'It's not a case of preventing,' said Mrs Oliver joyfully. 'I'd have made the most awful fool of myself. I mean, what can you say about how you write books? What I mean is, first you've got to think of something, and when you've thought of it you've got to force yourself to sit down and write it. That's all. It would have taken me just three minutes to explain that, and then the Talk would have been ended and everyone would have been very fed up. I can't imagine why everybody is always so keen for authors to talk about writing. I should have thought it was an author's business to write, not talk.'
'And yet it is about how you write that I want to ask you.'
'You can ask,' said Mrs Oliver; 'but I probably shan't know the answer. I mean one just sits down and writes. Half a minute, I've got a frightfully silly hat on for the Talk – and I must take it off. It scratches my forehead.' There was a momentary pause and then the voice of Mrs Oliver resumed in a relieved voice, 'Hats are really only a symbol, nowadays, aren't they? I mean, one doesn't wear them for sensible reasons any more; to keep one's head warm, or shield one from the sun, or hide one's face from people one doesn't want to meet. I beg your pardon, M. Poirot, did you say something?'
'It was an ejaculation only. It is extraordinary,' said Poirot, and his voice was awed. 'Always you give me ideas. So also did my friend Hastings whom I have not seen for many, many years. You have given me now the clue to yet another piece of my problem. But no more of all that. Let me ask you instead my question. Do you know an atom scientist, Madame?'
'Do I know an atom scientist?' said Mrs Oliver in a surprised voice. 'I don't know. I suppose I may. I mean, I know some professors and things. I'm never quite sure what they actually do.'
'Yet you made an atom scientist one of the suspects in your Murder Hunt?'
'Oh, that! That was just to be up to date. I mean, when I went to buy presents for my nephews last Christmas, there was nothing but science fiction and the stratosphere and supersonic toys, and so I thought when I started on the Murder Hunt, 'Better have an atom scientist as the chief suspect and be modern.' After all, if I'd needed a little technical jargon for it I could always have got it from Alec Legge.'
'Alec Legge – the husband of Sally Legge? Is he an atom scientist?'
'Yes, he is. Not Harwell. Wales somewhere. Cardiff. Or Bristol, is it? It's just a holiday cottage they have on the Helm. Yes, so, of course, I do know an atom scientist after all.'
'And it was meeting him at Nasse House that probably put the idea of an atom scientist into your head? But his wife is not Yugoslavian.'
'Oh, no,' said Mrs Oliver, 'Sally is English as English. Surely you realise that?'
'Then what put the idea of the Yugoslavian wife into your head?'
'I really don't know… Refugees perhaps? Students? All those foreign girls at the hostel trespassing through the woods and speaking broken English.'
'I see… Yes, I see now a lot of things.'
'It's about time,' said Mrs Oliver.
'Pardon?'
'I said it was about time,' said Mrs Oliver. 'That you did see things, I mean. Up to now you don't seem to have done anything' Her voice held reproach.
'One cannot arrive at things all in a moment,' said Poirot, defending himself. 'The police,' he added, 'have been completely baffled.'
'Oh, the police,' said Mrs Oliver. 'Now if a woman were the head of Scotland Yard…'
Recognising this well-known phrase, Poirot hastened to interrupt.
'The matter has been complex,' he said. 'Extremely complex. But now – I tell you this in confidence – but now I arrive!'
Mrs Oliver remained unimpressed.
'I dare say,' she said; 'but in the meantime there have been two murders.'
'Three,' Poirot corrected her.
'Three murders? Who's the third?'
'An old man called Merdell,' said Hercule Poirot.
'I haven't heard of that one,' said Mrs Oliver. 'Will it be in the paper?'
'No,' said Poirot, 'up to now no one has suspected that it was anything but an accident.'
'And it wasn't an accident?'
'No,' said Poirot, 'it was not an accident.'
'Well, tell me who did it – did them, I mean – or can't you over the telephone?'
'One does not say these things over the telephone,' said Poirot.
'Then I shall ring off,' said Mrs Oliver. 'I can't bear it.'
'Wait a moment,' said Poirot, 'there is something else I wanted to ask you. Now, what was it?'
'That's a sign of age,' said Mrs Oliver. 'I do that, too. Forget things -'
'There was something, some little point – it worried me. I was in the boathouse…'
He cast his mind back. That pile of comics. Marlene's phrases scrawled on the margin. 'Albert goes with Doreen.' He had had a feeling that there was something lacking – that there was something he must ask Mrs Oliver.
'Are you still there, M. Poirot?' demanded Mrs Oliver. At the same time the operator requested more money.
These formalities completed, Poirot spoke once more.
'Are you still there, Madame?'
'I'm still here,' said Mrs Oliver. 'Don't let's waste any more money asking each other if we're there. What is it?'
'It is something very important. You remember your Murder Hunt?'
'Well, of course I remember it. It's practically what we've just been talking about, isn't it?'
'I made one grave mistake,' said Poirot. 'I never read your synopsis for competitors. In the gravity of discovering a murder it did not seem to matter. I was wrong. It did matter. You are a sensitive person, Madame. You are affected by your atmosphere, by the personalities of the people you meet. And these are translated into your work. Not recognisably so, but they are the inspiration from which your fertile brain draws its creations.'
'That's very nice flowery language,' said Mrs Oliver. 'But what exactly do you mean?'
'That you have always known more about this crime than you have realised yourself. Now for the question I want to ask you – two questions actually; but the first is very important. Did you, when you first began to plan your Murder Hunt, mean the body to be discovered in the boathouse?'
'No, I didn't.'
'Where did you intend it to be?'
'In that funny little summer-house tucked away in the rhododendrons near the house. I thought it was just the place. But then someone, I can't remember who exactly, began insisting that it should be found in the Folly. Well, that, of course, was an absurd idea! I mean, anyone could have strolled in there quite casually and come across it without having followed a single clue. People are so stupid. Of course I couldn't agree to that.'
'So, instead, you accepted the boathouse?'
'Yes, that's just how it happened. There was really nothing against the boathouse though I still thought the little summer-house would have been better.'
'Yes, that is the technique you outlined to me that first day. There is one thing more. Do you remember telling me that there was a final clue written on one of the 'comics' that Marlene was given to amuse her?'
'Yes, of course.'
'Tell me, was it something like -' (he forced his memory back to a moment when he had stood reading various scrawled phrases): 'Albert goes with Doreen; George Porgie kisses hikers in the wood; Peter pinches girls in the Cinema?'
'Good gracious me, no,' said Mrs Oliver in a slightly shocked voice. 'It wasn't anything silly like that. No, mine was a perfectly straightforward clue.' She lowered her voice and spoke in mysterious tones. 'Look in the hiker's rucksack.'
'Epatant!' cried Poirot. 'Epatant! Of course, the 'comic' with that on it would have to be taken away. It might have given someone ideas!'
'The rucksack, of course, was on the floor by the body and -'