‘Reflect a minute. If you were to pass a fishmonger’s and saw twelve fish laid out on his slab, you would think they were all real fish, would you not? But one of them might be stuffed fish.’
Miss Williams replied with spirit:
‘Most unlikely and anyway-’
‘Ah, unlikely, yes, but not impossible-because a friend of mine once took down a stuffed fish (it was his trade, you comprehend) to compare it with the real thing! And if you saw a bowl of innias in a drawing-room in December you would say that they were false-but they might be real ones flown home from Baghdad.’
‘What is the meaning of all this nonsense?’ demanded Miss Williams.
‘It is to show you that it is the eyes of the mind with which one really sees…’
V
Poirot slowed up a little as he approached the big block of flats overlooking Regent’s Park.
Really, when he came to think of it, he did not want to ask Angela Warren any questions at all. The only question he did want to ask her could wait…
No, it was really only his insatiable passion for symmetry that was bringing him here. Five people-there should be five questions! It was neater so. It rounded off the thing better.
Ah well-he would think of something.
Angela Warren greeted him with something closely approaching eagerness. She said:
‘Have you found out anything? Have you got anywhere?’
Slowly Poirot nodded his head in his best China mandarin manner. He said:
‘At last I make progress.’
‘Philip Blake?’ It was halfway between statement and a question.
‘Mademoiselle, I do not wish to say anything at present. The moment has not yet come. What I will ask of you is to be so good as to come down to Handcross Manor. The others have consented.’
She said with a slight frown:
‘What do you propose to do? Reconstruct something that happened sixteen years ago?’
‘See it, perhaps, from a clearer angle. You will come?’
Angela Warren said slowly:
‘Oh, yes, I’ll come. It will be interesting to see all those people again. I shall see them now, perhaps, from a clearer angle (as you put it) than I did then.’
‘And you will bring with you the letter that you showed me?’
Angela Warren frowned.
‘That letter is my own. I showed it to you for a good and sufficient reason, but I have no intention of allowing it to be read by strange and unsympathetic persons.’
‘But you will allow yourself to be guided by me in this matter?’
‘I will do nothing of the kind. I will bring the letter with me, but I shall use my own judgement which I venture to think is quite as good as yours.’
Poirot spread out his hands in a gesture of resignation. He got up to go. He said:
‘You permit that I ask one little question?’
‘What is it?’
‘At the time of the tragedy, you had lately read, had you not, Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence?’
Angela stared at him. Then she said:
‘I believe-why, yes, that is quite true.’ She looked at him with frank curiosity. ‘How did you know?’
‘I want to show you, mademoiselle, that even in a small unimportant matter, I am something of a magician. There are things I know without having to be told.’
Chapter 3. Reconstruction
The afternoon sun shone into the laboratory at Handcross Manor. Some easy chairs and a settee had been brought into the room, but they served more to emphasize its forlorn aspect than to furnish it.
Slightly embarrassed, pulling at his moustache, Meredith Blake talked to Carla in a desultory way. He broke off once to say: ‘My dear, you are very like your mother-and yet unlike her, too.’
Carla asked: ‘How am I like her and how unlike?’
‘You have her colouring and her way of moving, but you are-how shall I put it-more positive than she ever was.’
Philip Blake, a scowl creasing over his forehead, looked out of the window and drummed impatiently on the pane. He said:
‘What’s the sense of all this? A perfectly fine Saturday afternoon-’
Hercule Poirot hastened to pour oil on troubled waters.
‘Ah, I apologize-it is, I know, unpardonable to disarrange the golf. Mais voyons, M. Blake, this is the daughter of your best friend. You will stretch a point for her, will you not?’
The butler announced: ‘Miss Warren.’
Meredith went to welcome her. He said: ‘It’s good of you to spare the time, Angela. You’re busy, I know.’
He led her over to the window.
Carla said: ‘Hallo, Aunt Angela. I read your article inThe Times this morning. It’s nice to have a distinguished relative.’ She indicated the tall, square-jawed young man with the steady grey eyes. ‘This is John Rattery. He and I-hope-to be married.’
Angela Warren said: ‘Oh!-I didn’t know…’
Meredith went to greet the next arrival.
‘Well, Miss Williams, it’s a good many years since we met.’
Thin, frail and indomitable, the elderly governess advanced up the room. Her eyes rested thoughtfully on Poirot for a minute, then they went to the tall, square-shouldered figure in the well-cut tweeds.
Angela Warren came forward to meet her and said with a smile: ‘I feel like a schoolgirl again.’
‘I’m very proud of you, my dear,’ said Miss Williams. ‘You’ve done me credit. This is Carla, I suppose? She won’t remember me. She was too young…’
Philip Blake said fretfully: ‘What is all this? Nobody told me-’
Hercule Poirot said: ‘I call it-me-an excursion into the past. Shall we not all sit down? Then we shall be ready when the last guest arrives. And when she is here we can proceed to our business-to lay the ghosts.’
Philip Blake exclaimed: ‘What tomfoolery is this? You’re not going to hold a seance, are you?’
‘No, no. We are only going to discuss some events that happened long ago-to discuss them and, perhaps, to see more clearly the course of them. As to the ghosts, they will not materialize, but who is to say they are not here, in this room, although we cannot see them. Who is to say that Amyas and Caroline Crale are not here- listening?’
Philip Blake said: ‘Absurd nonsense-’ and broke off as the door opened again and the butler announced Lady Dittisham.
Elsa Dittisham came in with that faint, bored insolence that was a characteristic of her. She gave Meredith a slight smile, stared coldly at Angela and Philip, and went over to a chair by the window a little apart from the others. She loosened the rich pale furs round her neck and let them fall back. She looked for a minute or two about the room, then at Carla, and the girl stared back, thoughtfully appraising the
