'She was infatuated. Her husband had been for many years a crippled invalid.
She was middle-aged but she was a passionate woman, and into her orbit came a young man of unusual beauty. Women fell for him easily-but he wanted-not the beauty of women-but the exercise of his own creative urge to make beauty. For that he wanted money-a lot of money. As for love-he loved only himself. He was Narcissus. There is an old French song I heard many years ago-' He hummed softly.
'Regarde, Narcisse Regarde, dans l'eau?
Regarde, Narcisse, que to est beau
Il ny au monde
Que tu est Beaut?
Et la Jeunesse,
Helas! Et la Jeunesse?
Regarde, Narcisse?
Regarde dans 1'eau?'
'I can't believe-I simply can't believe that anyone would do murder just to make a garden on a Greek island,' said Mrs. Oliver unbelievingly.
'Can't you? Can't you visualise how he held it in his mind? Bare rock, perhaps, but so shaped as to hold possibilities. Earth, cargoes of fertile earth to clothe the bare bones of the rocks-and then plants, seeds, shrubs, trees. Perhaps he read in the paper of a shipping millionaire who had created an island garden for the woman he loved. And so it came to him -he would make a garden, not for a woman, but-for himself.'
'It still seems to me quite mad.'
'Yes. That happens. I doubt if he even thought of his motive as sordid. He thought of it only as necessary for the creation of more beauty. He'd gone mad on creation. The beauty of the Quarry Wood, the beauty of other gardens he'd laid out and made-and now he envisaged even more-a whole island of beauty. And there was Rowena Drake, infatuated with him. What did she mean to him but the source of money with which he could create beauty. Yes-he had become mad, perhaps. Whom tine gods destroy, they first drive mad.'
'He really wanted his island so much? Even with Rowena Drake tied round his neck as well? Bossing him the whole time?'
'Accidents can happen. I think one might possibly have happened to Mrs. Drake in due course.'
'One more murder?'
'Yes. It started simply. Olga had to be removed because she knew about the codicil-and she was also to be the scapegoat, branded as a forger. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe had hidden the original document, so I think that young Ferrier was given money to produce a similar forged document. So obviously forged that it would arouse suspicion at once. That sealed his death warrant. Lesley Ferrier, I soon decided, had had no arrangement or love affair with Olga. That was a suggestion made to me by Michael Garfield, but I think it was Michael who paid money to Lesley. It was Michael Garfield who was laying seige to the au pair girl's affections, warning her to keep quiet about this and not tell her employer, speaking of possible marriage in the future but at the same time marking her down coldbloodedly as the victim whom he and Rowena Drake would need if the money was to come to them.
It was not necessary for Olga Seminoff to be accused of forgery, or prosecuted. She needed only to be suspected of it. The forgery appeared to benefit her. It could have been done by her very easily, there was evidence to the effect that she did copy her employer's handwriting and if she was suddenly to disappear, it would be assumed that she had been not only a forger, but quite possibly might have assisted her employer to die suddenly. So on a suitable occasion Olga Seminoff died.
Lesley Ferrier was killed in what is purported to have been a gang knifing or a knifing by a jealous woman. But the knife that was found in the well corresponds very closely with the knife wounds that he suffered. I knew that Olga's body must be hidden somewhere in this neighbourhood, but I had no idea where until I heard Miranda one day inquiring about a wishing well, urging Michael Garfield to take her there. And he was refusing.
Shortly afterwards when I was talking to Mrs. Goodbody, I said I wondered where that girl had disappeared too, and she said 'Ding dong dell, pussy's in the well' and then I was quite sure the girl's body was in the wishing well. I discovered it was in the wood, in the Quarry Wood, on an incline not far from Michael Garfield's cottage and I thought that Miranda could have seen either the actual murder or the disposal of the body later. Mrs. Drake and Michael feared that someone had been a witness-but they had no idea who it was - and as nothing happened they were lulled into security. They made their plans -they were in no hurry, but they set things in motion. She talked about buying land abroad-gave people the idea she wanted to get away from Woodleigh Common. Too many sad associations, referring always to her grief over her husband's death. Everything was nicely in train and then came the shock of Hallowe'en and Joyce's sudden assertion of having witnessed a murder. So now Rowena knew, or thought she knew, who it had been in the wood that day. So she acted quickly. But there was more to come. Young Leopold asked for money-there were things he wanted to buy, he said. What he guessed or knew is uncertain, but he was Joyce's brother, and so they probably thought he knew far more than he really did. And so-he, too, died.'
'You suspected her because of the water clue,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'How did you come to suspect Michael Garfield?'
'He fitted,' said Poirot simply. 'And then-the last time I spoke to Michael Garfield, I was sure. He said to me, laughing- 'Get thee beyond me, Satan. Go and join your police friends.' And I knew then, quite certainly. It was the other way round. I said to myself: 'I am leaving you behind me, Satan,' A Satan young and beautiful as Lucifer can appear to mortals?'
There was another woman in the room until now she had not spoken, but now she stirred in her chair.
'Lucifer,' she said. 'Yes, I see now. He was always that.'
'He was very beautiful,' said Poirot, 'and he loved beauty. The beauty that he made with his brain and his imagination and his hands. To it he would sacrifice everything. In his own way, I think, he loved the child Miranda but he was ready to sacrifice her to save himself. He planned her death very carefully he made of it a ritual and, as one might put it, indoctrinated her with the idea. She was to let him know if she were leaving Woodleigh Common he instructed her to meet him at the Inn where you and Mrs. Oliver lunched. She was to have been found on Kilterbury Ring there by the sign of the double axe, with a golden goblet by her side a ritual sacrifice.'
'Mad,' said Judith Butler. 'He must have been mad.'
'Madame, your daughter is safe but there is something I would like to know very much.'
'I think you deserve to know anything I can tell you. Monsieur Poirot.'
'She is your daughter-was she also Michael Garfield's daughter?'
Judith was silent for a moment, and then she said: 'Yes.'
'But she doesn't know that?'
'No. She has no idea. Meeting him here was a pure coincidence. I knew him when I was a young girl. I fell wildly in love with him and then-and then I got afraid.'
'Afraid?'
'Yes. I don't know why. Not of anything he would do or that sort of thing, just afraid of his nature. His gentleness, but behind it, a coldness and a ruthlessness.
I was even afraid of his passion for beauty and for creation in his work. I didn't tell him I was going to have a child.
I left him-I went away and the baby was born. I invented the story of a pilot husband who had had a crash. I moved about rather restlessly.
I came to Woodleigh Common more or less by chance. I had got contacts in Medchester where I could find secretarial work.
'And then one day Michael Garfield came here to work in the Quarry Wood. I don't think I minded. Nor did he. All that was over long ago, but later, although I didn't realise how often Miranda went
