Poirot's voice stopped her before she got to the door.
'You brought this back with you from India, perhaps?'
'Oh no,' said Maureen. 'I got it at the B. and B. at Christmas.'
'B. and B.?' Poirot was puzzled.
'Bring and Buy,' explained Maureen glibly. 'At the Vicarage. You bring things you don't want, and you buy something. Something not too frightful if you can find it. Of course there's practically never anything you really want. I got this and that coffee pot. I like the coffee pot's nose and I liked the little bird on the hammer.'
The coffee pot was a small one of beaten copper. It had a big curving spout that struck a familiar note to Poirot.
'I think they come from Baghdad,' said Maureen. 'At least I think that's what the Wetherbys said. Or it may have been Persia.'
'It was from the Wetherbys' house, then, that these came?'
'Yea. They've got a most frightful lot of junk. I must go. That pudding.'
She went out. The door banged. Poirot picked up the sugar cutter again and took it to the window.
On the cutting edge were faint, very faint, discolourations.
Poirot nodded his head.
He hesitated for a moment, then he carried the sugar hammer out of the room and up to his bedroom. There he packed it carefully in a box, did the whole thing up neatly in paper and string, and going downstairs again, left the house.
He did not think that anyone would notice the disappearance of the sugar cutter. It was not a tidy household.
III
At Laburnums, collaboration was pursuing its difficult course.
'But I really don't feel it's right making him a vegetarian, darling,' Robin was objecting. 'Too faddy. And definitely not glamorous.'
'I can't help it,' said Mrs Oliver obstinately. 'He's always been a vegetarian. He takes round a little machine for grating raw carrots and turnips.'
'But, Ariadne, precious, why?'
'How do I know?' said Mrs Oliver crossly. 'How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man? I must have been mad! Why a Finn when I know nothing about Finland? Why a vegetarian? Why all the idiotic mannerisms he's got? These things just happen. You try something – and people seem to like it – and then you go on – and before you know where you are, you've got someone like that maddening Sven Hjerson tied to you for life. And people even write and say how fond you must be of him. Fond of him? If I met that bony, gangling, vegetable-eating Finn in real life, I'd do a better murder than any I've ever invented.'
Robin Upward gazed at her with reverence.
'You know, Ariadne, that might be rather a marvelous idea. A real Sven Hjerson – and you murder him. You might make a Swan Song book of it – to be published after your death.'
'No fear! 'said Mrs Oliver. 'What about the money? Any money to be made out of murders I want now.'
'Yes. Yes. There I couldn't agree with you more.'
The harassed playwright strode up and down.
'This Ingrid creature is getting rather tiresome,' he said. 'And after the cellar scene which is really going to be marvelous, I don't quite see how we're going to prevent the next scene from being rather an anticlimax.'
Mrs Oliver was silent. Scenes, she felt, were Robin Upward's headache.
Robin shot a dissatisfied glance at her.
That morning, in one of her frequent changes of mood, Mrs Oliver had disliked her windswept coiffure. With a brush dipped in water she had plastered her grey locks close to her skull. With her high forehead, her massive glasses, and her stern air, she was reminding Robin more and more of a school teacher who had awed his early youth. He found it more and more difficult to address her as darling, and even flinched at 'Ariadne.'
He said fretfully:
'You know, I don't feel a bit in the mood today. All that gin yesterday, perhaps. Let's scrap work and go into the question of casting. If we can get Denis Callory, of course it will be too marvelous, but he's tied up in films at the moment. And Jean Bellews for Ingrid would be just right – and she wants to play it which is so nice. Eric – as I say, I've had a brainwave for Eric. We'll go over to the Little Rep tonight, shall we? And you'll tell me what you think of Cecil for the part.'
Mrs Oliver agreed hopefully to this project and Robin went off to telephone.
'There,' he said returning. 'That's all fixed.'
IV
The fine morning had not lived up to its promise. Clouds had gathered and the day was oppressive with a threat of rain. As Poirot walked through the dense shrubberies to the front door of Hunter's Close, he decided that he would not like to live in this hollow valley at the foot of the hill. The house itself was closed in by trees and its walls suffocated in ivy. It needed, he thought, the woodman's axe.
(The axe. The sugar cutter?)
He rang the bell and after getting no response, rang it again.
It was Deirdre Henderson who opened the door to him. She seemed surprised.
'Oh,' she said, 'it's you.'
'May I come in and speak to you?'
'I – well, yes, I suppose so.'
She led him into the small dark sitting-room where he had waited before. On the mantelpiece he recognised the big brother of the small coffee pot on Maureen's shelf. Its vast hooked nose seemed to dominate the small Western room with a hint of Eastern ferocity.
'I'm afraid,' said Deirdre in an apologetic tone, 'that we're rather upset today. Our help, the German girl – she's going. She's only been here a month. Actually it seems she just took this post to get over to this country because there was someone she wanted to marry. And now they've fixed it up, and she's going straight off tonight.'
Poirot clicked his tongue.
'Most inconsiderate.'
'It is, isn't it? My stepfather says it isn't legal. But even if it isn't legal, if she just goes off and gets married, I don't see what one can do about it. We shouldn't even have known she was going if I hadn't found her packing her clothes. She would just have walked out of the house without a word.'
'It is, alas, not an age of consideration.'
'No,' said Deirdre dully. 'I suppose it's not.'
She rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand.
'I'm tired,' she said. 'I'm very tired.'
'Yes,' said Poirot gently. 'I think you may be very tired.'
'What was it you wanted, M. Poirot?'
'I wanted to ask you about a sugar hammer.'
'A sugar hammer?'
Her face was blank, uncomprehending.
'An instrument of brass, with a bird on it, and inlaid with blue and red and green stone.' Poirot enunciated the description carefully.
'Oh yes, I know.'
