Her voice showed no interest or animation.
'I understand it came from this house?'
'Yes. My mother bought it in the bazaar at Baghdad. It's one of those things we took to the Vicarage, sale.'
'The Bring and Buy sale, that is right?'
'Yes. We have a lot of them here. It's difficult to get people to give money, but there's usually something you can rake up and send.'
'So it was here, in this house, until Christmas, and then you sent it to the Bring and Buy sale? Is that right?'
Deirdre frowned.
'Not the Christmas Bring and Buy. It was the one before. The Harvest Festival one.'
'The Harvest Festival – that would be – when? October? September?'
'The end of September.'
It was very quiet in the little room. Poirot looked at the girl and she looked back at him. Her face was mild, expressionless, uninterested. Behind the blank wall of her apathy, he tried to guess what was going on. Nothing, perhaps. Perhaps she was, as she had said, just tired…
He said, quietly, urgently:
'You are quite sure it was the Harvest Festival Sale? Not the Christmas one?'
'Quite sure.'
Her eyes were steady, unblinking.
Hercule Poirot waited. He continued to wait…
But what he was waiting for did not come.
He said formally:
'I must not keep you any longer, mademoiselle.'
She went with him to the front door.
Presently he was walking down the drive again.
Two divergent statements – statements that could not possibly be reconciled.
Who was right? Maureen Summerhayes or Deirdre Henderson?
If the sugar cutter had been used as he believed it had been used, the point was vital. The Harvest Festival had been the end of September. Between then and Christmas, on November 22nd, Mrs McGinty had been killed. Whose property had the sugar cutter been at that time?
He went to the post office. Mrs Sweetiman was always helpful and she did her best. She'd been to both sales, she said. She always went. You picked up many a nice bit there. She helped, too, to arrange things beforehand. Though most people brought things with them and didn't send them beforehand.
A brass hammer, rather like an axe, with coloured stones and a little bird? No, she couldn't rightly remember. There was such a lot of things, and so much confusion and some things snatched up at once. Well, perhaps she did remember something like that – priced at five shillings it had been, and with a copper coffee pot, but the pot had got a hole in the bottom – you couldn't use it, only for ornament. But she couldn't remember when it was – some time ago. Might have been Christmas, might have been before. She hadn't been noticing…
She accepted Poirot's parcel. Registered? Yes.
She copied down the address; he noticed just a sharp flicker of interest in her keen black eyes as she handed him the receipt.
Hercule Poirot walked slowly up the hill, wondering to himself.
Of the two, Maureen Summerhayes, scatterbrained, cheerful, inaccurate, was the more likely to be wrong. Harvest or Christmas, it would be all one to her.
Deirdre Henderson, slow, awkward, was far more likely to be accurate in her identification of times and dates.
Yet there remained that irking question.
Why, after his questions, hadn't she asked him why he wanted to know? Surely a natural, an almost inevitable, question?
But Deirdre Henderson hadn't asked it.
Chapter 15
I
'Someone rang you up,' called Maureen from the kitchen as Poirot entered the house.
'Rang me up? Who was that?'
He was slightly surprised.
'Don't know. But I jotted the number down on my ration book.'
'Thank you, Madame'
He went into the dining-room and over to the desk. Amongst the litter of papers he found the ration book lying near the telephone and the words – Kilchester 350.
Raising the receiver of the telephone, he dialled the number.
Immediately a woman's voice said:
'Breather Scuttle.'
Poirot made a quick guess.
'Can I speak to Miss Maude Williams?'
There was a moment's interval and then a contralto voice said:
'Miss Williams speaking.'
'This is Hercule Poirot. I think you rang me.'
'Yes – yes, I did. It's about the property you were asking me about the other day.'
'The property?' For a moment Poirot was puzzled. Then he realised that Maude's conversation was being overheard. Probably she had telephoned him before when she alone in the office.
'I understand you, I think. It is the affair of James Bentley and Mrs McGinty's murder?'
'That's right. Can we do anything in the matter for you?'
'You want to help. You are not private where you are?'
'That's right.'
'I understand. Listen carefully. You really want to help James Bentley?'
'Yes.'
'Would you resign your present post?'
There was no hesitation.
'Yes.'
'Would you be willing to take a domestic post? Possibly with not very congenial people.'
'Yes.'
'Could you get away at once? By tomorrow, for instance?'
'Oh yes, M. Poirot. I think that could be managed.'
'You understand what I want you to do. You would be a domestic help – to live in. You can cook?'
A faint amusement tinged the voice.
'Very well.'
'Bon Dieu, what a rarity! Now listen, I am coming into Kilchester at once. I will meet you in the same cafe where I met you before, at lunch time.'
'An admirable young woman,' he reflected. 'Quick-witted, knows her own mind – perhaps, even, she can cook…'
