have an idea of the kind of crime this was – but it must be that I am not looking at it the right way.
He turned a page of his notebook, and wrote: Did Lady Stubbs ask Miss Brewis to take tea to Marlene? If not, why does Miss Brewis say that she did?
He considered the point. Miss Brewis might quite easily herself have thought of taking cake and a fruit drink to the girl. But if so why did she not simply say so? Why lie about Lady Stubbs having asked her to do so? Could this be because Miss Brewis went to the boathouse and found Marlene dead? Unless Miss Brewis was herself guilty of the murder, that seemed very unlikely. She was not a nervous woman nor an imaginative one. If she had found the girl dead, she would surely at once have given the alarm?
He stared for some time at the two questions he had written. He could not help feeling that somewhere in those words there was some vital pointer to the truth that had escaped him. After four or five minutes of thought he wrote down something more.
Etienne De Sousa declares that he wrote to his cousin three weeks before his arrival at Nasse House. Is that statement true or false?
Poirot felt almost certain that it was false. He recalled the scene at the breakfast table. There seemed no earthly reason why Sir George or Lady Stubbs should pretend to a surprise and, in the latter's case, a dismay, which they did not feel. He could see no purpose to be accomplished by it. Granting, however, that Etienne De Sousa had lied, why did he lie? To give the impression that his visit had been announced and welcomed? It might be so, but it seemed a very doubtful reason. There was certainly no evidence that such a letter had ever been written or received. Was it an attempt on De Sousa's part to establish his bona fides – to make his visit appear natural and even expected? Certainly Sir George had received him amicably enough, although he did not know him.
Poirot paused, his thoughts coming to a stop. Sir George did not know De Sousa. His wife, who did know him, had not seen him. Was there perhaps something there? Could it be possible that the Etienne De Sousa who had arrived that day at the fete was not the real Etienne De Sousa? He went over the idea in his mind, but again he could see no point to it. What had De Sousa to gain by coming and representing himself as De Sousa if he was not De Sousa? In any case De Sousa did not derive any benefit from Hattie's death. Hattie, as the police had ascertained, had no money of her own except that which was allowed her by her husband.
Poirot tried to remember exactly what she had said to him that morning. 'He is a bad man. He does wicked things.' And, according to Bland, she had said to her husband: 'He kills people.'
There was something rather significant about that, now that one came to examine all the facts. He kills people.
On the day Etienne De Sousa had come to Nasse House one person certainly had been killed, possibly two people. Mrs Folliat had said that one should pay no attention to these melodramatic remarks of Hattie's. She had said so very insistently. Mrs Folliat…
Hercule Poirot frowned, then brought his hand down with a bang on the arm of his chair.
'Always, always – I return to Mrs Folliat. She is the key to the whole business. If I knew what she knows… I can no longer sit in an arm-chair and just think. No, I must take a train and go again to Devon and visit Mrs Folliat.'
II
Hercule Poirot paused for a moment outside the big wrought-iron gates of Nasse House. He looked ahead of him along the curving drive. It was no longer summer. Golden-brown leaves fluttered gently down from the trees. Near at hand the grassy banks were coloured with small mauve cyclamen. Poirot sighed. The beauty of Nasse House appealed to him in spite of himself. He was not a great admirer of nature in the wild, he liked things trim and neat, yet he could not but appreciate the soft wild beauty of massed shrubs and trees.
At his left was the small white porticoed lodge. It was a fine afternoon. Probably Mrs Folliat would not be at home. She would be out somewhere with her gardening basket or else visiting some friends in the neighbourhood. She had many friends. This was her home, and had been her home for many long years. What was it the old man on the quay had said? 'There'll always be Folliats at Nasse House.'
Poirot rapped gently upon the door of the Lodge. After a few moments' delay, he heard footsteps inside. They sounded to his ear slow and almost hesitant. Then the door was opened and Mrs Folliat stood framed in the doorway. He was startled to see how old and frail she looked. She stared at him incredulously for a moment or two, then she said:
'M. Poirot? You!'
He thought for a moment that he had seen fear leap into her eyes, but perhaps that was sheer imagination on his part. He said politely:
'May I come in, Madame?'
'But of course.'
She had recovered all her poise now, beckoned him in with a gesture and led the way into her small sitting- room. There were some delicate Chelsea figures on the mantelpiece, a couple of chairs covered in exquisite petit point, and a Derby tea service stood on the small table. Mrs Folliat said:
'I will fetch another cup.'
Poirot raised a faintly protesting hand, but she pushed the protest aside.
'Of course you must have some tea.'
She went out of the room. He looked round him once more. A piece of needlework, a petit point chair seat, lay on a table with a needle sticking in it. Against the wall was a bookcase with books. There was a little cluster of miniatures on the wall and a faded photograph in a silver frame of a man in uniform with a stiff moustache and a weak chin.
Mrs Folliat came back into the room with a cup and saucer in her hand.
Poirot said, 'Your husband, Madame?'
'Yes.'
Noticing that Poirot's eyes swept along the top of the bookcase as though in search of further photographs, she said brusquely:
'I'm not fond of photographs. They make one live in the past too much. One must learn to forget. One must cut away the dead wood.'
Poirot remembered how the first time he had seen Mrs Folliat she had been clipping with secateurs at a shrub on the bank. She had said then, he remembered, something about dead wood. He looked at her thoughtfully, appraising her character. An enigmatical woman, he thought, and a woman who, in spite of the gentleness and fragility of her appearance, had a side to her that could be ruthless. A woman who could cut away dead wood not only from plants but from her own life…
She sat down and poured out a cup of tea, asking:
'Milk? Sugar?'
'Three lumps if you will be so good, Madame?'
She handed him his cup and said conversationally:
'I was surprised to see you. Somehow I did not imagine you would be passing through this part of the world again.'
'I am not exactly passing through,' said Poirot.
'No?' She queried him with slightly uplifted eyebrows.
'My visit to this part of the world is intentional.'
She still looked at him in inquiry.
'I came here partly to see you, Madame.'
'Really?'
'First of all – there has been no news of the young Lady Stubbs?'
Mrs Folliat shook her head.
'There was a body washed up the other day in Cornwall,' she said. 'George went there to see if he could identify it. But it was not her.' She added: 'I am very sorry for George. The strain has been very great.'
'Does he still believe that his wife may be alive?'
