Accordingly, I left the beach, and walked inland. I soon found the Hotel du Phare, a very unpretentious building.
It was annoying in the extreme not to know the lady’s name and, to save my dignity, I decided to stroll inside and look around. Probably I should find her in the lounge. I went in, but there was no sign of her. I waited for some time, till my impatience got the better of me, I took the concierge aside and slipped five francs into his hand.
‘I wish to see a lady who is staying here. A young English lady, small and dark. I am not sure of her name.’
The man shook his head and seemed to be suppressing a grin.
‘There is no such lady as you describe staying here.’
‘But the lady told me she was staying here.’
‘Monsieur must have made a mistake—or it is more likely the lady did, since there has been another gentleman here inquiring for her.’
‘What is that you say?’ I cried, surprised.
‘But yes, monsieur. A gentleman who described her just as you have done.’
‘What was he like?’
‘He was a small gentleman, well dressed, very neat, very spotless, the moustache very stiff, the head of a peculiar shape, and the eyes green.’
Poirot! So that was why he refused to let me accompany him to the station. The impertinence of it! I would thank him not to meddle in my concerns. Did he fancy I needed a nurse to look after me?
Thanking the man, I departed, somewhat at a loss, and still much incensed with my meddlesome friend.
But where was the lady? I set aside my wrath and tried to puzzle it out. Evidently, through inadvertence, she had named the wrong hotel. Then another thought struck me.
Was it inadvertence? Or had she deliberately withheld her name and given me the wrong address?
The more I thought about it, the more I felt convinced that this last surmise of mine was right. For some reason or other she did not wish to let the acquaintance ripen into friendship. And, though half an hour earlier this had been precisely my own view, I did not enjoy having the tables turned upon me. The whole affair was profoundly unsatisfactory, and I went up to the Villa Genevieve in a condition of distinct ill burnout. I did not go to the house, but went up the path to the little bench by the shed, and sat there moodily enough.
I was distracted from my thoughts by the sound of voices close at hand. In a second or two I realized that they came, not from the garden I was in, but from the adjoining garden of the Villa Marguerite, and that they were approaching rapidly. A girl’s voice was speaking, a voice that I recognized as that of the beautiful Marthe.
‘Jack,’ she was saying, ‘is it really true? Are all our troubles over?’
‘You know it, Marthe,’ Jack Renauld replied. ‘Nothing can part us now, beloved. The last obstacle to our union is removed. Nothing can take you from me.’
‘Nothing?’ the girl murmured. ‘Oh, Jack, Jack. I am afraid.’
I had moved to depart, realizing that I was quite unintentionally eavesdropping. As I rose to my feet, I caught sight of them through a gap in the hedge. They stood together facing me, the man’s arm round the girl, his eyes looking into hers. They were a splendid-looking couple, the dark, well-knit boy, and the fair young goddess. They seemed made for each other as they stood there, happy in spite of the terrible tragedy that overshadowed their young lives.
But the girl’s face was troubled, and Jack Renauld seemed to recognize it, as he held her closer to him and asked: ‘But what are you afraid of, darling? What is there to fear?’
And then I saw the look in her eyes, the look Poirot had spoken of, as she murmured, so that I almost guessed at the words: ‘I am afraid—for you.’
I did not hear young Renauld’s answer, for my attention was distracted by an unusual appearance a lithe farther down the hedge. There appeared to be a brown bush there, which seemed odd, to say the least of it, so early in the summer. I stepped along to investigate, but, at my advance, the brown bush withdrew itself precipitately, and faced me with a finger to its lips. It was Giraud.