She was smoking a cigarette and staring in front of her. She seemed to be lost in thought. No, Poirot thought, hardly that.
There did not seem to be any thought there. She was lost in a kind of oblivion.
She was somewhere else.
He crossed the room quietly and sat down in the chair opposite her. She looked up then, and he was at least gratified to see that he was recognised.
'So we meet again, Mademoiselle,' he said pleasantly. 'I see you recognise me.'
'Yes. Yes, I do.'
'It is always gratifying to be recognised by a young lady one has only met once and for a very short time.' She continued to look at him without speaking.
'And how did you know me, may I ask?
What made you recognise me?'
'Your moustache,' said Norma immediately.
'It couldn't be anyone else.' He was gratified by that observation and stroked it with the pride and vanity that he was apt to display on these occasions.
'Ah yes, very true. Yes, there are not many moustaches such as mine. It is a fine one, hein?'
'Yes - well, yes - I suppose it is.'
'Ah, you are perhaps not a connoisseur of moustaches, but I can tell you. Miss Restarick-Miss Norma Restarick, is it not? - that it is a very fine moustache.' He had dwelt deliberately upon her name. She had at first looked so oblivious to everything around her, so far away, that he wondered if she would notice. She did.
It startled her.
'How did you know my name?' she said.
'True, you did not give your name to my servant when you came to see me that morning.'
'How did you know it? How did you get to know it? Who told you?' He saw the alarm, the fear.
'A friend told me,' he said. 'One's friends can be very useful.'
'Who was it?'
'Mademoiselle, you like keeping your little secrets from me. I, too, have a preference for keeping my little secrets from you.'
'I don't see how you could know who I was.'
'I am Hercule Poirot,' said Poirot, with his usual magnificence. Then he left the initiative to her, merely sitting there smiling gently at her.
'I -' she began, then stopped. '- Would - ' Again she stopped.
'We did not get very far that morning, I know,' said Hercule Poirot. 'Only so far as your telling me that you had committed a murder.'
'Oh!'
'Yes, Mademoiselle, that.'
'But - I didn't mean it of course. I didn't mean anything like that. I mean, it was just a joke.'
'Vraiment? You came to see me rather early in the morning, at breakfast time. You said it was urgent. The urgency was because you might have committed a murder. That is your idea of a joke, eh?' A waitress who had been hovering, looking at Poirot with a fixed attention, suddenly came up to him and proffered him what appeared to be a paper boat such as it made for children to sail in a bath.
'This for you?' she said. 'Mr. Porritt?
A lady left it.'
'Ah yes,' said Poirot. 'And how did you know who I was?'
'The lady said I'd know by your moustache. Said I wouldn't have seen a moustache like that before. And it's true enough,' she added, gazing at it.
'Well, thank you very much.' Poirot took the boat from her, untwisted it and smoothed it out; he read some hastily pencilled words: 'He's just going. She's staying behind, so I'm going to leave her for you, and follow him.' It was signed Ariadne.
'Ah yes,' said Hercule Poirot, folding it and slipping it into his pocket. 'What were we talking about? Your sense of humour, I think. Miss Restarick.'
'Do you know just my name or - or do you know everything about me?'
'I know a few things about you. You are Miss Norma Restarick, your address in London is 67 Borodene Mansions. Your home address is Crosshedges, Long Basing.
You live there with a father, a stepmother, a great-uncle and - ah yes, an au pair girl.
You see, I am quite well informed.'
'You've been having me followed.'
'No, no,' said Poirot. 'Not at all. As to that, I give you my word of honour.'
'But you are not police, are you? You didn't say you were.'
'I am not police, no.' Her suspicion and defiance broke down.
'I don't know what to do,' she said.
'I am not urging you to employ me,' said Poirot. 'For that you have said already that I am too old. Possibly you are right.
But since I know who you are and something about you, there is no reason we should not discuss together in a friendly fashion the troubles that afflict you. The old, you must remember, though considered incapable of action, have nevertheless a good fund of experience on which to draw.' Norma continued to look at him doubtfully, that wide-eyed stare that had disquieted Poirot before. But she was in a sense trapped, and she had at this particular moment, or so Poirot judged, a wish to talk about things. For some reason, Poirot had always been a person it was easy to talk to.
'They think I'm crazy,' she said bluntly. 'And - and I rather think I'm crazy, too. Mad.'
'That is most interesting,' said Hercule Poirot, cheerfully. 'There are many different names for these things. Very grand names. Names rolled out happily by psychiatrists, psychologists and others. But when you say crazy, that describes very well what the general appearance may be to ordinary, everyday people. Eh bien, then, you are crazy, or you appear crazy or you think you are crazy, and possibly you may be crazy. But all the same that is not to say the condition is serious. It is a thing that people suffer from a good deal, and it is usually easily cured with the proper treatment.
It comes about because people have had too much mental strain, too much worry, have studied too much for examinations, have dwelled too much perhaps on their emotions, have too much religion or have a lamentable lack of religion, or have good reasons for hating their fathers or their mothers! Or, of course, it can be as simple as having an unfortunate love affair.'
'I've got a stepmother. I hate her and I rather think I hate my father too. That seems rather a lot, doesn't it?'
'It is more usual to hate one or the other,' said Poirot. 'You were, I suppose, very fond of your own mother. Is she divorced or dead?'
'Dead. She died two or three years ago.'
'And you cared for her very much?'
'Yes. I suppose I did. I mean of course I did. She was an invalid, you know and she had to go to nursing homes a good deal.'
'And your father?'
'Father had gone abroad a long time before that. He went to South America when I was about five or six. I think he wanted Mother to divorce him but she wouldn't. He went to South America and was mixed up with mines or something like that. Anyway, he used to write to me at Christmas, and send me a Christmas present or arrange for one to come to me.
That was about all. So he didn't really seem very real to me. He came home about a year ago because he had to wind up my uncle's affairs and all that sort of financial thing. And when he came home he - he brought this new wife with him.'
'And you resented the fact?'
'Yes, I did.'
'But your mother was dead by then.
