vii

in leaving the room poirot almost cannoned into a tall figure outside the door.

he said: “i beg your pardon, mademoiselle.”

jane olivera drew apart a little.

she said. “do you know what i think of you, m. poirot?”

“eh bien—mademoiselle—”

she did not give time to finish. the question, indeed, had but a rhetorical value. all that it meant

was that jane olivera was about to answer it herself.

“you’re a spy, that’s what you are! a miserable, low, snooping spy, nosing round and making

trouble!”

“i assure you, mademoiselle—”

“i know just what you’re after! and i know now just what lies you tell! why don’t you admit it

straight out? well, i’ll tell you this—you won’t find out anything—anything at all! there’s

nothing to find out! no one’s going to harm a hair on my precious uncle’s head. he’s safe enough.

he’ll always be safe. safe and smug and prosperous—and full of platitudes! he’s just a stodgy

john bull, that’s what he is—without an ounce of imagination or vision.”

she paused, then, her agreeable, husky voice deepening, she said venomously: “i loathe the

sight of you—you bloody little bourgeois detective!”

she swept away from him in a whirl of expensive model drapery.

hercule poirot remained, his eyes very wide open, his eyebrows raised and his hand

thoughtfully caressing his moustaches.

the epithet bourgeois was, he admitted, well-applied to him. his outlook on life was essentially

bourgeois, and always had been, but the employment of it as an epithet of contempt by the

exquisitely turned out jane olivera gave him, as he expressed it to himself, furiously to think.

he went, still thinking, into the drawing room.

mrs. olivera was playing patience.

she looked up as poirot entered, surveyed him with the cold look she might have bestowed

upon a black beetle and murmured distantly:

“red knave on black queen.”

chilled, poirot retreated. he reflected mournfully:

“alas, it would seem that nobody loves me!”

he strolled out of the window into the garden. it was an enchanting evening with a smell of

night-scented stocks in the air. poirot sniffed happily and strolled along a path that ran between

two herbaceous borders.

he turned a corner and two dimly-seen figures sprang apart.

it would seem that he had interrupted a pair of lovers.

poirot hastily turned and retraced his steps.

even out here, it would seem, his presence was de trop.

he passed alistair blunt’s window and alistair blunt was dictating to mr. selby.

there seemed definitely only one place for hercule poirot.

he went up to his bedroom.

he pondered for some time on various fantastic aspects of the situation.

had he or had he not made a mistake in believing the voice on the telephone to be that of mrs.

olivera? surely the idea was absurd!

he recalled the melodramatic revelations of quiet little mr. barnes. he speculated on the

mysterious whereabouts of mr. q.x.912, alias albert chapman. he remembered, with a spasm of

annoyance, the anxious look in the eyes of the maidservant, agnes—

it was always the same way—people would keep things back! usually quite unimportant things,

but until they were cleared out of the way, impossible to pursue a straight path.

at the moment the path was anything but straight!

and the most unaccountable obstacle in the way of clear thinking and orderly progress was

what he described to himself as the contradictory and impossible problem of miss sainsbury

seale. for, if the facts that hercule poirot had observed were true facts—then nothing whatever

made sense!

hercule poirot said to himself, with astonishment in the thought:

“is it possible that i am growing old?”