“I wasn’t following her. I was following someone else, the person who met her.” “And who was that?” “I don’t suppose as it matters mentioning it to you, sir. It was one of the junior attaches of the Hertzogovinian Embassy.” Poirot raised his eyebrows. “That is interesting. Yes, very interesting. Kew Gardens,” he mused. “A pleasant place for a rendezvous. Very pleasant.” “I thought so at the time.” “They talked together?” “No, sir, you wouldn’t have said they knew each other. The young lady had a book with her. She sat down on a seat. She read the book for a little then she laid it down beside her. Then my bloke came and sat there on the seat also. They didn’t speak — only the young lady got up and wandered away. He just sat there and presently he gets up and walks off. He takes with him the book that the young lady has left behind. That’s all, sir.” “Yes,” said Poirot. “It is very interesting.”
Mr. Goby looked at the bookcase and said Good-night to it. He went.
Poirot gave an exasperated sigh.
“Enfiny” he said, “it is too much! There is far too much. Now we have espionage and counter espionage. All I am seeking is one perfectly simple murder. I begin to suspect that that murder only occurred in a drug addict’s brain!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Madame,” Poirot bowed and presented Mrs. Oliver with a bouquet very stylised, a posy in the Victorian manner.
“M. Poirot! Well, really, that is very nice of you, and it’s very like you somehow.
All my flowers are always so untidy.” She looked towards a vase of rather temperamental looking chrysanthemums, then back to the prim circle of rosebuds. “And how nice of you to come and see me.” “I come, Madame, to offer you my felicitations on your recovery.” “Yes,” said Mrs. Oliver, “I suppose I am all right again.” She shook her head to and fro rather gingerly. “I get headaches, though,” she said. “Quite bad headaches.” “You remember, Madame, that I warned you not to do anything dangerous.” “Not to stick my neck out, in fact. That I suppose is just what I did do.” She added, c! felt something evil was about. I was frightened, too, and I told myself I was a fool to be frightened, because what was I frightened of? I mean, it was London.
Right in the middle of London. People all about. I mean — how could I be frightened.
It wasn’t like a lonely wood or anything.” Poirot looked at her thoughtfully. He wondered, had Mrs. Oliver really felt this nervous fear, had she really suspected the presence of evil, the sinister feeling that something or someone wished her ill, or had she read it into the whole thing afterwards?
He knew only too well how easily that could be done. Countless clients had spoken in much the same words that Mrs. Oliver had just used. “I knew something was wrong.
I could feel evil. I knew something was going to happen” and actually they had not felt anything. Was Mrs. Oliver of the same?
He looked at her consideringly. Mrs.
Oliver in her own opinion was famous for her intuition. One intuition succeeded another with remarkable rapidity and Mrs.
Oliver always claimed the right to justify the particular intuition which turned out to be right!
And yet one shared very often with animals the uneasiness of a dog or a cat before a thunderstorm, the knowledge that there is something wrong, although one does not know what it is that is wrong.
“When did it come upon you, this fear?” “When I left the main road,” said Mrs.
Oliver. “Up till then it was all ordinary and quite exciting and — yes, I was enjoying myself, though vexed at finding how difficult it was to trail anybody.” She paused, considering. “Just like a game. Then suddenly it didn’t seem so much like a game, because they were queer little streets and rather sort of broken-down places, and sheds and open spaces being cleared for building — oh, I don’t know, I can’t explain it. But was all different. Like a dream really. You know how dreams are. They start with one thing, a party or something, and then suddenly you find you’re in a jungle or somewhere quite different–and it’s all sinister.” “A jungle?” said Poirot. “Yes, it is interesting you should put it like that.