paper. I will ask you if you agree with the four words I have written.'
Miss Ernlyn rose. She crossed the room to her desk, took a piece of writing paper and came across to Poirot with it.
'You interest me,' she said. 'Four words.'
Poirot had taken a pen from his pocket.
He wrote on the paper, folded it and handed it to her. She took it, straightened out the paper and held it in her hand, looking at it.
'Well?' said Poirot.
'As to two of the words on that paper, I agree, yes. The other two, that is more difficult. I have no evidence and, indeed, the idea had not entered my head.'
'But in the case of the first two words, you have definite evidence?'
'I consider so, yes.'
'Water,' said Poirot, thoughtfully.
'As soon as you heard that, you knew. As soon as I heard that I knew. You are sure, and I am sure. And now,' said Poirot, 'a boy has been drowned in a brook. You have heard that?'
'Yes. Someone rang me up on the telephone and told me. Joyce's brother. How was he concerned?'
'He wanted money,' said Poirot. 'He got it. And so, at a suitable opportunity, he was drowned in a brook.'
His voice did not change. It had, if anything, not a softened, but a harsher note.
'The person who told me,' he said, 'was riddled with compassion. Upset emotionally. But I am not like that. He was young, this second child who died, but his death was not an accident. It was, as so many things are in life, a result of his actions. He wanted money and he took a risk. He was clever enough, astute enough to know he was taking a risk, but he wanted the money. He was ten years old but cause and effect is much the same at that age as it would be at thirty or fifty or ninety. Do you know what I think of first in such a case?'
'I should say,' said Miss Ernlyn, 'that you are more concerned with justice than with compassion.'
'Compassion,' said Poirot, 'on my part would do nothing to help Leopold. He is beyond help. Justice, if we obtain justice, you and I, for I think you are of my way of thinking over this justice, one could say, will also not help Leopold. But it might help some other Leopold, it might help to keep some other child alive, if we can reach justice soon enough. It is not a safe thing, a killer who has killed more than once, to whom killing has appealed as a way of security. I am now on my way to London where I am meeting with certain people to discuss a way of approach. To convert them, perhaps, to my own certainty in this case.'
'You may find that difficult,' said Miss Ernlyn.
'No, I do not think so. The ways and means to it may be difficult but I think I can convert them to my knowledge of what has happened.
Because they have minds that understand the criminal mind. There is one thing more I would ask you. I want your opinion. Your opinion only this time, not evidence. Your opinion of the character of Nicholas Ransom and Desmond Holland. Would you advise me to trust them?'
'I should say that both of them were thoroughly trustworthy. That is my opinion. They are in many ways extremely foolish, but that is only in the ephemeral things of life. Fundamentally, they are sound. Sound as an apple without maggots in it.'
'One always comes back to apples,' said Hercule Poirot sadly. 'I must go now. My car is waiting. I have one more call still to pay.'
'HAVE you heard what's on at Quarry Wood?' said Mrs. Cartwright, putting a packet of Fluffy Flakelets and Wonder White into her shopping bag.
'Quarry Wood?' said Elspeth McKay, to whom she was talking.
'No, I haven't heard anything particular.' She selected a packet of cereal. The two women were in the recently opened supermarket making their morning purchases.
'They're saying the trees are dangerous there. Couple of forestry men arrived this morning. It's there on the side of the hill where there's a steep slope and a tree leaning sideways. Could be, I suppose, that a tree could come down there. One of them was struck by lightning last winter but that was farther over, I think. Anyway, they're digging round the roots of the trees a bit, and a bit farther down too. Pity.
They'll make an awful mess of the place.'
'Oh well,' said Elspeth McKay, 'I suppose they know what they're doing.
Somebody's called them in, I suppose.'
'They've got a couple of the police there, too, seeing that people don't come near. Making sure they keep away from things. They say something about finding out which the diseased trees are first.'
'I see,' said Elspeth McKay.
Possibly she did. Not that anyone had told her but then Elspeth never needed telling.
Ariadne Oliver smoothed out a telegram she had just taken as delivered to her at the door. She was so used to getting telegrams through the telephone, making frenzied hunts for a pencil to take them down, insisting firmly that she wanted a confirmatory copy sent to her, that she was quite startled to receive what she called to herself a 'real telegram' again.
She went into the kitchen where Judith Butler was making quince jelly.
'Judy,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'go and pack a few things. I'm going back to London and you're coming with me, and Miranda, too.'
'It's very nice of you, Ariadne, but I've got a lot of things on here.
Anyway, you needn't rush away to-day, need you?'
'Yes, I need to, I've been told to,' said Mrs. Oliver.
'Who's told you your housekeeper?'
'No,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'Somebody else. One of the few people I obey. Come on. Hurry up.'
'I don't want to leave home just now. I can't.'
'You've got to come,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'The car is ready. I brought it round to the front door. We can go at once.'
'I don't think I want to take Miranda. I could leave her here with someone, with the Reynolds or Rowena Drake.'
'Miranda's coming, too,' Mrs. Oliver interrupted definitely. 'Don't make difficulties, Judy. This is serious. I don't see how you can even consider leaving her with the Reynolds. Two of the Reynolds children have been killed, haven't they?'
'Yes, yes, that's true enough. You think there's something wrong with that house.
I mean there's someone there who-oh, what do I mean?'
