manner.
'M. Poirot! Well, really, that is very nice of you, and it's very like you somehow.
All my flowers are always so untidy.' She looked towards a vase of rather temperamental looking chrysanthemums, then back to the prim circle of rosebuds. 'And how nice of you to come and see me.'
'I come, Madame, to offer you my felicitations on your recovery.'
'Yes,' said Mrs. Oliver, 'I suppose I am all right again.' She shook her head to and fro rather gingerly. 'I get headaches, though,' she said. 'Quite bad headaches.'
'You remember, Madame, that I warned you not to do anything dangerous.'
'Not to stick my neck out, in fact. That I suppose is just what I did do.' She added, 'I felt something evil was about. I was frightened, too, and I told myself I was a fool to be frightened, because what was I frightened of? I mean, it was London.
Right in the middle of London. People all about. I mean - how could I be frightened.
It wasn't like a lonely wood or anything.' Poirot looked at her thoughtfully. He wondered, had Mrs. Oliver really felt this nervous fear, had she really suspected the presence of evil, the sinister feeling that something or someone wished her ill, or had she read it into the whole thing afterwards?
He knew only too well how easily that could be done. Countless clients had spoken in much the same words that Mrs. Oliver had just used. 'I knew something was wrong.
I could feel evil. I knew something was going to happen' and actually they had not felt anything. Was Mrs. Oliver of the same?
He looked at her consideringly. Mrs. Oliver in her own opinion was famous for her intuition. One intuition succeeded another with remarkable rapidity and Mrs. Oliver always claimed the right to justify the particular intuition which turned out to be right!
And yet one shared very often with animals the uneasiness of a dog or a cat before a thunderstorm, the knowledge that there is something wrong, although one does not know what it is that is wrong.
'When did it come upon you, this fear?'
'When I left the main road,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'Up till then it was all ordinary and quite exciting and - yes, I was enjoying myself, though vexed at finding how difficult it was to trail anybody.' She paused, considering. 'Just like a game. Then suddenly it didn't seem so much like a game, because they were queer little streets and rather sort of broken-down places, and sheds and open spaces being cleared for building - oh, I don't know, I can't explain it. But was all different. Like a dream really. You know how dreams are. They start with one thing, a party or something, and then suddenly you find you're in a jungle or somewhere quite different-and it's all sinister.'
'A jungle?' said Poirot. 'Yes, it is interesting you should put it like that.
So it felt to you as though you were in a jungle and you were afraid of a peacock?'
'I don't know that I was especially afraid of him. After all, a peacock isn't a dangerous sort of animal. It's-well I mean I thought of him as a peacock because I thought of him as a decorative creature. A peacock is very decorative, isn't it? And this awful boy is decorative too.'
'You didn't have any idea anyone was following you before you were hit?'
'No. No, I'd no idea - but I think he directed me wrong all the same.' Poirot nodded thoughtfully.
'But of course it must have been the Peacock who hit me,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'Who else? The dirty boy in the greasy clothes? He smelt nasty but he wasn't sinister. And it could hardly be that limp Frances something - she was draped over a packing case with long black hair streaming all over the place. She reminded me of some actress or other.'
'You say she was acting as a model?'
'Yes. Not for the Peacock. For the dirty boy. I can't remember if you've seen her or not.'
'I have not yet had that pleasure - if it is a pleasure.'
'Well, she's quite nice looking in an untidy, arty sort of way. Very much made up. Dead white and lots of mascara and the usual kind of limp hair hanging over her face. Works in an art gallery so I suppose it's quite natural that she should be among all the beatniks, acting as a model. How these girls can I suppose she might have fallen for the Peacock. But it's probably the dirty one. All the same I don't see her coshing me on the head somehow.'
'I had another possibility in mind, Madame. Someone may have noticed you following David-and in turn followed you.'
'Someone saw me trailing David, and then they trailed me?'
'Or someone may have been already in the mews or the yard, keeping perhaps an eye on the same people that you were observing.'
'That's an idea, of course,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'I wonder who they could be?' Poirot gave an exasperated sigh. 'Ah, it is there. It is difficult-too difficult.
Too many people, too many things. I cannot see anything clearly. I see only a girl who said that she may have committed a murder! That is all that I have to go on and you see even there there are difficulties.'
'What do you mean by difficulties?'
'Reflect,' said Poirot.
Reflection had never been Mrs. Oliver's strong point.
'You always mix me up,' she complained.
'I am talking about a murder, but what murder?'
'The murder of the stepmother, I suppose.'
'But the stepmother is not murdered.
She is alive.'
'You really are the most maddening man,' said Mrs. Oliver.
Poirot sat up in his chair. He brought the tips of his fingers together and prepared - or so Mrs. Oliver suspected - to enjoy himself.
'You refuse to reflect,' he said. 'But to get anywhere we must reflect.'
'I don't want to reflect. What I want to know is what you've been doing about everything while I've been in hospital.
You must have done something. What have you done?' Poirot ignored this question.
'We must begin at the beginning.
One day you rang me up. I was in distress.
Yes, I admit it, I was in distress. Something extremely painful had been said to me. You, Madame, were kindness itself.
You cheered me, you encouraged me.
You gave me a delicious tasse de chocolat. And what is more you not only offered to help me, but you did help me. You helped me to find a girl who had come to me and said that she thought she might have committed a murder! Let us ask ourselves, Madame, what about this murder?
Who has been murdered? Where have they been murdered? Why have they been murdered?'
'Oh do stop,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'You're making my head ache again, and that's bad for me.' Poirot paid no attention to this plea.
'Have we got a murder at all? You say - the stepmother - but I reply that the stepmother is not dead - so as yet we have no murder. But there ought to have been a murder. So me, I enquire first of all, who is dead? Somebody comes to me and mentions a murder. A murder that has been committed somewhere and somehow.
But I cannot find that murder, and what you are about to say once again, that the attempted murder of Mary Restarick will do very well, does not satisfy Hercule Poirot.'
'I really can't think what more you want,' said Mrs. Oliver.
'I want a murder.' said Hercule Poirot.
'It sounds very bloodthirsty when you say it like that!'
'I look for a murder and I cannot find a murder. It is exasperating - so I ask you to reflect with me.'
'I've got a splendid idea,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'Suppose Andrew Restarick murdered his first wife before he went off in a hurry to South Africa. Had you thought of that possibility?'
'I certainly did not think of any such thing,' said Poirot indignantly.
'Well, I've thought of it,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'It's very interesting. He was in love with this other woman, and he wanted like Crippen to go off with her, and so he murdered the first one and nobody ever suspected.' Poirot drew a
