danger or anything like that. I - I just want to know for my own satisfaction where she is.'
'Is it possible, Mr. Restarick - I hope I am not unduly presuming, that that is not the only thing that is worrying you about your daughter?'
'Why should you think there was anything else?'
'Because the mere fact that a girl is absent for a few days without telling her parents, or the friends with whom she is living, where she is going, is not particularly unusual nowadays. It is that, taken in conjunction with something else, I think, which has caused you this alarm.'
'Well, perhaps you're right. It's -' he looked doubtfully at Poirot. 'It is very hard to speak of these things to strangers.'
'Not really,' said Poirot. 'It is infinitely easier to speak to strangers of such things than it would be to speak of them to friends or acquaintances. Surely you must agree to that?'
'Perhaps. Perhaps. I can see what you mean. Well, I will admit I am upset about my girl. You see she - she's not quite like other girls and there's been something already that has definitely worried me- worried us both.' Poirot said: 'Your daughter, perhaps, is at that difficult age of young girlhood, an emotional adolescence when, quite frankly, they are capable of performing actions for which they are hardly to be held responsible. Do not take it amiss if I venture to make a surmise. Your daughter perhaps resents having a stepmother?'
'That is unfortunately true. And yet she has no reason to do so, M. Poirot. It is not as though my first wife and I had recently parted. The parting took place many years ago.' He paused and then said, 'I might as well speak frankly to you. After all, there has been no concealment about the matter.
My first wife and I drifted apart. I need not mince matters. I had met someone else, someone with whom I was quite infatuated.
I left England and went to South Africa with the other woman. My wife did not approve of divorce and I did not ask her for one. I made suitable financial provision for my wife and for the child - she was only five years old at the time - ' He paused and then went on: 'Looking back, I can see that I had been dissatisfied with life for some time. I'd been yearning to travel. At that period of my life I hated being tied down to an office desk. My brother reproached me several times with not taking more interest in the family business, now that I had come in with him. He said that I was not pulling my weight. But I didn't want that sort of life.
I was restless. I wanted an adventurous life. I wanted to see the world and wild places…' He broke off abruptly.
'Anyway - you don't want to hear the story of my life. I went to South Africa and Louise went with me. It wasn't a success.
I'll admit that straight away. I was in love with her but we quarrelled incessantly. She hated life in South Africa. She wanted to get back to London and Paris - all the sophisticated places. We parted only about a year after we arrived there.' He sighed.
'Perhaps I ought to have gone back then, back to the tame life that I disliked the idea of so much. But I didn't. I don't know whether my wife would have had me back or not. Probably she would have considered it her duty to do so. She was a great woman for doing her duty.' Poirot noted the slight bitterness that ran through that sentence.
'But I ought to have thought more about Norma, I suppose. Well, there it was.
The child was safely with her mother.
Financial arrangements had been made. I wrote to her occasionally and sent her presents, but I never once thought of going back to England and seeing her. That was not entirely blameworthy on my part. I had adopted a different way of life and I thought it would be merely unsettling for the child to have a father who came and went, and perhaps disturbed her own peace of mind. Anyway, let's say I thought I was acting for the best.' Restarick's words came fast now. It was as though he was feeling a definite solace in being able to pour out his story to a sympathetic listener. It was a reaction that Poirot had often noticed before and he encouraged it.
'You never wished to come home on your own account?' Restarick shook his head very definitely.
'No. You see, I was living the kind of life I liked, the kind of life I was meant for. I went from South Africa to East Africa. I was doing very well financially, everything I touched seemed to prosper, projects with which I was associated, occasionally with other people, sometimes on my own, all went well. I used to go off into the bush and trek. That was the life I'd always wanted. I am by nature an out-of-door man.
Perhaps that's why when I was married to my first wife I felt trapped, held down. No, I enjoyed my freedom and I'd no wish to go back to the conventional type of life that I'd led here.'
'But you did come back in the end?' Restarick sighed. 'Yes. I did come back. Ah well, one grows old, I suppose.
Also, another man and I had made a very good strike. We'd secured a concession which might have very important consequences. It would need negotiation in London. There I could have depended on my brother to act, but my brother died.
I was still a partner in the firm. I could return if I chose and see to things myself.
It was the first time I had thought of doing so. Of returning, I mean, to City life.'
'Perhaps your wife - your second wife - '
'Yes, you may have something there. I had been married to Mary just a month or two when my brother died. Mary was born in South Africa but she had been to England several times and she liked the life there. She liked particularly the idea of having an English garden!
'And I? Well, for the first time perhaps I felt I would like life in England, too. And I thought of Norma as well. Her mother had died two years earlier. I talked to Mary about it all, and she was quite willing to help me make a home for my daughter.
The prospects all seemed good and so - ' he smiled, ' - and so I came home.' Poirot looked at the portrait that hung behind Restarick's head. It was in a better light here than it had been at the house in the country. It showed very plainly the man who was sitting at the desk, there were the distinctive features, the obstinacy of the chin, the quizzical eyebrows, the poise of the head, but the portrait had one thing that the man sitting in the chair beneath it lacked. Youth!
Another thought occurred to Poirot.
Why had Andrew Restarick moved the portrait from the country to his London office? The two portraits of him and his wife had been companion portraits done at the same time and by that particular fashionable artist of the day whose speciality was portrait painting. It would have been more natural, Poirot thought, to have left them together, as they had been meant to be originally. But Restarick had moved one portrait, his own, to his office. Was it a kind of vanity on his part-a wish to display himself as a City man, as someone important to the City? Yet he was a man who had spent his time in wild places, who professed to prefer wild places. Or did he perhaps do it in order to keep before his mind himself in his City personality. Did he feel the need of reinforcement.
'Or, of course,' thought Poirot, 'it could be simple vanity!'
'Even I myself,' said Poirot to himself, in an unusual fit of modesty, 'even I myself am capable of vanity on occasions.' The short silence, of which both men had seemed unaware, was broken. Restarick spoke apologetically.
'You must forgive me, M. Poirot. I seem to have been boring you with the story of my life.'
'There is nothing to excuse, Mr. Restarick.
You have been talking really only of your life as it may have affected that of your daughter. You are much disquieted about your daughter. But I do not think that you have yet told me the real reason.
You want her found, you say?'
'Yes, I want her found.'
'You want her found, yes, but do you want her found by me? Ah, do not hesitate. La politesse - it is very necessary in life, but it is not necessary here. Listen. I tell you, if you want your daughter found I advise you, I - Hercule Poirot - to go to the police for they have the facilities. And from my own knowledge they can be discreet.'
'I won't go to the police unless - well, unless I get very desperate.'
'You would rather go to a private agent?'
'Yes. But you see, I don't know anything about private agents. I don't know who - who can be trusted. I don't know who - '
'And what do you know about me?'
