Jones was an accomplished swimmer.
Inspector Bland came ashore at Gitcham with the other two hundred and thirty passengers and consumed a lobster tea with Devonshire cream and scones. He said to himself as he did so, 'So it could be done, and no one would notice!'
III
While Inspector Bland was doing his experiment on the Helm, Hercule Poirot was experimenting with a tent on the lawn at Nasse House. It was, in actual fact, the same tent where Madame Zuleika had told her fortunes. When the rest of the marquees and stands had been dismantled Poirot had asked for this to remain behind.
He went into it now, closed the flaps and went to the back of it. Deftly he unlaced the flaps there, slipped out, relaced them, and plunged into the hedge of rhododendron that immediately backed the tent. Slipping between a couple of bushes, he soon reached a small rustic arbour. It was a kind of summer-house with a closed door. Poirot opened the door and went inside.
It was very dim inside because very little light came in through the rhododendrons which had grown up round it since it had been first placed there many years ago. There was a box there with croquet balls in it, and some old rusted hoops. There were one or two broken hockey sticks, a good many earwigs and spiders, and a round irregular mark on the dust on the floor. At this Poirot looked for some time. He knelt down, and taking a little yard measure from his pocket, he measured its dimensions carefully. Then he nodded his head in a satisfied fashion.
He slipped out quietly, shutting the door behind him. Then he pursued an oblique course through the rhododendron bushes. He worked his way up the hill in this way and came out a short time after on the path which led to the Folly and down from there to the boathouse.
He did not visit the Folly this time, but went straight down the zig-zagging way until he reached the boathouse. He had the key with him and he opened the door and went in.
Except for the removal of the body, and of the tea tray with its glass and plate, it was just as he remembered it. The police had noted and photographed all that it contained. He went over now to the table where the pile of comics lay. He turned them over and his expression was not unlike Inspector Eland's had been as he noted the words Marlene had doodled down there before she died. 'Jackie Blake goes with Susan Brown.' 'Peter pinches girls at the pictures.' 'Georgie Porgie kisses hikers in the wood.' 'Biddy Fox likes boys.' 'Albert goes with Doreen.'
He found the remarks pathetic in their young crudity. He remembered Marlene's plain, rather spotty face. He suspected that boys had not pinched Marlene at the pictures. Frustrated, Marlene had got a vicarious thrill by her spying and peering at her young contemporaries. She had spied on people, she had snooped, and she had seen things. Things that she was not meant to have seen – things, usually, of small importance, but on one occasion perhaps something of more importance? Something of whose importance she herself had had no idea.
It was all conjecture, and Poirot shook his head doubtfully. He replaced the pile of comics neatly on the table, his passion for tidiness always in the ascendent. As he did so, he was suddenly assailed with the feeling of something missing. Something… What was it? Something that ought to have been there… Something… He shook his head as the elusive impression faded.
He went slowly out of the boathouse, unhappy and displeased with himself. He, Hercule Poirot, had been summoned to prevent a murder – and he had not prevented it. It had happened. What was even more humiliating was that he had no real ideas even now, as to what had actually happened. It was ignominious. And tomorrow he must return to London defeated. His ego was seriously deflated – even his moustaches drooped.
Chapter 15
It was a fortnight later that Inspector Bland had a long and unsatisfying interview with the Chief Constable of the County.
Major Merrall had irritable tufted eyebrows and looked rather like an angry terrier. But his men all liked him and respected his judgment.
'Well, well, well,' said Major Merrall. 'What have we got? Nothing that we can act on. This fellow De Sousa now? We can't connect him in any way with the Girl Guide. If Lady Stubbs's body had turned up, that would have been different.' He brought his eyebrows down towards his nose and glared at Bland. 'You think there is a body, don't you?'
'What do you think, sir?'
'Oh, I agree with you. Otherwise, we'd have traced her by now. Unless, of course, she'd made her plans very carefully. And I don't see the least indication of that. She'd no money, you know. We've been into all the financial side of it. Sir George had the money. He made her a very generous allowance, but she's not got a stiver of her own. And there's no trace of a lover. No rumour of one, no gossip – and there would be, mark you, in a country district like that.'
He took a turn up and down the floor.
'The plain fact of it is that we don't know. We think De Sousa for some unknown reason of his own, made away with his cousin. The most probable thing is that he got her to meet him down at the boathouse, took her aboard the launch and pushed her overboard. You've tested that that could happen?'
'Good lord, sir! You could drown a whole boatful of people during holiday time in the river or on the seashore. Nobody'd think anything of it. Everyone spends their time squealing and pushing each other off things. But the thing De Sousa didn't know about, was that the girl was in the boathouse, bored to death with nothing to do and ten to one was looking out of the window.'
'Hoskins looked out of the window and watched the performance you put up, and you didn't see him?'
'No, sir. You'd have no idea anyone was in that boathouse unless they came out on the balcony and showed themselves -'
'Perhaps the girl did come out on the balcony. De Sousa realises she's seen what he's doing, so he comes ashore and deals with her, gets her to let him into the boathouse by asking her what she's doing there. She tells him, pleased with her part in the Murder Hunt, he puts the cord round her neck in a playful manner – and whoooosh…' Major Merrall made an expressive gesture with his hands. 'That's that! Okay, Bland; okay. Let's say that's how it happened. Pure guesswork. We haven't got any evidence. We haven't got a body, and if we attempted to detain De Sousa in this country we'd have a hornet's nest about our ears. We'll have to let him go.'
'Is he going, sir?'
'He's laying up his yacht a week from now. Going back to his blasted island.'
'So we haven't got much time,' said Inspector Bland gloomily.
'There are other possibilities, I suppose?'
'Oh, yes, sir, there are several possibilities. I still hold to it that she must have been murdered by somebody who was in on the facts of the Murder Hunt. We can clear two people completely. Sir George Stubbs and Captain Warburton. They were running shows on the lawn and taking charge of things the entire afternoon. They are vouched for by dozens of people. The same applies to Mrs Masterton, if, that is, one can include her at all.'
'Include everybody,' said Major Merrall. 'She's continually ringing me up about bloodhounds. In a detective story,' he added wistfully, 'she'd be just the woman who had done it. But, dash it, I've known Connie Masterton pretty well all my life. I just can't see her going round strangling Girl Guides, or disposing of mysterious exotic beauties. Now, then, who else is there?'
'There's Mrs Oliver,' said Bland. 'She devised the Murder Hunt. She's rather eccentric and she was away on her own for a good part of the afternoon. Then there's Mr Alec Legge.'
'Fellow in the pink cottage, eh?'
'Yes. He left the show fairly early on, or he wasn't seen there. He says he got fed up with it and walked back
