' said Mrs. Oliver.
'You have a very beautiful daughter, Madame,' said Poirot.
'Yes, I think she is beautiful now. One doesn't know what they will look like by the time they grow up. They acquire puppy fat and look like well-fattened pigs sometimes. But now-now she is like a wood-nymph.'
'One does not wonder that she is fond of the Quarry Garden which adjoins your house.'
'I wish she wasn't so fond of it sometimes.
One gets nervous about people wandering about in isolated places, even if they are quite near people or a village.
One's-oh, one's frightened all the time nowadays. That's why-why you've got to find out why this awful thing happened to Joyce, Monsieur Poirot. Because until we know who that was, we shan't feel safe for a minute about our children, I mean.
Take Monsieur Poirot out in the garden, will you, Ariadne? I'll join you in a minute or two.'
She took the remaining two cups and a plate and went into the kitchen.
Poirot and Mrs. Oliver went out through the french window. The small garden was like most autumn gardens. It retained a few candles of golden rod and michaelmas daisies in a border, and some Queen Elizabeth roses held their pink statuesque heads up high.
Mrs. Oliver walked rapidly down to where there was a stone bench, sat down, and motioned Poirot to sit down beside her.
'You said you thought Miranda was like a wood-nymph,' she said. 'What do you think of Judith?'
'I think Judith's name ought to be Undine,' said Poirot.
'A water-spirit, yes. Yes, she does look as though she'd just come out of the Rhine or the sea or a forest pool or something.
Her hair looks as though it had been dipped in water. Yet there's nothing untidy or scatty about her, is there?'
'She, too, is a very lovely woman,' said Poirot.
'What do you think about her?'
'I have not had time to think as yet. I just think that she is beautiful and attractive and that something is giving her very great concern.'
'Well, of course, wouldn't it?'
'What I would like, Madame, is for you to tell me what you know or think about her.'
'Well, I got to know her very well on the cruise. You know, one does make quite intimate friends. Just one or two people. The rest of them, I mean, they like each other and all that, but you don't really go to any trouble to see them again.
But one or two you do. Well, Judith was one of the ones I did want to see again.'
'You did not know her before the cruise?'
'No.'
'But you know something about her?'
'Well, just ordinary things. She's a widow,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'Her husband died a good many years ago he was an air pilot. He was killed in a car accident.
One of those pile-up things, I think it was, coming off the M what-is-it that runs near here on to the ordinary road one evening, or something of that kind. He left her rather badly off, I imagine. She was very broken up about it, I think. She doesn't like talking about him.'
'Is Miranda her only child?'
'Yes. Judith does some part-time secretarial work in the neighbourhood, but she hasn't got a fixed job.'
'Did she know the people who lived at the Quarry House?'
'You mean old Colonel and Mrs. Weston?'
'I mean the former owner, Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, wasn't it?'
'I think so. I think I've heard that name mentioned. But she died two or three
