drag her along, somehow.
We'll need all the help we can get.' Claudia also went out of the sittingroom.
Stillingfleet came back, propelling Norma, and uttering rough encouragement.
'There's a good gill… Nobody's going to bite you. Sit there.' She sat obediently. Her docility was still rather frightening.
The policewoman hovered by the door looking scandalised.
'All I'm asking you to do is to speak the truth. It isn't nearly as difficult as you think.' Claudia came in with Frances Cary.
Frances was yawning heavily. Her black hair hung like a curtain hiding half her mouth as she yawned and yawned again.
'You need a pick-me-up,' said Stillingfleet to her.
'I wish you'd all let me go to sleep,' murmured Frances indistinctly.
'Nobody's going to have a chance of sleep until I've done with them! Now, Norma, you answer my questions- That woman along the passage says you admitted to her that you killed David Baker.
Is that right?' Her docile voice said: 'Yes. I killed David.'
'Stabbed him?'
'Yes.'
'How do you know you did?' She looked faintly puzzled. 'I don't know what you mean. He was there on the floor - dead.'
'Where was the knife?'
'I picked it up.'
'It had blood on it?'
'Yes. And on his shirt.'
'What did it feel like - the blood on the knife? The blood that you got on your hand and had to wash off- Wet? Or more like strawberry jam.'
'It was like strawberry jam - sticky.' She shivered. 'I had to go and wash it off my hands.'
'Very sensible. Well, that ties up everything very nicely. Victim, murder-you - all complete with the weapon. Do you remember actually doing it?'
'No… I don't remember that… But I must have done it, mustn't I?'
'Don't ask me! I wasn't there. It's you are the one who's saying it. But there was another killing before that, wasn't there?
An earlier killing.'
'You mean - Louise?'
'Yes. I mean Louise… When did you first think of killing her?'
'Years ago. Oh, years ago.'
'When you were a child.'
'Yes.'
'Had to wait a long time, didn't you?'
'I'd forgotten all about it.'
'Until you saw her again and recognised her?'
'Yes.'
'When you were a child, you hated her.
Why?'
'Because she took Father, my father, away.'
'And made your mother unhappy?'
'Mother hated Louise. She said Louise was a really wicked woman.'
'Talked to you about her a lot, I suppose?'
'Yes. I wish she hadn't… I didn't want to go on hearing about her.'
'Monotonous - I know. Hate isn't creative.
When you saw her again did you really want to kill her?' Norma seemed to consider. A faintly interested look came into her face.
'I didn't, really, you know… It seemed all so long ago. I couldn't imagine myself- that's why - '
'Why you weren't sure you had?'
'Yes. I had some quite wild idea that I hadn't killed her at all. That it had been all a dream. That perhaps she really had thrown herself out of the window.'
'Well - why not?'
'Because I knew I had done it - I said I had done it.'
'You said you had done it? Who did you say that to?' Norma shook her head. 'I mustn't.
It was someone who tried to be kind - to help me. She said she was going to pretend to have known nothing about it.' She went on, the words coming fast and excitedly: 'I was outside Louise's door, the door of 763 just coming out of it. I thought I'd been walking in my sleep. They - she - said there had been an accident. Down in the courtyard. She kept telling me it had been nothing to do with me. Nobody would ever know- And I couldn't remember what I had done - but there was stuff in my hand - '
'Stuff? What stuff? Do you mean bloody 'No, not blood-torn curtain stuff.
When I'd pushed her out.'
'You remember pushing her out, do you?'
'No, no. That's what was so awful. I didn't remember anything. That's why I hoped. That's why I went - ' She turned her head towards Poirot - 'to him - ' She turned back again to Stillingfleet.
'I never remembered the things I'd done, none of them. But I got more and more frightened. Because there used to be quite long times that were blank-quite blank - hours I couldn't account for, or remember where I'd been and what I'd been doing. But I found things - things I must have hidden away myself. Mary was being poisoned by me, they found out she was being poisoned at the hospital.
And I found the weed killer I'd hidden away in the drawer. In the flat here there was a flick-knife. And I had a revolver that I didn't even know I'd bought! I did kill people, but I didn't remember killing them, so I'm not really a murderer - I'm just - mad! I realised that at last. I'm mad, and I can't help it. People can't blame you if you do things when you are mad. If I could come here and even kill David, it shows I am mad, doesn't it?'
'You'd like to be mad, very much?'
'Yes, I suppose so.'
'If so, why did you confess to someone that you had killed a woman by pushing her out of the window? Who was it you told?' Norma turned her head, hesitated. Then raised her hand and pointed.
'I told Claudia.'
'That is absolutely untrue.' Claudia looked at her scornfully. 'You never said anything of the kind to me!'
'I did. I did.'
'When? Where?'
'I - don't know.'
'She told me that she had confessed it all to you,' said Frances indistinctly.
'Frankly, I thought she was hysterical and making the whole thing up.' Stillingfleet looked across at Poirot.
'She could be making it all up,' he said judicially. 'There is quite a case for that solution.
But if so, we would have to find the motive, a strong motive, for her desiring the death of those two people. Louise Carpenter and David Baker. A childish hate? Forgotten and done with years ago? Nonsense.
David - just to be 'free of him?' It is not for that that girls kill! We want better motives than that. A whacking great lot of money - say! - Greed!' He looked round him and his voice changed to a conventional tone.
'We want a little more help. There's still one person missing. Your wife is a long time joining us here, Mr. Restarick?'
'I can't think where Mary can be. I've rung up. Claudia has left messages in every place we can think of. By now she ought to have rung up at least from somewhere.'
'Perhaps we have the wrong idea,' said Hercule Poirot. 'Perhaps Madame is at least partly here already - in a manner of speaking.'
'What on earth do you mean?' shouted Restarick angrily.
