Oliver ordered coffee and a Bath bun and settled down to be inconspicuous.
Norma and David did not even notice her. They were deeply in the middle of a passionate discussion. It took Mrs. Oliver just a minute or two to tune in to them.
“… But you only fancy these things,” David was saying. “You imagine them.
They’re all utter, utter nonsense, my dear girl.” “I don’t know. I can’t tell.” Norma’s voice had a queer lack of resonance in it.
Mrs. Oliver could not hear her as well as she heard David, since Norma’s back was turned to her, but the dullness of the girl’s tone struck her disagreeably. There was something wrong here, she thought.
Very wrong. She remembered the story as Poirot had first told it to her. “She thinks she may have committed a murder.” What was the matter with the girl. Hallucinations? Was her mind really slightly affected, or was it no more and no less than truth, and in consequence the girl had suffered a bad shock?
“If you ask me, it’s all fuss on Mary’s part! She’s a thoroughly stupid woman anyway, and she imagines she has illnesses and all that sort of thing.” “She kw ill.” “All right then, she was ill. Any sensible woman would get the doctor to give her some antibiotic or other, and not get het up.” “She thought / did it to her. My father thinks so too.” “I tell you, Norma, you imagine all these things.” “You just say that to me, David. You say it to me to cheer me up. Supposing I did give her the stuff?” “What do you mean, suppose? You must know whether you did or you didn’t.
You can’t be so idiotic, Norma.” “I don’t know.” “You keep saying that. You keep coming back to that, and saying it again and again. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ ” “You don’t understand. You don’t understand in the least what hate is. I hated her from the first moment I saw her.” “I know. You told me that.” “That’s the queer part of it. I told you that) and yet I don’t even remember telling you that. D’you see? Every now and then I — I tell people things. I tell people things that I want to do, or that I have done, or that I’m going to do. But I don’t even remember telling them the things.
It’s as though I was thinking all these things in my mind, and sometimes they come out in the open and I say them to people. I did say them to you, didn’t I?” “Well — I mean — look here, don’t let’s harp back to that.” “But I did say it to you? Didn’t I?” “All right, all right! One says things like that. (I hate her and I’d like to kill her.
I think I’ll poison her!’ But that’s only kid stuff, if you know what I mean, as though you weren’t quite grown up. It’s a very natural thing. Children say it a lot. ‘I hate so and so. I’ll cut off his head!’ Kids say it at school. About some master they particularly dislike.” “You think it was just that? But– that sounds as though I wasn’t grown up.” “Well, you’re not in some ways. If you’d just pull yourself together, realise how silly it all is. What can it matter if you do hate her? You’ve got away from home and don’t have to live with her.” “Why shouldn’t I live in my own home —with my own father?” said Norma.
“It’s not fair. It’s not fair. First he went away and left my mother, and now, just when he’s coming back to me, he goes and marries Mary. Of course I hate her and she hates me too. I used to think about killing her, used to think of ways of doing it. I used to enjoy thinking like that. But then — when she really got ill…” David said uneasily: “You don’t think you’re a witch or anything, do you? You don’t make figures in wax and stick pins into them or do that sort of thing?” “Oh no. That would be silly. What I did was real. Quite real.” “Look here, Norma, what do you mean when you say it was real?” “The bottle was there, in my drawer.