'So seriously does her mother regard the friendship that I gather she brought her daughter over from the States on purpose to get her away from this young man.'
'Oh!' Blunt's face registered comprehension. 'It's that fellow, is it?'
'Aha, you become more interested now.'
'He's a most undesirable young fellow in every way, I believe. Mixed up in a lot of subversive activities.'
'I understand from Miss Olivera that he made an appointment that morning in Queen Charlotte Street, solely in order to get a look at you.'
'To try and get me to approve of him?'.
'Well – no – I understand the idea was that he should be induced to approve of you.'
Alistair Blunt said indignantly:
'Well, of all the damned cheek!'
Poirot concealed a smile.
'It appears you are everything that he most disapproves of.'
'He's certainly the kind of young man I disapprove of! Spends his time tub-thumping and talking hot air, instead of doing a decent job of work!'
Poirot was silent for a minute, then he said:
'Will you forgive me if I ask you an impertinent and very personal question?'
'Fire ahead.'
'In the event of your death, what are your testamentary dispositions?'
Blunt stared. He said sharply:
'Why do you want to know that?'
'Because – it is just possible -' he shrugged his shoulders – ' that it might be relevant to this case.'
'Nonsense!'
'Perhaps. But perhaps not.'
Alistair Blunt said coldly:
'I think you are being unduly melodramatic, M. Poirot. Nobody has been trying to murder me – or anything like that!'
'A bomb on your breakfast table – a shot in the street -'
'Oh, those! Any man who deals in the world's finance in a big way is liable to that kind of attention from some crazy fanatic!'
'It might possibly be a case of someone who is not a fanatic and not crazy.'
Blunt stared.
'What are you driving at?'
'In plain language, I want to know who benefits by your death.'
Blunt grinned.
'Chiefly the St. Edward's Hospital, the Cancer Hospital, and the Royal Institute for the Blind.'
'Ah!'
'In addition, I have left a sum of money to my niece by marriage, Mrs. Julia Olivera, an equivalent sum, but in trust, to her daughter, Jane Olivera, and also a substantial provision for my only surviving relative, a second cousin, Helen Montressor, who was left very badly off and who occupies a small cottage on the estate here.'
He paused and then said:
'This, M. Poirot, is strictly in confidence.'
'Naturally, Monsieur, naturally.'
Alistair Blunt added sarcastically:
'I suppose you do not suggest, M. Poirot, that either Julia or Jane Olivera, or my cousin, Helen Montressor, are planning to murder me for my money?'
'I suggest nothing – nothing at all.'
Blunt's slight irritation subsided. He said:
'And you'll take on that other commission for me?'
'The finding of Miss Sainsbury Seale? Yes, I will.'
Alistair Blunt said heartily:
'Good man.'
VII
In leaving the room Poirot almost cannoned into a tall figure outside the door.
He said:
'I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle.'
Jane Olivera drew apart a little. She said:
'Do you know what I think of you, M. Poirot?'
'Eh bien – Mademoiselle -'
She did not give him time to finish. The question, indeed, had but a rhetorical value. All that it meant was that Jane Olivera was about to answer it herself.
'You're a spy, that's what you are! A miserable, low, snooping spy, nosing round and making trouble!'
'I assure you, Mademoiselle -'
'I know just what you're after! And I know now just what lies you tell! Why don't you admit it straight out? Well, I'll tell you this – you won't find out anything – anything at all! There's nothing to find out! No one's going to harm a hair of my precious uncle's head. He's safe enough. He'll always be safe. Safe and smug and prosperous – and full of platitudes! He's just a stodgy John Bull, that's what he is – without an ounce of imagination or vision.'
She paused, then, her agreeable, husky voice deepening, she said venomously:
'I loathe the sight of you – you bloody little bourgeois detective!'
She swept away from him in a whirl of expensive model drapery.
Hercule Poirot remained, his eyes very wide open, his eyebrows raised and his hand thoughtfully caressing his moustaches.
The epithet bourgeois was, he admitted, well applied to him. His outlook on life was essentially bourgeois, and always had been, but the employment of it as an epithet of contempt by the exquisitely turned out Jane Olivera, gave him, as he expressed it to himself, furiously to think.
He went, still thinking, into the drawing-room.
Mrs. Olivera was playing patience.
She looked up as Poirot entered, surveyed him with the cold look she might have bestowed upon a black beetle and murmured distantly:
'Red knave on black queen.'
Chilled, Poirot retreated. He reflected mournfully:
'Alas, it would seem that nobody loves me!'
He strolled out through the window into the garden.
It was an enchanting evening with a smell of night-scented stocks in the air. Poirot sniffed happily and strolled along a path that ran between two herbaceous borders.
He turned a corner and two dimly seen figures sprang apart.
It would seem that he had interrupted a pair of lovers,
Poirot hastily turned and retraced his steps.
Even out here, it would seem, his presence was de trop.
He passed Alistair Blunt's window and Alistair Blunt was dictating to Mr. Selby.
There seemed definitely only one place for Hercule Poirot.
He went up to his bedroom.
He pondered for some time on various fantastic aspects of the situation.
Had he or had he not made a mistake in believing the voice on the telephone to be that of Mrs. Olivera?
