'Does one ever have rendezvous in the middle of the morning?' she demanded, questioningly.
'Sometimes,' said Poirot, 'one has to have a rendezvous at the only time one can. Husbands,' he added sententiously, 'are sometimes jealous.'
'I doubt if mine is,' said Sally Legge.
She said the words lightly enough, but behind them Poirot heard an undertone of bitterness.
'He's so completely engrossed in his own affairs.'
'All women complain of that in husbands,' said Poirot. 'Especially in English husbands,' he added.
'You foreigners are more gallant.'
'We know,' said Poirot, 'that it is necessary to tell a woman at least once a week, and preferably three or four times, that we love her; and that it is also wise to bring her a few flowers, to pay her a few compliments, to tell her that she looks well in her new dress or her new hat.'
'Is that what you do?'
'I, Madame, am not a husband,' said Hercule Poirot. 'Alas!' he added.
'I'm sure there's no alas about it. I'm sure you're quite delighted to be a carefree bachelor.'
'No, no, Madame, it is terrible all that I have missed in life.'
'I think one's a fool to marry,' said Sally Legge.
'You regret the days when you painted in your studio in Chelsea?'
'You seem to know all about me, M. Poirot?'
'I am a gossip,' said Hercule Poirot. 'I like to hear all about people.' He went on, 'Do you really regret, Madame?'
'Oh, I don't know.' She sat down impatiently on the seat. Poirot sat beside her.
He witnessed once more the phenomena which he was becoming accustomed. This attractive red-haired girl was about to say things to him that she would have thought twice about saying to an Englishman.
'I hoped,' she said, 'that when we came down here for a holiday away from everything, that things would be the same again… But it hasn't worked out like that.'
'No?'
'No. Alec's just as moody and – oh, I don't know – wrapped up in himself. I don't know what's the matter with him. He's so nervy and on edge. People ring him up and leave queer messages for him and he won't tell me anything. That's what makes me mad. He won't tell me anything! I thought at first it was some other woman, but I don't think it is. Not really…'
But her voice held a certain doubt which Poirot was quick to notice.
'Did you enjoy your tea yesterday afternoon, Madame?' he asked.
'Enjoy my tea?' She frowned at him, thoughts seeming to come back from a long way away. Then she said hastily, 'Oh, yes. You've no idea how exhausting it was, sitting in that tent muffled up in all those veils. It was stifling.'
'The tea tent also must have been somewhat stifling?'
'Oh, yes, it was. However, there's nothing like a cuppa, is there?'
'You were searching for something just now, were you not, Madame? Would it, by any possibility, be this?' He held out in his hand the little gold charm.
'I – oh, yes. Oh, thank you, M. Poirot. Where did you find it?'
'It was here, on the floor, in that crack over there.'
'I must have dropped it some time.'
'Yesterday?'
'Oh, no, not yesterday. It was before that.'
'But surely, Madame, I remember seeing that particular charm on your wrist when you were telling me my fortune.'
Nobody could tell a deliberate lie better than Hercule Poirot. He spoke with complete assurance and before that assurance. Sally Legge's eyelids dropped.
'I don't really remember,' she said. 'I only noticed this morning that it was missing.'
'Then I am happy,' said Poirot gallantly, 'to be able to restore it to you.'
She was turning the little charm over nervously in her fingers. Now she rose.
'Well, thank you, M. Poirot, thank you very much,' she said. Her breath was coming rather unevenly and her eyes were nervous.
She hurried out of the Folly. Poirot leaned back in the seat and nodded his head slowly.
No, he said to himself, no, you did not go to the tea tent yesterday afternoon. It was not because you wanted your tea that you were so anxious to know if it was four o'clock. It was here you came yesterday afternoon. Here, to the Folly. Half-way to the boathouse. You came here to meet someone.
Once again he heard footsteps approaching. Rapid, impatient footsteps. 'And here perhaps,' said Poirot, smiling in anticipation, 'comes whoever it was that Mrs Legge came up here to meet.'
But then, as Alec Legge came round the corner of the Folly, Poirot ejaculated:
'Wrong again.'
'Eh? What's that?' Alec Legge looked startled.
'I said,' explained Poirot, 'that I was wrong again. I am not often wrong,' he explained, 'and it exasperates me. It was not you I expected to see.'
'Whom did you expect to see?' asked Alec Legge.
Poirot replied promptly.
'A young man – a boy almost – in one of these gaily-patterned shirts with turtles on it.'
He was pleased at the effect of his words. Alec Legge took a step forward. He said rather incoherently:
'How do you know? How did – what d'you, mean?'
'I am psychic,' said Hercule Poirot, and closed, his eyes.
Alec Legge took another couple of steps forward. Poirot was conscious that a very angry man was standing in front of him.
'What the devil did you mean?' he demanded.
'Your friend has, I think,' said Poirot, 'gone back to the Youth Hostel. If you want to see him you will have to go there to find him.'
'So that's it,' muttered Alec Legge.
He dropped down at the other end of the stone bench.
'So that's why you're down here? It wasn't a question of 'giving away the prizes.' I might have known better.' He turned towards Poirot. His face was haggard and unhappy. 'I know what it must seem like,' he said. 'I know what the whole thing looks like. But it isn't as you think it is. I'm being victimised. I tell you that once you get into these people's clutches, it isn't so easy to get out of them. And I want to get out of them. That's the point, I want to get out of them. You get desperate, you know. You feel like taking desperate measures. You feel you're caught like a rat in a trap and there's nothing you can do. Oh, well, what's the good of talking? You know what you want to know now, I suppose. You've got your evidence.'
He got up, stumbled a little as though he could hardly see his way, then rushed off energetically without a backward look.
Hercule Poirot remained behind with his eyes very wide open and his eyebrows rising.
'All this is very curious,' he murmured. 'Curious and interesting. I have the evidence I need, have I? Evidence of what? Murder?'
Chapter 14
I
Inspector Bland sat in Helmmouth Police Station. Superintendent Baldwin, a large comfortable-looking man,
