– I can imagine anything! That's the trouble with me. I can imagine things now – this minute, I could even make them sound all right, but of course none of them would be true. I mean, she could have been murdered by someone who just likes murdering girls (but that's too easy) – and, anyway, too much of a coincidence that somebody should be at this fete who wanted to murder a girl. And how would he know that Marlene was in the boathouse? Or she might have known some secret about somebody's love affairs, or she may have seen someone bury a body at night, or she may have recognised somebody who was concealing his identity – or she may have known a secret about where some treasure was buried during the war. Or the man in the launch may have thrown somebody into the river and she saw it from the window of the boathouse – or she may even have got hold of some very important message in secret code and not known what it was herself.'
'Please!' The inspector held up his hand. His head was whirling.
Mrs Oliver stopped obediently. It was clear that she could have gone on in this vein for some time, although it seemed to the inspector that she had already envisaged every possibility, likely or otherwise. Out of the richness of the material presented to him, he seized upon one phrase.
'What did you mean, Mrs Oliver, by the 'man in the launch'? Are you just imagining a man in a launch?'
'Somebody told me he'd come in a launch,' said Mrs Oliver. 'I can't remember who. The one we were talking about at breakfast, I mean,' she added.
'Please.' The inspector's tone was now pleading. He had had no idea before what the writers of detective stories were like. He knew that Mrs Oliver had written forty-odd books. It seemed to him astonishing at the moment that she had not written a hundred and forty. He rapped out a peremptory inquiry. 'What is all this about a man at breakfast who came in a launch?'
'He didn't come in the launch at breakfast time,' said Mrs Oliver, 'it was a yacht. At least, I don't mean that exactly. It was a letter.'
'Well, what was it?' demanded Bland. 'A yacht or a letter?'
'It was a letter,' said Mrs Oliver, 'to Lady Stubbs. From a cousin in a yacht. And she was frightened,' she ended.
'Frightened? What of?'
'Of him, I suppose,' said Mrs Oliver. 'Anybody could see it. She was terrified of him and she didn't want him to come, and I think that's why she's hiding now.'
'Hiding?' said the inspector.
'Well, she isn't about anywhere,' said Mrs Oliver. 'Everyone's been looking for her. And I think she's hiding because she's afraid of him and doesn't want to meet him.'
'Who is this man?' demanded the inspector.
'You'd better ask M. Poirot,' said Mrs Oliver. 'Because he spoke to him and I haven't. His name's Estaban – no, it isn't, that was in my plot. De Sousa, that's what his name is, Etienne de Sousa.'
But another name had caught the inspector's attention.
'Who did you say?' he asked. 'Mr Poirot?'
'Yes. Hercule Poirot. He was with me when we found the body.'
'Hercule Poirot… I wonder now. Can it be the same man? A Belgian, a small man with a very big moustache.'
'An enormous moustache,' agreed Mrs Oliver. 'Yes. Do you know him?'
'It's a good many years since I met him. I was a young sergeant at the time.'
'You met him on a murder case?'
'Yes, I did. What's he doing down here?'
'He was to give away the prizes,' said Mrs Oliver.
There was a momentary hesitation before she gave this answer, but it went unperceived by the inspector.
'And he was with you when you discovered the body,' said Bland. 'H'm, I'd like to talk to him.'
'Shall I get him for you?' Mrs Oliver gathered up her purple draperies hopefully.
'There's nothing more that you can add, madam? Nothing more that you think could help us in any way?'
'I don't think so,' said Mrs Oliver. 'I don't know anything. As I say, I could imagine reasons -'
The inspector cut her short. He had no wish to hear any more of Mrs Oliver's imagined solutions. They were far too confusing.
'Thank you very much, madam,' he said briskly. 'If you'll ask M. Poirot to come and speak to me here I shall be very much obliged to you.'
Mrs Oliver left the room. P.O. Hoskins inquired with interest:
'Who's this Monsieur Poirot, sir?'
'You'd describe him probably as a scream,' said Inspector Bland. 'Kind of music hall parody of a Frenchman, but actually he's a Belgian. But in spite of his absurdities, he's got brains. He must be a fair age now.'
'What about this De Sousa?' asked the constable. 'Think there's anything in that, sir?'
Inspector Bland did not hear the question. He was struck by a fact which, though he had been told it several times, was only now beginning to register.
First it had been Sir George, irritated and alarmed. 'My wife seems to have disappeared. I can't think where she has got to.' Then Miss Brewis, contemptuous: 'Lady Stubbs was not to be found. She'd got bored with the show.' And now Mrs Oliver with her theory that Lady Stubbs was hiding.
'Eh? What?' he said absently.
Constable Hoskins cleared his throat.
'I was asking you, sir, if you thought there was anything in this business of De Sousa – whoever he is.'
Constable Hoskins was clearly delighted at having a specific foreigner rather than foreigners in the mass, introduced into the case. But Inspector Bland's mind was running on a different course.
'I want Lady Stubbs,' he said curtly. 'Get hold of her for me. If she isn't about, look for her.'
Hoskins looked slightly puzzled but he left the room obediently. In the doorway he paused and fell back a little to allow Hercule Poirot to enter. He looked back over his shoulder with some interest before closing the door behind him.
'I don't suppose,' said Bland, rising and holding out his hand, 'that you remember me, M. Poirot.'
'But assuredly,' said Poirot. 'It is – now give me a moment, just a little moment. It is the young sergeant – yes, Sergeant Bland whom I met fourteen – no, fifteen years ago.'
'Quite right. What a memory!'
' ot at all. Since you remember me, why should I not remember you?'
It would be difficult, Bland thought, to forget Hercule Poirot, and this not entirely for complimentary reasons.
'So here you are, M. Poirot,' he said. 'Assisting at a murder once again.'
'You are right,' said Poirot. 'I was called down here to assist.'
'Called down to assist?' Bland looked puzzled.
Poirot said quickly:
'I mean, I was asked down here to give away the prizes of this murder hunt.'
'So Mrs Oliver told me.'
'She told you nothing else?' Poirot said it with apparent carelessness. He was anxious to discover whether Mrs Oliver had given the Inspector any hint of the real motives which had led her to insist on Poirot's journey to Devon.
'Told me nothing else? She never stopped telling me things. Every possible and impossible motive for the girl's murder. She set my head spinning. Phew! What an imagination!'
'She earns her living by her imagination, mon ami,' said Poirot dryly.
'She mentioned a man called De Sousa – did she imagine that?'
'No, that is sober fact.'
'There was something about a letter at breakfast and a yacht and coming up the river in a launch- I couldn't make head or tail of it.'
Poirot embarked upon an explanation. He told of the scene at the breakfast table, the letter, Lady Stubbs's headache.
'Mrs Oliver said that Lady Stubbs was frightened. Did you think she as afraid, too?'
